admin loginIntroducing… ShotChartr, a computerized shot chart for college basketball teams
ShotChartr Entry Interface
As tipoff for the 2012-13 college basketball season approaches, StatBroadcast is proud to unveil the latest addition to its arsenal of tools for sports information and media operations – ShotChartr.
ShotChartr is a web-based shot charting application that let’s your stat crew keep a computerized shot chart and create PDFs with the information after each half or game.
To find more about ShotChartr, including viewing PDFs, screenshots, stat monitor display demo and more in-depth feature information, visit our ShotChartr page here.
To review the user’s guide for ShotChartr, visit our Support Document Library.
If you are a current StatBroadcast partner and you’d like to test drive ShotChartr or get more familiar with its interface prior to the season, simply add a Basketball Event to your StatBroadcast Calendar through the Admin Panel and you’ll have immediate access to start testing ShotChartr.
PDFs and Archiving now supported for Ice Hockey
As men’s and women’s ice hockey seasons officially drop the puck this week on the 2012-13 season, StatBroadcast has expanded its PDF and Event Archiving features to now include Ice Hockey. Media can create an on-demand box score and face-off summary at any point in the game. Schools can also now archive these events, storing the game state as XML, HTML and PDF in the Cloud for perpetuity.
October 06, 2012 by Nate PolicarNew Third Down Statistics Added for Football!
You can now take a deeper dive into how each team is performing in third down situations. Added to the ‘Team Comparison’ stats page, you’ll be able to see starting this weekend the new information that’s been added. New statistics include:
- Average Third Down Distance to go
- Conversions on Third and Long (10 or more) and Third and Short (less than 5)
- Third Down Passing
- Third Down Rushing
- Third Down Penalties
- Third Down Turnovers
Broadcastr 4.1 introduces HTTP mode
Broadcastr version 4.1, which was released by StatBroadcast this week, introduces a new feature called HTTP Transmission mode. To help explains what this feature mans for you, when and why you might need it and more, we’ve put together the following FAQ.
Why do I need HTTP Transmission mode?
The IT/Networking departments of more and more universities are blocking the FTP protocol on wired and wireless connections on campus, particularly those which can be accessed in public places, like an arena or soccer pitch. Also, many MyFi and Cellular wireless cards also restrict FTP access. Many internet providers do this to prevent software piracy and limit traffic on their network.
You may able to access web pages on your scoring laptop, and even load an event in Broadcastr to begin sending, only to get an error when you start the transmission that reads something similar to ‘No internet connection’ or ‘the transport connection could not be established.’ In most cases, this is indicative that FTP access is being blocked.
What do I do if FTP is being blocked?
If you aren’t able to get an IT department to unblock it (or you’re in a rush or on the road and need a quick solution) StatBroadcast now gives you the ability to transmit your live XML files to us through the HTTP protocol – the same connection that serves web pages to your computer.
That means if you’re able to view our website and load an event into Broadcastr on your scoring computer, you should now be able to send us your live stats, even if you’re on a MyFi connection, a public wireless or just a secured connection.
How do I activate it if I need it?
Simply click on the ‘Advanced Settings’ button from the main window of Broadcastr, mark the checkbox labeled ‘Use HTTP Mode for Transmissions’ and hit Save.
You can now continue using the software as you normally would. All file transfers will now be done in HTTP Mode until you return to Advanced Settings and uncheck the option, or upgrade your software.
What’s the drawback of using HTTP Mode? Why wouldn’t I just want to activate it always just to be safe?
Because only StatBroadcast’s servers currently accept files via HTTP, and we havent’ yet built the infrastructure on the server end to repeat your file to other servers, activating HTTP Mode means that you will not be able to simultaneously transmit to your other FTP destinations, including ESPN.com and your team website.
Also, though 90% of users will not notice a difference, transfers will be slightly slower (0.25-0.5 secs) through HTTP mode. While not noticeable in almost every situation, some users may see updates appear a hair slow when using a slow connection and updating the stat file at a very quickly pace (once every 1-2 seconds).
What does all this HTTP/FTP mumbo jumbo mean?
HTTP and FTP refer to the different ways that your computer connects to the internet to complete different tasks. Think about it like the different connections you have in your home that do different things: a phone line, an internet connection and a cable TV connection.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is used for viewing web pages and is very rarely, if ever, blocked by Network security, since it covers about 95% of most people’s typical internet traffic.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is used specifically for uploading and downloading files, or for our purposes, sending XML stats files to StatBroadcast’s servers, and requires software running on both the client (your) computer and the server (our) computer. Because it can be used to easily store and retrieve movies, music and software, some networks disable access to it to combat media and software piracy.
