Thats Interesting

The review team at odinjobs.com showcases up and coming companies and their products. Who knows one of them may be the next Google.

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The Game’s The Thing!

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Hate being the only one who missed the unbelievable game? Or the only one sleeping while baseball history was being rewritten? RUWT? or Areyouwatchingthis is the site that will keep you right in the game, right in the thick of things.

Created by Mark Phillip in January, 2007 at Austin, Texas, aided by the Tribune Group, the company that owns www.zap2it.com, the site has reached out to a million sports fans either by emails or by text messages.

This amazing new sports fan site, let’s people on to the most popular game based on votes and provide real-time scores. Each game in the TV schedule tells you where and when it will be aired, a written preview of the match, lets you vote, and lets you “shout” your opinion to a comment thread. The site also tracks news, standings, and teams across 15 sports. The score board page is another way of following games on the site.

At the core of the site is RUWTbot, the "game-watching robot" that uses algorithms to identify the next instant classic in the making and will alert you about instant classics being televised. The RSS or iCalendar feeds make it easier to get updates and their sports videos through YOUTUBE are an interesting watch.

Recent updates include an RUWT? toolbar that displays a ticker in your Firefox browser containing scores and news from the sports of your choice.

Sports+TVGuide+Digg=RUWT? asks Techcrunch

(RUWT?) is a new sports fan site you can use to follow the most popular sports games on TV based on votes from the community and the real-time score of the game. It’s meant keep people from missing the really spectacular sports games as they develop.

Though a similar site does not exist, there are huge sports sites, flexing muscle in the same areas.

R U Reading This? A Chat With The Company

1. What does the brand of RUWT mean?

RUWT (pronounced root) stands for Are You Watching This? I can't count how many times I've called a buddy shouting that phrase as a game went into triple overtime, or a there was a huge brawl on TV, so it was the perfect name for a site that lets you know when you need to get on the couch and turn on the TV.

2. With the development of the Internet, scores can be viewed in near real time. How does RUWT take advantage of this?

The core goal of RUWT? is to help fans catch as many great games as possible. RUWT? uses algorithms to determine the "Root Rating", so our users can tell how exciting a game is. Thanks to real time scoring, we're able to alert our users almost instantly when there's a great game on TV they could (and should) be watching.

3. Besides being able to change the feed to your postal code & cable provider, what other features can be customized?

We understand that people don't want to spend all day monitoring the site, but definitely don't want to miss anything good, so in-game alerts are far and away the most popular feature among users. To make the alerts as helpful as possible, we let users pick the sports they care about, the level of Root Rating before receiving a message, as well as whether they want notification via email and/or SMS.

4. Who writes the preview of the matches?

All of our news is provided by PA SportsTicker. We mash-up a sports feed from SportsTicker with a TV feed from the Tribune Group to power our game information.

5. I have been a sports fans all my life and I always hear the "any broadcast without express permission is prohibited" thing. How does RUWT avoid violating this law?

Thankfully, those policies don't apply to us because we just show scores and game updates, and don't provide a play-by-play stream of what's going on.

6. How does RUWT take advantage of RSS technology?

RUWT? uses RSS, iCal, and standard XML to power different data feeds on our site. RSS can be used to monitor news of any one of our 20+ sports or 7000+ teams, upcoming games for a sport or team, or a customized list of televised games available to a user.

7. What is the RUWTbot?

The RUWTbot is our "game-watching" robot that monitors the sports feed searching for instant classics in the making. The core, ground-breaking feature of RUWT? is our ability to use algorithms to determine how exciting a game is. It's a new way to watch sports so initially it was hard explaining to people what the site was about. We created RUWTbot's character to help people wrap their heads around the concept.

8. How do you use your blog to generate buzz about RUWT?

I laugh when people ask if I've done any surveys or market research--I'm basically building a sports service that I always wished existed. All sports fans hate missing great games, and I'm one of them. The blog is a place for me to show the lighter side of sports, share some behind the scenes tidbits about the site, and show other fans that I'm just like them.

9. What type of person makes an ideal RUWT employee?

RUWT? doesn't have any competitors, but the other big Sports Web 2.0 sites out there are just that: big. Fannation.com probably gets the most publicity, and they were purchased for $20M+ by Sports Illustrated. To combat that, and to hold the attentions of our users we have to be flexible and nimble, so the perfect employee is more focused on the principles of programming versus any particular language. We value breadth of skill versus depth, because one day our Flash widget is the high priority, but the next day programming in XUL to get our Firefox Toolbar out the door could become hot. For RUWT? to be successful, and for an employee to be successful with us, we have to be more nimble than the giants in the Sports Web 2.0 space.

We Are Watching This For Sure!

It’s human to want to be where the action is. And with RUWT? you’ll never again miss that opportunity. A great site and a great idea, which has the potential to become a habit (rather than a mere product/service) with sports fans, in the same genre as looking up the TV schedule or reading about a game, despite having watched it all night!

Posted by Sally Richardsson       Posted at 06:37AM Jun 06, 2007 by Sally Richardsson   


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