New! This Week at Overtime Media

By Reece

Happy Halloween! We are all working from home today, but I'm sure if I went over to Joe's, he'd be in full costume. You gotta love that kind of spirit...

This is going to be the first of many "This Week at Overtime Media" updates to our blog. Usually, we write in with major updates and info vaguely relevant to HomeField, sports, media and technology. This will simply serve as the digest of those things, and any other anecdotes worthy of mentioning, but unworthy of an entire post. And so it begins...

• This week at Overtime Media... started off on the wrong foot! One of our servers crashed, and it was out of our control, so we were forced to wait (impatiently) until we were back online. The great news is that no one lost any data and we developed a new protocol for dealing with crashes, as well as some best practices to prevent them in the future. Joyent also gave us a free month for the inconvenience; that's good customer service. Here's to up-time!

• We also ran into a couple issues with our buddy Coach Thompson at Colby College where his videos weren't converting properly due to some funky code. We patched that and saw his vids - he's doing some things on HomeField that we haven't seen at any other school - watch out for the Mules in the NESCAC this season!
  

• Flash also updated to version 10 recently, and that kind of messed up our world a bit - disabling Downloads as well as affecting Uploads for certain users. Dan busted his ass though, and this has been fixed. You literally just received the upgrade. Didn't notice it? That's because HomeField is a smooth operator. No software updates and restarts and all that wasted time... Pat yourself on the back for making the right choice!

• Some of the text in the emails you receive regarding Trades seemed jumbled to us, so we cleared it up. Haven't been trading? Joe made a trade with a coach this week and it nearly blew his mind. Once the video's on HomeField, Trades are INSTANT. Go ahead... Propose a trade. I dare you...
  

• We also made a trip out to Strong Island to present our pitch deck for the first time. I've been working on it for a while, and it's made me realize how much we've accomplished with so little and how fortunate I am to be a part of such a great company. We're a passionate, dedicated team and I think it's apparent in HomeField. See for yourself! Email us to sign up today!

• Finally, you should also notice our new logo at the top of the HomeField app (and coming soon to GoOvertime.com). Not bad, considering we did it ourselves. Tell us what you think!

Have a great weekend!

And we're back!

By Reece

This post is a bit late, but HomeField is back up and running (as of last night, actually). Again, our apologies for any inconvenience.

The good news is that we now have a great protocol in place that should prevent unexpected outages such as this in the future.

And just for fun, I got this from some pals from Down Under...

The System is Down

By Reece

Ruh-roh!!! Some of you may have noticed that HomeField isn't working right now. It's Sunday, give it a break! Just kidding... The downtime is due to an emergency issue with our server hosts at Joyent and they are working to fix it as we speak. They are likely going to catch an earful from Dan, too.

HomeField should be up and running again this afternoon. Serious apologies for any inconvenience.

That being said, I'd like to mention that aside from this little instance, HomeField has been rock solid throughout this beta. Sure, a few bugs here and there, but no major downtime like this. We're pretty psyched about that, because you guys, yea... I'm talking to you here coaches... have been uploading like crazy! We have a deal with our partners at Wistia for certain numbers on storage, bandwidth and encoding and according to the latest stats and projections for the month, we will be 150% over our normal usage! Sure, it makes for a hefty bill, but we are psyched! It's so great to see everyone uploading more and more videos; keep it up!

On a similar note, I swear Joe has been making phone calls in his sleep. How else would he be over his 900 minutes/month... by 750 minutes!? That's a lot of phone time, and I know it's not his friends calling... It's you! It's funny to see him scramble around our office (a.k.a. kitchen) trying to juggle phone calls. Keep the calls coming! And soon, we'll have a land-line, so check back here in a week for that number.

Finally, a few suggestions for you while the system is down.

1. It's Sunday in October. Watch and/or play football.

2. Edit/prepare video now to upload this afternoon while watching football.

3. Free nights and weekends. Call Joe. Seriously. 516-507-9322.

And again, we're extremely sorry for the inconvenience. If this negatively affected any of you, please email us.

Use Your Friends!

