If you ever considered yourself a Marv Albert or John Madden in training, YouCastr is the place for you. The site just launched out of a quiet beta. It’s kind of like Ustream or Justin.tv for sports commentary. The site lets anyone stream live broadcasts of game commentary or cut random rants in archived podcasts. Listeners can tune into commentary covering the latest sports games and chat live or leave comments. Here’s an example of a good podcast.
While I’m not quite ready to turn down the volume on my TV to hear Joe Schmo’s coverage of the Superbowl, a place for sports fans to post sports rants for later listening has promise. There’s already a vibrant community of sports bloggers covering news and even live blogging games. These same bloggers would probably love to easily make audio broadcasts like the best of them. YouCastr makes that easy.
With the entry of Yahoo into the live video category and Ustream acquisition rumors, there’s a lot of interest in the live format. YouCastr’s focus on sports strikes me as a good way to inject a sense of purpose and consistency missing from some lifecasting sites. When you go on Justin.tv, you don’t always know what you’re going to get, but YouCastr will always give you something sports related.
YouCastr was built over the past year by a team of four and is funded in the mid six figures by a team of angels.
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It should be possible for Justin.tv to achieve the same by using some concept similar to categories on blogs or channels on youtube.
If anyone is interested in the full source code for youcastr.com I have it.
No I’m not a developer of the site, but it appears that youcastr has outsourced their development to India and some of the Indian programmers are rather lax about passing around source code.
One of the developers emailed me the complete source code out of the blue without my even remotely requesting any such thing. The CTO and CEO need to take stock of who and how they do their tech hiring.
What a terrible name! Sounds like do-it-yourself castration!
@Dr J
I am a programmer from India myself and I think that you making a generic statement like this about Indian programmers is not in good taste.
@DR.J: I think you are full of bull. Got 2nd on techcrunch and want some free traffic admit it. Why would some tech out of “India” give you source code and you are not even developer/programmer. I clicked on your link happy now? I close it after 1 sec.
@LiveCruch,
Think what you want, but it is not bull.
Where and why do you say I am not a programmer? I am a full-time web developer.
I could send you the full RoR application, but as a web developer myself, I wouldn’t want someone passing my code around. How, other than passing the code along, would you like me to prove that I have the full code?
@BinaryDay,
I did not infer or mean to imply that all developers from India do this sort of thing, because of course they dont. But in this case, the one that the guys at youcastr.com hired did.
@LiveCruch,
Why would I be trying to promote a Mixed Martial Arts site on techcrunch? That is not the type of audience that my site even is geared towards.
I simply provide this information to the techcrunch guys and the guys at youcastr.com to let them know what kinds of actions their developers are involved with.
Here is the original email for all you “doubters.” Attached to this email was a file called youcastr.rar with the full source code
——— Forwarded message ———-
From: bhanu prasad madala
To: bhanu prasad madala
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:55:21 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: ruby on rails developer
Hi,
This is bhanu and am inrested in your job but am from india and i can work from india as a developer and iam invoved in ruby on rails from an year and a half and been involved in high profile projects such as http://www.youcastr.com and , http://www.friendspacebook.com,www.wallhogs.com and also http://www.jobmia.com which is still under construction because of my interest in ruby on rails i did develop a product which i cant reveal now and i do work for full time and am interested to work under you and i am going to send you a sample of code and just look after that.
Weather watching at home or at the stadium there are legal restrictions against this sort of thing. Interesting that there is no mention that this practice is prohibited by almost all major sporting leagues.
Unless I’m mistaken.
Cool idea - I had a roommate in college who would have loved this.
It’s unfortunate that the branding is such a cookie-cutter web 2.0 identity (wet floor, “r” ending, “You” prefix, beta tag, sound waves, etc). With all the great adjectives and verbs available in the sports world, it’s a shame the end result is something so expected.
youcastr..please contact http://www.NowHound.com..they are creating a “live event” search engine and I think you can benefit by having your events indexed and listed…
@Markus,
You are definitely not mistaken but this may not be an issue with the major sporting events rather an issue with the local radio broadcast. The local radio broadcasts have to pay for rights to broadcast a game over the airwaves. Here is what their website says:
“You shall be solely responsible for your User Broadcasts and the consequences of broadcasting them. In connection with User Broadcasts, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize YouCastr to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Broadcasts to enable inclusion and use of the User Broadcasts in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service; and (ii) you have the written consent, release, and/or permission of each and every identifiable individual person in the User Broadcasts to use the name or likeness of each and every such identifiable individual person to enable inclusion and use of the User Broadcasts in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service.”
They are basically the napster of sports broadcasts.
@Markus Thomson
I was wondering the same thing and stopped by to offer my comment. At the end of every NFL broadcast is an explicit statement covering just this sort of thing with words like No portion of this broadcast description, or accounts of the game may be produced without expressed written consent from the NFL or its commissioners.
I’m curious to know if Youcastr has an agreement or a legal loophole but I doubt the NFL is eager to loosen its guidelines.
If it’s live it isn’t really a podcast now is it?
Kinda getting tired of hearing about new sites with “you”, “my” or ridiculous vowel omissions in the name. It’s not cute anymore.
First half of the name stolen from youtube, the ‘R’ in the end is from Flickr, I wonder where did they get the CAST thing?
C’mon guys you start a whole new company, build a new app and can not come up with a cool name for it?
Markus Thomson, YouCastr broadcasts fans commentary, not the sports games themselves.
I love this site! I am not tech savvy, but I love sports and this appeals to me, so thanks for the opportunity to have fun and get involved in another element of sporting life…. Whoever is doing the web-design and programming for this is brilliant! I know that stuff isn’t easy, but it makes it easy for me to use and I know nothing…
And as far as knocking the name and concept goes…. It still has your attention, so keep talking fools….
Aaron, that’s a broad generalization and could apply to anything discussed on TechCrunch - it’s obviously going to be talked about here. The point is that the branding is weakened by simply recycling the same cliched elements found in hundreds of other logos.
Markus - You can do commentary, but not play-by-play. How exactly play-by-play is defined is rather complicated and inexact since you can’t copyright facts, but it’s not hard to avoid.
iamshimone - The guidelines that sports leagues claim are overly broad and unenforceable; they are written as if the concept of “fair use” is non-existent
See the STATS/Motorola vs NBA court case case in the Second Circuit for more on what constitutes play-by-play
Great idea. I can see all the Texas high schools using this.
Interesting….The name is pretty broad and doesn’t imply sports whatsoever. Looks like they’re using sports to get their foot in the door and have every intention of expanding to other niches.
You can see a video interview of YouCastr CEO Ariel Diaz here:
http://us.intruders.tv/Broadca....._a206.html
Once YouCastr got up and running near the end of the ‘07 MLB season, I didn’t listen to one more major network broadcast. I muted the TV and listened to different broadcasters using YouCastr. The quality of baseball analysis varied from exceptional (in my opinion) to almost non-existent, but the broadcasts were always entertaining and were FAR superior to the bland and often idiotic commentary provided by the major networks. Perhaps the most enjoyable games were those when a group of friends seemed to have gotten together and gave their running commentary on games. Some very witty people who clearly love baseball were using YouCastr and it made some dull games a lot more fun than they might have been otherwise.
I don’t know or understand a thing about the tech side of things (a tech-savvy friend forwarded me the link to this site), but I hope that sites of this kind find success and allow more people to regularly provide the kind of entertaining and refreshing approach to pro sports that I found last fall.