Taffy

We offer our clients a lot of features and functionalities at Stretch, so at times we like to remind our clients of some useful features they can take advantage of to provide both them and their fans a more pleasant streaming experience.

Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the things you can do with our RSS Manager. This is a feature that can be accessed by clicking the “RSS Manager” link in the back-end admin page. Pretty creative name, we know.

RSS stands for really simple syndication and it’s a feed system that has been around for more than a decade now. You might be familiar with using it to consume content from news sites or blogs.

It’s the same basic concept at Stretch: Each time you add an event using the event editor it automatically is added to the RSS feed. You can get the entire feed by clicking RSS manager, scrolling to the bottom of the list and selecting “Pull Raw Feed.” Keep in mind that there is one feed for live and future events and a second feed for On Demand events. You can toggle between the two at the top of the page.

This can be helpful for your own personal use or if you have fans who are unable to access the portal for whatever reason – be it technical difficulties or visual impairment that is causing your fans difficulty in accessing the normal portal.

In addition to the general feed, you can also get the direct RSS link. This will open the selected event in the portal and automatically start playing the event if it is underway. This can be useful in several situations.

The most common use of this feature is for testing. If you are checking everything at a field or in an auditorium, you can set up a test event and hide it in the portal from the public view. Then, you can give the direct link to your athletic director, fellow SID or the IT guy who has been helping you for weeks but you keep calling him the wrong name. That way Jeremy can pull up the link in the portal and check on the test.

You can also use this to distribute a link to an event you only want certain people to be able to access. For example if you are streaming a booster club banquet and want only members of the booster club who live in Kentucky to have access, you can e-mail that direct RSS link to every Bluegrass booster and they’ll be able to view it from the comforts of their home (sipping bourbon and eating some KFC to complete the stereotype, no doubt) while everyone else is none the wiser that there’s an event, since nothing is listed in the portal.

These are some of the practical applications of our RSS Manager feature. As always, get in touch if there are any questions we can help with or if you’d like to know more about this feature.

TeamViewer is software which has proved immensely helpful in several troubleshooting situations since we began using the remote desktop program last year. It allows our technicians to see and control your machine, taking some of the guesswork out from our side of the equation and hopefully removing some of the frustration from your side. Let’s walk through how to get the program on your machine, how to fire it up and cover some of the situations in which it comes in handy.

While TeamViewer is incredibly useful, it can’t help us if you don’t have the program on the machine you’re working with. We recommend putting a copy on every computer you use for streaming. It’s very small and downloading it beforehand can really pay off. There are a couple of ways you can download TeamViewer, but the easiest way is probably the links we’ve set up on our site for our clients. They can be accessed at: http://stretchinternet.com/tv/. Once there, download the applicable program, and you’re on your way to your first TeamViewer session.

One issue we see repeatedly is many clients know they have TeamViewer somewhere on their machine, but just aren’t sure where it is. Like with our other software, and especially if you have a machine dedicated to streaming, it’s a fantastic idea to throw a shortcut to TeamViewer on the desktop. If you’d rather not put something else on the desktop, or if you’re not the person who set up the computer, take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the search tool. On a Mac, you should be able to click the magnifying glass in the top-right corner and type in TeamViewer. On windows you can do a “Find” or “Search” from your start menu.

You should see this, but with real numbers when you start TeamViewer

You’ll start TeamViewer like any other application, and when you get there you’ll see a screen with a couple of numbers on it. It will probably prompt you to tell us the numbers, or we might just ask. We’re looking for two different sets: the ID and the password. The ID is a nine-digit number broken down into groups of three. It also has a four-digit password. Often it’s very noisy when we’re trying to get these numbers, so we appreciate your patience as you repeat them multiple times while we try to input them into our side of TeamViewer.

Once you’ve done these relatively simple steps (opening the program and giving us the info) you’re basically done. We’ll be able to see exactly what you’re seeing on the computer, and we can do anything you can do. Of course, we still can’t do some things (plugging in cameras or mixers, hooking up Ethernet cables or making you snacks so you don’t have to settle for a concession stand hot dog and over-carbonated soda between games of your doubleheader), so it’s nice if you can stick around just in case.

