Sportacular: free sports tracker for iPhone, iPod Touch

SportacularAlthough I noticed that ESPN now offers a mobile friendly site for iPhones, I’m still not convinced we should have websites formatted for specific devices. Apparently neither are some of you. That’s why I was happy to see a new free application in the Apple App Store this morning: Sportacular.

This freebie offers the latest scores updated every 30 seconds and covers six sports: MLB, NFL, NCAA football & basketball, NBA and the NHL. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: "Where’s the NASCAR?" Or maybe, it’s just me that’s thinking that and it should have been part of my inner monologue.

Anyway, since apps can’t yet run in the background on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll need to keep Sportacular up and running all the time if you want updates every half-minute. Here’s where the app gains some real added value though: it’s not just for scores. There are three additional feature tabs on the bottom of the app: Standings, Player Stats and News. Standings are simply that, but the Player Stats and News feature really shines.

For Player Stats, you add whole teams or individual players to your preferred lists. Even better: you can create custom fantasy teams of players, which is perfect for watching "your" team in the local league. The News bits are pulled from four key sources and you can choose which sources are on or off: ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports and FOX Sports are all there. The news rolls like an RSS reader to the four sources and when you tap a story, Sportacular uses Safari to render the full feature. Note that it does this inside of Sportacular, which is very clever and keeps you in the app. Sports junkies that have an iPhone or iPod Touch owe it to themselves to take a look at Sportacular: you simply can’t beat the price and the interface is well designed.

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