PractiScore website results being upgraded - input welcome

[Ken N.]

USPSA, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram logins will all be ways to establish accounts/identiy on PractiScore.com .

I really hope you are using OAuth [1] for FB, Twitter and Instagram. Shouldn't be too hard to make USPSA to be an OAuth host too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth

That is the intent on our side. I recommended the use of OAuth with USPSA login as well. I discussed it briefly wit Rick (their new web dev) last month, and he knew and saw the merits of it. So I suspect that will be what's done.

Ken N.

[alma]

Slightly different area but app integration to automatically retrieve time over bluetooth from DAA Shotmaxx timer would be really cool.

Perhaps use logins, cookies etc. To track previous club results so you can suggest most likely match results. Tracking by USPSA member number would work too. Email when new match results are posted with your member number.

[Ken N.]

Slightly different area but app integration to automatically retrieve time over bluetooth from DAA Shotmaxx timer would be really cool.

Perhaps use logins, cookies etc. To track previous club results so you can suggest most likely match results. Tracking by USPSA member number would work too. Email when new match results are posted with your member number.

We are toying with a Shotmaxx timer hookup. Will post as we learn more.

Generally, we are intending to add social media type contexts. I know that I use Facebook for this, as do many (most) of us. But it's burdensome to our non competitive friends. So the system, as we are envisioning it, will integrate discussion and social connections in at the shooter, club, match, and stage level, and include "liking" or "following" clubs, matches and sharing of photos, videos, and match results. So you will be able to "like" Ken Nelson, follow "SUPS" (my club), which will then notify your feed of scores/news/vids from Ken Nelson, matches/results for clubs, so forth. The project name is "Practical Book", although it won't be called that once released, it just be practiscore.com, only behaving a lot differently when you browse it.

I've got hand surgery late tomorrow afternoon, thumb joint replacement. So I'm up late enjoying my last night (for a while) as a productive right hander. Tomorrow, left handed awkward ness takes over for 6 to 10 weeks. No shooting for 4 months at least (-:

Ideas welcome… keep them coming! We meet AM thru lunch to finish plotting all this, and all ideas will get due consideration.

Ken N.

[j33716]

All looks good.

A lock on results being shown on the RO tablet would be good.

The results should be public, not just seen by the ROs. I have seen many ROs coaching at the stages because they have information that others do not have. Locking this down to only public sharing would help.

Having the results only posted in a public manner would also allow us to present sponsor ads (which helps pay for the equipment needed)

[ZackJones]

Being a bit of a numbers nerd I currently keep a spreadsheet with times for the steel challenge stages I've shot. I like to see if I'm improving or slipping in time for the different stages. Something I'd like to see is the ability to retrieve past performance data from the web site. What I'm thinking may first require an enhancement to Practisore. That enhancement would be for steel challenge matches include the official 8 steel challenge stages so they could be picked from a pick list such as we do with USPSA classifiers. By incorporating this into Practiscore you can ensure everyone using it calls the stage Smoke & Hope (SC-103) "Smoke & Hope" and not "Smoke and Hope", etc. This would also allow you to include the official SC-XXX number associated with the stage.

Once Practiscore is enhanced to have the specific stages listed when results are uploaded include the SC-XXX number as part of the upload. Once that data is captured I could then run a report on the results web site that shows my scores for that stage over time. Now if you wanted to make it really cool include a chart with my results plotting my time. That way one could see just from looking at the chart if you're shooting it faster or slower.

Also just want to say thanks for opening up this line a communication with us. It is appreciated.

[LabMan45]

Are you looking at having a "club" results page, meaning i can see a list of all our matches at once?

Yes. Each club will have a home page with their match results, their matches available for registration, as well as a way to sign up for notifications (via text or email). Each competitor will have their own page as well, with their results (where we have an identifying common thing (like uspsa #, 3gn#, phone, email or other) in the match db.

The searching will also be improved to find matches, competitors and clubs more readily.

Ken,

Do I properly interpret your answer above to mean that clubs will be able to simply announce their upcoming matches or will competitors actually have the ability to sign up or register for those matches on PractisScore? If it's the latter that would be a huge benefit for our club (a service that we would probably be willing to pay for).

Good luck with the surgery and recovery.

Jim S

[Ken N.]

Are you looking at having a "club" results page, meaning i can see a list of all our matches at once?

Yes. Each club will have a home page with their match results, their matches available for registration, as well as a way to sign up for notifications (via text or email). Each competitor will have their own page as well, with their results (where we have an identifying common thing (like uspsa #, 3gn#, phone, email or other) in the match db.

The searching will also be improved to find matches, competitors and clubs more readily.

