We've been putting our main focus on this piece of the pie as it was the biggest hit at the CTIA show last month.  People LOVE the idea, but want to use their own apps - their own mobile apps, their own desktop apps, their own scoring system, but absolutely ate up our sabermetric and sorting capabilities that their current app lacked, and the ability to compare across ALL entry points (apps).  Sure, in a perfect world, one app would rule them all, but that's not the case.  People have their favorites, and we don't want to stop that.

That's the market we envisioned on Day 1.  We knew that there wasn't an app out there that COLLECTIVELY produced the deep data analysis that amateurs enjoy.  You can't find one that fits them all, and that is the problem we're solving with a backend that'll accept and validate the data!

What does a typical Stathead like about stats?  Digging deep in them!  Who is the best hitter in your rec league softball team with 2 outs versus a lefty on Tuesdays?  Genevieve Brown would probably give you a run for your money in 2011, but what about lifetime stats?  What about who was the best hitter in 13 year-old All-Stars from Helena, Montana from 1990-1992?  We'd love to find that out, and people have that data tucked away in a notebook, an old scorebook, or how about in a Wordpefect 5.1 for DOS? Seriously, I remember using this back in the day.  Hokey?  Sure!  Effective? Absolutely!

Who's going to want to use this "XML API" you're chatting about?  Well, the plan is anyone that has desktop or mobile app that wants VALIDITY in their statistics.  If the other team uses product "x" and you're using product "y", how do you prove it in an amateur setting?  Sure professional sports use stats.com or Elias Sports Bureau, but as an amateur, we don't have that luxury, so cook up something special here!  

We don't want to be the frontend interface of data entry, we want to be the backend validator/repository to give more credibility to ALL the apps already out there!  This isn't to say we'd not be in the market to create an app if we need one, but at this time, not on the roadmap.

We've got contacts in the newspaper industry that have MILLIONS of these records from old high school and rec league games with clean data, but no good way to pipe it to us.  We've got people that have the data in old XLS spreadsheets - we've got a large population of people currently using an Android or iPhone app that have the recent data, but no historic data.  We've got recruiters talking to us about finding the next best tool to find new recruits, and a list a mile long of coaches and managers looking to keep what they have, yet organize it better.  Finally, and most importantly, we've got players that are lost in the current market, they've got dozens of options, all valid, but none play well with other apps.

That's what we're shooting for for v1.0 of the XML API.  Give us a jingle if you've got an app vendor that we should chat with, cause worry not, if they're willing to give validity to their app, we're willing to have them!

We can't begin to express how grateful we are for the warm welcome into the startup realm after this weekend.  Like we've already said, we can't believe the number of contacts and general interest in the product we had during the first week.  

We're not PR buffs, we're not marketing buffs, but we were able to really get a good buzz going about the product.  People really related with us - it's true, *everyone* is an amateur athlete of some kind, and if they're not, they have kids that are.

We've got dozens if not hundreds of leads to follow up on in the coming weeks and you can be assured, we're going to have a very busy next few weeks and months in development.

We've got to re-carve the Roadmap a bit based on the info we got, but shouldn't be earth shattering.  It appears as though we do want to tackle the sports realm (before moving on to board/card games and online games.  Yes, those'd look nice on your profile page, but it's not appearing to be the best bang for our collective buck right now.  If you think differently, do tell in the comments.

It's amazing to think how far we've all come in the last 2 years.  We've gone from a PHP/Zend Framework backend, transferring code to tearing it down and starting fresh with .NET and SQL backend and Telerik driving our stats.  We've really found a rhythm with the current team and we really hope to see that rhythm continue long into the future.  

We're not saying that we aren't looking to hire, because we are always looking to find that next person that can help out with the site, but right now, our team is really just "clicking".

Really looking forward to what we've got ahead!  Thanks to everyone for all the support so far!

We're still down in Orlando this week, but we needed to get the product out there and show what we were capable of showcasing.  You'll see in our main navigation bar that we've got Baseball, Softball, Soccer, Golf, and MORE currently.  if you're on this page, you likely clicked one of the latter 3 choices.  Soccer and Golf are in ALPHA release right now, so they'll be the next sports you see in the very near future.

The "MORE" button is a placeholder right now.  It'll soon be a dropdown menu showing the other offerings we've got.  With our XMLAPI we'll absolutely be able to import anything you want to our site; the catch here being that we need to allow the import.  We'll base that on what we see as the next best product to integrate.  Do you have a game that you'd like to see us tackle next?  Let us know on the CONTACT US page or head over the GetSatisfaction post and let 'er rip!