Features, bug fixes, and more.

• User experience
• Made it so you can click photos directly from the home page
• Made it so you can click a photo to see the next in the series, ad infinitum
• We added in a widget on NFL team pages in partnership with Fanatics that allows you to get the best team merchandise, like, oh, say, a Tebow jersey
• Added in a widget for new users coming from Twitter and Facebook to better explain the interface
• Created a press room with mentions of FanFeedr in the news

• API
• We remedied having multiple representation of the same team for NCAA events
• Fixed the NFL next game query
• Fixed a bug that made events/last results inaccurate
• Deleted an events “geo” call that existed in the documentation, but, unfortunately, not in real life
• Amended calls for home/away teams, which were occasionally getting transposed
• Made it so that the player’s name was linked to his player ID in boxscores

As always, thank you for your support, FanFeedr

Folks,

This week’s release has several significant fixes.

• Added in a direct link to FanFeedr Hot Takes in the main navigation. Please check it out for super-timely insights into what people are talking about in sports.
• Support for Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9
• Fixes for Firefox to see the entire stories

• RSS feeds: get your favorite team news directly in your favorite news readers, like Google Reader, Flipboard, or My Yaho0!
• New York  Jets
• New England Patriots
• FC Barcelona
• Arsenal
• New York Yankees
• Boston Red Sox, for example

Improvements

• You can watch all of the March Madness games directly from our NCAA Basketball scoreboards

Mobile hotness

• We relaunched our FanFeedr iPhone and iPad application to get rid of the login loop that was driving some of you crazy
• We also relaunched our Redskins Feedr application for you dedicated Redskins fans
• Made the application more stable
• Added in other bug fixes

Bug fixes

• We fixed a login issue in our Chrome application for Facebook
• Fixed an issue whereby scores were being replicated multiple times via the API
• Fixed the way that photo embeds from FanFeedr into Facebook display (they work now)
• Inline commenting on the home page was fixed
• Fixed “Hotness” on the site that so that it works immediately for new items on the site
• Fixed a bug whereby our Chrome app displaying the same favicon for all sources.

Cool? Cool.

We had several updates for you, primarily in the realm of getting bigger boxes for everything from game recap, boxscore and photo processing, to updating our database servers to make them distributed.

The detailed breakdown.

Epic

• Our NCAA basketball scoreboard page occasionally was overwhelmed when some 150 took place on a single day. We refactored that page to make it more robust and stable.
• Gaming was moved over to our message-queue so that your game results will arrive in a more timely fashion on both Facebook and on FanFeedr.com
• We added in MLB and College Basketball into Facebook Pick’Em, just in time for March Madness

Bugs

• Removed tweets from the Chrome application
• Gaming updates sent via email now have the up-to-date player rank
• Amended photo publishing to Facebook and Twitter to provide more value by actually publishing photos

That’s it. The current sprint is all about bug fixes, so we will have more for you next week.

Thanks, as always, FanFeedr

Gaming

• Relaunch of FanFeedr Pick’Em on Facebook
• Better badges
• Faster response time
• Revamped User Experience
• If you . . .
  • like to show off, and
  • have a mild inclination for betting,
  • then this game is for you

FanFeedr Chrome Application

• The Chrome App store launched on Feb. 1st
• We made several changes to improve your user experience, based on your feedback
  • Box scores open directly in the interface
  • Photos open directly in the interface
  • Recaps open directly in the interface
  • Made it easier to get to your fanned items

Twitter

• We put tighter restrictions on what gets published to Twitter so that you get more value, less noise, for each of the team and player accounts.

Celery

• More than just a good source of fiber
• It is a “Celery is an asynchronous task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It is focused on real-time operation, but supports scheduling as well.”
• Allows for a more stable FanFeedr so that you will see even better uptime

Minor bugs

• We had both “Yahoo” and “Yahoo Sports” listed. There is now just “Yahoo Sports.”

Thanks again, and we hope you try out the new stuff, FanFeedr

We have to put this here, in case Michael Bay hasn’t seen it.

Non-technical updates for you:

• More photos for your favorite NCAA teams. Here is one of our favorite for Michigan, featuring Lil’ Timmy Hardaway (Jr.).
• Improved the speed of the FanFeedr Chrome Application, and we are really happy to be featured in Google’s Chrome App Store.
• The Kansas City Wizards have changed their name to Sporting Kansas City, and we had to do what can kindly be called “database massaging” to make them the same.
• Implemented all of the logos for obscure Champions’ League teams like FC Benfica (what, who, where?)
• And a slate of smaller technical fixes

Happy holidays, FanFeedr

Have a great holiday season, FanFeedr

We continue to adjust and improve the HTML5 version of our application, including adding social tools to the various articles that we have there. You can try out the HTML5 version of FanFeedr here, if you have an HTML5 compliant browser like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. That is the primary output of this sprint, along with the usual assortment of bug fixes and speed improvements.

We have also sorted out a persistent bug in our Pick’Em game so that results and badges are rendered almost instantaneously. Thanks for your patience there.

Have a great week, FanFeedr

Yes, we are behind with our product releases, and it is because the writer of this blog has been focused on the revenue-generating aspects of the business to the detriment of clear communication about product releases and the hard work of our engineers. Situation remedied today, as . . .

Sprint 7

• Supporting Champions League soccer as an independent group, and this wasn’t easy
• Formally created our HTML5-compliant application, which you can check out here.
• Deployed our customized FanFeedr for Athletes product for Visanthe Shiancoe. You can check it out on Twitter or Facebook.
• Added standings to all of the soccer/European football leagues. Check out the Premier League.
• Added rosters for all of soccer/European football. This means that you can also follow individual players, like Leo Messi.

Bugs

• Fixed the way ties are displayed for soccer/European football results
• Changed “soccer” to “football” wherever we could to least offend your sensibilities
• Posting comments to Twitter on the website was not working, but it is fixed now

Sprint 8

• Redskins Feedr now live for the iPhone and iPod Touch (previously iPad, Android only.) Yay!
• Added live updating to the FanFeedr HTML5 application
• Integrated Google Authentication for the FanFeedr HTML5 application
• Made it so that fans of a league, like NFL or NBA, will see more popular stories when using their FanFeed
• We added in videos that we aggregate, so you should see more of those

Bugs

• Deleted preseason NBA games so that they didn’t show up as betting opportunities
• Fixed team records to show record for Champions League vs. national league, in context.
• Slate of fixes for the Chrome application
• Our aggregation of Tweets fell down, go boom, so that is back and functional
• Fixed caching on team records, which made them seem slightly out-of-date
• Fixed schedules for soccer/European football teams. Check out FC Barcelona’s schedule, for example.
• Comment notification emails now linking to the right place.

As always, thank you for supporting us, and let us know what we can do to make your experience better by using the big red “Feedback” tab on the left-hand side of every web page at FanFeedr.

Thanks, FanFeedr

Mobile goodness

All of our mobile apps are up-to-date and chock full of goodness.

Football/Soccer

We had a slate of improvements to our European football features, including adding players and rosters so that you can become a fan of your favorite players, like Leo Messi, Wayne Rooney, and Didier Drogba.

Thanks, FanFeedr