The Timu Blog

Winter Olympics 2010

Toby — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:34:15 +0000

It is that time of year again and with the change of the seasons come a change in sports. For me, it’s the approaching winter months that are exciting. As I sit here and look out the windows, on a over cast day, I gaze at the surrounding mountains with a pending excitement of a once in a lifetime winter season.

Whistler Blackcomb is hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics and if you are like me and live in Washington then you are but a few hours away. Whistler Blackcomb has been consistently voted as the worlds best ski and snowboard destinations in the world (the summer months are just as excilierating as well) due to the vast amounts of terrain, night life, and shopping. After spending time during the winter their I can attest to the quality of snow, terrain and epic-ness that is Whistler Blackcomb.

For many here in Washington, the games being so close gives many more the opportunity to cheer on local athletes without having to travel across the world or the country. Here is a list of local athletes.

- Apolo Anton Ohno (Speed Skating)
- Christian Niccum (Luge)
- J.R. Celski (Speed Skating)
- Jeremy Teela (Biathlon)
- Laura Valaas (Cross-Country),
- Libby Ludlow (Skiing)
- Mark Johnson (Curling)
- Nicole Joraanstad (Curling)
- Patrick Deneen (Moguls)
- Scott Macartney (Skiing)
- Torin Koos (Cross-Country)
- Vic Wild (Snowboarding)
- Will Brandenburg (Skiing)

I am planning a trip to Whistler Black as to watch a few skiing events and maybe even buy a t-shirt to remember the trip. If you can a chance take a moment and check out the Winter Olympics because the games are only 123 days away and before you know it they will be gone for another 4 years.

Here is a picture from our cabin in Feb. 2006. That was one of the best powder days I have ever seen.

Try not to take yourself to serious

Toby — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:04:37 +0000

The other day I was sitting with a friend and getting a few guitar lessons, saying I’m musically challenged is an understatement, I asked “how do you remember all this?” and his response was “you just have to find that spot and then it all comes easy.”

After thinking, for sometime, about what the “spot” is, I reflected on what that “place” is for me when skiing. Growing up skiing was always there and trying to keep up with the older kids when your less athletic was always a challenge. I always had to try to be the best, wondered what people thought all the time, and took it way to damn serious. Skiing was never just about relaxing, making turns, and hitting jumps. It always seemed to be a competition, a proving ground, and then the fun started leeching out of it.

It could have just been me not liking the sport anymore or maybe it was just part of being a teenager. It goes for every sport and athlete I think. A person reaches a point in their sport where it is difficult to progress and seems like a never ending plateau of the same old routine. Plateaus are really common in weight and conditioning training. First, you start with a workout and a goal. Second, the goal comes and goes. Third, you find yourself asking the question “what next?”.

When skiing, I had this very question and the answer was far different than expected.

The day was up at Stevens Pass, roughly late teens, and I no longer cared about others thought or said and just concentrated on fun and the enjoyment of the sport. As a result, my skiing become smooth, more agile, less aggressive, more powerful and solid, and a lot more crazy (hopefully the knees hold up to the crazy).

The pressure was gone; lost in last in the previous season. It seemed everything about skiing made sense. Understanding body motion and center of gravity, how to hold edges no matter the terrain, learning to fly and use the body like a gyroscope, and staying relaxed through the whole thing.

Now I ski with a variety of people, skill levels, and primarily snowboarders. It changes everything about riding and you can get a fresh perspective on the sport. Snowboarding brings a unique dynamic to skiing because their is some carry over and park riding is a blast. Why should snowboarders have all the fun?

So have fun even if you fall down in the light line

(I still haven’t master that hurdle yet).

Timu As A Work In Progress

Matt Heaton — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:25:55 +0000

I spent probably about 6 months worth of development work spread out over a year, building the first incarnation of Timu.com that officially launched in early June. As many of the teams and players using the site on a daily basis can attest, Timu is far from a static project. I tend to make minor changes and feature enhancements on a near daily basis.

