I remember sitting on a flight from Detroit to Orlando next to Brian back in June. Well, I sort of remember it. I had been up all night at the hospital with our two month old, who had come down with something. She had a temperature, and with very young kids (less than three months old), that can be very serious. It turns out it wasn't serious, but still not something you mess around with.

Anyway, on the flight, our plan was to talk about how we could simplify the Tourney Bracket Control. We'd already decided that the "1.0 way" wasn't the best we could do and an easier way would be to generate rounds and games based purely on the number of competitors. Now, all we had to do was figure out how to do that! So we spent part of the flight talking about it. And by the time we were done talking, we figured out the logical algorithm to take the number of teams and figure out how many rounds and games you'd need. We even figured out how to determine where the bye games should go.

Then I slept.

We then spent a week at Tech Ed learning about .NET 2.0 and the newly planned features there. We decided the best course for the Tourney Bracket Control would be to make it a .NET 2.0 control. It would be a great learning experience with Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0, and it would ensure that our software was on the latest and greatest platform.

On the way back, we formulated a plan to conquer it. I mocked up a CSS-based bracket layout (which was later partially abandoned) while?Brian worked on coding the algorithm.

Fast forward seven months. We're done! We've both been working nights and weekends to get this out, and we're very happy with how things turned out. I'll go into more technical details in posts to come, but for now, it's out there.

So what made it in the final version?

• It's just plain easier!: This is the big one! You no longer have to worry about how the bracket should look. Or plan out your?groups, rounds?and match ups. You just tell?it how many teams you want, and it builds the bracket?for you.
• CSS-based layout: We used to use a table approach, and while tables are still involved, it's not nearly as much as before. There's a few side effects of this change: First, the bracket no longer natively supports nice coloring and filling of rounds with specific colors. Before, you could specify a group or round to have a certain appearance, and that's no longer supported. Why did we think that was acceptable? Because, using your own CSS, you'll be able to go in and create any type of coloring you want (see the advanced styling sample for a look at?what's possible now).
• Databinding: We wanted to do this with 1.0, but never got around to it. With 2.0, you can now take a collection of competitors, and bind it to the Tourney Bracket Control. The Tourney Bracket Control will then use those teams to create the layout.
• Pricing: We now have a professional licensing system instead of our homegrown system we were using. There are many benefits to the new licensing. First, because we can create all kinds of different limits, we are able to offer it to hobbiests for a very reasonable price - pricing starts at $19.99. But, it's flexible enough that it can also handle large installations easily too. The other benefit (and this is for both Tourney Logic and you!) is that licensing is automatic. Before, it required human intervention, and you were gauranteed a license within 48 hours. Now, once we receive confirmation of payment, you'll get an email with the licensing instructions included! I'm being intentionally vague here. It will either be attached or as a download. I'm not working on that part, so I'm not sure.
• And more: There are a ton of other new things in this. It's basically almost a?complete rewrite, and we fixed everything that we didn't like about the original. It renders faster. It self-validates results. It can even make toast! Ok. No toast. But there's a lot there that's new!

We are missing one glaring feature: double elimination. It's something that everyone's been clamoring for, and it's coming! We're actually very, very close. I had it almost working (the end of the tourney was giving me a hard time - when the losing and winning brackets come back together), but we ran out of time. We backed out those features and solidified the Tourney Bracket Control for release. Double elimination is coming, I promise. But not until this summer.

What timeframe did we run up against? The Tourney Pool Manager. We need to get that upgraded to the new Tourney Bracket Control and get that ready to go. March Madness isn't that far away!

Anyway, after a lot of hard work, it's out! Go download it now - there's a 30 day trial!

Technorati Tags: Tourney+Logic | Tourney+Bracket+Control | server+controls | aspnet

I don't think I've talked about TailRank in the past, but I recently saw they did a redesign, so I figured I'd check it out. It's a lot like Digg. Kind of.

Here's how it works. You read something you like. You share it with TailRank.?If enough people do the same, then it works it's way up to the top of the page. It's like Digg because it's a manual process for users. But instead of "Digging" something already there, you submit it again. It's also kind of like Memeorandum, because it tracks how many people are linking to it too. I'm sure that plays into a story's popularity too.

I hadn't registered, but decided to to give it a go and see what the benefits were. So far, I can't really tell.?You can upload your own OPML subscription list, and they even make it easier - I'm a Newsgator subscriber, and just by entering my subscriber info, they were able to import all 740 feeds. But after that, I'm lost as to why I want to do that. There's a link to focus the page to either Social or Local, but neither has returned any results for me. The error messages are cute though!

Oh yeah. I'm not sure what Social and Local mean either. No description that I could find.

