Using Personal Technology in Umpiring

[sdix00]

Using personal technology in umpiring

Visit the Forums.

• The online forums such as Umpire-Empire.com, Umpire.org, and Officiating.com are a GREAT place to
  
  • explore complex rules and situations,
    
  • get advice on gear,
    
  • and meet some really great folks from around the world.
    
  • Even the old guys agree -
    
    • "If I had access to an online forum when I was coming up, I would not have had so many learning moments on the field and I would have moved up more quickly."
      
      • - Old Guy
        
        

Use a cell phone to record your game.

• Once or twice a year at a rec game, I will have my wife inconspicuously strap a cell phone to the fence with rubber bands and press record. Then I push it to YouTube, marked as private and review my plate work in HD.
  

Use Gmail. I have been using Gmail since 2005. In that time I have had 20000 conversations - all searchable.

• Search for Association memos and attachments by content keyword.
  
• Keep a full history of email reminders even though historical games have been cleared from ArbiterSports.
  
• Export contact lists from ArbiterSports in to your Gmail contact list - EASILY.
  
• Set rules such as "Mark (star) as important any email from these five assignors." -
  
  • This rule will save important messages locally to your phone and make them easy to locate even when you are offline.
    
• Android Apps like SMSBackup (Jan Berkel) automatically backup all my text messages to Gmail and make them searchable, as well.
  

Use Google Calendar -

• Export your games from ArbiterSports directly in to Google Calendar.
  
• Google Calendar also allows you to overlay multiple calendars on one screen.
  
  • This allows me to see my family's other games on my calendar as well.
    
    

Use Google Maps

• Bookmark (star) all of your game sites. http://goo.gl/maps/LcPv3
  
• Send a map marker to your partner letting him know exactly where to park and meet for pregame. http://goo.gl/maps/Wn9FN
  
• Share the site map as public and allow other umpires to collaborate. Once I saw that my partner marked the location of the portable restrooms.
  

Use Google Latitude to automatically track your mileage.

• Google Latitude will track your mileage and what time you arrived at and departed the game.
  
• Handy during tax teason.
  
• http://goo.gl/Bp85X http://goo.gl/qaZBp
  

Use Google Docs

• Keep all your journals, spreadsheets, cheat sheets, PDFs, Calendars and schedules from various leagues and assigners.
  
• Use a Kindle to build a portable, searchable and handy library of electronic resources. (Transfer them from Google Docs)
  
  • Refereee magazine articles.
    
  • Carl Childress's Electronic Baseball Rules Differences (EBRD)
    
  • Rules in PDF:
    
    • Official Baseball Rules (OBR)
      
    • NCAA
      
    • PONY and Little League rule book and Rules Instruction Manual.
      
• Photo Roster from ArbiterSports.com
  
• Archived Forum threads (http://www.umpire.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-10295.html)
  
• Local Ground Rules for your various leagues
  
• Association Mechanics Manuals
  
• Plus lots more.
  

[*]Don't laugh, but I spend two hours per day on the road and I often fire up the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle and have the various baseball publications read aloud to me while I am driving. Sounds dull, but honestly, I listen and I usually hear something new in each session. I make a note of it and review that section later.

Finally - Glue it all together with Android:

• Above, I exported
  
  • my Arbiter Contacts to Gmail
    
  • my games to Google Calendar
    
  • all my documents to Google Docs,
    
  • all my game sites to Google Maps.
    

Once I log in to my Android phone with my Gmail account, magic happens.

• When partners and assignors call, their names come up on my caller ID.
  
• When I search for "balk" all my saved emails and documents with the word "Balk" show up in my search results.
  
• The awesome new app, Google Now, will automatically look at my calendar, check the traffic, and remind me to leave for the ballpark earlier if there is a traffic issue.
  

How do YOU use technology to do this job?

[Specks]

WOW! I thought I was doing good by manually entering my games in the calendar and entering the milage in the note of that game. I also have the FED rules app.  Good for you

[Mike Prince]

I do some of the things sdix00 mentions, one other thing I've done is created a fairly comprehensive Excel spreadsheet (even has a bunch of VBA code in it) to track and record notes of all my games from the past several years.  With one glance I can see which partners are averse to working the plate, games/teams where I have had issues (fields, EJ's, etc), how many games I have worked by level, and a bunch of other stuff.