Obviously, TeamViewer allows us to do a lot of things. It eliminates the guessing of trying to figure out what one side of the conversation is talking about. Don’t understand what we mean when we say the “speaker icon?” That’s fine. With TeamViewer, we can show it to you. Perhaps you’re running stats and your cameraman is out sick. We call and let you know we need a quick stream restart. You can run up in a break, pop open TeamViewer, give us the info and we can get it running while you don’t miss a play.

TeamViewer doesn’t necessarily replace what you’re doing there on the ground. As mentioned, we can’t plug in devices or make a sandwich, but it does allow us another resource we can turn to if we’re having a communication breakdown (or if the Led Zep in the arena is cranked to 11).

Again, we encourage all our clients to download the program. It’s saved us (and those on site) dozens of headaches, and we know headache reduction is a valuable proposition in the life of a busy SID.

As always, shoot us an e-mail if you have any questions about TeamViewer or anything else.

There’s a reason Monday Night Football is one of the longest running series in prime time television today, and it’s not just because it’s usually a salivating NFL match up (though that certainly doesn’t hurt anything).

The broadcast is good. Really good. And it’s been that way for a long time. So, while you’re not going to have the resources or manpower to turn your broadcast into a MNF-quality production, it’s still a good place to go when you want to get some ideas to improve your own broadcast. Let’s take a look at some of the things MNF does well, and some areas on which they could improve, to help better our own broadcasts.

One thing the brand has always been associated with is legendary commentators. From the beginning MNF has had legendary play-by-play announcers and larger-than-life color personalities. Of course, the brand hasn’t been without a few missteps in this area (try as we might we still can’t forget the Dennis Miller experiment), but the current commentary team with Mike Tirico calling the play-by-play along with Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski doing analysis is a strong group.

There’s plenty for broadcasters to learn from this team, but one area in which Tirico excels is in letting his color guys shine. More often than not a three-man booth is a little crowded, and that’s still the case at times, but Tirico plays it to its strengths by setting up opportunities for Gruden and Jaws, who clearly know their NFL, to voice their opinions and sometimes get into mini-debates without taking too much away from the game. When working with a color commentator, it’s important to know their strengths and figure out how to utilize them. Giving them the right lead-in can make the difference between a good broadcast and a fantastic one. Again, the three-man booth isn’t always a good thing, and you probably don’t need more than two commentators for any given event.

Another element of MNF that has been top-notch for many years is the production. Again, this is in large parts because of the massive amount of resources ESPN (and ABC before that) devote to the show, but there’s still an opportunity to take something from this element of the broadcast. While transposing graphics onto the field such as the down and distance and the now-ubiquitous yellow first down line might not be an option, you can take some cues from ESPN’s scoreboard. The scoreboard does take up a lot of screen real estate, but most viewers won’t mind since it manages to be both unobtrusive and visually appeasing. We’ve seen many of our clients experimenting with different scoreboards and some of the best looking are those that imitate MNF, staying on the bottom of the screen to avoid interfering with any of the on-screen action.

And there’s this:

Even if you can’t get Hank Williams Jr., it might be worth exploring making some sort of intro. Many of our clients have some intros that, similar to MNF, pump up the viewer and get them excited about the impending broadcast. These can be kind of a bear to produce, but once you get it down it’s something that always has your broadcast looking classy.

Those are a few suggestions drawn from Monday Night Football. There are plenty more to glean from MNF and other professional-level broadcasts. Most in this industry are working in sports because of the passion for the games. Next time you sit down and watch a game as a neutral, try and think of your own product and what ideas you can take from their broadcasts and apply to their own. It’s one of the best ways to better your product.

Don’t look now, but it’s past time to tear off another page of the calendar. Of course, in the world of college athletics that means the preparations are drawing to a close, the deadline is creeping closer.

Fall sports are about to be in full swing.

Don’t worry, there’s still time left to set up a test and ensure everything’s in its proper place, but this weekend marks the first really full slate of fall sports after what was hopefully a relaxing summer for all those working in the sports information. We know that typically the fall, while worthy of many different adjective, is rarely termed ‘relaxing.’

