New toys for the end of summer | Sprint 4 (old R70)

A bunch of fixes and improvements . . .

iPad/iPhone users

• We released our brand new official Redskins Feedr iPad application, with all of the best Redskins news and information, served up directly to your iPad. You can get the official Redskins Feedr application here.
• If you have experienced authentication problems with FanFeedr since upgrading to version 1.6.3, we traced the error down to a server side API error on our end and it has been promptly fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Facebook Pick’Em game

• First, do you know that we have a killer Facebook Pick’Em game? You can predict the outcome of English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A games, directly on Facebook, with your friends.
• We are using Facebook Credits directly, and you don’t have to go hunting for currency to play the game
• We added live scores to the game, so you can check your scores as the games take place

First-time user experience

• We deleted the welcome pop-up screen, because many of you complained about it. She’sa gone.

There were other bug fixes. We hope that you are enjoying your Summer, and remember, if you like the website, you can also get FanFeedr for your iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Thanks, FanFeedr

European Football Pick’Em directly on Facebook

Folks,

We have been working on this for most of the summer, so we are quite excited about the opportunity around being able to play Pick’Em directly on Facebook. We are launching with European soccer, so that you can predict the outcomes of games against your friends or everyone on Facebook, all for the opportunity to be the commissioner for the Premiership, La Liga, Serie A or the Bundesliga.

We simplified the interface, and we use Facebook Credits directly to make it easier for you to continue playing the game if your luck leaves you for a short bit.

We hope you enjoy playing and look forward to your feedback about the game, as we will roll out improvements every week.

Please share it with your friends as well.

Remember, you can pick your favorite Premiership, La Liga, Bundesliga, and Serie A teams right here, and you can compete against your friends on Facebook.

Thanks, FanFeedr

R66: Getty Images and World Cup Soccer

We have a lot in this week’s release.

World Cup Soccer

• The main World Cup page is here
• Follow all of the teams on FanFeedr, Facebook and Twitter.
• The USA team can be followed via FanFeedr, Facebook and Twitter

We also have a pretty sweet World Cup Challenge game on Facebook. Pick your favorite teams and compete with your friends in the Tournament.

Getty Images

• We have a partnership to Getty Images for their amazing sports photos, which are now live on the site.
• Here is a great example of Pau Gasol
• We are also adding some functionality if you would like to show Getty Images on your site. We will let you know when that is available.

Thanks, as always, FanFeedr

R64: Tracking NBA Free-Agents and European Football Transfers

We heard your request, especially from Knicks’ followers: we want to be able to track all of the free-agent/football transfer news on a per-team basis. Problem solved.
We have a new filter on each team and player page that gives you just that: all team changes, all the time. Some examples . . .

NBA free-agent news

• New York Knicks’ free agents
• Miami Heat free agents

Premier League Football transfer news

• Chelsea transfers
• Man U transfers
• Arsenal transfers

La Liga Football transfer news

• Barca transfers
• Real Madrid transfers

One last new feature: we have added the ability to customize your feed on the team pages so that you can see just the information that is important to you. When you go to a team or player page, you can turn on some, all or none of the Filters in the left column.

Additionally, some bug fixes:

• Twitter suppression on the home page is permanent. If you select it, it will stick even if you leave and come back.
• Added a link to “Hot Pick’Em games” in the right column of the home page to all of the Pick’Em games.
• Improved the frequency and type of stories that we publish to our popular Facebook team pages, like the LA Angels or New York Yankees.

Another great week of work by our talented engineering team.

Thanks, FanFeedr

R63: Pick’Em and our user experience

This is a pretty straightforward release: Pick’Em has been added to the FanFeedr home page so that you don’t have to search for it.

You can pick games directly on the front of FanFeedr.com so that you don’t have to go to the Pick’Em homepage.

Also, we added a new World Cup news section on Facebook.

Let us know if we can provide you with other features right here.

Thanks, as always, FanFeedr

R54, for even the wackiest brackets

• NCAA Tournament
  • New badges. We’ve created special badges for Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four and Championship game winners.
  • Online video links. We’ve provided integration with CBS March Madness on Demand Internet video on scoreboard and team pages, so it’s even easier to keep track of the action.
• Pick ’Em refinements
  • Game opportunities on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribers of our Facebook news pages and Twitter feeds now receive game opportunities in their feeds, so they won’t miss a chance to bet on their favorite teams.
  • Picks now appear on all games. Now it’s dead simple to keep track of your Pick ’Em record: just look up the games from last night (or the night before) and witness the fruits of your labor against the game results.
• Plus: new Facebook pages for F1 and NASCAR racing teams, RSS feeds for local area teams, and more.
• Last but not least: RSS for the home page. You can now get your personalized FanFeed delivered to your feed-reader of choice.

R53: Laying the table for March Tournament Pick’Em

Straight to the goodies.

More real-time goodness

• We are publishing in real time to Facebook through the API, so no more of that RSS lateness
• Facebook team pages also get scores, photos, and videos, so that you don’t have to go elsewhere to get everything about your favorite teams
• We are now publishing our RSS feeds via Pubsubhubbub, which means you can get them completely in real-time, with no latency
• Scores and photos are have also been included in the RSS feeds on FanFeedr.com.