Ken,

Do I properly interpret your answer above to mean that clubs will be able to simply announce their upcoming matches or will competitors actually have the ability to sign up or register for those matches on PractisScore? If it's the latter that would be a huge benefit for our club (a service that we would probably be willing to pay for).

Good luck with the surgery and recovery.

Jim S

Clubs will create a match, when registration date arrives, competitors will be able to register, with most form data being automatically filled. Then on the PractiScore side, a simple pin # finds the match and brings the registration in.

This actually already exists and is use, in our beta release, all over the world. I've used it for last 2 Area 1, and also Nationals, and now MG Nationals.

Also, we intend to provide a way for clubs to upload match/stage information (even stage diagrams). In source (for sharing) or PDF.

Ken N.

[LabMan45]

That's outstanding, Ken. Is it practical and scalable (reverse) down for use with simple weekly and monthly club matches? If so, a couple of lives in our club will improve greatly when you implement the changes. Can't wait.

Thanks,

Jim S

[Ken N.]

That's outstanding, Ken. Is it practical and scalable (reverse) down for use with simple weekly and monthly club matches? If so, a couple of lives in our club will improve greatly when you implement the changes. Can't wait.

Thanks,

Jim S

Yes. I use it at club matches. I'm using it at our club championship, which will have about 80 shooters right now. And MG Nats, right now. And a small LEO 3-Gun we are running next week. It's pretty flexible, it even works for SASS matches and training events where you want to squad people.

Anything I can do to have people registered, squadded, and paid before 0800 registration helps a club match flow in the AM.

It also has Stripe integration (for credit cards) with 100% flow thru to your account (it takes nothing). And an automatic e-cart, I used it to sell a bazillion shirts at area 1, in advance, easily.

You can view this, loosely, as Ken in a Box. What I mish mash together for a match or club I run (or help - I help 3 or 4), typically enters the system. So it has email notifications, a blog, a store, registration, squadding, so forth.

This results effort is the final step before taking that out of beta and making it freely available.

Ken N.

Ken N.

[jdphotoguy]

Ken, best of luck with your surgery, hope all goes well.

I can sympathize with being forced to be a lefty for weeks or months. I had hand surgery last January and for a few months I was forced to live life as a lefty. Learning to eat left handed and actually one handed was the hardest part.

Shot several matchs left handed, can't say that my USPSA results were any better then shooting right handed, but I got quite good at Steel Challenge shooting weak hand and I still shot the steel matches left handed when using my Ruger 22/45.

Loving some of the future changes being discussed. Especially love online match registration part. I currently have a web site setup to handle this for the 3 monthly matches I help with, but having something designed and built by folks that know web design would be great.

Edited January 23, 2014 by jdphotoguy

[PistoleroJesse]

USPSA, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram logins will all be ways to establish accounts/identiy on PractiScore.com .

I really hope you are using OAuth [1] for FB, Twitter and Instagram. Shouldn't be too hard to make USPSA to be an OAuth host too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth

I'm assuming Google account will work too? I know Google was doing something with OAuth but I'm no web developer so... can anyone clue me in?

[Ken N.]

USPSA, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram logins will all be ways to establish accounts/identiy on PractiScore.com .

I really hope you are using OAuth [1] for FB, Twitter and Instagram. Shouldn't be too hard to make USPSA to be an OAuth host too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth

I'm assuming Google account will work too? I know Google was doing something with OAuth but I'm no web developer so... can anyone clue me in?

Google is one of the oath options

[bp78]

Practiscore Wordpress Plugin -- I'd love to see a simple Wordpress plugin we could use on club websites to publish results. Uploading, organizing, and keeping match scores has been a common requirements with every club I've deployed squadsignup.com with so far. I even wrote a tool for folks to upload and publish your results.zip to their site but it's still fairly manual. Some sort of off-the-shelf wordpress plugin to display your clubs prior match results within our own websites would be awesome.

[RadarTech]

Ken- DId Apple kick the update back?

[JFlowers]

Not really sure how to put this...

I would like the ability to lock which "clients" I can synch from. Let me explain. As we are finishing match, I am often sitting on the trailer porch synching to the squad tablets. While I am doing this, I see lots of devices pop up as individual shooters synch to me in order to get their scores. I would like to be able to lock which devices I can synch from so that I don't accidentally try to synch with Joe Shooter's iPhone, but still allow Joe to synch from the Master.

I don't think anyone would do it purposefully, but Joe and Bob could be doing What-Ifs on Joe's iPhone and I don't want to accidentally pull the changed scores from him.

I hope that made sense.

[Ken N.]

Ken- DId Apple kick the update back?

I did. found a crash on iOS 6.x iPod touches

It was resubmitted today it'll probably turn around pretty quick 2 to 3 days

[Ken N.]