With the newest additions to the software running on our servers and Broadcastr 4.1, you can now send stat files to us using an HTTP connection for the web
August 20, 2012 by Nate PolicarNew Feature: On Demand PDF and Event Archives
One of the newest set of features that StatBroadcast has expanded on and introduced this year is its new On-Demand PDF and Event Archiving system.
The On-Demand PDF system allows media and staff members to generate full game books (or individual report pages) of stats for saving or printing in PDF format at any point in time from a StatMonitr stats feed. Formatted to look exactly like the reports that come out of the stats software, this new tool will help take one more thing off the plates of SIDs and media relations staff during busy game days. Previously available only for Basketball box scores, it is now supported for full game books for all available sports.
Tying into this new feature also is the new Event Archive system. Once an event has finished and the stat crew has confirmed the accuracy of the final stats, StatBroadcast partners can, with the click of a button, create an archive of that event, which immediately generates and permanently stores the final stats in HTML, PDF and XML format on our Content Data Network in the cloud. It also presents the stats in the archived final stats view for both media and fans, and organizes the event into a searchable archive. Media, fans and staff have a full archive of all their events, in a variety of formats, available at their fingertips from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
Try out the On-Demand PDF feature by following the link and clicking the PDF/Print icon on the bottom tool bar:
http://stats.statbroadcast.com/statmonitr/?id=1
View an example of the new Event Archive and archive views:
http://www.statbroadcast.com/events/archive.php?gid=uk&sport=bbgame&gender=M&date1=2011-10-01&date2=2012-04-05
New Feature: Twitter Integration
Stats feed with the Twitter bar activated
StatBroadcast has unveiled its newest enhancement for both media stats and live stats: Twitter integration. Now media and fans don’t have to switch back and forth between stats and their Twitter timeline or cell phone screen. StatBroadcast has incorporated Twitter feeds into an easy-to-use and easy-to-read Twitter status bar along the bottom of the screen.
Media relations staff can select from StatBroadcast’s Admin control panel which Twitter feeds to integrate for specific events, or even set it across an entire sports season. Twitter feeds can be selected by :
- Specific user(s)timelines
- A user’s Twitter list
- Hashtag or keyword searches
When a user activates the Twitter status bar, StatBroadcast automatically collects the most recent tweets from the selected feeds and displays them in the status bar in an automatically rotating ticker (users can also move forward and back through the ticker manually). The Twitter status bar automatically checks for updated tweets and adds them to the front of the bar as they are tweeted, so users always have the most recent tweets right at their fingertips, without ever having to leave your live stats page.
To try out this feature, visit this link and click the Twitter button on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen: http://statb.us/b/2
The Twitter Controls make it easy to integrate the Twitter feeds you want.
Countdown to Kickoff 2011: New Drive Chart and Views
As we get ready for the college football kickoff in just about a week, StatBroadcast is highlight some of the new features it has added to its football live stats for media and fans this year.
As with previous versions, the interface still includes a side-by-side comparison of drive charts for each team with scoring drives highlighted. And still available are last year’s additions which provide the number of three-and-out drives and average starting field position for each team.
Added to this year’s interface is a visual drive chart for each team. The display not only visually shows how the team has progressed down the field, but also highlights drives that resulted in red zone scoring attempts, and highlights which drives ended in either a turnover or score.
Fans will also get to see a visual representation of the current drive as it occurs in the StatBroadcast Live interface. A view of the football field displays where the drive started, the line of scrimmage, the current length of the drive on the field and the spot of the first down marker.
Finally, we’ve added a chronological drive chart, which shows the combined drives for both teams in the order they occurred in the game. You can now track exactly how the flow of possession and field position has changed from drive to drive from one combined table.
May 05, 2011 by Nate PolicarStatCrew: The Next Generation — What it Means for you and StatBroadcast
In May 5th’s CoSIDA newsletter, StatCrew addressed questions from members of the CoSIDA organization relating to its new product line and impact on how schools run stats for their events. For those of you who have not seen it and are interested in getting the information direct from the horse’s mouth, the full article is available at http://cosida.com/news.aspx?id=3215
In an effort to communicate with our partners and also better explain some of the more technical aspects of StatCrew’s response, I am providing answers to the following five questions regarding the immediate impact new StatCrew software will have on your stats and your ability to use StatBroadcast’s services.