And yet, for so many of us, we live for times like the fall. Sure there is a heavier workload and the occasional day that makes you sit down and reconsider your career choice, but there are also plenty of amazing things about the season. Students are back on campus, the weather will start to cool down (at least we hope) and college football is back.

I’m incredibly excited for college football, both as a Stretch employee and as a massive fan of the game. This week’s kickoffs provide an unofficial start to the crazy busy season. When you see two college football teams going at it, it’s officially fall, even if the start of the season is before Labor Day.

There’s plenty of room for competitive banter, as all the guys in the office went to different schools. Several college QBs are cropping up on desktop backgrounds and there are plenty of wild Heisman (or sometimes Walter Payton Award) projections being thrown around. Luckily, there are no unreconcilable rivalries, so nobody ever seems to stay mad at each other. At least not yet.

And that’s good because it’s quite a slate ahead this season. It hasn’t been the best offseason for the sport, with more scandal in the headlines than season previews, but plenty of that goes away once there are games to be played and controversies emerge on the field rather than outside the stadium. This weekend already brings a top five game on the Division I level with LSU and Oregon meeting on a neutral site in Saturday’s marquee fixture.

Not a football fan? No worries. Fall also brings a whole slew of volleyball, soccer and a host of other sports. We like streaming pretty much anything at Stretch, after all, it’s what we do. It’s always nice to have some diversity in the events we monitor and watch during a day that might include a few minutes of field hockey here, some soccer there and the occasional tractor pull.

So, as we all prepare for this exciting time, best of luck to everyone as we enter the fall season.

My Dad told me starting a new job is like trying to take a drink from a fire hose. To some extent, that’s right. There’s a flood of information coming at you: Logistics, corporate philosophy, logins and a plethora of other things. You can only hope to soak up so much. Luckily, while there were plenty of the aforementioned items, my introduction as a member of the Stretch Internet team was pretty painless and easy.

That first day came last Monday but, backing up a bit, I accepted a job as an operations & customer care specialist at Stretch a few weeks ago. It was this decision that had me in my beleaguered Ford Focus making the trek across the Arizona desert Sunday as I prepared to lay eyes on the Phoenix Metro area for the first time.

The last decade of my life I’ve been in Texas, living with my family in Fort Worth with four college years in Lubbock sprinkled in at the end. During those years, I worked in various roles at The Daily Toreador, the campus newspaper of Texas Tech. I was heavily involved with both the print side of things, as a columnist and reporter, and the Web side, editing video and producing multimedia content for the online product.

While I wasn’t tied up with those duties, I was able to complete a couple of internships at Dallas-area television stations, a brief stint at a newspaper in London and broadcast small college and high school sports. Plus, I came away with a degree in broadcast journalism and one in Spanish. Looking back, it wasn’t a bad four years. But after college, of course, it’s time to go into the ever-daunting real world and get a scary, real job.

For a while, I kept on the path that most people figured I’d be on. I did some freelance work in the journalism world and applied for full time positions all over, mostly in journalism, but also at any other spot I thought I might enjoy. Sports have always been a huge passion of mine, and I was hoping to find something that would feed my love of sports and cope with my aversion to neckties.

It this combination (among other things) that led me to throw in an application to Stretch. It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that it was through the broadcasting I learned of Stretch Internet. While working with Lubbock Christian University, I did several broadcasts streamed by the company and didn’t have any problems. Plus, when I was hoping to get copies of those broadcasts to cut up for resume and award submission purposes they came right away (the broadcasts, not the awards).

So, knowing of Stretch’s high reputation among broadcasters and other clients, I applied, did a couple of interviews and was thrilled when I was invited to come on board. I’m incredibly excited to be a part of this company. As a young, somewhat tech-savvy person, I’m convinced Web streaming is going to continue to grow and evolve. Stretch is committed to figuring out what those evolutions will be and staying ahead of the curve.

Not only am I excited to be a small part of the development of this medium, I’m also excited to be at a place that truly cares about its customers and clients. I was brought up to treat people with the utmost respect and meet their needs however possible, and it’s nice when personal philosophy is mirrored by corporate policy.

Plus, no neckties in sight.

So, it seems like it’s going to be a good fit here, and I can’t wait to get my mind wrapped around everything and start contributing.