Tonight I am releasing a new version of InfiniteSoftball that reflects a significant change in the way developers are building new sites of the real-time web.

What is the real-time web?

The real-time web is all about information delivered to you as it becomes available.  For InfiniteSoftball users, it means every block on the site is real-time enabled.  When you look at your game roster, you will see your teammates mark themselves as in, out or undecided as they do it.  Your comments and updates blocks will always be up to date.  It means you don't have to refresh to see the latest stuff.  You don't have to wait for something to poll to get new data.  It's all live.

I hope the change is useful to you.  I think you'll see more real-time features all over the web as time goes by.  As always, if you see a bug on our site or have feature suggestions, feel free to send me a message and let me know.

Cheers,
Tosh

We've just added the ability to sign in with your Twitter account to InfiniteSoftball.  If you are a big Twitter user and would like to avoid remembering a new password, feel free to click the "Sign in with Twitter" link and get right in.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Tosh Meston

Hey everybody,
Just a quick update. InfiniteHoops now supports Facebook Connect and MySpaceID as login methods. This means you no longer have to remember your InfiniteHoops password, you can just click the Facebook Connect or MySpaceID button and get right in.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Cheers, Tosh Meston

"InfiniteHoops is a unique site that lets you find others in your area who might want to start a pickup basketball game. Users input where they will be playing a game and when, and others who want to play can join the game. It's a great way to connect with people around town when the tournament makes you want to play some hoops."

-- Don Reisinger, CNET Blog Network author

CNET mentioned InfiniteHoops in a March Madness inspired post this evening.  How cool is that?  Check out the article everybody.

InfiniteSoftball would like to thank CoastToCoastTickets for their support of our pick-up sports social network.

Coast To Coast Tickets is your connection to great tickets, nice people and a fantastic buying experience.  Looking for baseball tickets or other sports tickets?  Coast To Coast Tickets does the searching for you, and they make it possible for you to buy tickets to an event, even at the last minute.

Coast To Coast Tickets -- Great Tickets from Nice People

Nice.  Our Infinite sports sites have reached four thousand registered players today.  Not bad at all considering we're a home grown shop, self-funded, self-developed...  The last six months or so has been very good for us.  The player registrations and page views are at all time high.  We've even added a site for finding and scheduling pick-up hockey games -- InfiniteHockey.com.

We've also had some great press from a number of sites including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Toronto's GlobeAndMail.com and the technology blogosphere's ReadWriteWeb.com and more.  Check out our press page!

So who was player number four thousand?  A soccer baller from Santa Cruz, CA.  Invite your friends everybody.  Let's go 5000!

"In this post we look at another mainstream basketball site, but this time a small niche site created by someone with a passion for the sport - InfiniteHoops.com.  InfiniteHoops.com has a very simple purpose: to enable people to find and schedule pick-up games of basketball."

-- Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

InfiniteHoops was featured in a post on ReadWriteWeb today, which I think is fantastic.  ReadWriteWeb is a blog that covers web technology news, reviews and analysis.  Thanks for the great post, Richard!

What a day.  First I wake up to seeing InfiniteHoops mentioned in Mashable.com, and now the Seattle PI venture reporter, John Cook, has included InfiniteHoops in a post on his Venture Blog on Seattle sports startups.  Have a read.

Quote: Tosh Meston, who runs the InfiniteHoops site, where basketball players can find local pick up games ... created InfiniteHoops because he and his friends simply wanted an easy way to know who would be showing up for games. The site now has about 3,000 members and 600 groups.

The social networking news site Mashable.com has given our site InfiniteHoops a mention.  Check it out.

Quote:  InfiniteHoops.com - If all this basketball talk this time of year gives you an urge to go out and play some yourself, InfiniteHoops can help you set up a pick-up game in your area quickly.

Today we launch InfiniteHockey.com, a new social sports network designed to connect people to play the sport of hockey.  If you have a regular game and are looking for players, schedule it with us so players can find it.

The release of InfiniteHockey coincides with some new features in the software that powers each of our sports websites.  


ICalendar Subscriptions

For each group, you can now subscribe to the iCal feed of the upcoming games scheduled by our system.  When looking at a group page, you will see a "Subscribe Calendar" link in the left side menu and calendar icon in the top right corner of the group details block.  If you use a calendaring application like Microsoft Outlook or Apple iCal and you click on this link, you will be subscribed to the game calendar.  Updates will be automatically pulled into your calendaring app so you'll always be up to date.

Social Bookmarking

If you use a social bookmarking service like Delicious, Digg, Faves etc., and you like one of our news items, you can click the "Fave It!" or "Bookmark" buttons and save them to your social bookmarking service.

Display Preferences

By default, we show your next two upcoming games on the main page, but if you play more frequently and want to see additional games, you change it under Preferences / Display Preferences.

http://InfiniteHockey.com

InfiniteHoops was mentioned on Seattlest.com as one of their best technology picks of 2007.  Awesome!

Quote: Seattlest emailed a bunch of local tech professionals and asked them for the best of the Seattle tech scene in 2007. They responded and we threw all their suggestions in a list, looked it over, and scrapped 90% of them and then made up a new list off the top of our heads.
...
8. Infinite Hoops
If there's a theme to the rest of the list it's that the best technology out of Seattle this year really shines when it's facilitating real-world contact. InfiniteHoops.com helps you find pick-up games in your area.

InfiniteHoops is mentioned in an article on sports social networking sites.  This is our first press!

Quote: This is the Seattle Startups Index* (SSI) for the month of November which reached the incredible level of 210 startups on the list. Is Seattle a great place for startups or what?

This month marks the debut of InfiniteHoops on the Seattle Startup Index, which is a ranking of startups in the Seattle area by their Alexa and Compete scores.  While InfiniteHoops has a long way to go to compete with companies like Zillow and iLike, we're happy to make a showing on the list at #158.  Woot!

We released a new version of the service on Friday.  This one adds a new navigation bar, a groups directory and basic threaded messaging.

Thanks for using the site.  Let us know if you have feature requests or see bugs.

Thanks,
Tosh Meston

Hey Everybody,
This week we launched the all new InfiniteSoccer.com.  It is a release we are really excited about and hope you will like it too.  

The new stuff includes:

- All new design of the pages.
- Player profiles.
- Latest Updates Block - a place where you can see at a glance what players in your groups are doing.  See when they mark themselves In for a game, when they update their profiles, when they comment...
- Google Maps of games and groups locations.
- Improved city search for upcoming games and groups.

Thanks to all of you who've emailed your appreciation and feedback.  Enjoy the site.  Let you friends know about us.

Thanks,
Tosh Meston