I ran into an awesome post in Adapative Path’s essay archives (what, they couldn’t just say blog?) called The Long Wow. If you run a startup, a company, or a hot dog stand, it’s worth the read. It

“Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “wow,” when the product or service delights, anticipates the needs of, or pleasantly surprises a customer. OXO’s Good Grips Angled Measuring Cup triggers such a moment of wow. A set of angled markings on the OXO cup lets you quickly measure liquids for recipes without having to stop cooking and bend over. Suddenly a little part of your life is easier, because OXO thought carefully about the way you cook. This delightful surprise resonates because it feels tailored to your needs.” (more)

I’ve had to spend a lot of my time on “plumbing” type activities doing my best to keep RUWT? up and running. We had over 200GB of traffic to the API last month (triple the site traffic if you’re wondering) and keeping it humming to support the RUWT? Sports Toolbar, iPhone app, desktop widget, Twitter Bot, definitely takes up a lot of time. Unfortunately all that time revolves around work that you may never notice.

So Listen Up! Heading into the end of the year, we’re bagging the boring “plumbing” work and focussing on new features. Top 25 options for College Basketball in the Toolbar? It’s coming. A way to turn off games in NBA League Pass and NHL Center Ice? On it’s way. Include the message when you’re notified that someone shouted at you? Already done, son!

Christmas is starting early kids. Tell Santa RUWTbot what you want.

I’m a little wary of getting my daily breakfast burrito since there is a freakin’ SWAT standoff down the street from me, so I figured this would be a good time to knock the dust off the blog a bit.

A couple things:

• Version 1.8 of the RUWT? Sports Toolbar fixed a lot of compatibility issues with other add-ons, and version 1.9 (in Mozilla’s queue, should be out soon) will have Breaking News alerts built right in. If you use Firefox or Flock, you should definitely check it out.
• With College Basketball getting underway, we’re getting into one of the busiest (if not best) time of year for sports. Remember, at http://areyouwatchingthis.com/my/alerts, you can configure your alerts to your heart’s content.
• My first RUWT? business trip will be next week. Should be interesting.

As always, don’t hesitate to shout at me on my page, or drop me a line at mark@areyouwatchingthis.com if you have any questions or suggestions.

I’m currently in the B group, waiting for flight 607 to take me to Vegas for an overdue vacation. Why do you care? No reason.

But if there are any site hiccups, or you don’t hear from me in the Bleachers for a few days, or even worse still, you do and it’s full of drunken ramblings, part incomprehensible and part asinine, you’ll know to just ignore me.

Elaine driving. The passenger seats are piled with the garbage from the basement – old carpets, bits of timber, boxes, etc. An external shot of the car reveals she is driving on Kramer’s section of road, as the black-painted lane markers can be seen.

ELAINE: Hey, look at this. Wide lanes. This is so luxurious. Woo, yeah.

Do you remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer adopted a highway and repainted all the highway lanes? It’s easily in my all-time top 5 with Elaine pretending to be a janitor so she can get Chinse Food from the delivery guy that won’t cross the street, George pretending to be a construction worker as he tries to get his Phil Rizzuto (RIP) key ring from underneath a pothole, Jerry unable to kiss his girlfriend (played by Kristin Davis) after knocking her toothbrush into the toilet, and it all ends with Newman belting “Three Times a Lady”, just before his truck explodes into a fireball.

What’s the point, Mark?

Shut your cakehole. Point is, I found some fatfingered code and a spot where I can cache some data a bit more aggressively in the RUWT? API this morning, so things will be running a lot smoother. As the server’s load factors fall to miniscule levels, I’d go as far as to call it luxurious.

API traffic (coming from the Desktop Widget, the Firefox Toolbar, and the iPhone app) dwarfs normal site traffic, so if you’ve seen any hiccups recently, those should be pretty much squashed. If you haven’t run into any hiccups, then there’s nothing to see here…

They may not think it’s the best iPhone-optimized sports site out there, but at least they rank it in the top 9.

Check it: RUWT? is now listed in Apple’s official iPhone Web App Directory.

I swear I’ll stop talking about the iPhone soon. Probably.

http://areyouwatchingthis.com/iphone

It’s a work in progress, but with just a few more days of work, I think it’ll be the best iPhone-optimized sports app out there. Lemme know what you think.

On Thursday we’ll be adding two new items to RUWT?—one I’m excited about, one makes me a bit queasy.

First off, we’ll be launching an iPhone-optimized version of the site. It’s still in it’s early stages, but will let you checkout customized scores and news on your new geek hawtness.

Secondly, there’ll be a trial run of ads on the site. News to me, but there’s a limit to how many credit cards one can actually fit in a wallet, so we’re gonna give it a go.

With both of these, I’d really, really, really love to hear feedback from you guys. You can either leave a comment below or just drop me a line at mark@areyouwatchingthis.com.

It took ages longer than I hoped, but I’m happy to officially announce that RUWT? finally supports television listings and alerts for Canada.

Welcome aboard folks. RUWTbot stands on guard for thee.