I finally got around to releasing the code for SoccerPhone on the SoccerPhone SourceForge project site. So, if you’re looking for code samples for using VoiceXML and Python CGI scripts to speech enable a web site, check it out. the code is licensed under the GPL. Since MLS changed the HTML layout for their live… Read More »
SportsML — The Sports Markup Language Over an afternoon capuccino at Peet’s, I read about SportsML in the final issue of New Architect magazine. When I invented a simple XML-based markup for SoccerPhone in around February or March of 2002, I didn’t realize that a more general purpose XML-based markup language for sports was already… Read More »
After the Major League Soccer season ended last fall, I forked the code for SoccerPhone so I could work on a version that downloads the live scores from SoccerNet and reads them to you over the phone. This was a much bigger challenge than automating the MLS live scores page. I now had to deal… Read More »
The Crew-Revs match ended in overtime. In the past, the MLS website used “Final (OT)” or “Final (2OT)” to indicate overtime. The 2OT only appeared once that I can remember. Whether the game ends early due to a golden goal or if both overtime periods are played, the website usually says “Final (OT)”. For the… Read More »
In the scoring details on the MLS webpage, the time has always been given as just the minute of the goal, e.g, 34 for a goal in the 34th minute. The main exception is that goals in extra time are sometimes given a plus sign, e.g., 92+. In today’s game between Dallas and Colorado, Steve… Read More »
Fixed the problem where the Python script wrote the cached results to one place, but the VXML code looked for it in another directory. I didn’t detect the problem earlier, because 1) I accidentally ftp’d a copy of results.xml to the VXML directory and 2) I didn’t do a good job of regression testing failure… Read More »
Whoever runs the MLS website is definitely keeping me on my toes. They made a couple new changes to the scores page that broke SoccerPhone again. First, they dropped the date information from each score. Admittedly, I probably should have had exception handling code for this scenario, but it just seems strange that they would… Read More »
I ran out of time before last week’s vacation and never uploaded the new files for SoccerPhone. Consider it done. I even sort of tested it.
I finally fixed the problem I caused at some point in the past. For some time now, SoccerPhone got an error when it couldn’t retrieve the scores from the MLS website. The problem was that I needed to set a variable at the VXML Document level scope, not at a block level scope. I didn’t… Read More »
This wasn’t such a big deal at the beginning of the season when virtually every game was played on a Saturday. However, recent weeks have included a lot of Wednesday games, and there have also been some Sunday games. So, to make it easier for you, my valued non-paying patron, to keep track of when… Read More »