The 6th Hole

This morning I find myself thinking about golf leagues. Golf leagues are an incredible amount of fun and a great way to meet new golfers who are as crazy about the game as you are. Over the past 4 years I’ve been a member at Rose Creek here in Fargo, I’ve met scores of great golfers (some I now play with on a regular basis). We kick back, have a beer and perhaps a meal afterwards, and just focus on having a good time.

As much fun as it is to play, keeping tabs on a golf league must be a royal pain in the ass. First of all, you have to keep track of everyone either individually or in teams (which probably means substitutes and a whole new set of problems). You’d also have to organize everyone via schedules and/or tee times (which I can’t imagine is fun at all). After you’ve gotten done herding the cats, you need to compile the scores and do the math. Next, you need to total everything for your season-long statistics (and forget multi-season stats because no one has that kind of time). Last comes probably the hardest part, letting everyone know where they stand. Most people aren’t tech-savvy enough to put this stuff online and many golfers aren’t tech-savvy enough to find it online either. Most courses have it on the bulletin board, which just plain sucks.

The more I think of these problems the more I’m convinced there should be an easier way to do all this. As a league member who knows how to operate a web browser, I have a pretty good idea of what I’d like to see online. It should be incredibly informative and drop dead simple for the golf league’s manager to use. It should allow some kind of feedback loop so it has a true community feel. It should have notification so golfers can subscribe to see the results as soon as they’re posted. It should just be painless.

How does your golf league work? Do you manage a golf league right now and if so, how do you make it easier? If you have any comments shoot me an email (brandon [at] holein6 [dot] com).

A brief message of congratulations to the U.S. Ryder Cup team on their win this past weekend. It was riveting television (as the Ryder Cup usually is). I was ill almost all weekend, which gave me the perfect excuse to lay around and watch all 3 days of coverage.

Regarding Hole in 6, the summer programming hiatus is almost over. Unfortunately, North Dakota puts the brakes on golf about this time of the year, so I’ll be back to slaving over a computer keyboard on weekends in no-time. Until then, I’ll be out on the course enjoying the last few 50+ degree days.

After many significant “great weather for golf” delays, we’ve finally shipped a new update (the infamous Project Woods). Today, we’re announcing a mobile version of Hole in 6 designed specifically for cellphones. You can access this new mobile site at http://m.holein6.com.

This isn’t just a version of our site with a few less images. We’ve completely replicated every feature (minus Tournament Flyer printing, of course) in all its Web 1.0 glory. You can search, contribute, edit, even signup all from your mobile handset. Best of all, we did it without using a single image file for super-fast downloads.

Why do it? Forget for a minute that the mobile web is exploding across the globe and consider the following scenario:

“For need of a mobile Hole in 6″
Location: a bar in Anytown, USA
Setup: Golfers Sam and Adam are having a beer after exploring every bunker imaginable in 18 holes

Sam: “Hey, way to break 80 out there today, you’ve got some game”

Adam: “I played pretty well. Too bad about your broken wedge. Those oak trees can be quite hard.”

Sam: “Uh, yeah… it must have slipped. Was fun out there though.”

Adam: “Sure was, we should find a buddy or two and play in some scrambles. I have this friend who can hit the ball 320, so we’d do some damage.”

Sam: “Hell yeah, I wonder if there are any coming up?”

Enter Brandon and his Blackberry, floating into the room gently from the heavens (or returning from the bathroom, whatever you find more believable).

Brandon: “Hey, I can look that up in 3 secs.”

Brandon whips out his trusty Pearl and in literally 4 clicks he has found all the scramble golf tournaments available on all his favorite golf courses.

Brandon: “Looks like there’s a scramble next week at Mulligan Ridge Country Club and one at Birdie Bay. The latter of the two is only $25 per person.”

Adam: “Alright, count me in! ”

Sam: “Without a doubt. Now only if Brandon would allow us to buy him a beer!”

Now anyone can find local golf tournaments and courses directly from their cellphone. So, go check out our new mobile baby at http://m.holein6.com. We think you’ll like it.

Ok, the weather here has been phenomenally dry which translates to lots of golf and little web development. Having a full time working gig, an obsession to play golf, a social life, and a great golf webapp is a tough balancing act.

Anyhow, I just wanted to assure you that an update is coming. The final touches were put on the now infamous “Project Woods” and I have it in beta testing. As far as I’m aware, everything is bug-free. Look for an update this week.

It seems like forever since I’ve placed a blog post up here. Rest assured, we’ve had our share of bogeys around here given the nice weather.

I just wanted to drop in to let everyone know that “Project Woods” is progressing nicely. We have a few bugs to iron out and some more testing to do, but all in all things are coming together quite nicely. We’re already using the latest code around here and it’s proven quite handy. Very soon, you’ll be able to see for yourself.

Hopefully the next time we post an entry it will be to announce this latest upgrade. Until then, happy golf everyone.

Around town this weekend, productivity has to be at an all-time low. We’ve been glued to our televisions here in Fargo, watching what has been an unbelievable U.S. Open. Tiger Woods continues to limp (literally) towards his next major. The electricity present while he’s on the course right now is simply unreal.

So, we’ll be suspending development on our next big thing (appropriately codenamed Project Woods) to watch more U.S. Open coverage. We hope you can find time to watch this too.

Also, to all the fathers out there, Happy Father’s Day.

The rain keeps falling mainly on the northern plains these days. Since another league night was rained out, we decided to spend our time wisely and release a new feature: printable golf tournament flyers.

These flyers, available on every golf tournament page throughout Hole in 6, will allow users to take the golf tournament information inside the system with them in the form of a common flyer. The flyers have all the information on a golf tournament we have, including the web address of a golf tournament’s page inside Hole in 6. If you’ve ever had to whip up a flyer to place in golf clubhouses, this tedious task can now be taken care of by us.

So, if you need to create flyers for your golf tournament, Hole in 6 is a great place to do it. Enter it once and you can print flyers and make your golf tournament available to web users everywhere. Give it a try.

So far it looks like a great day to play some golf here in Fargo. My tee time is about an hour away, so hopefully the wind stays down a bit longer (not likely).

A quick note, we added “Website” to the list of golf course attributes an hour ago. This small addition will help golf courses receive more traffic to their own public-facing websites. Also, some courses have content that we don’t, so it’s helpful to have that information one click away. Hopefully this is easier than running to a search engine.

So, if you have the web addresses of some golf courses, go ahead and link them up.

Hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend. Up here in the northern plains we experienced another weekend of gusting winds. It seems as though we’ve endured quite a bit of wind this month (which, for North Dakota, is saying something).

However, these windy conditions have given us time to sit down and think of the next round of features to add to Hole in 6. We certainly have plenty of great ideas in the hopper (and a couple items in the works), but the challenge is always deciding where to focus next.

So, if you have a feature request that would make your golf life easier, go ahead and hit us up at requests [at] holein6 [dot] com.

Thanks to the power of great screen capturing software, we proudly present our Hole in 6 Video Tour. This is a roughly seven minute long video showing the major features of Hole in 6. Starting today, we’ve placed this on the home page to increase people’s awareness of the awesome things you can do.

So, if you can tolerate my horrible narration, give it a view.

Update: Apparently YouTube didn’t like the video. I’ve updated the link with a new version that works.