tickets

Do you like to go to sporting events and shows? Most people like to get out to the ballpark or a concert every once in a while, but often rising ticket prices, service fees, and extra hassle keep people from buying tickets.

ScoreBig Daily (Free) is an app for iPhone that works with the ScoreBig.com Web site to get you good seats for events for much less than the original ticket price. As of today's launch of the app, ScoreBig only works with events in L.A. or San Francisco, but it will soon be available for most … Read more

The next time you find yourself in traffic court, add the "Krioukov defense" to the list of strategies you can use to weasel your way out of a stop sign violation.

Dmitri Krioukov invoked the laws of physics to beat the $400 traffic ticket he was issued when a police officer observed him allegedly running a stop sign, according to an article in Physics Central. The University of California, San Diego, physicist drafted a four-page paper detailing his defense, arguing that the police officer mistakenly thought he ran the stop sign owing to a unique combinations of events. … Read more

Picking up where Square (and possibly PayPal) left off, the increasingly popular ticketing company Eventbrite said today it is releasing a payments dongle for iPad that could make it simple for event organizers to quickly sell tickets and merchandise.

Eventbrite said its At the Door box office package--which includes both the dongle and an iPad app--is potentially the "final nail in Ticketmaster's coffin," given that the new system should make it easy for organizers to sell tickets to just about any event, as well as to get what vice president of marketing Tamara Mendelsohn called a "… Read more

Poynt rolls all of the local discovery tools you need into one application. You can use it to search for restaurants, events, deals, people, businesses, movie tickets, even gas prices.

With all that functionality, fortunately Poynt's interface is simple and straightforward. Just open up the app and tap any of the icons on the home page to begin your search. All of the search tools take your GPS location into account, which means in most cases you'll get the most-relevant results. Also, many of the tools have additional options to help you further refine your search, if necessary.… Read more

If you were a developer who missed out on nabbing tickets to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference last year, there's a new solution to make sure that doesn't happen again next year.

Developers Anthony Herron and Aaron Wardle have launched WWDC Alerts, a simple site that promises to give people the heads up when tickets to Apple's yet-to-be-announced 2012 event goes on sale.

"In 2011 it sold out in less than 10 hours. In 2012 it will likely by sooner [sic]," the site says. "WWDC Alerts will notify you via call and SMS … Read more

On opening weekend of the NFL season, I gave NFL Sunday Ticket To Go, DirecTV's NFL game-streaming service, a spin on the PlayStation 3. Or, at least, I tried to: service outages for Sunday Ticket To Go plagued everyone and killed the excitement of NFL game-watching on a console.

Two weeks later (I was tailgating at the Jets-Jaguars game last week), I returned to my first-gen PS3 to give the service a second go. Thankfully, this time it worked as well as advertised.

Sunday Ticket on the PS3 acts and works nearly identically to how it functions on devices like the iPad. After entering login information and waiting several seconds, a dashboard of all the available Sunday games appears for browsing, optimized for use with the PS3 controller (stats and standings can be browsed with the left/right shoulder buttons, but if you use a PS3 Bluetooth remote you'll need to fumble for the equivalent "L2/R2" button). Sunday Ticket starts you off on the Red Zone Channel, which cuts to the most interesting action among all games. From there, clicking on the others will load the appropriate game, after a delay of 10 seconds or so. … Read more

I am an NFL fan, and I don't have cable. For those reasons alone, I was incredibly excited about this year's addition of DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket to the PlayStation 3. Like MLB and NHL streaming apps before it, Sunday Ticket is an extension of DirecTV's NFL game-streaming package, which has already been available on the PC, mobile phones, the iPad, and Android tablets. The PS3, however, is the first gaming console to gain NFL game-streaming capability.

It sounds great, but be aware of the caveats. First, Sunday Ticket costs $340 to activate for one season. That's $90 more than the cost of a PlayStation 3. Second, Sunday Ticket does not work for all games: In fact, it's only for 1 and 4 ET Sunday games outside of one's local broadcast market (hence, "Sunday" ticket). Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and Thursday night games won't play. As a Jets fan, I'd still need to watch games via over-the-air broadcast, as I normally do.

That's standard knowledge to anyone who's already used NFL Sunday Ticket, but it's useful disambiguation for newcomers, particularly cable cord-cutters hoping that Sunday Ticket will be a catch-all solution. It isn't, entirely, especially since ESPN and NFL Network are cable-only. For those, you'll either need cable TV or a local sports bar and some beer money. However, I was curious and extremely excited to see if DirecTV's PS3 app could vault the NFL to a new level of access for the cable-free.… Read more

StubHub is launching a mobile ticket option today for San Francisco Giants fans that allows them to get tickets sent directly to their phones, eliminating the need for printouts.

Because the feature, which is being added to the current StubHub app for the iPhone or Android phones, eliminates the need for a paper ticket, buyers will literally be able to find and buy tickets as they stand outside the gate. Ushers using special scanners, not the bar code scanners currently in use at most sporting and concert venues, simply scan the image of the ticket displayed on the screen.

The app does not completely eliminate the need for paper: ushers will hand customers a printed receipt that they need for reentry to their section after leaving for the bathroom or food.

Mats Nilsson, director of product at StubHub, said that for now there are six of the new scanners at the Giants ballpark. The company plans to expand the mobile ticketing service to other venues over the next few months. … Read more

Football season is upon us, yet being a football fan often feels like a punishment if you enjoy technology; streaming of NFL games has lagged behind the NBA, NHL, and MLB in terms of device availability.

Sony announced today that NFL Sunday Ticket will be available on the PlayStation 3 this season, bringing the only method of viewing all NFL games to a video game console for the first time.

The price of adoption isn't cheap: New customers who aren't already using DirecTV will have to pay $339.95 for the privilege of streaming a whole season of games. Existing DirecTV customers have to pay $50 to activate the PS3 connectivity.

Another caveat: this only allows access to out-of-market games, meaning that die-hard local fans (such as myself) will have to watch local broadcasts and regular television for their teams, and hop off the PS3--or, keep the PS3 and TV in a picture-in-picture orientation. … Read more