 

I also use this to track all of my umpire income so come tax time it is very easy to take care of business.  Also use this to reconcile my pay from the group I work with the most as we get paid in 2-3 checks during the season (we do not get paid right at the game).

[JHSump]

Wow, that's a big list in the OP.

 

I do use...

1) UE --- best interface, best people, best advice

2) Gmail --- receive Arbiter reminds/changes; Tournament assignments; permanent searchable record

3) Google Calendar --- game schedules

4) Google Maps --- directions, mileage for tax record

5) Excel --- record all my game dates, pay, mileage, expenses, etc.  Could use Google Docs I suppose.

6) Laptop --- for PDFs of rule books, etc.

7) Basic cellphone --- texts between partners, assigners.  Not an Android!  

 

You make neat use of a Kindle!  I don't have one.

 

And I don't have a smartphone.

 

I once used my basic cellphone in a umpiring-physics experiment.  Does that count?  While putting my equipment away in a parking lot, I got distracted and I slammed the tailgate of my van down on the phone.  It squirted out, flew through the air and landed 30 feet away in the parking lot.  The travel time was precisely what one should have expected!  The phone died.

[cyclonehokiece]

Wow, that's a big list in the OP.

 

I do use...

1) UE --- best interface, best people, best advice

2) Gmail --- receive Arbiter reminds/changes; Tournament assignments; permanent searchable record

3) Google Calendar --- game schedules

4) Google Maps --- directions, mileage for tax record

5) Excel --- record all my game dates, pay, mileage, expenses, etc.  Could use Google Docs I suppose.

6) Laptop --- for PDFs of rule books, etc.

7) Basic cellphone --- texts between partners, assigners.  Not an Android!  

 

You make neat use of a Kindle!  I don't have one.

 

And I don't have a smartphone.

 

I once used my basic cellphone in a umpiring-physics experiment.  Does that count?  While putting my equipment away in a parking lot, I got distracted and I slammed the tailgate of my van down on the phone.  It squirted out, flew through the air and landed 30 feet away in the parking lot.  The travel time was precisely what one should have expected!  The phone died.

Did the question appear on your next exam, professor?

[JHSump]

 

Wow, that's a big list in the OP.

 

I do use...

1) UE --- best interface, best people, best advice

2) Gmail --- receive Arbiter reminds/changes; Tournament assignments; permanent searchable record

3) Google Calendar --- game schedules

4) Google Maps --- directions, mileage for tax record

5) Excel --- record all my game dates, pay, mileage, expenses, etc.  Could use Google Docs I suppose.

6) Laptop --- for PDFs of rule books, etc.

7) Basic cellphone --- texts between partners, assigners.  Not an Android!  

 

You make neat use of a Kindle!  I don't have one.

 

And I don't have a smartphone.

 

I once used my basic cellphone in a umpiring-physics experiment.  Does that count?  While putting my equipment away in a parking lot, I got distracted and I slammed the tailgate of my van down on the phone.  It squirted out, flew through the air and landed 30 feet away in the parking lot.  The travel time was precisely what one should have expected!  The phone died.

Did the question appear on your next exam, professor?

 

Now, that's an idea!

[cyclonehokiece]

Wow, that's a big list in the OP.

 

I do use...

1) UE --- best interface, best people, best advice

2) Gmail --- receive Arbiter reminds/changes; Tournament assignments; permanent searchable record

3) Google Calendar --- game schedules

4) Google Maps --- directions, mileage for tax record

5) Excel --- record all my game dates, pay, mileage, expenses, etc.  Could use Google Docs I suppose.

6) Laptop --- for PDFs of rule books, etc.

7) Basic cellphone --- texts between partners, assigners.  Not an Android!  

 

You make neat use of a Kindle!  I don't have one.

 

And I don't have a smartphone.

 

I once used my basic cellphone in a umpiring-physics experiment.  Does that count?  While putting my equipment away in a parking lot, I got distracted and I slammed the tailgate of my van down on the phone.  It squirted out, flew through the air and landed 30 feet away in the parking lot.  The travel time was precisely what one should have expected!  The phone died.

Did the question appear on your next exam, professor?

Now, that's an idea!

