As I said in a previous post, I am not exactly great in terms of planning site enhancements, but as anyone in this kind of business (or anything tech-wise) can appreciate, when you think something’s going to take a month, it’s probably going to take 2 ½ months. And as I write this, there has yet to be a single preseason game played, so we’re not incredibly late on our 2010 improvements and enhancements (and several of them were rolled out months ago).

I wanted to remind people that very soon we’ll be rolling out a redesign of MyGuru. This is going to be WAY better in terms of ease of use, functionality, and aesthetics. HOWEVER, it will require us to clear out everyone’s pre-set scoring systems, teams, etc. It’s the only way to make it happen. But the good news is you’ll find that adding and removing players (which was cumbersome before) is a breeze. It’ll all be worth it, trust me.

In addition, I hope to introduce our new fantasy game next week. It’s an in-season game, so there’s no huge rush, but I’m really excited about it. We’ve polled people for three years to see if they’d be interested [...]

I would not exactly say that I am the best in terms of planning, so I can be behind with some developmental stuff, and I certainly am this year. But better late than never, and since it’s only August 1st, we’re not that late. Bottom line, I’m always committed to improving our offerings, and I’m taking that to a new level in 2010, so it’s mostly “all good.”

We do have a few more interesting things coming down the pike very soon, including a weekly salary-cap contest that we will have this year with low entry fees and large cash prizes (stay tuned for details on how to sign up for all 17 weeks of the NFL season) and a really cool GRAND PRIZE, and a redesign of MyGuru hopefully completed this week (it’s way better and easier to follow).

But right now I’d like to “soft launch” here on the blog the new software package we’ll be offering this year. I know this has been an area we’ve been lacking in, so this year we’ve teamed up with a major industry player in this realm. Here’s more information on the software.

Draft Analyzer Introduction

We’re excited to roll out new draft tool [...]

It took a long time, but our new site design is finally done, pending a few final tweaks and fixes.

The goal of the new design is pretty simple: less scrolling around for content, and less busy.

Let’s start at the top and let me give you a quick review of how this new Subscriber Homepage works.

Note: I HIGHLY recommend using the Firefox Browser for our site. That’s what we use in the office, and if there are any problems we know right away. This new homepage has no reported issues using Firefox. There might be some java issues currently with this new page for those using IE 7.0 or older, so if you insist on using IE, I suggest updating to version 8.0. In the meantime, we’re looking into any other issues.

You can still see our top headlines where you always did, but you can also click the Recent Articles tab and quickly see our latest articles posted by date

Right at the top, you’ll see the feature article, so that hasn’t changed. Across from that you’ll see our Top Headlines, which also hasn’t changed. The one change in this area is the recent article tab we’ve added. Just click on [...]

Whew. I finally got done editing and posting our initial 2010 player previews. They are the beefiest yet and contain more analysis and information than we’ve ever had (I don’t miss the magazine and its space restrictions at all). Contrary to what one blog respondent wrote here recently, I think bigger is better when it comes to these previews/profiles. In fact, while these things are massive, they probably could have been 15-20% bigger and still contain zero fluff. I do realize some people have shorter attention spans, so you do have to draw the line somewhere. For those who are simply looking for 1-2 sentences on the players, check out the comments within the projections.

For everyone else interested in reading these, consider it assigned summer reading – and your deadline’s about August 1st. There’s no way we can realistically re-write and update all these in the summer, so what we do on the player profile page going forward is include all subsequent updates on each player below his profile on his profile page. So what I’d recommend, if you’re interested, is to read these profiles from now until the start of training camps (in about seven weeks) to get you [...]

We’ve been working behind the scenes on some site improvements, and we have one that’s just about ready, so we made it live today.

One of my goals this year is to condense our information and tools a little bit. I know most people don’t have the time to read all our stuff and to utilize all of our tools, so we have developed something that I think is quite bad-ass.

We’re going to call this thing something like “Quick Glance,” and as the name suggests, the goal is to give you as much information at a quick glance.

To see what I’m talking about, you can head over to the “Leaders” section of the DB and click on a player’s name. What you see may surprise you, and let me explain what this is.

When you click on a guy, you’ll see the table expands and includes a ton of information, at a “quick glance.” Let’s break down the information you can now see:

Schedule – Comes in handy when you’re looking at a player. As the season progresses, you’ll see only his remaining games.
Weather – This little widget from weather.com will show the current forecast in the city of his next game, which [...]