Gear Patrol, “the definitive resource for discovering the best gear for guys”, recently featured Spitter in their daily guide to cool stuff for guys.

VERY cool stuff featured in Gear Patrol each day, well worth checking out.

Thanks to writer Patrick Morris for the profile.

Link: Gear Patrol “Spitter.com” profile

A roundup of recent news coverage of Spitter.com:

New site Spitter focuses social media on sports
The Oakland Press
Reporter Matt Myftiu talks with Spitter co-founder David Eckoff, and profiles the company.

Spitter.com overlays social media on sports
Broadcast Engineering
Reporter Michael Grotticelli features new online sports site, Spitter.com.

A New Sports Aggregation Network
Computer and Technology Radio
Hosts Marc Cohen and Marsha Collier talk with Spitter.com co-founder Peter Gruman, in this 20 minute radio show segment, heard live in California and worldwide on the internet.

The World Cup reminds me of the summer Olympics since it only happens once every four years and is watched world wide. It is ironic that soccer is the world’s most popular sport, yet it’s not popular in the United States, however World Cup fever is taking hold and working hard to capture an American fan base.

I do not follow soccer, but I am fascinated by the 2010 World Cup and I am following team USA as they battle it out against the world’s greatest soccer teams in a fight to win the coveted World Cup title. It was easy to get caught up in the excitement, everyone is talking about it and it is all over the social media channels. I completed a soccer bracket and will root for my teams and while I am slightly clueless about the  rules of the game, I am determined to learn them.

Over the weekend, team USA played England, people packed into bars to watch this exciting match-up. I live in Washington, DC and the game was televised in a large park in the middle of the city.  The park was completely filled and it was amazing to see people of all races, religions and ethnicities join together to root for our country. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the last Winter Olympics when the U.S. played Canada in the fight for gold.

World Cup also made the news because of the loud South African horns called vuvuzelas. The horns are played by the fans during the games and they sound like a swarm of bees. They are so loud that FIFA is considering banning them, however no decision has been made to date. The sound bothered me and gave me a headache, but I couldn’t mute my television, I wanted to hear the commentary.

I will follow the rest of the tournament, watch with friends and discuss online and in person. It is an exciting time and I can’t wait to see how it ends and who knows, I may become a soccer fan after all. Go USA!

What about you? Do you normally follow soccer or just World Cup?

–

Melissa Rubin is a Ravens fan, fantasy football fanatic and sports blogger. Follow her on Spitter at BmoreSportsFan.

A really nice one-minute video profile about Spitter.com, after we won “audience favorite” at the Startup Atlanta #onstage competition.

Startup Atlanta #Onstage: David Eckoff of Spitter
Uploaded by friendlyhuman. – Watch the latest news videos.

And bravo to Daniel Robers of friendlyhuman who did a GREAT job filming & producing this video segment. HIGHLY recommend his video production services.

Now is a great time to use Spitter.com

Get real-time news for the teams in the NCAA Tournament. All the news from the best news sources, and fan discussions, in one place.

Visit Spitter.com now

Quick links for the teams in the tournament:

• Baylor
• Butler
• BYU
• California
• Clemson
• Cornell
• Dominion
• Duke
• ETSU
• Florida
• Florida St
• Georgetown
• Georgia Tech
• Gonzaga
• Houston
• Kansas
• Kansas St
• Kentucky
• Lehigh
• Louisville
• Marquette
• Maryland
• Michigan St
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Montana
• Morgan St
• Murray St
• New Mexico
• New Mexico St
• North Texas
• Northern Iowa
• Notre Dame
• Oakland
• Ohio
• Ohio St
• Oklahoma St
• Pittsburgh
• Purdue
• Richmond
• Robert Morris
• Sam Houston St
• San Diego St
• Siena
• St. Mary’s
• Syracuse
• Temple
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Texas A&M
• UAPB
• UCSB
• UNLV
• Utah St
• UTEP
• Vanderbilt
• Vermont
• Villanova
• Wake Forest
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Winthrop
• Wisconsin
• Wofford
• Xavier

We recently presented Spitter.com to a crowd of investors and entrepreneurs at Startup Atlanta #onstage, along with a number of other startups.

