Photo-illustration — ALEX MESSMER
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
CALGARY, Alberta — A weekly look at what’s new, what’s coming on our site …
• Baseball!
Just having sprinted from the Saddledome to my rental car at the Calgary Stampede in minus-7 freeze, I’ve got to admit it isn’t easy to think about spring training. But that’s the next big priority for the site when I fly home from Western Canada, and that applies to the business side, as well.
I’ll be spending two weeks in Bradenton with the Pirates to provide you up-close coverage over more than a third of the total time the team is down there. What’s more, I’ll be doing so in two stints, so that you get both a taste of the earliest phases — pitchers and catchers reporting — and the heart of the Grapefruit League schedule when things are rounding out. It won’t be quite like when I was on the beat, but it’ll be close.
To account for this, we’ll begin selling baseball gift subscriptions next week, aimed at Pirates fans looking to join our site at just the right time where they can have their favorite team covered front to finish through our one-year plan. A custom baseball-style card will be sent to all gift recipients, and we’ll be sure, as with all subscribers, that they get all the help they need using the site and the app.
Really looking forward to our first full baseball season here. The more the merrier.
• The app count: 4,142 downloads from Apple for iPhone/iPad platforms, 1,606 downloads from Google for Android platforms. Growing by the day, too. Oh, and if you haven’t updated your app to the 1.1 version, please do so. Here’s how.
Everything related to the app, of course, is free to subscribers.
• App notifications, you might have noticed remain hit and miss. There’s no real pattern to this, and there’s nothing amiss on your end. It’s being fixed.
• It wouldn’t be Saturday without a reminder that general gift subscriptions are available all year round, not just for the holidays. Click the big, happy box below:
• If you can’t figure something out related to our site or app, please check our Support and App Support pages. About 99 percent of the questions we get can be answered right there. But if your issue isn’t there, email us at [email protected]
• As of this writing at 10 p.m. Friday, we’re at 7,923 subscriptions. We’re 6 1/2 months old, and our stated goal for the first full year was 10,000.
• I’m flying out to Vancouver at noon Saturday, then home the next day.
• Thank you so much for reading and for your support.
February 7, 2015
Saturday site stuff: Give the gift of baseball
by Dejan Kovacevic • Site stuff • Saturday site stuff
Photo-illustration — ALEX MESSMER
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
CALGARY, Alberta — A weekly look at what’s new, what’s coming on our site …
• Baseball!
Just having sprinted from the Saddledome to my rental car at the Calgary Stampede in minus-7 freeze, I’ve got to admit it isn’t easy to think about spring training. But that’s the next big priority for the site when I fly home from Western Canada, and that applies to the business side, as well.
I’ll be spending two weeks in Bradenton with the Pirates to provide you up-close coverage over more than a third of the total time the team is down there. What’s more, I’ll be doing so in two stints, so that you get both a taste of the earliest phases — pitchers and catchers reporting — and the heart of the Grapefruit League schedule when things are rounding out. It won’t be quite like when I was on the beat, but it’ll be close.
To account for this, we’ll begin selling baseball gift subscriptions next week, aimed at Pirates fans looking to join our site at just the right time where they can have their favorite team covered front to finish through our one-year plan. A custom baseball-style card will be sent to all gift recipients, and we’ll be sure, as with all subscribers, that they get all the help they need using the site and the app.
Really looking forward to our first full baseball season here. The more the merrier.
• The app count: 4,142 downloads from Apple for iPhone/iPad platforms, 1,606 downloads from Google for Android platforms. Growing by the day, too. Oh, and if you haven’t updated your app to the 1.1 version, please do so. Here’s how.
Everything related to the app, of course, is free to subscribers.
• App notifications, you might have noticed remain hit and miss. There’s no real pattern to this, and there’s nothing amiss on your end. It’s being fixed.
• It wouldn’t be Saturday without a reminder that general gift subscriptions are available all year round, not just for the holidays. Click the big, happy box below:
• If you can’t figure something out related to our site or app, please check our Support and App Support pages. About 99 percent of the questions we get can be answered right there. But if your issue isn’t there, email us at [email protected]
• As of this writing at 10 p.m. Friday, we’re at 7,923 subscriptions. We’re 6 1/2 months old, and our stated goal for the first full year was 10,000.
• I’m flying out to Vancouver at noon Saturday, then home the next day.
• Thank you so much for reading and for your support.