Practiscore Wordpress Plugin -- I'd love to see a simple Wordpress plugin we could use on club websites to publish results. Uploading, organizing, and keeping match scores has been a common requirements with every club I've deployed squadsignup.com with so far. I even wrote a tool for folks to upload and publish your results.zip to their site but it's still fairly manual. Some sort of off-the-shelf wordpress plugin to display your clubs prior match results within our own websites would be awesome.

Good idea. Added to list. Note that we are also embedding Word press into the website as well. All people creating accounts including clubs will have webspace

Already on the list was embedding, ala youtube Facebook and other content providers

Edited January 31, 2014 by Ken N.

[Ken N.]

Not really sure how to put this...

I would like the ability to lock which "clients" I can synch from. Let me explain. As we are finishing match, I am often sitting on the trailer porch synching to the squad tablets. While I am doing this, I see lots of devices pop up as individual shooters synch to me in order to get their scores. I would like to be able to lock which devices I can synch from so that I don't accidentally try to synch with Joe Shooter's iPhone, but still allow Joe to synch from the Master.

I don't think anyone would do it purposefully, but Joe and Bob could be doing What-Ifs on Joe's iPhone and I don't want to accidentally pull the changed scores from him.

I hope that made sense.

I faced a similar problem at area 2 where the network was open. Dozens and dozens of devices were on the net. My view on this has been that scoring devices should be on a secure network limited to match devices. But I understand that passwords leak and that networks sometimes need to be shared. My intent here is to extend the existing Match password setting to be optionally required for synching. One successfully used that device would show up in a list of trusted devices. How does that sound?

My apologies for writing terse replies, I'm recovering from hand surgery and have only the use of my left hand for a couple months. Yes that means no shooting but compared to the difficulties of being one-handed in day-to-day life that isn't a big deal.

[jcwren]

Not really sure how to put this...

I would like the ability to lock which "clients" I can synch from. Let me explain. As we are finishing match, I am often sitting on the trailer porch synching to the squad tablets. While I am doing this, I see lots of devices pop up as individual shooters synch to me in order to get their scores. I would like to be able to lock which devices I can synch from so that I don't accidentally try to synch with Joe Shooter's iPhone, but still allow Joe to synch from the Master.

I don't think anyone would do it purposefully, but Joe and Bob could be doing What-Ifs on Joe's iPhone and I don't want to accidentally pull the changed scores from him.

I hope that made sense.

I faced a similar problem at area 2 where the network was open. Dozens and dozens of devices were on the net. My view on this has been that scoring devices should be on a secure network limited to match devices. But I understand that passwords leak and that networks sometimes need to be shared. My intent here is to extend the existing Match password setting to be optionally required for synching. One successfully used that device would show up in a list of trusted devices. How does that sound?

My apologies for writing terse replies, I'm recovering from hand surgery and have only the use of my left hand for a couple months. Yes that means no shooting but compared to the difficulties of being one-handed in day-to-day life that isn't a big deal.

Unless you've something else in mind, not the model I'd want.

I want competitors to be able to sync, I just don't want to see them in the sync list. I would prefer to pre-qualify the devices I can see. Something like when I sync the stage devices from the master, I can register their MAC address with the iPad (which is really the only direction I see going for sometime. Android stage devices, iOS master devices). I only see devices with the MAC addresses I've approved.

Or perhaps instead of the MAC address, it's a magic word that doesn't get transferred as part of the sync.

But whatever the case, I want the ability for competitors to sync from stage devices. I just don't want to see those competitors.

[Ken N.]

Not really sure how to put this...

I would like the ability to lock which "clients" I can synch from. Let me explain. As we are finishing match, I am often sitting on the trailer porch synching to the squad tablets. While I am doing this, I see lots of devices pop up as individual shooters synch to me in order to get their scores. I would like to be able to lock which devices I can synch from so that I don't accidentally try to synch with Joe Shooter's iPhone, but still allow Joe to synch from the Master.

I don't think anyone would do it purposefully, but Joe and Bob could be doing What-Ifs on Joe's iPhone and I don't want to accidentally pull the changed scores from him.

I hope that made sense.

I faced a similar problem at area 2 where the network was open. Dozens and dozens of devices were on the net. My view on this has been that scoring devices should be on a secure network limited to match devices. But I understand that passwords leak and that networks sometimes need to be shared. My intent here is to extend the existing Match password setting to be optionally required for synching. One successfully used that device would show up in a list of trusted devices. How does that sound?

My apologies for writing terse replies, I'm recovering from hand surgery and have only the use of my left hand for a couple months. Yes that means no shooting but compared to the difficulties of being one-handed in day-to-day life that isn't a big deal.

Unless you've something else in mind, not the model I'd want.