Still time, finals have just begun!

[BalkHawk]

I don't care for the way Google uses my information. I read "1984" several times as a teenager...

[IABlue]

Way, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much work and effort involved in all of that.  I keep my schedule in my head, know where I am going 99% of the time before I leave the house, and save all of my e-mails anyway (going back over 10 years).  The only thing I would like to do is cellphone record one of my games, but I almost never have anyone at the park that would do that for me.

 

But to each their own.

 

BTW:

Keep a full history of  email reminders even though historical games have been cleared from ArbiterSports.

 

This is not necessarily true.  I have about 9 different groups and all of them except my main college association will show years worth of past games if you check the "Show all" box.  Our local college group will only show the past season's games, but I can see what I've gotten for high school games going back to 2006.

[Aging_Arbiter]

I have this stubby pencil & notepad in the console/armrest of my truck....................

[johnnyg08]

I use a midland HD camera and clip it to the bill of my cap to get the "Centerfield" camera angle (actually from a,b, or c)  for my partner on the plate and I use it to review close plays on the bases and my positioning/angles when I get home.

[sdix00]

Just some new awesomeness added to Google Drive for Android this week. 

Thumbnails for quick access to documents. 

Scanning and OCR instantly from your phone.  - Just take a picture of a page and GDrive instantly turns it into a PDF and recognizes the text making the document searchable. 

 

 

search for "qualifications"

 

 

In other news, I installed the Little League rule book app (very good) and Kevin Hunter's Index app (needs work).

[Richvee]

I'm so tech-challenged. N o smartphone here. The bill's high enough with the kid's I-phones and my wife's and my regular phone.

I would love to video some games though and review.

I do keep an excel spreadsheet with all my games, fees, mileage, partners and game notes. 

Google maps, especially the satellite view is a lifesaver. Not sure who people found some of these fields without it! 

[sdix00]

I tried to avoid posting this because I don't want to seem like a salesman, BUT mobile phones DO NOT have to be expensive.

Please understand that I post the following in the interest of helping my fellow umpire brothers solve a real problem: high cell phone bills.

Consider going with a prepaid plan. t-mobile, boost, etc all have plans that will keep you under $40.

BUT the best prepaid deal in mobile is Ting.com. They have an incredible pricing model. Need a phone with text only? How does $11 / mo sound? Need to access the Arbiter only a few times? Add $3 for 100MB.

Each line costs $6/mo and then they charge you a wholesale rate for MB/mins/SMS that starts at $3 each and gets cheaper the more you use. If you use more than you paid for, no prob. They just bill you at the same wholesale rate for the difference. (The worst keep secret is that users pay for the line and the $0 plan and just pay for whatever usage at the end of the month.)

Leary about switching? Don't switch, then. Buy from them a used flip phone for $43 or Android for $59 and try them out with a new phone number for a month or two. Even better, if you have an unused Sprint phone, you can use it on their network.

I have 6 phones and we use 7k messages and 3GB of data combined even though I tell the kids to download their music and movies over WiFi. My bill for last month was $131 (for 6 lines!!!). The total taxes and regulatory fees was $7. How much are your taxes and fees? Mine used to be over $30 on Sprint.

Ting was created by the guys who created Tucows and openSRS. They fixed everything that was wrong with cell phone services, i.e. taxes, premium data charges, contracts, bad support, poor usage visibility, surprise charges, etc.

You will need decent Sprint coverage in your area, and I am the first to admit that Sprint ain't so great. BUT my old bills were $250 for only 5 lines which was still competitive. I am loving the extra $100 savings. Totally worth the hassle of lesser 3G at the house (but the 4G at my office is really great).

My older son pays his own part of the bill and Ting itemizes the charges per line, and his share is about $21 last month. I use the most data and my share was $43. You can also limit each line. I only give my daughter 300MB and then she gets an SMS around the 25th day that she hit her limit. I am a technophile so I was most attracted to the "free" hotspot option (no extra charges, just pay for whatever data.)

Ting does have a referral program but this post isn't about that. If you want to use my referral code, send me an email and you and I get $25 credit. But I won't post the referral code here because I really just hope that Ting can help someone.

PLEASE feel free to message me with any questions about Ting - if for no other reason than to help you decide that it isn't right for you.

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