Rev2.org

This last year my school’s softball team won very few games. Some blamed our lack of skill, some blamed the beer drinking prior to our games, but I blame the lack of a great web 2.0 team management service. If only TeamSnap had been around last semester, maybe our team would have won a few more games. TeamSnap is a very unique new service designed to facilitate the complicated management of recreational adult or youth sports teams. With TeamSnap, team leaders can manage rosters, publish and track game schedules, and even collect payments.

Features:

Schedules – TeamSnap provides an easy to understand schedule of games including opponent, date, time, location and the all important W/L. The schedule can be used to coordinate meetings, practices, or parties, and is directly tied to Google Maps for the directionally challenged.

Player Availability – Anyone who has managed a sports team knows that managing player availability is like herding cats. With TeamSnap, managers can eliminate forfeiting because of too few players by tracking who can or cannot attend a game. For coed teams that require specific ratios of the sexes, TeamSnap will let you know if you are short men or women.

Payment Tracking - You wouldn’t think that collecting $5 from a group of mature adults would be a big problem, but it usually is a headache. With TeamSnap, team leaders can monitor payments from team members and can publically ridicule the unpaid with a big red X in the payment field.

Messages/Photos – TeamSnap provides a private team forum for discussion amongst team members, and lets leaders send email messages to the entire team. After a great game or party, players can upload photos to the TeamSnap photo gallery for the enjoyment of all of the other players.

Statistics – No longer will players have to debate who scored the most goals, hit the most homeruns, or took their skate off and used it as a weapon most often. TeamSnap provides a simple system for tracking of individual points, penalties or anything else, and even some more advanced spreadsheet style calculations.

No more excuses for being unorganized and forgetting a game or for not remembering refreshments (yes it helps with that too), because TeamSnap is a great team management solution. TeamSnap is in beta, so you can give the system a shot and customize the interface with your team logo and colors. The beta testing will be free, but eventually TeamSnap will cost $7 or $10 per month for the two different plans. In my experience, it would be a $7 or $10 well spent.

I realize that this announcement may stray a bit from the “web 2.0″ theme of Rev2, but I feel that Pidgin and the open IM platform it supports do play an important role in the “new” internet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Pidgin, it is the open source IM application formally known as Gaim. Pidgin works with Windows, Linux, BSD and other Unixes, and supports many networks including AIM, ICQ, JABBER/XMPP (includes Google Talk), MSN Messenger, Yahoo, Bonjour, and IRC.

The wonderful thing about Pidgin is that it supports logging in to all of these networks at the same time. In addition to the traditional instant messaging functionality, Pidgin also offers many network specific features like file transferring, and status messages.

Thanks to the Google Summer of Code program, many new features are included in the latest version of the software. The most exciting feature for a lot of users will be the MySpaceIM integration. Now in addition to all of the other networks, MySpace addicts can use Pidgin to communicate with other MySpace users. Other great projects sponsored through the Google Summer of Code include a virtual classroom plugin, and improved SSL support. Yahoo IM now works with Pidgin as well.

For users who prefer a web based platform to handle some of the same networks, I recommend Meebo. Services like Meebo and software like Pidgin will hopefully push the big IM networks towards a more unified solution, where users can communicate with each other regardless of platform. Google and AOL teased users before when Google announced the eventual compatibility of Google’s Jabber platform and AOL’s instant messaging platform. Although this has not come to pass, Pidgin provides a great interim solution.

Interesting Note: “A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups who do not share a common language, in situations such as trade.” – Source: The all-knowing Wikipedia

Propeller: A rotating device, with two or more blades, that acts as a screw in propelling a vessel. Now we can add to that definition the less-than-successful Digg clone that is hosted at Netscape.com. According to the Netscape Blog, the Netscape “social news experience” will be migrated and revealed at http://www.propeller.com.

