iPhone score keeping

Saw a topic about iphone recording and made me thing of something I stumbled upon recently. Not to sound like a salesman but I found an awesome iphone app for keeping score of baseball / softball games. Its called iscore and I was able to use it for all of one game before our last softball team was eliminated but it really is pretty sweet once you get the hang of it. Once the game ends the app gives you an option to print out in-depth box scores and traditional scorecards. It will save games and will keep season statistics too if you were to follow one team around all season. You can even produce gamecasts with it.. my phone did crash a couple of times during the game but the app saved my spot so I got lucky there. I brought in my scorebook too just in case all went to hell.

Has anyone else tried it or a similar app? They have a basketball version too but that seems like it would be a lot trickier. They are remarkably similar to statcrew and other stat keeping computer programs often used by athletic programs.

 

I should add that the app costs $10 so it's a little bit pricey..

 

Drawback I would see is that the battery drains so quickly that it might go dead by the end of a game.

 

I love iScore. Definitely worth the $10 once you consider the cost of scorebooks.
I make sure my battery is fully charged when I get there and I do not have a problem. If I do, most press boxes in my area have an open outlet that I can plug in with. If not, I have a plug-in battery that I use for covering AAU.

 

I can see the iPhone rendering the debate between press box vs. sidelines obsolete. Hurray!

 

I am already planning on using my iPhone on the sidelines this fall. We live update the blog, so I'll use the gamecast feature for it.

 

I've been using the IScore app for baseball and softball for two years and the basketball app for this season. (Thankfully I got in early, so I only paid about $3 for each before they raised prices). But I make sure I'm also keeping barebone statistics on paper in case of problems with the app. I've never had it lose any info or crash, but I don't completely rely on it.

The baseball app is intuitive. The basketball app takes time to master, especially keeping up with fouls and substitutions. But after about four or five games scored, you get the hang of it.

The gamecast feature is fantastic. A lot of parents have thanked me for using it. There's just no way my podunk daily could afford to make a gamecast for our website, but this allows us to do it and provide a link to it.

I don't know if a football app will ever exist, though. Seems to be too many moving parts to ever get a usable multitouch-based system.

The IScore apps will become mainstream once the IPad is in more people's hands. It will go from a niche with the short battery life and small screen of the IPhone (or Ipod Touch) to a viable alternative for high schools instead of StatCrew with the increased batter power, 3G abilities and large screen size of the IPad.

By next year, I truly believe you'll see basketball statkeepers on the bench with an IPad in their hands and baseball players with one in the dugout.

I think there are real concerns with moving away from a paper-based system, but I've found the benefts outweigh the negatives.

Commence panning the use of these apps...

 

Not much panning going on here, Brian.

 

If they get a footbal app, Friday nights may never be the same.