- Will the stat monitors and/or live stats provided by StatBroadcast still work? What is the immediate impact for the 2011-2012 season?
- Should we/will we need to upgrade Stat Crew for the 2011-2012 season?
- I don’t understand what the new StatCrew “cloud”. How is it going to be different from what StatBroadcast provides?
- What are the potential advantages you see for StatBroadcast arising from this new version of StatCrew?
- Will I still need StatBroadcast’s services once the full roll-out of Next Generation StatCrew is complete?
Will the stat monitors and/or live stats provided by StatBroadcast still work? What is the immediate impact for the 2011-2012 season?
In one word: YES.
According to Stat Crew’s press release: “The Xml data format will not change with next generation software. We will have more detail about how the third party organization will access the Xml feed at a later time.
What this means in normal person terms is that all of our current technologies will continue to function normally as they currently do, regardless of whether a school has upgraded to the Next Generation or is still using the legacy version of their software. To reiterate, your stat monitors and live stats provided by StatBroadcast will continue to work as before.
In terms of information on how third-party organizations (such as StatBroadcast) can access your XML feed, until more information becomes available as to how to access the data from the cloud and how fast it will be, we recommend continuing to run our StatBroadcast Broadcastr software concurrently with the new StatCloud software that will be released this June. This is the only way we can guarantee that stat monitors and media stats sites will continue to function in real-time, until we can reliably determine how fast stats will be delivered from the StatCloud to their destinations. As always with our software, this should have no impact on your ability to input stats.
Since all of you already currently use our Mission Control/Broadcastr software to power our services, there will be little changed in terms of setup for the 2011-2012 seasons.
Should we/will we need to upgrade Stat Crew for the 2011-2012 season?
Some of you will not get to make that determination based on the fact that your conference is in charge of purchasing your software. However, since the old version will still be updated and available this summer, here are our recommendations for the following sports:
2011 Football Season
“The football beta will be available at the end of July.” As both your stats services provider and a long-time software programmer, I am always weary of depending on software that has an uncertain release date and is put out in an unfinished form (i.e. BETA release).
At this time, StatBroadcast strongly discourages any schools or events from upgrading to the beta release for Football for the 2011 season.
Beta software is what it is—it is a preliminary version of software that has not been fully tested by the developer yet and has not been certified for release; it is not guaranteed to be bug-free and may crash without warning. For a mission-critical application such as in-game stats, I must recommend that schools wait to upgrade football until StatCrew releases a fully-qualified release version of their software. This opinion also applies to the Olympic sports upgrades as well (such as baseball which will release its beta mid-way through the 2012 season).
2011-2012 Basketball Season
According to the information released, it sounds as if Stat Crew’s first priority is the completion of its Next Generation Basketball software, which will be available (in its final release version) starting in June. If it’s on schedule and it is a completed release (read: not a beta or pre-release candidate verson), we don’t currently see issues for those schools who want to upgrade this year. Once released, we will work as hard as we can to make sure that our system for receiving your XML stats file (our Broadcastr software) is still compatible with the new software so that you are able to continue using our services to their full capabilities.
I don’t understand what the new StatCrew “cloud”. How is it going to be different from what StatBroadcast provides?
Foreword: for those who are still unclear on this, the computing term “cloud” simply means that software is installed on a remote server rather than your actual laptop or desktop computer. Although the term “cloud” is the newest buzzword, many of you are already familiar with “cloud-like” applications, such as CSTV’s Netitor (which many of you use to your website), the NCAA’S XML Game Participation Submission website and our own StatBroadcast Live and StatMonitr web applications.
From my understanding of the information furnished by StatCrew, the cloud services that StatCrew will be offering will serve two primary functions:
(i) Schools will be able to share, access and load directly into StatCrew files before, during and after events to aid in the transfer of information between different SID offices. This includes:
- Schedules (which currently have to be inputted by hand into StatCrew)
- roster files (known currently as BRO, .FRO, etc) and duplicate number listts
- game pack files (known as FPK, BPK, etc.)
(ii) Secondly, schools will use StatCloud instead of TASFTP to send their live stats XML to the StatCrew server. The StatCrew server will then dish out your file to where it needs to go.
Please note, while its not completely clear in the information it release, my understanding is this: while the StatCrew StatCloud will deliver live stats to your live stats servers, StatCrew will still not deliver or display live stats in a human-readable format for your fans or media.
To repeat what I stated earlier, at this point until we can reliably determine how long the transfer will take to go from your laptop TO StatCrew Cloud TO the StatBroadcast cloud, we recommend continuing to run our StatBroadcast Broadcastr software concurrently with the new StatCloud software.
