lowpost.net/blog - striketwo.net category

Add NBA Blog Headlines to Your Site

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 06:21:05 GMT

Those of you who have your own blogs or web sites may be interested to know that you can now include lowpost.net headlines on your site with a new widget. You can see it in action in the sidebar of this blog, just below the archives.

To include it with default lowpost.net colors, add the following code to your HTML template:

<script src="http://lowpost.net/widget/lowpost_news.js"></script>

If you'd rather apply your own style, define the classes .lowpost_widget, .lowpost_title, .lowpost_title_link, .lowpost_item, and .lowpost_item_link in your CSS file, and then add the following code:

<script src="http://lowpost.net/widget/lowpost_news_nostyle.js"></script>

Code for striketwo.net and faircatch.net is also available:

<script src="http://striketwo.net/widget/striketwo_news.js"></script>
<script src="http://striketwo.net/widget/striketwo_news_nostyle.js"></script>
<script src="http://faircatch.net/widget/faircatch_news.js"></script>
<script src="http://faircatch.net/widget/faircatch_news_nostyle.js"></script>

UPDATE: For sites like WordPress.com that don't grant HTML template access, you can instead use a generic RSS sidebar widget with one of the lowpost.net RSS feeds (like http://lowpost.net/feed/rss2.0/) for a similar effect.

As always, contact me if you have any feedback.

Introducing the striketwo.net Blog

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:48:32 GMT

In a way, it's fitting that the Heat won the NBA championship last night ... today is the summer solstice, and it was the hottest day of the year so far in the Bay Area.

And, with the commencement of the NBA offseason, it also seems like a fitting time to make one final baseball-related announcement here: sister site striketwo.net now has an exciting new blog.

The striketwo.net blog figures to be a compelling destination for baseball fans. First of all, there's a top-notch sports blogger at the helm: Matt Watson, known to many basketball fans via the terrific Detroit Bad Boys blog.

Second, it leverages and incorporates much of the striketwo.net baseball blog-tracking application. Matt is extremely tech-savvy, and he'll be using the public striketwo.net site as well as a set of advanced internal tools to identify breaking stories from around the league and highlight some of the best baseball-related blog content around.

Finally, it will be updated very frequently. The blog hasn't even officially launched, and it already has more posts than I've written in the last 3 months.

So, if you're a baseball fan, be sure to check it out and let Matt know what you think.

Trend Charts on lowpost.net and striketwo.net

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 05:49:48 GMT

A fun new feature was rolled out to lowpost.net and striketwo.net this evening: Player and team trend charts. Each player and team page now contains a chart that shows how often they have been referenced in tracked blogs over the past several weeks. Specifically, the chart measures the percentage of posts referencing the player or team by week. You can click any of bars to view the matching content for that week.

Some examples:

The Sam Cassell trend chart shows a modest amount of coverage during the regular season, with a strong post-season surge that coincided with the Clippers' playoff run.
The Golden State trend shows a peak in early December, and a steady decline throughout the season and postseason as it became increasingly clear that the Warriors were going to miss the playoffs for the 12th straight year.
Kobe Bryant's chart shows relatively high frequencies throughout the year, with two big spikes corresponding to his 81-point game and the conclusion of the 7-game Lakers-Suns series.

There are undoubtedly plenty of other interesting trends ... if you find one, feel free to leave a comment.

New on lowpost.net & striketwo.net: Games

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 07:14:02 GMT

This week a major new feature was added to lowpost.net and striketwo.net: Game tracking. This is a natural extension for sports services, and with the NBA Playoffs just getting started, it seems like the right time. Both blog monitoring tools now include pages for each contest that contain scores as well as links to related previews, open threads, recaps, and analysis from sports bloggers.

Primary navigation to the game-specific content is available via each site's scoreboard page: lowpost.net/scoreboard/ and striketwo.net/scoreboard/. Mini scoreboards are also available in the sidebar of each team page (like Detroit Pistons or New York Mets) as well as the lower right corner of the respective home pages.

The home pages have also been streamlined somewhat to make room for the new scoreboards. The old home pages are still available at these new locations: lowpost.net/threads/ and striketwo.net/threads/

Thanks to everyone who participated during the past couple of weeks of beta testing--your feedback was extremely helpful.

Introducing striketwo.net for Baseball

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 08:47:51 GMT

Tonight I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new sports-related blog-tracking application: striketwo.net.

Like lowpost.net, it tracks many more blogs than I can read, summarizing common discussions and ranking the players and teams that appear--but for baseball-themed blogs. As it turns out, there are a lot more baseball blogs than basketball blogs out there, and striketwo.net is now monitoring 600 of them.

One recent addition to lowpost.net that also appears is the new Blog Rankings page. It ranks all tracked blogs by influence, which is a measure of incoming links from individual posts (similar to Technorati's authority metric).

Special thanks to Matt Watson of Detroit Bad Boys and Fake Teams, for planting the idea and providing a lot of good feedback during the development process.

striketwo.net is still in beta testing, so if you have any feedback or suggestions, please pass them along.