The motivation for RUWT? is pretty simple: I hate missing great games and I don’t think any of us should have to ever again. Here’s a great post I found late last night about RUWTbot doing his job.
I almost missed Jon Lester’s no-hitter. There I was with my softball team, relishing another victory, not really paying attention to much, largely due to some slightly inconvenient tv locations. The meal and beers were seemingly at an end when my buddy Derek piped up:
“Uhhh… so, I signed up on this site called areyouwatchingthis.com. The idea is it sends me e-mails and texts when there is an awesome game on, like an overtime basketball game, 12-inning baseball game, whatever. You tell it what tv channels you get and what sports you want to follow, and it let’s you know when something exciting is going on. Anyway, I’m supposed to get e-mails when games are at an “high” level of excitement, and texts when a game is at “severe” level. So, my question is… why am I getting a text that says “Red Sox 7, Royals 0″? Do we need to check the Sox game?” (more)
very cool story. Same thing happened to me – would have totally missed the game had I not gotten the text message. Quick question, though – I might be imagining this, but did the alerts used to give a reason, too? (i.e no hitter in progress, upset, close game, etc)
yeah, it’s funny i got a question about that last night too. turns out i dorked up some code so the reasons were going out when RUWTbot pushed a game over the threshold, but not when users made the deciding vote. i’ll have it fixed this week…