PlaybookSoccer Overview Video
I finally got around to making a demo video of PlaybookSoccer. I’m hoping to make a few more videos to show off some of the more advanced features of the app as well as making some videos to answer some commonly asked questions, such as how to do File Sharing. Anyway, if you’re a soccer coach interested in play diagramming software for the iPad, you’ll want to watch this video.
PlaybookFootball Updated!
PlaybookFootball-To Go (iPhone) has been updated in the App Store to version 1.10. Look for PlaybookFootball (iPad) to be available soon, pending Apple approval.
Update 9/27/2010 – PlaybookFootball (iPad) has been approved and is now available in the App Store.
New Features in version 1.1.0:
- Added support for formations, includes several pre-set formations (11 player formations only) as well as the ability to add/delete custom formations
- Added support for custom positions
- Added support for custom player names/labels, player names can be toggled on/off while viewing the field as well
- Added ‘Align with Player’ feature to easily line up players with one another
- Increased maximum number of players to 12 to support Canadian Football
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed bug where plays could not be edited after playing an animation (iPhone only)
- Fixed bug where naming a play as an existing play would sometimes overwrite it
- Fixed bug where plays did not always save upon closing
- Fixed other minor bugs
Note that PlaybookBball, PlaybookSoccer and PlaybookWaterPolo will be updated soon. (I am adding in some pre-made formations which takes some time to research and create for each sport.)
Development Update
The latest Playbook Apps update added in some buttons to email me bugs and feature requests. I want to thank everyone who has sent something in. I do go through and read each one and share my thoughts on them. One of the most requested features is ‘Custom Player Naming’ which I am almost done implementing.
I’ve also recently completed implementing formations, but it’ll take me some time to draw up all of the formations for each sport so they can be loaded in.
Also, for Football, I’ve added an ‘Align with Player’ function so it’ll make things easier to line up your players with each other. Hopefully with this and the formations, users will be able to setup their plays much faster.
A worrisome bug has been reported that I am having trouble reproducing seems to only occur on the ‘To-Go’ versions. The Play, Forward and Back buttons on the bottom menu are being disabled. A few users have found that deleting some plays will fix it. Others have found that deleting and reinstalling the app will fix it. However, before deleting, I’d recommend backing up your plays first via iTunes File Sharing. I’m still looking into this and hope to include the fix in the next update.
Look for these updates to come out soon. I need to adjust the ‘Player Settings’ menu to allow for easy access to formations and custom player names and positions. After that do some more testing and fix some of the bugs that users have reported.
To help support further development, please rate or write a review on the App Store. Thank you everyone for your support!
Last Days of Sale!
Just wanted to remind everyone that Today and Tomorrow will be the last days of the Back To School Sale. After that prices will be going back up. So, if you want to check out any of the Playbook Apps, now is a great time!
Fantasy Football Roster Moves
Man! Just when I thought Hardesty coulda been a very good value pick towards the end of my draft, he goes and tears an ACL! Oh well, such are the highs and lows of Fantasy Football.
So the waiver period after the draft had ended and I quickly made two moves. One was to drop Rashad Jennings for Kareem Huggins. It appears that Huggins may have a larger chance to get carries than Jennings since Derrick Ward was released and Cadillac Williams’ is well… a Cadillac. Once news became official that Hardesty was out for the season I quickly dropped him for Brandon Tate who’s looking to be a WR3 for the Patriots as well as the guy retuning kick offs. (We get 1pt/20yds for returns in this league.)
Btw, I’ve found some good resources for those of you in return leagues. These two pages seem to get updated pretty frequently:
http://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2010/08/03/kick-punt-returner-depth-chart/
http://sourcedmock.blogspot.com/2010/08/2010-nfl-kickoff-returners-kr-and-punt.html
1 draft down, 2 more to go!
Post Fantasy Football Draft
So the draft came and went. It was one of the longer drafts that I’ve been a part of taking more than 2 hours. We had 11 or 14 managers actually online for the live draft, one of the best turnouts ever for our league. I ended up with the 7th pick and here are my results: (Note this is a return yardage league and we get 6 Pts for passing TDs.)