By Reece

Yesterday, we had a consultant (a.k.a. my friend Charlie) stop by our Financial District office (a.k.a. Joe's apartment). In a former life, Charlie and I worked together at a production company where he did Business Development (a.k.a. Sales). Since then, he's been traipsing around the globe - Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, China, France, UK and so on. He now looks like a true outdoorsman, and in NYC his beard was long enough to earn him an NYPD bag check on the subway.

But don't let appearances fool you. Charlie knows his stuff. He sat down with Joe and went through the ABC's of business development, from cold calling to client development to proper beard maintenance (kidding - there's no way Joe's babyface could produce a beard like Charlie's).

Charlie was a HUGE help! It's baptism by fire here in the start-up world, so we learn a lot as we go. Joe's been killin' it as it is, signing up teams left and right, but with Charlie's help, he could be a contendah'!

The best part? Charlie works for food! I took him to Shake Shack for lunch; end of transaction! The point is - in small business, especially during this financial crisis - you've got to use your connections, the people around you, your friends and family, for help. In addition to Charlie's consulting, I get graphics help from a designer friend, and marketing tips from my sister. We used our roommates and friends as our alpha testers. And we get a ton of advice out of our partnership with our buddies at Wistia.

I've even got my mom and dad handing out my business card to potential leads at our family restaurant!

All for $Free.99. Ok... maybe I still have to wash dishes at the restaurant once in a while. But hey, I owe 'em one.

So, thanks to everyone who has been so helpful to us along the always bumpy road that is starting your own company. Your advice and support is invaluable and we wouldn't be where we are without all of you!

HomeField Upgrade: Organized, Supercharged

By Dan

We just went live with the latest in a series of updates to HomeField, so I wanted to take a few minutes away from writing code in Eclipse to tell you about the recent changes you can see, and those you can feel. I'll start with the stuff you can see...

Video Organization and Link Share
We have greatly improved video organization for players and coaches alike. You can fluidly browse your films based on the teams you want to watch, the year of the film, and any tags the coaches have added. This makes it so easy to jump directly to recent films of your next opponent, and then watch the ones that impact you as a player. As an added bonus, you can bookmark, email, or otherwise share the current URL while you browse, and later go directly to that selection of films with one click.

Original File Downloads
This one is strictly for the coaches. We have added the ability to download the original file for any of your films. So, if you've uploaded an entire game and something happens to the original (a crashed harddrive or lost laptop, for example), rest assured you'll be able to get it back from HomeField. Additionally, if you receive a whole game film in a trade, you'll be able to download and then edit the film in your favorite video editor. These downloads are very secure, so only you can download the films. If we detect unauthorized access, the link stops working almost immediately, keeping your media in your hands only.

And now the stuff you'll feel...

Under the Hood
First, retrieving your films - even if you have thousands - is much quicker. You'll notice the extra pep in our step every time you click on the Chalkboard, or begin browsing your films. Second, Google recently released version 1.5 of their Google Web Toolkit, and we're taking advantage of it. This toolkit helps us provide you with a fluid desktop-like application over the web, without waiting for page loads after every click. HomeField is a web application, smooth and intuitive, as it ought to be. And now it's faster than ever. Enjoy.

Stealth Upgrades
Finally, we want to remind you that you will always be using the latest and greatest version of HomeField. You never have to deal with an install or upgrade, it just works. The only thing you may notice from time to time, is your browser taking a little longer than usual to bring up HomeField. This happens after we upgrade, as your browser automatically pulls down the new version of HomeField. We think this is a lot better than asking you to manually download and perform an upgrade of a traditional application, and we hope you do too. This allows HomeField to stay on the cutting edge, and allows you to stay focused on your opponent.

Go ahead, Upload, I dare ya.

By Reece

We haven't run into many questions from our users on how to use HomeField, but we don't want anyone out there lost in the dark because they're too afraid to ask a question. So... I've cooked up a quick screencast tutorial on uploading and managing video using HomeField, as the first in a series of video demos.

And while I've got you here... the latest update from HomeField's public launch - over 50 teams signed up! Lots of coaches are signed on - from top D1 teams through to high school sports - and we are pumped! Thanks to all the coaches who are testing for us and a big slap on the back to Joe for doing a great job promoting HomeField.