A Little Tech for the Soccer Masses

I blogged last week about how important it is for soccer to embrace technology. Soccer people should also embrace technology individually. If you’re not tech savvy, don’t worry. Read on brave technophiles to be! Think about how you’ve adapted to life with email, and just imagine life before word processors and excel. I think they call that the stone age. The point is, there are a few technologies that are extremely powerful, useful, and above all, easy to learn. Here’s a list of those I recommend for everyone. (If you haven’t watched the video above, now is a good time. It’ll get you pumped.)

RSS – If you’re at all like me, there are 10 or so websites that you read on a regular basis. Soccernet, SI, Jamie Trecker’s blog, and D3Kicks are a few that come to mind. It takes time to go to each of those websites, and then you have to scan through it to see if there’s anything new. RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, brings the content to you. All you have to do is (1) Download an RSS “reader” such as NewsGator or use an online version like Google Reader; (2) Subscribe to “feeds” on the websites you read whenever you see the RSS logo. Whenever your favorite sites post new articles, pictures, and videos, your RSS reader automatically grabs them. It’s like the difference between driving 10 miles through ice and snow to get the paper versus getting it delivered to your door along with a steaming mocha.

Blogs - Blogs are a great way to reach people. Players can use blogs to keep college coaches updated. And if you are a college coach, you can reach the faithful very easily through a blog. Dave Barrett, the head women’s coach at Illinois Wesleyan, writes a great blog that keeps parents, alumni, and people like yours truly updated on the latest and greatest. Blog tools like Blogger and WordPress are free and easy to use. They allow readers to add comments, and they automatically create RSS feeds.

Podcasting - Podcasting allows you to listen to an immense variety of “radio” shows whenever you want to hear them. If you have iTunes, you’re ready to podcast. Podcasting actually uses RSS to “push” new shows to your iTunes player. Whenever there’s a new show, iTunes automatically downloads it. You can listen to it via iTunes or put it on your iPod for that 10-mile daily run. Here are a couple shows I’m listening to these days: The Beautiful Game, The BS Report with Bill Simmons, and This American Life.

Collaboration Tools - This is a really exciting area of development. You can now very easily share calendars, spreadsheets, and documents you’re working on. In fact, a free Google account (the one you use for Google Reader) will get you access to Google Calendar and Google Spreadsheets and Docs.

In designing CaptainU, we have drawn heavily on these technologies. I can’t wait to get the beta version of our software up and running!!