I have a couple of major features that I’m working on but at least half my time is spent making minor tweaks to the platform, mostly based off member feedback. For example the Game RSVP feature that was added a couple days ago was a result of feedback from managers of several sports teams that were having trouble verifying who was actually going to show up for a particular game.

Today I had the chance to virtually walk through the system with two new members, observing how they interacted with the system, or any “snags” they ran into. Using these observations I was able to make some minor user interface changes such as repositioning buttons or changing prompts that should make a substantial impact on the experience of new members. It’s these small changes which I think will have the most noticeable impact, and I plan to spend much of my development time continuing to make things even more user friendly and efficient for team managers.

Feel free to let me know how I can keep improving things, you might find your suggestion incorporated much faster than you think…

-Matt

Solving the Game Attendance Problem with Timu

Matt Heaton — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:23:26 +0000

By far the biggest headache I hear about from coaches and managers of recreational sports teams is the issue of knowing which players are going to make it to upcoming games. It’s vital to know if you are going to have enough players at a particular game in a timely manner to know if you need to go out and find substitute players or even make out a batting order. This issue gets even trickier with CoEd teams where you need to have a certain number of both men and women to play, and often creates a lot of last minute scrambling for coaches.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had an easy way to track who was going to make it to a game well in advance?

We just launched a new Game RSVP feature as part of the free team sites on Timu that does just that. Directly from the team schedule players can specify what upcoming games they will be attending, won’t be attending or maybe will attend. Team managers then can view the list or responses and can automatically be notified of changes. They can also send out a request to the team or certain members of the team to RSVP for the game.

Live Feed from the 2009 Figure Skating National Championship

Toby — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:40:04 +0000

There are so many sports out there that people, like myself, that playing them all would be an monumnetal feat so we end up enjoying them from the sideline. Not so bad in my opinion; not sure if the old knees could take the bumps and bruises of learning a new sport.

A while back I got troduced to artistic figure skating through a friend and since then I have had to the pleasure to meet many great local skaters. And tonight is a great chance to watch them live via a streaming feed provided through USARollerSports.org.

Live Feed: http://www.usarollersports.org/event/event/543

One of the skaters I am looking forward to watching is Kylee Berger. Kylee is a great skater and for being so young she accumulated a large list of accomplishments. Here are just a few:

- Team USA Sport Accomplishments: Team member from 2004-2007
- Regional Champion in all events 2001-2007.

Pretty impressive and if you are around a computer watch Kylee skate her Short Program at &:15 PST.

The 2009 Figure Skating National Championship goes on all week and end on 8/9/2009. I have been watching the live feed most of the day and it is one of the best I’ve seen. Capturing a fast moving skater is tough enough without the added factor of streaming that video on the internet. Well I am off to check stuff out.

Managing Your Team Schedule Just Got More Efficient

Matt Heaton — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 05:41:59 +0000

We’re continuously trying to improve on what we’ve already built here at Timu based on member feedback. One of the things we heard from a number of teams was that entering a season schedule could sometimes be a little tedious, especially it there were several dozen games or practices.

Based on this feedback we just put up some substantial user interface changes to added or modifying the schedule on a Timu team site. You can now add a full season’s worth of games and practices to the schedule in just a couple of minutes.

All games, practices and other team events can now be entered without navigating away from the page.
There is now the ability to “clone” a game or event, which is a huge time saver, particularly for practices.
Opponent names and game locations now will auto-fill to cut down on re-entering the same information.
We also added additional game status’ for postponed, forfeited and suspended games.

Screenshot of Timu's new scheduling editing feature.

If you haven’t yet created a team site on Timu for your amateur sports teams, try it out now, it only takes a few minutes and it’s free.

The Best Reality Suspending Viral Sports Videos

Matt Heaton — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:28:38 +0000

Sometimes it can be fun to suspend reality for a bit and marvel at superhuman, athletic feats, even if they may involve a tad bit of CGI work. Here’s my three favorite viral sports reality suspending sports videos…

1. NFL Fantasy Files: The Best Players

Easily my favorite viral sports video of all time. It brings a whole new meaning to “fantasy football”, but at the same time is so well done that you just want to believe. It features seven different NFL players showing off their superhuman football skills (passing, kicking, catching), while vying for that #1 draft spot on your fantasy football team.

