If you haven’t heard, Amazon.com’s popular website went down recently.

Not the website front page itself, but the infrastructure.

You see, companies like Foursquare, Reddit, Quora and many many other big name companies actually use Amazon to host their websites, their apps and their data. So when Amazon went down it was a really,really big deal because not only were many websites down but many websites actually lost users’ data. Amazon is the shining knight in terms of security and redundancy and even they hiccup’d, went down and lost vital digital information.

The reason I am bringing this up is that when you invest in applications on the web, its important to ask questions about the data…specifically your data. You should know for certain what happens in disaster situations like Amazon’s. If a meteorite comes from outer space and lands on the servers, is your [...]

excerpt from Active Camps Monthly News…

“Active Network has teamed up with Front Rush, a leading provider of recruiting and team management software, to offer upgraded software to college and university coaches. Front Rush customers that run camps will now utilize Active Network’s software, including camp management and online registration products. Together Active Network and Front Rush will work with over 2500 coaches across the country to help manage their recruiting and camp registration needs.

Together we released a data integration tool that enables the transfer of camper information between Active and Front Rush databases. What does this mean? When you find a camper that you would like to add to your Front Rush recruiting database you can select the “Front Rush” button to [...]

February 30, 2011 – GoBig Recruiting and Front Rush make ‘Big’ announcement that will streamline the way college coaches get data.

College coaches with access to GoBig Recruiting can now add recruits to their Front Rush account with a single click of a button. Coaches simply find a recruit they are interested in, click “add to Front Rush” and the data transfers directly from GoBig Recruiting into their Front Rush database. The old way of importing/exporting and data entry is going away and being replaced by seamless integration.

“Easy is the best word to describe this new functionality. GoBig and Front Rush have the same core values, we are here to make recruiting easier for the coaches” said Front Rush’s co-founder Brad Downs.

The [...]

The Student Athlete Consulting Group and Front Rush announce a partnership to help college coaches and compliance officers manage their compliance initiatives and stay within NCAA rules.

Each division, from DI to DIII, is unique with their rules and interpretations. SACG and Front Rush have teamed up to simplify this complexity. The partnership blends the legal expertise of former NCAA staffers with the technical and design proficiency of Front Rush, so all rules are customized per sport in an easy to use application. In this format, Front Rush can proactively alert coaches before any rule is even broken. Along with proactive notifications, coaches and compliance officers also have key features like violation reporting, compliance calendars, dedicated mobile apps and violation alerts.

“The key is making the application easy to use so Coaches can focus on the recruiting side and know they are staying away from potential violations” said Sean Devlin [...]

The best skill that I ever learned was how to type.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about this idea of “always improving”. You know, the new things that you can learn that will help you on a day to day. The one common theme I hear a lot is “I wish I had learned to type better”.

Maybe it’s my ignorance (being the son of a typing teacher)  but for a long time I took this skill set for granted.  As a typer watching someone who is not, you generally get the feeling that there is productivity loss occurring. Its simple math:  What a fast typer can do in 10 minutes, it may take a slow typer 30. Without double checking my work, that’s 20 minutes.

If your not an expert typer, I would strongly urge you to take the time [...]

Have you ever been in the wild and come up with an idea or needed to jot something down or wanted to remind yourself of something?  Have you ever had a friend or colleague tell you about a great book, or a cool site or showed you a place to visit?

How have you remembered these things?  Did you take a mental picture or scribble it on a piece of paper or maybe even your hand?  How many times did you forget about it later or lose that piece of paper, or ended up washing it off your hand?

O.K., lots questions thrown at you at once!

We certainly have run into this ourselves, and a great app we use to solve this problem is called Evernote. We have no affiliation with Evernote, we just think it is a great product.

Evernote is an app that can [...]

February 24, 2011 – NCSA Athletic Recruiting and Front Rush announce an integrated partnership that will dramatically simplify the way that college coaches get recruit data.

NCSA Athletic Recruiting and Front Rush give college coaches with access to NCSA’s recruit database the ability to seamlessly add recruits to their Front Rush account. There is no longer the requirement to import/export or enter data. Instead, coaches can search through NCSA’s 300,000 recruits, click the ‘Add to Front Rush’ button, and the recruits’ data will automatically be added to their Front Rush account.

“With this integration, we’re bringing Front Rush’s leadership in recruiting & compliance software together with NCSA’s qualified and vast database. In just a single click of a button, Front Rush is offering [...]

At Front Rush, we do a fair amount of traveling.  And, as we can all relate, traveling can at times be a burden.

One app that we use quite a bit to make that burden a bit easier is called TripIt. We don’t have any affiliation with them and have never met the founders.  So what I’m about to say comes from my heart:  They make a good app.

Here’s how TripIt works: First, you create an account, let’s say using your gmail or school email credentials, and TripIt syncs all of your travel itineraries. Essentially, they look for any confirmation emails that you get from the airline that you are flying and make the information instantly accessible online or through your mobile app. The problem it is solving is the challenge of searching through your email, printing out your travel documents, storing them in a folder, [...]

In our view, this whole thing with Verizon carrying the iPhone is, in fact, a big deal.  No doubt about it.

And since more and more college coaches are using their web-enabled phones to do their job away from the office, and because it is going to be hitting shelves later this week, here are a couple of things we feel our college coach clients need to know:

Don’t buy one right away! In just a few months (the Summer of 2011) Apple will be announcing their new iPhone 5 which will most likely show up on Verizon’s system, as well (and I should mention that the rumors I am hearing are saying it will be completely redesigned).

Don’t buy one right away! Although initial reports have shown that voice quality is better with the Verizon iPhone compared [...]

Want to know what college coaches all over the country are going to be talking about when it comes to technology in 2011?  Here’s our list of this year’s top seven technology stories you’ll need to know as we start the new year:

1. iPad 2 Its the original iPad but smaller, lighter, and rumored to have dualcameras. Done deal.

2. iPhone on Verizon The rumors of this have been going on for a long time now, and yet somehow they have never come to fruition. Well, from what we’re hearing, 2011 should be the year that Verizon takes up the iPhone and tests its network on the most formidable of phones.

3. 4G and the expansion of the mobile web 4G is a marketing term used to describe the next generation of mobile standards. This year will be the break-out year for 4G and the connection rates [...]