Pick’Em enhancements

• We are now publishing the opportunity to pick your favorite NBA and NHL games directly to our Twitter and Facebook feeds so that you don’t have to come searching to bet.
• We reduced the number of times that Pick’Em picks publish to your Facebook feed. You will only see them once a day at the very most so that we don’t overwhelm your posts.
• We also reduced the publishing of picks on FanFeedr to just the first pick you make each day so that you can see everyone in the Public Timeline, and, more importantly, so that your own feed isn’t overwhelmed.
• On Monday, you can pick the NCAA tournament, and we have special badges for each bracket
  

Racing improvements

NASCAR

• We now have individual pages for each of the NASCAR teams, like Penske
• We also have Twitter accounts for Penske and others

Formula 1

• We now have individual pages for each of the Formula 1 teams, like Ferrari and BMW Sauber
• We also have Twitter accounts for Ferrari and Mercedes

Technical stuff

• Fixed a bug whereby posts to Facebook didn’t work properly

We hope that you enjoy the tournaments this weekend, and look forward to checking out your Picks in a couple of days, FanFeedr

R52: One year anniversary edition, now with Twitter Authentication

Hello and good morning/afternoon/evening.

This week we enabled the ability to sign up using Twitter as well as Facebook, so if you would like to use those credentials as the primary way you login to the site, no problem. You can also post material to and from Facebook, but you will be known on the service primarily by your Twitter handle.

You can try it out by going to the homepage and logging in with Twitter. If you already have an account with us, you can add your twitter credentials whenever you make a comment and post to twitter or if you share via Twitter.

Facebook

You can follow your favorite teams on Facebook now, and that functionality is exposed on the team pages (in the left column, the blue button.)

Some examples of team pages on Facebook:

• Soccer-Arsenal
• College Basketball-Kentucky Wildcats
• NFL-New Orleans Saints
• MLB-Yankees and Red Sox
• NBA-Lakers

These feeds publish headlines, scores, boxscores, photos and other updates directly on Facebook.

Pick’Em Game

• We fixed the badging so that there is only one Commissioner, and so that Newbies show up in the right place

Content

• We added the mildly unintentionally funny Ozzie Guillen’s twitter feed for your consumption
• You can also get Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy
• And Deadspin, so that you don’t have to go hunting for your favorite sports writers
• Baseball schedules for 2010 are up on the team pages for MLB

UX

• We reformatted the team and player pages so that they look good (that is, not like a ransom note) in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, which are super finicky about style sheets
• Roster pages have been cleaned up to look like our super fresh schedule pages

And we are up to 7,000 content sources, including all of the material submitted in the past month.

Thanks for your support, and let us know if we are missing anything, here.

FanFeedr

Release 49: Blackberry, Android, Palm and Windows Mobile users get in the action

There are three themes for this week’s release.

Mobile

• We have made it so that our links work on mobile devices. If you want to follow your favorite teams on your Blackberry, Android, Palm or Windows Mobile device, just add follow the team on Twitter.
• You can find your teams’ Twitter account by going to the team page, like this one, and clicking on “Follow on Twitter.”

Gaming

• New and better badges, you can see them on the Leaderboard.
• We added a FanFeedr Pick’Em page that allows you to pick all of the games on a given day. You can access this from any page on the service using the “FanFeedr Pick’Em” link above the search bar.
• Adding a user’s winning percentage after their picks on the Leaderboard, so you can see who is a “volume” winner and who is picking accurately
• Reduced posting a user’s picks to Facebook and the service so that you don’t get overwhelmed with updates (and neither do your friends.)

Service

• Revamped our schedules pages so that you can see upcoming games and refer to past games as well, easily.
• Fixed sharing by email so that the links work properly
• We are up to 6,500 content sources for your reading pleasure

As always, thanks for all of your support, and please tell your sports-enthused friends to try out the service, Feedr of the Fans

Submitted for your approval: R48

Consider if you will an ordinary real-time sports information website. Diligent engineers provide a steady hand directing regular updates. Then suddenly a magical, revolutionary device changes the face of personal computing forever. The website has entered — the iPad zone.

Nice, right? And yes, we’ll be working on an app for it just as soon as we can get our grubby mitts on one. But in the meantime…

This week’s release offers refinements to our intensely competitive Pick Em game as well as the usual array of nuanced improvements and fillips.

• Improvements to game picks
  • All picks page. Now there’s a single location to find upcoming games to bet on regardless of league or sport. Clicking here will take you there.
  • Publish game outcomes to FB. Results of the outcomes of your game picks can now be published to Facebook, providing even more fertile ground for mocking your friends.
• And some other enhancements:
  • Better URLs for game pages
  • Game results for NCAA Basketball now grouped by conference
  • Team standings on game boxscore pages
  • And the usual: new content sources to bring you even more delectable news items, tweets, and other informational kibbles and bits.

We do hope this week’s update provides the incremental delectation you’ve come to expect from us. As always, you can drop us a line using the Feedback button featured on every page, and of course, until next week, be careful out there.

We thank you for your support,
Your friends at FanFeedr.