“Are You Watching This” (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. The main page consists of a TV schedule listing all the sports events across the different TV networks that you use to vote on upcoming games. The default feed is based on east coast time, but you can customize by postal code and cable provider within the US and Canada. 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 other major way to follow games on the site is through their sport specific scoreboard page where they list the votes for each game in real time by sport or team. As games get closer or work their way into overtime, the scoreboard automatically adds points to reflect a more entertaining matches. The NCAA Basketball board has been pretty active today and the NHL board includes game highlights pulled from YouTube.
It’s a good application of the community voting model that benefits greatly from the automated analysis of scores to determine interestingness. They also tie it all together by letting you track your watchlist by RSS and iCal feeds, check if your friends are getting a game you aren’t.
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How long until Gemstar extracts their pound of flesh for violating a dozen or so of their patents? Anyone thinking about starting a business that uses a TV grid, think again - Gemstar OWNS JUST ABOUT EVERY PATENT IMAGINABLE.
Or…I could just see the scores I want for the games I want without other people interfering with my choice of games at….any other online sports site in existence.
This is really lame.
Digg has given a lot of other site an idea of how to get the news at one place get it rated and make it popular if its worth
@John B: I actually tried getting TV data from Gemstar, but after repeated calls with no response, I had to give up. The TV listings for RUWT? are provided by the Tribune Group, the company that owns http://www.zap2it.com. They (and I) believe that a patent on a “TV Grid” is ridiculous, and they have been challenging the suit with Gemstar for years. I’m not too worried about it.
@Jorge: I’m a die-hard sports fan and super-connected geek, but I can’t count how many games that I’ve missed (Texas vs. OSU’s 3OT classic, for example), simply because I didn’t know the game was on, or didn’t expect a comeback.
I don’t know of “any other online sports site in existence” that will actively hunt for no-hitters through 7, ranked teams getting upset, or games going into overtime, and alert me with a text message. I don’t know of any other site that can give me TV listings with integrated sports scores so I can scan all the scores of the games on my TV. I don’t know of any other site that can tell me which of my friends has the big game I want to see, when my local cable provider isn’t carrying it.
If you know of another site that does all of this, please let me (and the world!) know. Don’t hold out on us, Jorge! Share, so I can join you in calling this site lame, start showering regularly, and finally get to know sunlight again…
Mark
RUWT?
Interesting concept and another way to involve the community. I like the concept and I’m sure it will do well. Haven’t heard of anyone else doing something similar to this.
Yeah, I’m with Mark and Spud. I haven’t seen anything like this around. I love Digg, but this is taking it to the next level for that good ole small subsection of the geek/sports fanatic. And it’s pretty good for any other sports fan too - did you check out the Bleachers? That’s just one of the fun features. I mean, there are other sites with posting functionality, of course, but it is in a new context. I think it’s awesome.
Watching TV with the laptop on the lap? Or watching the games on the desktop? How else will you use this site while watching TV?
But for interactive TV, this would be a nice app.
what % of people sit in front of a computer & a TV at the same time?
where do people come up with these ideas
I sit at a computer with sports on all the time. I think this is a fantastic idea.
This is an even better idea for those of us who CAN’T be in front of a television and need someone to feed us the information.
For starters, one of the major trends in society today is people multitasking with media (i.e. sitting in front of a TV with a laptop). I do this all the time and I would guess most of the readers here do as well. But this seems to be a good idea simply because once you’ve gone to the site and registered you can set up ALERTS. Alerts that go to your mobile phone (or by email)! I think that is invaluable if you love sports but also have a busy life. Even if you can’t get to a TV to watch the game (maybe you’re in your car) you can flip on the radio and catch it? Seems like a pretty solid idea.
being both a computer geek as well as a sports fan/tv watcher, i think it is a good idea. my work revolves around both medias at the same time. go with it mark, i think it’s a solid project!
Congrats it looks really nice and works well. We just released our website sports social networking site http://www.isportif.com and we are currently leveraging youtube and flickr. It is still in early Beta and we are still testing it and we have alot left to do on the design side but we hope that we can help bring fans together too.