Today, we're going to take a step back at look at the big picture, once again. The reason being that SCORE OS has started talking to another group of "open" folks about uniting forces on the data side and those discussions raised some questions pertaining to the "core technology" that SCORE OS may be built upon. Don and I have been pretty open-minded about the paths we're taking and listening to some new ideas won't hurt a thing.

When Don and I sat down and started the discussion about what code to use, what database to utilize, what code style and models to choose, we focused on two key issues: 1) a lack of resources (time, people, expertise, money) and 2) a desire not to reinvent any wheels. As part of our decision-making, we laid out the various functionalities that we thought any solid Website Management System (WMS) should employ and the features that any solid Fantasy Game System (FGS) should have.

So I had an overwhelming number of people tell me that my color choices were "genius" and "the only colors people should use," and I'm not about to argue with responses like that, right? Unfortunately, I can't find those comments to show you, but just trust me, people loved my work.



The next step, then, is to create an icon for the logo. I have a few rules that I like for logos, which fly right into the face of most logo designs you see nowadays. I prefer logos that retain their quality when enlarged, shrunk, or placed on all types of media (business cards, stationary, clothing, etc). Complicated logos, which are usually pretty cool looking, suffer in form when the functional needs multiply. We want to keep that balance, here.

1. The icon should be strong enough to stand alone without the font/text
2. The icon should be simple enough to stand alone without colors
3. The icon should be scalable enough to the size of a favicon (that little logo that goes with most website tabs and bookmarks)
4. The icon should be easy enough for someone else to create in a graphics program (as in, an open source icon)
5. The icon should be simple enough to be on a baseball cap
6. The icon should be simple enough to be on a football helmet

With those points in mind, I opened up my Photoshop app and started to hack on the following icon, which I am now calling the "StarDrop."

OK, we're getting the early stages of the development going and the first thing to do is set up a development environment open-source style. I recently got this system to work on a Windows operating system and wanted to provide the info for anyone that wants to join in. I'll break the sequence into the following steps:

1. Set up a test WAMP/LAMP server
2. Set up and configure an IDE (Eclipse)
3. Connect with the SCORE OS Google Code SVN
4. Links to follow for all of these processes

Since this process is as new to Don and I as it might be for you, don't sweat it when you read all of this and say "WTF?" I already said it about 30 times...but now I'm down to about 1 per hour. Once you get all of this running, things might start looking better. By the way, the cost for all of these downloads: $0.00 and your time.
 
Whenever you get lost, start back at the main page for all of this stuff: Drupal - Setting up a development environment
 
Here we go:

OK, so I'm by no means a Graphic Designer. In fact, I'm really just an Adobe Photoshop hack. Anyone (not a designer) who has seen my work has probably said "That's interesting, and while I probably can't do it, this guy ain't a graphic designer."

But regardless of my lack of design skills, I want to get a standard, professional web-look for SCORE OS and I know from reading around that a good place to start is a color palette. Most websites stress that three to five color choices are best so that your website doesn't looking like a Reading Rainbow website gone wrong (apologies to Lavar Burton).

Since I have no graphic design background (should have taken Intro to Art instead of Intro to Insurance/Risk Management), I have no foundation with which to read graphic design books, and I don't have a lot of time, I'm going to try and pull this off web-style: scan some websites, pull out the info fast, and act like I know what I'm doing.

1) First I found a post on a site called Veerle's blog called "Choosing Color Combinations."

2) In the comments I found someone refer to a little app called "Color Scheme 2" on a website named WellStyled.com

3) Knowing that I want a red-white-blue type palette and that I'm utterly in-love with the green shade known as #006600, I plug in this hex-color number and select an option called "tetrad" because, well, it pops out four colors that appeal to me.

One of the things I've noticed about people starting up businesses is that they love to work on the "fun" tasks of a new company before they do the really important things, such as focusing on the name of the business or project, printing business cards, buying a custom sign, etc.

