Google's been in the news a lot this week. They released their Google App Engine, which allows you to build apps on their servers, using their databases, for free. They're investigating a partnership with Yahoo regarding seach ads which will end up going nowhere for anti-trust reasons.

I'm a big fan of Google - I use Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calender, iGoogle - we use Google Groups for the discussions here at ScoreOS. I spent some time thinking about the Google App Engine and what it means to us here and the broader software market.

I posted a Twitter message on Saturday that if no one is organizing a BarCamp for your town, you should seriously look at putting one together. BarCamp is billed as an "un-conference" - essentially, a couple of low-key venues are chosen, for Orlando it was two bars next door to each other and anyone can give talks on any topics. There were over 30 talks given on Saturday (and probably just as many on Sunday, which was more geared towards new media and less on tech/programming).

So far, Randy's done all the talking on here and I've been silent. No more - it's my time to contribute to the commentary here. I do want to tag onto what he said earlier - there are many ways to help. If you look at the Areas of the Project link, you'll notice the design areas are mysteriously vacant - mysterious, that is, unless you've seen my attempts at design. That said, design is not the only area we could use extra hands and we'll welcome any input you have.

On to technical stuff...

As the SCORE OS project gets off the ground, I tend to get an email or two from people that like the idea of an open source fantasy league management system. Either they want an FLMS for their personal league or because they would like to host fantasy leagues for their business or as a marketing opportunity. However, after a little discussion, they will sometimes express less interest for getting involved because of one simple reason: They don't know much about web development.

When Don and I decided to tackle the SCORE OS project, our original timeline had us converting the old Pre Pro Hoops South (college basketball) code into what would be the first release of SCORE OS. However, as holidays, real work, and life plans (engagements, physical injuries, and family issues) crept into the picture, we realized that the fantasy college basketball season was passing too quickly.

One of the advantages of moving to the Drupal platform to create our FLMS is that Drupal is developed in the paradigm of modularization. This basically means that new functionality is added to the system in "safe" blocks. All code and development takes place in a module that is then installed without affecting the code of the other modules (most importantly, the Drupal/SCORE OS Core) and can be just as easily uninstalled.

So, I came up with the idea of (well, I should say, I copied the concept of) the Facebook News Feed and tried my best to explain it. Still, I got a few questions that wanted some clarification about what the heck I was talking about.

In the past, I always came up with an idea, created a database, hooked up an ASP page/interface to it, and finally, maybe days (or weeks) later, I'd have my concept come to life before my eyes.

A question was posed to us by a prospective developer who wondered why we were pushing SCORE OS towards a LAMPD (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Drupal) stack versus the WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP) stack that was already used to create the Pre Pro Sports Fantasy League System. Here are the replies Don and I gave, which we think will be worth re-posting here:

wrburgess reponse:

This represents the first post for the SCORE OS project, a development effort to build an open source fantasy league management system for a variety of sports.

There are a slew of links, people, sites, and info that will be posted here in the coming days. This blog will be used somewhat as a diary to detail how the project is progressing and to allow a little interaction via push or pull for those folks interested in the progress of the SCORE OS application.