1. (7) Andre Johnson
2. (22) Matt Schaub
3. (35) Percy Harvin
4. (50) C.J. Spiller
5. (63) Ahmad Bradshaw
6. (78) Dez Bryant
7. (91) Leon Washington
8. (106) Montario Hardesty
9. (119) Braylon Edwards
10. (134) Jabar Gaffney
11. (147) Rashad Jennings
12. (162) New Orleans
13. (175) Kevin Boss
14. (190) Adam Vinatieri
As you can tell I like to draft rookies. Rookies tend to be returners like Spiller and Bryant. Harvin and Washington are supposed to be returners too. I’m pretty high on Spiller after hearing that Fred Jackson has an injured thumb and Marshawn Lynch is looking to be traded. Jabar Gaffney’s looking like he’ll be Orton’s go to guy, and with recent news about MJD’s knee I’m hoping I can ransom Jennings later in the season to MJD’s owner. I waited way too long for a TE, I was hoping to get Chris Cooley or Zach Miller since they both should have good years (McNabb and Campbell likes their TE’s) but some managers chose to grab a back up TE.
Anyone got any recommendations for a TE? I’m thinking of dropping Boss for Keller… There’s not much to choose from on the waiver wire.
Woo hoo! Only one more week ’til Fantasy Football season starts!
Fantasy Football Season is Back!
Woo hoo! I’m both excited and nervous today! The first of 3 fantasy leagues I’m in is having the draft tomorrow. It’s a big 14 team league w/ $50 buy-in. Everyone is very serious in this league, a few years we even had some drama that the commish had to clamp down on! But, yes, as all you Fantasy Football fans know, this is a serious game with lots of pride on the line.
This group of folks has been playing for more than 5 years now. We don’t follow standard rules (20yd/pt rushing/passing/returns, 50yd/pt passing, 6pt/TD, -2pt/INT, plus standard DEF and K points), so we can’t really follow the standard ESPN draft guides and need to make some tweaks here and there.
Who do you think is a sleeper this year? Will there be any impact rookies? In the past few years I’ve been lucky to draft studs like Percy Harvin (2009), Chris Johnson (2009), and Adrian Peterson (2008?) all before they broke out and became household names. But, I’ve also missed a few times too with Marion Barber (2009), Tim Hightower (2008), and Jonathan Stewart (2008).
I’ll post my thoughts on who I think’ll be big this year after tomorrow’s draft. 
Hey Everyone! I’m having a ‘Back To School Sale’ on select Playbook Apps from now through Labor Day. So, if you were ever considering trying any of the Playbook Apps and thought it was too much, now is a great time to buy the app.
Remember that the Playbook Apps all allow coaches to create plays broken down into individual steps that can be animated. All Playbook Apps also include the ability to share play between users of the same sport via email and iTunes Files Sharing. Additionally, with the Playbook Apps you can more easily teach new plays to your plays by using the VGA Dock Connector to display each step on a TV or Projector.
Sale includes: PlaybookSoccer (iPad), PlaybookWaterPolo (iPad), PlaybookBball-To Go (iPhone), PlaybookSoccer-To Go (iPhone), PlaybookWaterPolo-To Go (iPhone)
PlaybookFootball Approved for Sale!
PlaybookFootball (iPad) and PlaybookFootball-To Go (iPhone) have been approved by Apple for sale on the App Store. Thank you everyone for your early interest. I will send out promo codes shortly to those of who I’ve spoken with.
Playbook Apps Updated
I submitted another batch of updates last Friday to the App Store and it looks like Apple is getting around to approving them. So far, PlaybookSoccer-To Go and PlaybookWaterPolo-To Go have been approved and the update is available now on the App Store.
Update @ 10pm PST: All Playbook Apps updates have been approved! Also, PlaybookFootball and PlaybookFootball-To Go are now available on the App Store.
If you like the app and have not yet done so, please rate the app or write a review on the App Store. Thank you!
New features include:
- Can now pass to opposing team, for defensive plays
- Can now create plays with an uneven number of players per team, for power plays (water polo), practice drills, or uneven plays
- Also added links within ‘Settings’ to submit bugs, feature requests, and app reviews
Funny Formations
I wish I was a funny guy. I mean, sometimes I think I am, but when I’m really not. It’s one of those things where I can make one-liners here and there but I can’t actually come up with something funny when asked to on the spot. I was trying to think of something clever to write that had to do with Formations. Maybe something like, Duck! Formations are coming! But, no, that isn’t really that funny.
Anyway, I’ve been getting some really good feedback from Users of the Playbook apps. It’s funny how the volume of email tends to increase with the criticality of bug. It’s great that there’s feedback and people telling me what’s wrong, but I’d also like to hear what’s right, what can be improved, and what would be nice if it could be added. (Thank you those of you who have sent me feature suggestions and thank you to everyone who will in the future!)