I want competitors to be able to sync, I just don't want to see them in the sync list. I would prefer to pre-qualify the devices I can see. Something like when I sync the stage devices from the master, I can register their MAC address with the iPad (which is really the only direction I see going for sometime. Android stage devices, iOS master devices). I only see devices with the MAC addresses I've approved.

Or perhaps instead of the MAC address, it's a magic word that doesn't get transferred as part of the sync.

But whatever the case, I want the ability for competitors to sync from stage devices. I just don't want to see those competitors.

OK. So having an option to show only trusted devices would suffice if I understand correctly. Then we just need to figure out an easy way to make them trusted. My thought was that they would enter the password on their device it would flow over in the pairing protocol showing trust and would be in the list.

There are some complications in that the device could be on the network with a different match. I will discuss internally and make sure to Post what we come up with.

[jcwren]

Not really sure how to put this...

I would like the ability to lock which "clients" I can synch from. Let me explain. As we are finishing match, I am often sitting on the trailer porch synching to the squad tablets. While I am doing this, I see lots of devices pop up as individual shooters synch to me in order to get their scores. I would like to be able to lock which devices I can synch from so that I don't accidentally try to synch with Joe Shooter's iPhone, but still allow Joe to synch from the Master.

I don't think anyone would do it purposefully, but Joe and Bob could be doing What-Ifs on Joe's iPhone and I don't want to accidentally pull the changed scores from him.

I hope that made sense.

I faced a similar problem at area 2 where the network was open. Dozens and dozens of devices were on the net. My view on this has been that scoring devices should be on a secure network limited to match devices. But I understand that passwords leak and that networks sometimes need to be shared. My intent here is to extend the existing Match password setting to be optionally required for synching. One successfully used that device would show up in a list of trusted devices. How does that sound?

My apologies for writing terse replies, I'm recovering from hand surgery and have only the use of my left hand for a couple months. Yes that means no shooting but compared to the difficulties of being one-handed in day-to-day life that isn't a big deal.

Unless you've something else in mind, not the model I'd want.

I want competitors to be able to sync, I just don't want to see them in the sync list. I would prefer to pre-qualify the devices I can see. Something like when I sync the stage devices from the master, I can register their MAC address with the iPad (which is really the only direction I see going for sometime. Android stage devices, iOS master devices). I only see devices with the MAC addresses I've approved.

Or perhaps instead of the MAC address, it's a magic word that doesn't get transferred as part of the sync.

But whatever the case, I want the ability for competitors to sync from stage devices. I just don't want to see those competitors.

OK. So having an option to show only trusted devices would suffice if I understand correctly. Then we just need to figure out an easy way to make them trusted. My thought was that they would enter the password on their device it would flow over in the pairing protocol showing trust and would be in the list.

There are some complications in that the device could be on the network with a different match. I will discuss internally and make sure to Post what we come up with.

So just winging this... The device has a name, password, magic word, whatever you want to call it that you manually enter. It's stored only on the device. In the match setup, a checkbox is added for "I only want to see matches that match my system secret word". So the secret word is entered on the Android devices and the iPad, and we see only those.

Now, a second option in the match settings says "Do not sync unless the UUID of the match is the same as mine.". This prevents the iPad from pulling data from a stage device that somehow got it's match changed, and if you try to sync against that device, you get an error dialog.

This allows the most flexibility in that if the match is changed on either the stage device or the master, and a sync is attempted, it won't happen. And the first option allows competitors to sync, but the master not to see those competitors. AND it's managed on a match by match basis, because most of the time I'm not too worried about seeing competitor devices in the list, but if I *should* need to sync with a competitors device to recover some stage data (outlier case, admittedly), I can still do that.

[alma]

Maybe create a unique match password for device sync?

Also, if PractiScore has a static IP then you could limit the router firewall to only allow access to the PractiScore network range. That would limit anyone connecting to Wi-Fi in hopes of using it for Internet access.

[alma]

I am now sure how this works now but especially when you start doing cloud synchronization you should ensure that you are using HTTPS to help prevent score manipulation and eyedropping through hacking.

[alma]

double tap

Edited February 1, 2014 by alma

[ZackJones]

I know exactly what James is talking about because I do scoring and shoot with him. Given that each device has a synch code perhaps that could be used as the synch password? During the match briefing you could provide shooters with the synch code for the master device and then they could pull scores as they desired. Before we distribute tables to the squads we write down the tablet name T1 - T5 in our case and the synch code for each one. If you were prompted to enter the synch code when you pull scores from the stage tables you would be okay. The great thing about Practiscore is it uses the pull method of synching so that limits the ability for Billy and Bob to attempt to push enhanced scores to the master. Not that Billy and Bob would ever do such a thing, of course .