AthletesGoLive thread for users to help each other and commiserate

[gator5]

It is great to see this thread. I agree that they rushed this to market with some flaws. I also think, even with the flaws, they were wise to do this to capture market share first.

First - the video feed was great and we have two family members sign up to watch my daughter's games. That alone makes this worth it. My wife, who was watching at home, asked me to go over and give updates between innings so people at home could figure out what was going on.

After one game with no live play by play scoring, I offered to do that. So our coach set up a practice game so I could try it out. Yikes to some of the error messages not making any sense at all. It almost seemed like this was created in a foreign country and someone tried to translate it. (I don't really think that is the case, but the messages are just so far out there it is laughable) It is not as easy as GC - I gave up trying to do a courtesy runner. So the coach will do GC and I will do this. We will see what happens on a close play. I may not have time to see how he scores it on GC before the next batter gets up.

We played a weekday game so no issues with the connection. It will be interesting to see what happens this coming weekend.

My daughter was talking to a college coach who mentioned AthletesGoLive by name and said they watch all the time. That surprised me. We had 5 colleges view our game. I was told 2 were watching the other pitcher (it was our feed) One was from California (we are east coast) Two were somewhat local.

 

[TXJames44]

As someone who has launched several software products over the years, there are rules you must follow.

1. Never ever launch your product until it can work smoothly even if that means reduced feature set. Your early market share grab will be easily gobbled up by the next competitor that watches your failures and launches a more stable product while addressing features your product doesn't have.

2. Any software product that has traffic spikes during peak times should be hosting on cloud servers that can expand bandwidth as needed. There should NEVER be a traffic issue (especially if we are talking sub 1M users).

Not addressing those 2 basic things at startup tells me that getting features added etc will be difficult as they chase fixes for the first 2 issues.

 

[corlay]

As someone who has launched several software products over the years, there are rules you must follow.

1. Never ever launch your product until it can work smoothly even if that means reduced feature set. Your early market share grab will be easily gobbled up by the next competitor that watches your failures and launches a more stable product while addressing features your product doesn't have.

2. Any software product that has traffic spikes during peak times should be hosting on cloud servers that can expand bandwidth as needed. There should NEVER be a traffic issue (especially if we are talking sub 1M users).

Not addressing those 2 basic things at startup tells me that getting features added etc will be difficult as they chase fixes for the first 2 issues.

great advice.

I'll add one more:
Don't design a software that needs to connect to cloud server every 20-30seconds (typical frequency of a pitch being thrown). You've just created a bandwidth problem for yourself and your servers, and re-coding your software later (to handle server communication in "batches", for example) will take some heavy lifting.

 

[TXJames44]

great advice.

I'll add one more:
Don't design a software that needs to connect to cloud server every 20-30seconds (typical frequency of a pitch being thrown). You've just created a bandwidth problem for yourself and your servers, and re-coding your software later (to handle server communication in "batches", for example) will take some heavy lifting.

Exactly. Especially if relying on cell network. I think it is a great idea, but I'm not sure these guys are software developers.

I hope I am wrong.

 

[corlay]

Exactly. Especially if relying on cell network. I think it is a great idea, but I'm not sure these guys are software developers.

I hope I am wrong.

Best case scenario: GameChanger (Dick's Sporting Goods) buys them out, throws some real development and infrastructure money at it, and makes the app truly useful and reliably usable.

 

[Canonq]

team admin accounts cannot watch the "live" only the archived games...

i hope this changes but i believe this is by design

from the website under products and pricing , under team account,

"They can live score and live stream their games and maintain all their advanced team and player stats "

watching live stream is not listed here even though it is listed under fan and org accounts....

Thanks, Swoosh. I had created a fan/parent account and tried to watch the game. The watch button on the app wasn't "click-able". I'd usually say it was something I was doing wrong, but given how buggy this app is, I'm not sure I'm ready to go there yet.

 

[Canonq]

Best case scenario: GameChanger (Dick's Sporting Goods) buys them out, throws some real development and infrastructure money at it, and makes the app truly useful and reliably usable.

Wouldn't it be cool to open up GC and it ask you, "Would you like to connect to your GoPro?"

 

[Shiloh]

Exactly. Especially if relying on cell network. I think it is a great idea, but I'm not sure these guys are software developers.

I hope I am wrong.

Yep.

They’re using server-side rendering. Great for security, control and storage but can wreak havoc when the servers are taxed.

Another example: the name of a courtesy runner on 1B reverted to the name of the orignal batter on the next pitch because the change was never committed on the backend.

They also aren’t using localized caching to compensate for potential connectivity disruptions. It’s like they didn’t think through the use case - fields potentially in the middle of nowhere, limited connectivity and bandwidth, 100% mobile access, weather (heat) etc etc.

Too late to fix the programming framework, they’ll need to elasticize their backend and implant some localized caching before the scoring system will approach GC levels of reliability.

But hey, great streaming!

 

[softball dad 6]

Pros:
We had a lot of college coaches watch the games. From reports to our head coach the video was actually pretty good and they thought it was worth watching.

Cons:
Our person keeping the live stream stats was so frustrated by the end of the weekend I am not sure we could get them to do it again. Constantly having connectivity issues was tough.
The stats are a complete mess. We had a girl go 0-3 one game with 6 RBIs. Another girl score 4 runs in only 2 PA. It was so bad that we went back and entered everything into GC after the tournament so the HC had accurate stats to send out on request.

Overall I think it is a great concept and is important for uncommitted 2020-2021-2022 girls to have some ability to have coaches watch them this summer.

 

[Abouche]

Pros:
We had a lot of college coaches watch the games. From reports to our head coach the video was actually pretty good and they thought it was worth watching.

Cons:
Our person keeping the live stream stats was so frustrated by the end of the weekend I am not sure we could get them to do it again. Constantly having connectivity issues was tough.
The stats are a complete mess. We had a girl go 0-3 one game with 6 RBIs. Another girl score 4 runs in only 2 PA. It was so bad that we went back and entered everything into GC after the tournament so the HC had accurate stats to send out on request.

Overall I think it is a great concept and is important for uncommitted 2020-2021-2022 girls to have some ability to have coaches watch them this summer.

I went back to GC for the stats portion after out first game. It had my daughter pitching all 12 innings, 6 for our team and 6 for the other. It also had her with 12 earned runs. She actually pitched 2 innings with 0 earned runs. I figured if they could mess up that bad, the stats were going to be a mess so we are using both GC and AGL. I did give up the AGL all together because it wouldn't connect and update.