When I was at ESPN.com, the top item on my wish list for things ESPN.com should’ve been doing was opening up the Fantasy engine with good APIs. My reasoning was twofold. First, there were lots of features people wanted that simply weren’t popular enough for a site like ESPN, where audience is measured in millions. Second, the team is small and couldn’t (and wouldn’t) build everything in house. It doesn’t make sense.

So, the idea is that a clean API that exposed just enough of the game engine for external tools to integrate in and then independent developers could build (and charge for, if they wanted) all the little niche features that are out there. FAAB free agency and auction drafts were the biggest features I thought were missing (though ESPN did roll out limited auction drafts this year).

Another thing to consider: Facebook was just “eh, Facebook” until the developer API came out. Then, they became a darling, started growing audience a bit more quickly, and now even Friendster has a developer API. There are positive business effects for concentrating on the core platform and turning your game into a service.

You have no idea how much I wanted to do this. Had I stayed at ESPN, I would’ve pushed for that as a new architecture. I had it documented out, plans on how to implement it, and was lining up the ducks to turn the sports group at ESPN.com into a stealth data provider. I was really considering this to be the next startup idea for someday in the future after we turn Fanzter into a media giant.

Now, it seems I won’t have to do it. TechCrunch just wrote up a new company called OPEN Sports Network. While the company web site talks more about the social piece (perhaps they integrate into social networks?), the TechCrunch post suggests that their game platform will have open APIs.

I’m making a prediction now: if this is executed well (and there’s reason to hope because this guy ran SportsLine), this will become the fantasy platform of choice for serious gamers quickly, with casual games following as soon as enough third party features extend the game.

The only thing I don’t understand is launching the platform in August. That gives 0 time to developers to extend the game before the NFL kickoff. I’m sure I’m just missing something, or they’re going out cautiously in year 1.

Yahoo has made a pretty significant change to their fantasy baseball game. I’m not sure if this is new for Yahoo (I didn’t play football there), but the new interface is pretty nice. All drag-and-drop YUI goodness. Here’s a screenshot of me fixing my roster:

It’s pretty well executed. The yellow rows are the only slots that Fielder is eligible for, and the symbol on the far right conveys whether I’m dropping the player in the right slot. More importantly, this will cut down on the cryptic error messages in most fantasy games when you forget to move someone to the bench or accidently put two people in the same slot.

Useful Ajax and a nice addition.

The iPhone SDK is 2.1 GB. Tiny phone, massive SDK.

This is going to seem a bit harsh, but I stumbled across something worth sharing. Over at time.com, they were running a poll on the front page asking users to pick which team will win the Super Bowl. The poll is created by a company called Second Thought, Inc.. Two things about the poll worth criticizing.

First, the poll results page is a near complete ripoff of ESPN.com’s polls, but uglier. Really. You can’t see this now, because they’re down (more on that in a sec), but it’s a stunning lack of creativity.

More importantly, though, was that while checking out the company, I found out their admin URL scheme. And the best part was that when you go to the admin pages, you can simply bypass the login scheme by clicking “Cancel” on the login prompt. That’s pretty much the height of incompetence. I didn’t try it, but I read that folks have changed the text on the polls without any problem. On Time.com, by the way. Imagine if someone had gotten in with malicious intent on one of the political poll questions? Push polling via Time.com, anyone?

Don’t worry, I emailed them because even a ripoff shouldn’t get hacked by someone. It looks like they’ve taken the app down so I feel OK posting this. They list ESPN as a client so I’ll probably be in touch with folks over there to take a hard look at whatever work these guys have done for them.

If you have these guys do work for you, have someone competent on your staff audit the security. This is good advice any time you use outside contractors, even if they’re hosting the app on their own servers, just to protect your brand.

One of the more confusing things I’ve run into with Javascript is the way mouse and keyboard events really work. It makes sense when you think about it, but I have trouble explaining it to others (which means that, while I get it, I haven’t mastered it myself). I found a good rundown at Quirksmode. Not surprising, I guess, but I’m posting this in case anyone else is looking for one.