The design of a company's logo is no different: designing a company logo is fun, it can make a person look sharp, and it will ultimately represent a firm to the rest of the world. And in this day and age the surface of a firm sometimes matters (often wrongly so) more than the substance. Sometimes, the name and logo becomes a huge ordeal...and the managers don't actually get around to building a business before the cash runs out. Heck, even the All-American Football League had a logo (and a draft) even as things went South...

So, I'm going to focus on "important tasks" right? Nada. Despite my little rant there, I'm a sucker for fun--and while reading Pro Drupal Development and Version Control with Subversion is a wealthy endeavor, they are boring the living crap out of me--so let's have some fun!

The current SCORE OS logo is weak and the colors of the site are boring. Why? Because the current logo was just a product of me learning Adobe Photoshop font effects (in my favorite bold, space-efficient font: Haettenschweiler) and layer blending options (gradients, drop shadows, etc) to make a little badge that looked halfway decent. The current colors are a deep green and black that I used for the Pre Pro Sports standard colors (#006600 to be exact), but SCORE OS needs its own shades, right? So now it's time to get a little more serious about our project's "look" and make the SCORE OS logo a bit more sexy. My first task is always to brainstorm, so I'm going to throw some thoughts up on the board add see what else follows...
 

SCORE OS is a sports-related project and fantasy sports are essentially leagues of fantasy teams that are derivatives of real leagues. Thus I want to first post, as an example, some of the logos of the top sports leagues.
 

Right on the heels of our two-interview punch, Derrick Eckhardt at RotoNation grabbed a quote from us regarding the Open Sports Network launch that hit the wires on Sunday. The OSN, for those of you not reading the Sports Business Clipper, is an effort that purports to break down the "walled garden" of proprietary fantasy sports technology platforms. "Walled garden" is a term usually used for the AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint stranglehold on cell-phone technologies. Is Google Android going to employ an OSN roster manager? Sounds cool to us.

Since our quote about the OSN speaks for itself, I'll let ya'll click on the above link and read it there. However, once the Open Sports Network actually releases some info about their plans, whether it be to create a Google-like effect on the fantasy sports industry or to join the MLBAM effort to own the statistical rights of the universe, we'll post some kind of love note or rant depending on which response is more appropriate.

In the meantime, we're off to beg for $500 on the corner for the right to carry Derrick's bags at the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Conference being held in our backyard in July.

The SCORE OS project received two recent interview requests from our blogging friends at Sports Tech Now and Fantasy Sports 2.0. I won't comment too much about the interviews so that you can follow the links and read them for yourself. Thanks to Joe and Jim, respectively, for asking some good questions and getting the word out about the SCORE OS projects and its objectives!

Interview with Randal Burgess of SCORE OS, Fantasy Sports 2.0

Score OS: Open Source Fantasy Sports Management System Interview, Sports Tech Now

I usually leave the "top links" posts to the good fellows at RotoNation and Fantasy Sports 2.0, but here are two articles that I think were specifically great at speaking about the current state of the fantasy sports industry:

Making It to the Major League of Fantasy Sports, New York Times.
Interview with Chris Russo of Fantasy Sports Ventures (who recently sealed a nice content deal with USA Today): 
"Fantasy sports combines games, sports and community — three of the most powerful drivers on the Web, rolled into one."

Fantasy sports have hit a wall. Now the real fun starts, ESPN the Magazine.
Peter Keating's view of the maturation of the Fantasy Sports industry and where it's headed: "Fantasy sports will soon cover every kind of competition imaginable."

Another "real" blog post coming soon!

If you want to be a leader in any industry, you have to know what is going on inside and outside of it. In the case of the fantasy sports industry, it's probably good to know about fantasy sports, sports business, and sports technology, right?

In the old days (ie: a couple of years ago), the PR departments in many companies would actually hire "news clippers"--people whose job it was to subscribe, scan, read, clip, and collect articles from various print media and collect articles related to the company and the industry it competed within.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to spell out who (or what) I think are SCORE OS stakeholders, along with the positives and negatives that may result with a successful launch. I plan to break down a particular category per post with both how the industry can benefit from an open source fantasy sports platform and the threat that such a system might pose. Here are the groups for the future topics: