Introducing: Video Growler

By Dan

In half a year we have watched you - the HomeField Coaches and Athletes - write thousands of comments about the video that you have uploaded.  With time-coded comments, these discussions interactively played back the video at the exact moment you wanted to discuss.  Hitting the play button didn't make it obvious that additional insights and discussions were taking place though.  So we fixed that last week with the launch of the Video Growler...

When you play back your video, and hit a point where a teammate or coach has added a comment, the comment will growl in the upper right corner of your browser.  Click the comment to go directly to that part of discussion, or click the time-code to repeat that part of the video.

I love the growler.  I built it.   But I'd love to hear from you, so please tell us what you think!

HomeField Email Issue

By Dan

Starting on 18 January 2010 (and ending at 8am this morning) the HomeField mail server decided to get quiet.  This is not a good trait for a mail server, as HomeField sends out lots of emails for our users.

No emails were lost.  But if you signed up, invited somebody to your team, made a trade or commented in a discussion you may not have received the email you expected when you expected it.  All emails that were supposed to be sent during this unfortunate quiet period were sent this morning.

I sincerely apologize for this delay of game.  If you have any problems, questions, comments or concerns please let me know.

But now... Game On!

HomeField 2010 - If You Don't Know, You Better Ask Somebody!

By Joe

Let's make a comparison of apples to oranges - HomeField in 2009, to HomeField in 2010. We officially launched HomeField to the public a year ago this month with a version we like to refer to today as HomeField 1.0. For a newly launched product that had barely been tested, it fared pretty well. We had over 20 paying customers in the spring, and a bunch more teams using HomeField’s free demo.

More importantly, we got to watch, listen, and learn a lot about how you wanted to use HomeField. With all that input, we created the version you see today. HomeField 2.0! We built the features you requested, added in some ideas of our own, and ultimately made it better, faster and even easier to use.

So how is HomeField growing so far in 2010? We are now through the first two weeks of January, and HomeField is already in use by 66% of Division I Men's Lacrosse, with 41% upgraded to Pro! And the season hasn't even started yet!

Johns Hopkins, Ohio State, Hofstra, North Carolina, Maryland, Rutgers, Brown, Bryant, Bucknell... shall we continue? Because believe me, the list goes on!

We not only have individual teams signing up, we have entire leagues! The CAA and the Ivy League jumped in early, though more leagues are confirming with us as they realize the benefit of having all of their conference using HomeField for film exchange.

And apparently word travels fast, because the women’s lacrosse teams are catching on quick! Already, the American Lacrosse Conference - home to dominant programs like Vanderbilt, Penn State, and the defending National Champs, Northwestern - has agreed to make HomeField it's official online video system! We're also working with the ACC, the Ivy League and other women's programs across the country.

The HomeField network is growing stronger and stronger with every new team, whether they’re men or women - NCAA or MCLA - Div I, Div II or Div III - even high school teams are jumping on HomeField.

If you haven’t already, sign up and get the HomeField Advantage today! And if you have, then tell your friends!

NYC Sports Startups FTW: GameChanger

By Reece

Since we started Overtime Media two years ago we've met some great people along the way, especially some cool startups. In particular, we've had a kinship with the guys at GameChanger - one of the few other NYC sports startups (that we know of) - that has meant a few meetings and some great knowledge exchange. If we didn't all work so much, we'd probably hang out a lot more. Alas...

GameChanger is an iPhone app that does mobile scorekeeping and live stats updates (currently just for baseball, but more sports coming I believe). I checked out an early beta, and it's pretty rad. Here's a great blog post from founder Ted Sullivan as they really get going...

We like these guys because they're former athletes/sports obsessed techies like us, who understand the importance of using technology to improve the experience of coaches, players and fans alike.

So, congrats to our buddies - Ted, Kiril and Calvin. Keep up the great work! You can download GameChanger for your iPhone here.

Finally, if you're a sports startup - in NYC or otherwise - hit us up! We're always open to talk about our industry.

Stale Accounts Removed

By Dan

We introduced HomeField 2.0 (the HomeField you all know and love today) after the end of our inaugural season last spring.  This major upgrade included many improvements, but a small amount of cruft from the old version remained, including a few hundred unused accounts.  I removed these stale accounts about an hour ago.

Although I'm confident that no active user accounts were deleted, I wanted to share this update with our community, in case anybody was affected.  So, if you can no longer log in to your HomeField account, and resetting your password does not work, please drop me a line.

p.s. First post (of the new year)!