One of the other things you will be at the mercy of is the performance and reliability of the StatCrew StatCloud server. As some of you may experienced a few weeks ago with the crash of Amazon’s cloud and the subsequent downtime for Twitter and other social media, you will be giving much of the control and responsibility for delivering your stats to a third-party. This is specifically why the StatBroadcastr application sends directly to your additional websites without using a go-between. Despite the security of our 99.9% guaranteed uptime, if there were to be seven separate extreme calamities or natural disaster simultaneously at the seven datacenters spread worldwide that are responsible for serving StatBroadcast’s clouds, it would still not impact your ability to continue to send stat feeds to ESPN, CBS, NeuLion, etc. I can’t speak on behalf of StatCrew at this time to say whether or not they have the same amount of redundancy built in for the StatCloud.
What are the potential advantages you see for StatBroadcast arising from this new version of StatCrew?
Offhand, here are several of the things I am excited about exploring further:
- StatCloud FTP services
For one thing, it appears that StatCrew has followed our lead and implemented this new system which will make it easier and more automatic to configure sending live stats to multiple locations. This will reduce the need for our multi-port StatBroadcastr application (which means it can be used solely to send stats to your monitors) and, depending on speed and reliability, may replace the need to run a separate StatBroadcastr application. Personally, I would welcome that, as we’d much rather natively integrate into the StatCrew software suite. - StatCloud XML
Once the StatCloud XML delivery service is deployed to its full capacity, it sounds like it gives us the potential to do a few different things, including- For those of you using us for StatBroadcast Live Stats, we will potentially be able to start feeding 100% (home, away and neutral) of your events through your StatBroadcast Web interface
- The potential also exists for more detailed stat information and more advanced calculations to be made. While we’re already striving to implement more advanced features, such as trending stats in Basketball, a tighter integration with StatCrew opens the possibility for more stat categories as well as (if it was even possible) even faster updating stats.
- Windows 7 Support
Many of our partner schools have asked about upgrading to Windows 7 and previously it was not an option because of StatCrew’s incompatibly. This will allow you to upgrade to Windows 7 and continue to use StatCrew in an operating system that is very reliable and secure.
Will I still need StatBroadcast’s services once the full roll-out of Next Generation StatCrew is complete?
It doesn’t appear that the new StatCrew will replace the functions that StatBroadcast currently serves for your media relations department, including stat monitors, real-time web stats for media and live stats, but until each of you has had a chance to fully explore the new software and all of its capabilities, we can’t say for sure. At any time, even with the current software, schools must determine that for themselves based on what their organizational needs are.
What I can tell you with absolute certainty is this: StatBroadcast will continue to stand by its 100% Satisfaction Money-Back Guarantee. If for any reason you are dissatisfied with our services, let us know and we will work to rectify it and make you whole.
I am so proud of our software and our ability to continue to serve your needs, that, as always, I make the following guarantee:If at any time during your contract term you determine that you no longer need or want StatBroadcast’s services, we will gladly pro-rate and refund any remaining credit on your account.
And as always, we will continue to work tirelessly to continue to constantly upgrade and improve our software so that it continues to serve the needs of your school or event.
Please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us if you have any questions, comments or concerns relating to either the new Stat Crew release or our services in general. I am always happy to hear from each of you and respond to your comments and questions. I also enjoy and appreciate receiving your suggestions for how to improve our software.
Warmest regards,
Nate Policar
President
StatBroadcast Systems
Fix for mobile Android Browsers
StatBroadcast has deployed a new fix to its mobile stats web application which addresses an issue the newest Android operating system was having accessing the menu of different stats views for each sport.
We have conveniently added Forward (>>) and Back (<<) buttons to the menu, which will allow users to cycle through the views without having to use the dropdown/spinner list. This is now available on all mobile operating systems, not just Android, and should make it easier for all mobile users to change stat views.
October 28, 2010 by Nate PolicarStatMonitr Basketball: New Print-from-anywhere Box Score
Through the StatMonitr for Basketball stats system, you can now print an official formatted NCAA box score from any computer connected to the internet.
There’s no longer a need to be tethered to the stat computer or interrupt your statistician crew to print boxes at timeouts or end of half. On the bottom toolbar of basketball stat feeds is a new icon titled ‘PRINT’, which will generate a properly formatted PDF file of your up-to-date box score, which you can then send to any printer.
Just another way that StatMonitr is revolutionizing sports statistics technologies and making life easier for SID’s.