By the vote of the audience, Spitter won “Crowd Favorite”.

David Eckoff presents Spitter at Startup Atlanta

Thanks to great work by our new lead developer, Mike, Spitter.com is now much (MUCH!) faster.

With millions of news stories, blog posts and fan discussions that we aggregate, and a growing number of members, the site had come to a screeching halt.

Now, we’ve fixed major issues with the beta code, optimized databases – and upgraded to much more powerful hardware.

If you haven’t been on the site for a while, now is a great time to check it out.

Let us know how you like the new and improved speed! (And thank you to Mike!)

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Update: migration to new servers is complete.

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We’ve quickly outgrown our current server capacity!

Jan 28: Our engineering team is moving the service to new higher performance servers.

Spitter.com will be unavailable for a period of time while the DNS propagates, and we thank you for your patience. Once that has completed, you’ll see the site on the new server.

Then over the next week, our engineers have some database tuning to do to work on optimizing site speed.

Watch the System Status page for most up to date details.

Photo credit: Prasad – Happiness

TechFlash, (Puget Sound Business Journal) has a great feature on Spitter.com, reported by Todd Bishop. From the article:

The site’s founding team includes Peter Gruman and David Eckoff, both of whom worked before at companies including RealNetworks and Rivals.com. Spitter was designed for an era when the immediacy of information is critical, Gruman said.

“With Scout and Rivals, we were very proud of the dwell time, the amount of time that a person spent on the site,” Gruman said. “That was a criteria that was relevant in that particular era. This is simply the opposite. It’s a utility function for people to learn what’s going on.”

Read the full article here.

If you like Spitter, and want to help spread the word about the service, please consider passing the link along to your friends, or Tweeting about it!

Like all die hard football fans, each week I anxiously watch to see if/when the Indianapolis Colts will finally lose a game.

I love my football team, I really do, I am a die hard Baltimore Ravens fan and while I wish they had a better record this season, I would not trade their 8-6 record for 14-0. The Ravens are in wild card contention, with a shot of winning the division if certain cards fall into place. And making the post season gets the Ravens a shot of heading to Miami to play in another Super Bowl.

Two years ago the world was shocked and stunned that the undefeated New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants in the 2007 Super Bowl . What good were all the wins if they didn’t win the game that meant the most?

This season brings another undefeated team. Well there were two undefeated teams until last Saturday night. But this week I heard rumblings about how the San Diego Chargers are better than the undefeated Indianapolis Colts. Both teams are quite good and there is real potential for a knock down drag out fight to the AFC Championship game. While Peyton Manning is the better quarterback, the Chargers turned it around this season from a shaky start to winning the AFC West and stand a legitimate chance of knocking off the Colts.

If you’re undefeated this late in the season, the pressure is on to stay undefeated. So an undefeated team is less likely to rest its starters. But gambling on the health of your team is a bet that should not be entered into lightly. As a fan, I would not want to risk injury or fatigue to any of my players; I’d want them healthy and well rested for the games that mean the most, the playoffs.

This season I’ve witnessed many painful losses by the Baltimore Ravens and yet they still have a shot at the playoffs. While having a better record gives you a shot at a first round bye and/or home field advantage, I’d still prefer to have the losses along the way so that the pressure of losing is off. Winning every game does not necessarily make you a better team; sometimes the wins are lucky…

What do you think? Is there too much emphasis on being undefeated or is it a worthy goal to pursue? Post YOUR comments below.

Melissa Rubin is a Ravens fan, fantasy football fanatic and sports blogger. Follow her on Spitter at BmoreSportsFan

Photo: Steve Rhodes