The Netscape browser saw great success through the years, at one point holding as much as 85% of the browser usage share. However, the Netscape browser now holds less than 1% of the user share. After being purchased by AOL, the Netscape.com domain name was a generic web portal including customized information tied to AOL accounts. Starting in June of last year, the Netscape.com page became a social news page very similar to Digg. Many Digg users were even paid to submit stories to the Netscape service.

The Netscape.com domain name is going to receive a new face lift with the move of the social news service. The domain name will once again host an AOL branded web portal page available now at http://netscape.aol.com. Most likely, AOL is trying to take advantage of the large amount of traffic still hitting the Netscape.com domain name. Amazingly, AOL has not taken advantage of the traffic surrounding this announcement and hasn’t even created a holding page at the Propeller.com domain.

More Commentary: DownloadSquad, SearchEngineLand, and PaidContent.org.

The Google-Microsoft battle wages on, as Microsoft released its Windows Live Translator in a beta testing stage. Similar to the established translators created by Babel Fish (owned by Altavista) and Google, Windows Live Translator simply takes text entered in one language and translates it to another.

The new translator service uses Systran machine translation. Systran is no rookie to the translation field, as it was established in 1968, and has worked with the United States Department of Defense and the European Commission. In addition to the Microsoft Translator, Systran also supplies translations for Yahoo, Babel Fish, and most of Google’s language tools.

Most everything appears similar to Google’s offering, but I did notice one great new feature. When translating an entire page, Windows Live Translator shows the original page and the new translated page side by side. This could potentially be very useful for anyone translating text or anyone learning a language. Microsoft didn’t stop with the side by side view though, adding some other views like top-bottom, hover, and hover original language. Users could find great new uses for these views. I could see this hover option proving very handy to students studying for language exams, and for translators proofing translations.

English – Spanish: Rev2 es el mejor Web site del mundo. Pienso que debo leerlo ocho veces cada día.
English – German: Rev2 ist die beste Web site in der Welt. Ich denke, dass ich es achtmal lesen sollte jeden Tag.
English РItalian: Rev2 ̬ il migliore Web site nel mondo. Penso che dovrei leggerlo otto volte ogni giorno.

Let’s clear one thing up right away. If you are reading this post because you are looking for ice cream, you have come to the wrong place. Blue Bunny is a wonderful concert finding service from the people over at Imity (the bluetooth social network I hope to profile soon).

With Blue Bunny, getting “free concern inspiration” is easy. Focused on the festival schedule of concerts, you begin your Blue Bunny journey at home choosing your favorite bands. Blue Bunny’s “giant computers” then calculate your taste in music, and text message your mobile as soon as a great concert fits your profile. For those who actually attend the concerts, bluetooth antennas actually track which concerts you visit, and use this information to further refine your musical taste profile.

A lot of features are accessible directly via SMS as well. Users can access and sign up for daily recommendations, can get a list of the bands they have chosen, and can find the next concert location. Although this service is specific to the festival schedule in only certain areas, they have a wonderful service that people will love. With an additional social networking kick, like offered by Imity, the whole package could be groovy.

Have you ever wondered about that creepy guy living across the street from you? Today there are over 650,000 registered sex offenders living in the United States, and that number is growing by a whopping 25,000 per year. Knowing where these individuals live can be a real advantage and can create peace of mind.

With Vision 20/20’s POM sex offender locator service, you can track where sex offenders live by address. The service brings together the state databases of sex offenders with the easy to use Microsoft Visual Earth mapping system. Similar to other mapping services, users can search by street, city, state, or zip code. The map will show a small criminal-looking icon (he is wearing a winter cap and has a handlebar mustache) at the exact registered address for sex offenders. Information about the person including name, address, crime, a photo, and last date of registration is available.

This is a really great use of web technology, and I think this could prove very valuable especially for families with children. Users can also register with the service to receive alerts the moment any new offender moves into their neighborhood for free. This service is available only in the United States, and isn’t available in every state yet.

More Commentary: Gizmodo, TechJuicer, and Smart Mobs.