Despite that, just using the top stories from TailRank has been useful. It's picked up a few things that the others haven't, which is good for finding interesting things. Still, I would like to be able to see the top stories from my authors in my OPML, which is what I thought I would get by adding mine to TailRank, but as of yet, I haven't been able to.

I guess I'll just have to finish my project after all.

Technorati Tags: tailrank | opml | digg

We are down to 7(!?!) NFL games left for the season. Then a long seven month layoff until we hit meaningful games again. That's a long time. Enjoy 'em while you can...

• Pittsburgh* vs. Indianapolis (-9.5) (47.5 O/U): Indy will win. They are too dominating, but a spread of 10 in the playoffs is huge. Pittsburgh is going to have to do whatever they can to turn this into "their game" and that means a lot of running to slow the game down. That's their only?hope - clock control. If they can't hold the ball more than Indy, the Colts offense will go to work and we've all seen what happens when that happens. But, the Colts haven't played a meaningful game in over a month. They'll probably get off to a slower start, which will help the Steelers with their game plan. But at the end, Manning will have figured out the defense, and they'll get the win.
• New England vs. Denver (-3) (44 O/U): Denver is dominating at home this season, and while cold weather isn't intimidating to the Patriots, that mile high altitude will be a tough adjustment. Denver's been there all year, and they just spent the last two weeks there gearing up for this one (and adjusting to the altitude). And you know Denver's game plan is tire down the Patriot defense. They love to run, and with the combo of Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell, they don't have to worry about either getting tired. But if they do, remember that huge game earlier this year by Ron Dayne? Yeah, they're deep. They should be able to dethrone the defending champs.
• Washington vs. Seattle (-9.5) (41 O/U): I just got done saying that a 10 point spread was huge in the playoffs, and then I go and pick Seattle to cover it. Go figure. But in the NFC, Seattle is a notch above everyone else. Washington will have a tough time getting through to get to Alexander, let alone stop him. That Seattle line is very good. On the other side, Seattle's defense is good. Not great, but good. Good enough to stop a washed up quarterback. Holmgren is a very good coach, and is back on top of his game, so I don't expect him to get outcoached, even by Joe Gibbs, who's done an excellent job of adjusting his style after seeing it didn't work last season.
• Carolina vs. Chicago (-2.5) (30 O/U): In what could turn out to be the most boring game ever (for the average NFL fan), this could be a 2-0 game, with only one defense registering any points. Carolina obviously has the better offense. Steve Smith is one of the best receivers in the league, but he's going up against a defense who will be all over them all game. Carolina's defense isn't as good as Chicago's, but the Bear offense isn't nearly as good as the Panther's either. The reinstatement of Rex Grossman has helped the Bears get better, but they still aren't great. After saying all that, why'd I take the over? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the defenses outscore the offenses in this one - and that could push them over 30 measly points.

Here's an interesting stat. Since the inception of the Divisional Playoff round (where two teams from each division?get a bye), the home team is 49-11 all time. That's pretty good odds for betting on the home team, don't you think? If you look at the money lines, the oddsmakers know the history too! Still, it's a pretty sure bet. But is it worth it? If you put $10 on each home team, you'd come away with $18.30 in winnings. Not a bad return for a weekend's work!

Anyway, see you on the flip side with results.

Technorati Tags: NFL | picks | odds | predictions | playoffs

Well, I've decided to make?a career change. I'm going to make all of my money by picking NFL games. You'll see why that's funny when you see all of the red below.