I’m actually surprised at how many people fell for it being real, and it took me a little bit of searching to find the original source for the video, Reebok.

2. Insane street football

“Crazy stunts mixing football tricks and capoeira fighting style!” and a healthy dose of computer editing work. The viral video was made to promote EA sports’, FIFA street 3 video game.

3. Amazing Ball girl catch

A video purporting to show a ballgirl making an amazing catch at a minor league baseball game as she bounds nearly 10 feet up the outfield wall. This video got some pretty wide circulation throughout the Internet and created quite a buzz whether it was real or not. There are several dead giveaways though like the catcher changing hands between pitches. It was created as part of a Gatorade viral marketing campaign.

Runners up:

Lebron hits 3 court shots, Kobe Jumps of A Moving Car

Timu Contest Update

Matt Heaton — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:58:10 +0000

We’re currently have a contest running through the end of August, where the ten Timu members who accrue the most points get gift certificates for sports gear. Points are earned by doing things such as inviting members to Timu (500 points a sign-up), uploading photos, entering game results, and about a dozen other things. We also manually award points to people that promote Timu in other ways.

Here’s the standings now that we are a couple weeks into the contest with six weeks to go.

1st Place ($200 gift certificate)

terry peterson

35,145 Points

2nd Place ($100 gift certificate)

socks

30,963 Points

3rd Place ($50 gift certificate)

Reid McCann

15,931 Points

4th-10th Place ($25 gift certificates)

Jay Matsudaira 14,649 points, John Meyers 9,866 points, Bill McCarthy 9,566 points, Michelle Viscione 9,453 points, Lance McGrath 8,244 Points, Dacia Roessler 8,149 Points, Amy Chua 8,028 Points

The Point of Points

Matt Heaton — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:17:25 +0000

I’ve gotten several emails in the last week asking what this whole “Points Thing” on Timu is about (but at the same time wondering how they can get more). Every member and team on Timu has a score that is tied to how active that member is on the site. There are dozens of ways for a member or team to receive more points, ranging from filling out your profile, inviting members, uploading photos, adding game results, etc.

Basically, the more active you are in helping to build the Timu community the more points you receive.

So what are points good for?

Besides being almost kind of a game for members as everybody likes to have a higher score, they serve several purposes. One is it gives us a way to display the most active members, teams or even sports throughout the site. For example you’ll noticed “featured sports”, and “featured teams” on the front page of Timu or on the sports pages, and this is based off of score.

We also will periodically use points as a basis for contests within Timu. Right now we have a contest running through the end of August in which the members accruing the most points get gift certificates to purchase sports gear. There will undoubtedly be other contests and rewards in the future tied to points. Our intention is to help reward those members and teams that help to build Timu.

A list of all Timu members ranked by points.

Timu Adds Team/Player Statistics For Four More Sports

Matt Heaton — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:45:46 +0000

We just extended it’s powerful game results and statistical tracking functionality to four additional team sports, basketball, lacrosse, hockey and soccer. Previously only baseball and softball had been supported.

There are now over 30 sports supported on Timu.com, but there is an ongoing process of extending advanced team features to all of the team sports. With minimal effort, amateur sports teams can now provide their players, coaches, parents and fans with professional, dynamic, statistics, presented in a way that had previously been relegated to the realm of professional sports teams.

There is a huge range of statistical categories available for each sport, many automatically calculated by Timu’s statistical engine. For example we support over 50 different categories for both baseball, ranging from hits and RBI’s to things like WHIP and OPS. The key is the design of the user interfaces to minimize the amount of time it takes a coach or parent to enter results.

Statistics are an integral part of the sporting experience, and Timu continues to provide new ways for amateur sports teams, leagues, and individual athletes, to organize and share this information.

See stats in action on the Dreadsox Team Site