A Gadget For Jon Box

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Not a technical post today.

If you don't know, I like baseball. I like the St. Louis Cardinals.  I also like Vista, and Gadgets.  And during a non-exciting pontification on creating custom content types and events in WSS v3, I took a quick look to see this new gadget, the Baseball Team Score Gadget.  So, I'm checking it out.

I like that it lets me choose my team, my time zone, and the opacity of my team's logo. That's nice. Upon showing, it displays a time of the next game, including a link that takes me to the ESPN preview of that game.

Baseball Team Score Gadget

Their description: "Follow the games of your favorite team throughout the day. See the time of the game before it happens, follow the score throughout the game, and then get a link to the recap article when the game finishes."

But anyway, I really like the idea of this baseball gadget - and I wish that I had thought of it first. If I knew how to access the data, I would have built this myself. Now, if I was going to do this, I would add a few extra pieces of information. Here is my wish list for the perfect MLB gadget:

  • All of the features that Hawkmoon has done in this gadget.
  • Link to MLB team site of my selected team. The game preview link gets me close - but not exactly what I want all the time.
  • Division standings, as well as Wildcard standings
  • Schedule tab that shows date, time, location of last games and next games. For last games, show a score which is a hyperlink to the ESPN recap of the game.
  • Link to the video highlights of yesterday's game - using Silverlight
  • RSS info on selected team
  • I could go on, but this would be good enough for me.

As I write this, I'll keep from dwelling on how the Cardinals got spanked yesterday by the KC Royals, which is not necessarily a baseball powerhouse. And to add to the day's baseball disappointment, the Cubs are tied with the Cardinals for 2nd place.