Tech review: Apps to welcome back March Madness

Teh ESPN Tournament Challenge app is a must-have for college... — Teh ESPN Tournament Challenge app is a must-have for college basketball fans. Credit: Disney

By Peter KingSpecial to NewsdayMarch 10, 2021

Madness never felt so good. A year after both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments were cancelled because of the pandemic, fans of college basketball, office pools and bracketology eagerly await the return of March Madness. These apps can help you construct tournament brackets and follow the action.

NCAA March Madness Live

(iOS, Android; free)

This official app of the men’s tournament is your portal to stream all 67 games, beginning with Tuesday’s "First Four" games. There are some rules: To stream games, you will have to log in using your credentials from your cable or satellite provider. (Games telecast locally on WCBS do not need login credentials.) The app allows you to make your own brackets and receive alerts when your favorite teams play.

ESPN Tournament Challenge

(iOS, Android; free)

The go-to app for "bracketology" aficionados, ESPN Tournament Challenge lets you create as many as 25 brackets for the men’s tournament and fill in every team yourself or use ESPN’s "Basketball Power Index" formula to do your brackets. A nice feature: If you strongly believe you know who will win, just begin your bracket with your champion and let the app fill in everything else.

Bracket Tracker

(iOS, Android; free)

If you just want an app to create and follow your brackets with a neat and clean interface, you can’t go wrong with Bracket Tracker. Create as many brackets as you want for both the men’s and women’s tournaments and the scores will be updated automatically. There’s a nice historical feature in which you can quickly see the results from past men’s and women’s tournaments going back to 2013.

Women's College Basketball

(iOS, Android; free)

The other apps looked at here cover the women’s NCAA Tournament to some degree, but this app covers only the women’s NCAA Tournament, as well as women’s basketball in general. You get game previews, live scores, boxscores, alerts and a rundown of the TV schedules, so you can keep up with all the action. You can filter your results in several ways, including by teams or conference.

Vinyl revival amid streaming surge

Music streaming revenues hit a record $10.1 billion in 2020, up 13.4 percent from 2019, as subscriptions to services such as Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music surged, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Meanwhile, revenue from vinyl records grew 29 percent to $626 million, surpassing CDs for the first time since 1986. Overall, streaming accounted for 83 percent of the music industry’s revenue in 2020.

— PETER KING

Porsche rolls out EV, and EB

Porsche is expanding its line of electric vehicles, unveiling the Taycan Cross Turismo, an all-wheel drive sport wagon with a starting price of $90,900. If that price is too steep, you can get a Porsche at a fraction of the price, if you don’t mind two-wheel drive. Porsche has also introduced two electric bicycles: the eBike Sport for $10,700 and eBike Cross for $8,549.

— PETER KING

Reddit eyeing IPO

Reddit has moved a step closer to an initial public offering. The host of popular internet forums appointed Drew Vollero its first chief financial officer. Vollero led Snapchat’s IPO preparations when he served as CFO at the social media company. Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman told The New York Times he didn’t have a timeline for going public, but “we’re working toward that moment.”