Version: 2008

April 11, 2005 9:55 AM PDT

Red Sox fan site has fresh pitch

  • 4 comments
Related Stories

Sox comeback takes Web by storm

October 21, 2004
To Boston Red Sox fans, he's known as the "RemDawg."

Jerry Remy is a former all-star second baseman who played for the Sox and Angels in the '70s and early '80s. He's better known to a younger generation of fans as the color commentator on Red Sox television broadcasts. Now his Web site, the Remy Report, has become the latest showcase for open-source software.

The Remy Report, which has 50,000 registered die-hard Sox fans, hosts chats with Red Sox luminaries such as pitcher Curt Schilling, has baseball news and sells merchandise. On Monday--opening day for the Red Sox at Fenway Park--the Remy Report relaunched with a new look.

The company that put the Web site together, Back Bay Technologies, rebuilt the Remy Report entirely out of open-source components.

The reason is cost, said Marc Maselli, CEO of Back Bay. Remy's business partner, John O'Rourke, gave the company a tight budget and a long list of desired features.

"O'Rourke asked for the world in terms of functionality. We knew right away, it had to be Microsoft or open source," Maselli said.

Back Bay Technologies figured it could buy the full suite of Microsoft development products and an x86 server for about $10,000. But even that was too much.

"All of the budget had to go to service work, not software licenses," Maselli said.

The company used the JBoss application server, MySQL database, Eclipse development tool and the Apache Struts programming framework. Performance should not be an issue for the Remy Report, Maselli said. If it needs to, Back Bay Technologies can add more memory to its servers to accommodate spikes in traffic, he added.

The company designed the site to be easy to use, because Remy and O'Rourke are the only people responsible for maintaining it. Apparently, both are more interested in sports business than in tinkering with computers.

In a recent broadcast, Remy noted that he recently acquired an Apple iPod. But he admitted he hasn't figured out how to download songs yet.

See more CNET content tagged:
open-source software, open source, server, Microsoft Corp.

Add a Comment (Log in or register) (4 Comments)
  • prev
  • 1
  • next
why is this news?
by April 11, 2005 12:10 PM PDT
There are thousands of open-source sites just like this, so I'm not sure what's so special about remy. I helped develop chicagomixer.com which is built on Tomcat, MySQL, and Struts using NetBeans, and the site supports tens of thousands of users. So what's the big deal?
Reply to this comment
cos...
by Scott W April 12, 2005 7:21 AM PDT
OSS ROCKS!!!!
why is this news?
by April 11, 2005 12:10 PM PDT
There are thousands of open-source sites just like this, so I'm not sure what's so special about remy. I helped develop chicagomixer.com which is built on Tomcat, MySQL, and Struts using NetBeans, and the site supports tens of thousands of users. So what's the big deal?
Reply to this comment
cos...
by Scott W April 12, 2005 7:21 AM PDT
OSS ROCKS!!!!
(4 Comments)
  • prev
  • 1
  • next
advertisement

Latest tech news headlines

RSS Feeds

Add headlines from CNET News to your homepage or feedreader.

More feeds available in our RSS feed index.

Markets

Market news, charts, SEC filings, and more

Related quotes

Dow Jones Industrials (0.00%) 0.00 10,428.05
S&P 500 (0.00%) 0.00 1,115.10
NASDAQ (0.00%) 0.00 2,269.15
CNET TECH (0.00%) 0.00 1,646.41
  Symbol Lookup
advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right