Are You Watching This?! is returning to the desktop!
The Desktop App is one of our oldest applications, but sadly doesn’t get the love that it should. Today we’re relaunching it as a fork of our RUWT?! Chrome Web App codebase.
What does all that gobbledygook mean? It means you can have the Game Tracker, Videos, Scores, and all the other features that make it a Featured Web Store App, right on your desktop. What are you waiting for? Install it now!
It may not have a catchy name, but mid-April to mid-May is at the top of my favorite sports “months” of the year. With the NHL Playoffs starting off in style last night, the NBA starting its playoff push on Saturday, and the MLB season in full swing, there are a slew of games each and every day.
Standing against that backdrop of joy makes it that much harder for me to break the following news:
The Sports Ticker that we know and love is dead.
Never to be faulted for effort, that reliable friend seen everywhere from our living room TV to our favorite smartphone app, had dutifully churned through each and every score of the day for decades. Sure, it took up room on your beautiful new flat-screen even when you didn’t need it, and sure, if you missed the actual game you’re looking for it was another 12 minutes before you realized you just missed it again, and sure…well, you get the point.
The cause of death is still being speculated, but the culprit has been confirmed.
I’m thrilled to introduce the Are You Watching This?! Game Tracker, the new application that revolutionizes sports fan multi-tasking. At a glance you can easily track dozens of games at a time, and with built-in TV listings and the ability to rewind individual games back in time (drag the dot), or rewind the whole tracker back in time (click the date), it’s Christmas in April for the Superfan.
Today we’re launching as an embeddable widget, a historic excitement viewer (check out Butler vs. Florida or what a No-Hitter lost in the 8th looks like), and in our featured sports Chrome Web App.
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The National Championship might have been a complete snoozer, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t exciting for RUWT?! users! After 2+ weeks and 68 games worth of picks, not only did we yet again prove how bad I am at picks, but we’ve crowned three winners!
Congrats to Ashley, Angus, and gun.cho. Each wins their choice of a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate, or a RUWT? t-shirt made by yours truly. Extra respect to Ashley for winning the topping everyone–she’ll have 10 roots until we crown next year’s champ!
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| Ashley | Angus | gun.cho |
We didn’t say it, ABC News did!
Just in time for this year’s March Madness, the folks behind RUWT?! launched another sports-related website, I Can’t Find the Game.
The dead-simple site is a gift from the gods for sports fans who need help figuring out which channels to turn to for their favorite games.
Just enter your zip code and choose your cable/satellite provider, and the site tells you the channel you need to watch.
We couldn’t have said it better.
Just how boring were the 0th Round games?
If the players can’t even stay awake, how could we? But there’s good news, everybody. The main course is just a few hours away, and we have two special entrees on the way.
Watch Games Live!
As we’ve been doing since 2007, links to a live stream for each and every Men’s College Basketball game will be available via CBS MMOD. Just click on any game, and hop on the video link for live streaming goodness.
Who You Got? Challenge
Back by popular demand, we’re running another Who You Got? Challenge! Correct picks for each game of the Tourney earns you points, and the most points wins. Up for grabs will be an Amazon Gift Card and those world-famous, handmade RUWT?! T-shirts. More info to come, but start picking now!
Our goal at Are You Watching This?! is to guarantee that you never miss an Instant Classic. While you always have the option between text and email alerts, we know that two choices is simply not enough. That’s why we make sure to have a presence on every platform and newfangled device out there.
Whether you rely on our first app: the Firefox Toolbar, our newest app: the Chrome Web App, or my favorite app: the Google TV App, you’ll have RUWTbot watching your back no matter where you are.
Even I have found myself forgetting the full list of apps, so we have a new page to catalog all of them. Give a new app a shot today!
We sincerely love having company in the “Instant Classic Alerts” space, but our friends at Thuuz got another one wrong today.
Following up on the Royals are the most exciting team in baseball proclamation, we get today’s decree that the UAB Blazers were the most thrilling team in College Football.
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Even more of a head-scratcher for sports fans, is the statement that the Big East was more exciting to watch than the SEC and Pac-10. Really? This pains me to write as a native New Yorker, but let’s be plain: The Big East was atrocious this year. Their conference champ got thumped in a BCS Bowl Game by Oklahoma.
Oklahoma.
Can anyone remember watching or seeing highlights of a UAB game this year? If you’re the most exciting team in Football and half of your results end up as two-score games, you better have unicorns running flea-flickers in the other half.
The numbers from RUWTbot, our patent-pending algorithm, tell a very different story. Crazy, grass-eating Les Miles and the LSU Tigers were at the top of our excitement list, with Auburn and Alabama close behind.
1. LSU (108.71)
2. Auburn (108.01)
3. Alabama (99.67)
4. Iowa (97.61)
5. Oklahoma (91.48)
6. North Carolina (90.35)
7. USC (81.32)
8. Arkansas (81.12)
9. Texas (79.20)
10. Oregon State (76.76)
11. Northwestern (73.74)
12. Arizona (72.91)
13. South Florida (72.58)
14. Michigan State (71.05)
15. Nebraska (70.62)
16. Michigan (70.52)
17. Rutgers (69.94)
18. Notre Dame (69.74)
19. Alabama-Birmingham (67.88)
20. Texas A&M (67.73)
Teams are ranked by average rating minus one-quarter of the standard deviation.
Pssst.
Guess who’s the first company to have a 3rd-party app featured in the Google TV Gallery?
I’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll probably only need one.
Wow, what a month. Lots of meetings and lots of time on the road was tiring, but it was the integrity of data at RUWT?! that was keeping me up at night.
Without boring you with all the details, near the end of last month we got word that we had less than a week to switch sports data providers. As you might guess, after four years with the same data, making a switch is far from simple. Somehow though, it got done, and as of this weekend, we’re completely moved over to the new feed.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, the bad news first: Some WYG picks and roots for some upcoming games for some minor College Football and Basketball teams were tossed during the conversion. And…that’s it.
With our new feed, there’s a whole lot of good news. First off, we’ll never again have games that don’t get updated. If you see a game, there’ll be a score. Period. Also, we’re getting new information about play-by-play action for pro sports. I’m figuring out the best way to incorporate without cramming to much stuff into the bleachers, and you should see that landing soon. Finally, we’re getting more frequent score updates for all sports, and re-adding coverage for College Hockey and some other minor league sports.
My sincere apologies to anyone that received bad data in the past couple weeks. I take the integrity of this site very seriously, and I’m thrilled to put issues we’ve all been annoyed with, to bed. Finally.
As always, don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions.
Football is officially back, kids.
Sure, we haven’t had two ranked teams face off yet (Boise/VaTech is going to be awesome) and we have one more weekend before the pros start, but we had our first Upset, first Epic game (admittedly a smidge too soon), and our first Overtime thriller that had me yelling at the TV.
RUWT?! has always been about cutting down on the noise, and focusing on getting your butt in front of the TV when it’s crunch time. For better, and for worse, we’re getting more and more games, on more and more stations every year. For the next four Saturdays, we’re averaging 300 sporting events a day.
300.
RUWT?! alerts work great for the right now, but we can do a better job of letting you know what’s on deck. Very soon you’ll have a great new way to keep an eye on the big picture.
Really vague? Yeah, I know. Just sit tight.