The latest feature I’ve been thinking of adding is Formations. With the current setup, the User needs to setup each new play manually. When the original PlaybookBball came out, this wasn’t so bad with a maximum of 10 players on the court at a time. But, as I’ve realized with PlaybookSoccer and PlaybookFootball, setting up 22 players can get really time consuming. In fact, in the lastest video I made for PlaybookFootball, I chose to use only 7 players per team for the play to cut down on some of the time you’d just be sitting there watching me move players around.
So, I’d like to add formation support for each sport, so that when you create a new play, you can select how you want your players set up and the app’ll set them accordingly. So, my question for you all out there is, what is your favorite and most used formation for your sport?
Comment below, or respond to this forum post: What’s your favorite/most used formation?
Blog, Product Info, What is this?
I’ve been having a ton of thoughts running through my mind the past few weeks. This isn’t different than anyone else out there, but one of the biggest things I’ve been struggling with is trying to figure out what to write on my web site.
My original intention was to make something that I could showcase my apps and other personal projects that I work on in my spare time. However, over the past few months all of my postings have been about the Playbook Apps that I’ve been working on. Now, while this is good and all I keep wondering why would anyone want to actually read any of this?
Lately I’ve been reading up a lot on how to drive traffic to your own web site and how to increase visibility of your products. Essentially, I’m trying figure out how to spread the word about the apps that I’ve built. I really do think that I’ve made something that’s head a shoulders above the other offerings out there (I’m just a little bit biased, huh?) but I’ve realized that I’m not really an expert in what it is that I’m ‘supposed’ to talk about. To clarify, a lot of people are talking about ‘inbound marketing’ and how to drive traffic and interest you need to create interesting and valuable content that can add to the community that you are targeting. In my case, I’m trying to target the sports community, sports coaches to be more precise.
To be honest, I’m a sports enthusiast but not a sports expect. I grew up rooting for the Trail Blazers and never got into american football until I started playing Fantasy Sports. (The closest NFL team to me was the Seahawks, which wasn’t exactly local.) Now I’m in 3 Fantasy Football Leagues and 3 Fantasy Basketball Leagues and can’t wait for the season to start. I play basketball on a weekly basis with some of my friends and coworkers, but none of us are really that great. However, I do look up the occasional web site to try to figure out what moves I can do to get past my friends, or how to move better with and without the ball.
As I’ve learned more about sports, I find all of the strategy very intriguing (I love playing strategy games, Civilization and StarCraft are among my favorite) and have found that it’s not that you just need a great set of athletes to win, but you also need a good strategy. Everyone and every team has their weaknesses and every possession is just a way to test for another team’s weakness (or your own team even). The team that can do a better job finding and exploiting their opponents weakness will have a better chance at winning the game.
I guess what I ultimately wanted to say was that I’m going to try speaking my mind a bit more. But, I’m not a sports expert, just a sports enthusiast. I am also knowledgeable about technology and interested in good user interaction design and will try to post about what I know rather than what I do not.
Thanks for reading this if you actually got down this far. 
PlaybookFootball Demo Video
I’ve made a new video showing off some of the basics of the upcoming PlaybookFootball App for the iPad. (An iPhone version is also on the way as well, but with fewer features.) Check it out and let me know what you think!
Practice Cones in PlaybookFootball
I’ve just uploaded a new video to YouTube showing the use of practice cones. Practice Cones are available in PlaybookFootball and the latest versions of PlaybookBball and PlaybookSoccer.
Here’s the video:
PlaybookFootball is on the way!
Ever since PlaybookBball came out, I’ve had many people requesting a football version of the app. With the upcoming football season about to start, I’ve been working hard on adapting the app for football. PlaybookFootball has been submitted to the Apple App Store and should be available soon (pending Apple approval).
I’ve added some football specific features into the app, such as creating four different field areas. I figure that most football plays take up anywhere between 10-30 yards and that putting an entire football field on the iPad would make everything too crowded. So, I’ve created a ‘Red Zone’, ‘Goal Line’, ‘Between the 30s’, and ’30 Yd’ Fields for users to draw their plays on.
Some new features that I’ve added (and will be incorporated with the rest of the Playbook Apps) are Practice Cones, and Passing to an Area. Practice cones could come in handy when a coach wants to draw up drills. Also, for all sports, players are constantly on the move and passes rarely get thrown to a stationary person.
I’ve figured out a workaround to Apple’s Policy Change and have reenabled VGA Output Support. This too will be coming soon to all the other Playbook Apps in a future update.
If there’s any features that you’d like to see in PlaybookFootball please let me know and I can provide you with a FREE copy of PlaybookFootball/PlaybookFootball-To Go (forthcoming).
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