• Pittsburgh 31 (-3), Cincinnati 17 (46 O/U) [P: $6.80, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $6.80]: My sole correct pick, and that (most likely) was only because Carson Palmer went down early on in the game with a torn ACL and MCL. He'll be out for a while. Due to that, Jon Kitna had to come in, and actually did a pretty decent job. But it wasn't enough, The Steelers won this game because they played their game - they didn't panick, even after going down by 10 early. A lot of coaches do, but Pittsburgh stayed with the game plan, and ended with 30+ rushes - over 60% of the offensive plays. That's smash mouth football! On the other side, despite missing your quarterback and having Rudi Johnson in the backfield, he only touched the ball 15 times (2 were passes). Kitna put the ball up 40 times, including two picks. Why? Who knows, but Marvin Lewis is fairly inexperienced in the playoffs. A case of the gitters?
• Jacksonville* 3, New England 28 (-8.5) (37 O/U) [P: $2.85, S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($17.15)]: If they could go back, would the Jags have played Leftwich in week 17? If he was available, he could have used the work out.?Give he was going to be rusty, why didn't they run the ball more? When healthy, Fred Taylor can be dominating, yet he only got 8 rushes. I can hear the excuses now though - they were down big, so they had to pass. Except it was 7-3 at half time - actually it was that same score half way through the third. There's no excuse for not running more than that. Even New England roughly split passes and rushes 50/50. And what was Tom Brady's comment about the Patriots being underrated? They were the favorite despite having a worse record, and they've won two Super Bowls in a row. How can they be underrated?
• Washington 17, Tampa Bay 10 (-2.5) (37 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]: This was probably the best game this weekend, yet I couldn't get into it. It was the only one that was anywhere near close at the end of the game. Simms showed that he is inexperienced and threw 2 picks, which eventually cost them the game. But ultimately, it was the game plan that caused the loss. Simms, an inexperienced quarterback, threw 38 times. They ran the ball 22 times. Yes, they were down for most of the game, but not by a lot. This is an example of a coach changing their game plan because they were down early, when in reality, being down by 14 early in a game isn't really cause for alarm. Stick to your game plan! I thought Gruden was better than that.
• Carolina 23, New York Giants 0 (-2.5) (43.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.71, T: ($10.29)]: In my opinion, this was the shocker of the weekend. Not so much that Carolina won (even though I thought the Giants would win), but that they shut out the Giants. What's the best way to shut out a team? Keep the ball to yourself! Carolina held the ball for more than 42 minutes! It's tough to win when you don't get the ball. Of course, Manning didn't help with his 3 picks. But that was due to Carolina's ability to stop Tiki Barber. He only got the ball 13 times, but wasn't able to do much with those carries - he only got 41 yards. And before you think I'm going to jump on the Giants for only running the ball 13 times, Manning only threw 18 times. It's hard to score with your defense - you can do it, but Carolina was very good at grinding the clock down- they ran over 40 times!

Results Summary

• Picks (this week): 2 - 2 (50.00%) - Winnings: ($10.35): I completely missed the NFC picks. Neither worked out as I expected, so that hurt.
• Spread (this week): 1 - 3 (25.00%) - Winnings: ($20.00): Watching the Pittsburgh game, I thought for a while I was going to go 0-4. Luckily, they pulled it out.
• Over/Under (this week): 2 - 2 (50.00%) - Winnings: ($1.20): Over/under is just too hard to predict!
• Total Weekly Winnings: ($31.55): Not a great way to start the playoffs.

Well, this is late obviously. I'll have my picks for this weekend out shortly after this post is up!

Technorati Tags: NFL | picks | odds | predictions | playoffs

Maybe so. I've been doing a lot of thinking about it lately. The sheer time that it takes to produce the show is getting to be too much. I already changed when I do it, but that isn't going to make it take any less time. I haven't received much feedback on RCW's podcast one way or another, which tells me that there's not many out there listening.

I don't want to quit rounding up the news, but I also don't want to go back to writing 3,000 word posts either.

Some have mentioned in the past that they enjoy RCW strictly for the link dump. I could continue doing that. I already track all of the stuff I talk about, so?the time commitment?would be less, leaving me more time. So, this week's RCW would look almost the same (maybe better link descriptions), just no MP3 link.

So that's where I'm at. Anyone care to convince me one way or another?

Technorati Tags: RossCodeWeekly | RCW | podcast

Frank?La Vigne is asking for other's experiences with ASP.NET 2.0 and namespaces. He's noticed that by default, namespaces aren't used in ASP.NET 2.0 pages, and wonders if it's a bug.

I don't think it is. In my opinion, it's an omission, but it's not a bug. With the default compilation model, namespaces for web forms aren't really needed - each is it's own assembly, and don't know anything about each other (and can't reference each other), so therefore, it's namespace isn't needed.

Personally, I added namespaces back in, because I think that's how it should be.

One last thing. Frank asked for feedback on this, which I find a little ironic. He has comments turned off, so it's kind of hard to provide feedback. I know comment spam is a problem, but if you want feedback, give people an easy way to give it!

Technorati Tags: aspnet | visual+studio | web

Andrew Connell was nice enough to send me an invite to Windows Live Messenger's beta, and I've been messing around with it for the past few days. I haven't really done much with it - no voice or video, so I can't really say too much about it. So far though, it's a lot like MSN Messenger, but with a nice new UI. And more tabs. So far, no reason for me to switch from using Trillian for Messenger functionality. At least not until everyone else has version 8, and then there may be some incentive for the voice stuff. If you're out there though, and want to test out the voice capabilities, let me know. I'm curious too. I don't have a web cam, so I can't do much with that part though.

Anyway, I now have invites to let others into the beta. It's amazing how GMail started the phenom, and it's just continued. So if you want one, let me know! I need an email address to send the invite to, so you're probably best off just shooting me a quick email to jross @ rosscode.com. Get 'em while they're hot!

