application News and Viewing for iphone

WatchESPN (free; also works with iPad)—Here’s the good news: this app provides access to live streaming feeds from ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, and ESPNU. Impressive, no matter how you slice it. Here’s the bad news: you need a pay-TV subscription on Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, or Verizon FiOS TV. There’s no way to simply “pay” for access through the app. It’s an awful ploy to keep people locked into an arcane, outdated pay-TV ecosystem that people are peeling away from, but until à la carte programming emerges in America, we’re stuck with two options: pay up or don’t watch.

* ESPN ScoreCenter (free)—The best part of this app is the newer, lower price
tag, which is $0.00. ESPN has proven to be a go-to source for breaking sporting
news as well as up-to-the-minute scores across just about every league
you can imagine, and all of the web-based content is wrapped up in an easyto-
digest format (shown in Figure 11-4). Better still, no pay-TV subscriptions
are necessary to enjoy any of the material here.
* Yahoo! Sportacular (free)—If it’s not ESPN breaking sports-related stories, it’s
Yahoo! I simply prefer the layout of this app when digging up game scores and
following moment-by-moment updates on the fly, and there’s a nice array of
push notifications that you can enable, too. As for your fantasy teams? If you
set ‘em up with Yahoo!, there’s a delightful amount of integration to be found.
* Insert Your Favorite Team Here—Most, and I emphasize most, major professional
teams have their own dedicated iPhone app. Some of them are nothing
more than schedules, whereas others have news updates, player profiles, and
message boards. It’s worth a search in the App Store for your team’s name. And
if their app isn’t up to snuff, it’s probably about time to reevaluate your loyalty.