Technorati Tags: windows+live+messenger | IM | beta | microsoft | trillian

RossCode Weekly #032 - 01.11.2006

Intro - 0:00
Download this episode -?33:00 /?15.8 MB
Subscribe to RossCode Weekly

Previously on RCW - 1:09
AT&T rolls out IPTV in San Antonio
Riya gets $15,000,000 in funding?(#027)
Google launches Google Earth for the Mac?(#029)

News & Views - 2:43
Google adding partner homepages
Google releases Google Pack
Mozilla released Thunderbird 1.5 final
Vista to ship with all version on the CD
Yahoo buys WebJay
Yahoo posts audio and videos from CES
Dateline NBC using Technorati to pick top blog stories
Apple launches Intel-based Macs
20,000,000 songs purchased between Christmas and New Years

The Cold Wars - 12:27
Verizon launches VCAST music downloads
Verizon music software disables MP3 playback, but it's not Microsoft's fault!
Vodaphone and Sony team up for mobile music?stations
iTunes to offer SNL skits
AOL buys Truveo
Google Video to offer paid video downloads
Google creates another DRM
MySpace to launch video downloads and IM service
E-Online to launch broadband channel
Fox to offer VOD shows a couple of days early
DirecTV teams with Microsoft for portable media
First Blu-Ray player announced
Sony and Phillips announce Blu-Ray players
External HD-DVD drive for XBox 360
Microsoft could offer Blu-Ray XBox 360 drive if it wins
Samsung to offer a HD-DVD / Blu-Ray combo drive
Samsung backs off on plans to offer HD-DVD / Blu-Ray combo
Retailers upset over format wars
Skype 2.0 final is released
Uniden announces a Windows Live Messenger phone

The Grapevine -?24:01
NHL close to deal with iTunes
XBox and PS2 could see price cuts in the near future
PS3 pricepoint to be $500?

Odds & Ends?- 26:13
CBS to launch a mobile soap opera
Apple, Intel and the stock price
Rolls Royce comes with lifetime Sirius subscriptions

Bonehead of the Week - 28:11
New version of iTunes phones home
Spammer fined $11,200,000,000
Qwest's Terms of Services a little restrictive

Contact / Feedback - 31:17
weekly @ rosscode.com
(206) 424-4RCW (4729)

Production Notes
Background music provided by Chronos (Introvert 4) and the Podsafe Music Network.
Hosting of RossCode Weekly is provided by OurMedia.org.
Would you like to sponsor RossCode Weekly? Contact me at sponsor @ rosscode.com.

Free Hogg is running through his reading list, and checking their blog roll. From those, he's discovering new blogs. I read about it on Alex Barnett's blog, and decided to click through. Alex's blogroll is big enough that it warranted six separate discovery projects, and Alex posted after number six.

Well, to my surprise, one of the blogs he picked out was mine. Surprise, for two reasons. First, that I'm on Alex Barnett's list, and second, because Free Hogg picked mine out. So, I checked his blog out and reciprocated. He's now on my subscription list, and since then, he pointed out egoSurf. It's a nice way to boost your ego (or deflate it!).

Anyway, isn't this just a formalized way of how most people find new blogs? I don't go through others blogrolls per se, but I do check out those who my subscription list link to. I even tried to automate the process to find out what the most popular links are among my subscription list, but life got in the way of that! Maybe when time allows, I'll get back to that project...

Technorati Tags: blogs | free+hogg | blogroll | alex+barnett

But I wouldn't recommend actually tasting me! Now, once you get your mind back out of the gutter, I'm talking about del.icio.us, and, even though I've used it for quite a while, just recently have I started to see the real value in it. I guess you have to have quite a few items tagged before you can see the value, which makes sense.

Anyway, I was subscribing to a couple of other people's del.icio.us feeds, mainly because I didn't know another way to do it. Then I saw the inbox - and now I just use that, and have added those two, plus a few others to my inbox, meaning whenever they tag something, it shows up in my inbox. FYI, you can also add tags to your inbox, so you can see all posts about a particular tag. Or a combo - see links that a user tags with a specific tag.

There's so much power offered by del.icio.us than I realized when I first started using it.

But then I discovered something else: For. I can tag a link for another user if I know their user name. How did I find that out? Jason Salas tagged something for me.

On another note,?and this isn't directly related to del.icio.us, but I've decided to start tagging my posts (through Technorati) more than I have in the past (assuming I remember to do so). A while ago, I added tagging to my custom blogging tool, so it's just a matter of adding the tags. It's too simple not to. What prompted that? It's one of three steps that Darren Rowse recommends to get more traffic. I'm not doing it specifically for traffic, but more to get my writing in the hands of the people who want it.

I guess that is more traffic, huh?

Technorati Tags: tagging | del.icio.us | technorati