There was a fantastic turnout this year, which went above and beyond last years attendance.  Our booth was so busy, we had little time to spend visiting other industry friends during the tradeshow times. 

We ran a drawing this year for a free kiosk.  Fort Lee Bowling Center was the winner, which was great to see one of our many military customers win.  They’re very excited to put this in and get their customers using the new kiosk.

Our industry partners appeared to be very busy as well.  We hope they were successful in signing on new business as well.  As always, if a center is looking for a new or updating scoring equipment, be sure to check out our industry partner page for a list of certified and non-certified partners.  If you’re not sure, feel free to contact us.  Our practice is not to recommend one system over another, however we certainly can assist regarding the integration of our products with the scoring systems you may be looking at.

Switch was a newcomer this year to Bowl Expo.  Another great scoring system out of Italy, it was great to see them at the show. 

Steltronic showed their next generation scoring system “Focus” which looks exciting.  Steltronic customers (current / future) can now purchase the new Photostrike Kiosk from them which is now integrates their unique reservation system with our kiosk software enabling you to get more features for your investment as well as minimize hardware.

One of Brunswick’s new features was their new Internet reservation system.  West Seattle Bowl became the first US center to implement the new system.

QubicaAMF showed off their new Conqueror Pro and Conqueror Universal systems.  If your center has legacy scoring, including BOSS, you should contact your QubicaAMF sales representative regarding upgrades. The new system integrates well with our league and tournament products.

Of course, those with legacy Brunswick systems may want to check out Purrfect Desk as a solution for legacy Brunswick equipment.

Next year, Bowl Expo will be in Orlando, Florida.  Be sure to make plans to go.

According to BPAA, the booths have sold out and all of the rooms in three hotels that were reserved by BPAA have sold out.  So if you’re making last minute plans, be sure to check some of the neighboring hotels. This year, the host location is the Mandelay Hotel and Casino.  

Something new this year….  We’re giving away a free kiosk to a lucky center. This is valued at over $5000.00.  Simply stop by our booth and enter your center.  The drawing will be at the end of the Thursday’s exhbiting hours. 

Bowl Expo is a great opportunity to see different manufacturers and pick up some great specials.  There are usually many great ideas there at the exhibit.  Also along with this is some great seminars relating to your business of bowling.

TNBA - The National Bowling Association, according to their website, organized in August 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, for the express purpose of encouraging Blacks to develop their skills in the game of Ten Pins. Originally known as the “National Negro Bowling Association” the organization was necessary due to ABC and WIBC restricted non-Caucasians from membership. As the membership grew to include a large number of Asians, Hispanics and people of color other than Black, the organization was renamed in 1944.  The organization was key in challenging ABC and WIBC for equality in the sport, to which in 1950, the non-Caucasian clauses were removed from ABC and WIBC constitutions. While a large percentage of TNBA’s membership is Black, the organization is open to all.

JANBA / JACL – The Japanese American Bowling Association is an organization that was formed for encouraging Americans of Japanese decent to hone their skills for the sport of bowling.  The Japanese American Citizens League has been around since 1929 and also found bowling as one if its organized sports.  In 1974, the National Advisory Board on Bowling voted to break away to form JANBA. Aside from leagues, JANBA hosts an annual tournament.

MAMBO – The Mexican-American Bowling Organization is an organization that also has an annual tournament and caters to Americans of Mexican descent.

ABBA – American Blind Bowling Association was formed in the 1940’s to enable blind and visually impaired youths and adults to bowl alongside sighted friends and family.

IGBO – International Gay Bowling Organization was formed in 1980 to provide a opportunity for organized league and tournament play in a completely non-discriminate manner.

There are several more organizations out there that I’ll follow up on in a later post.  With all of the mentioned organizations, they provide an opportunity to have an alternate means of organization within the sport of bowling as well as complementary with USBC as many leagues are “dual citizen” leagues.

He predicts the continued erosion of a membership that has been in decline for 25 years but doesn’t stress about it, saying the USBC still needs to “thin the herd.” The organization has 2.5 million members and the number eventually could fall below 1 million, Dalkin said.

This is quite an interesting statement to say the least, if this is indeed what the USBC’s Chief Executive Officer truly believes.  The article does continue on explaining that USBC will be stressing the competitive side of the sport instead of the recreational side.

“We’ve in essence convinced the general population it’s a great, fun game. And it is,” he said. “But in doing so, we’ve totally negated the athletic skills necessary to be a top-level bowler. It’s a conundrum we have.” 

Over the past few years, the ABC and WIBC organizations created the Sports league program, which carried forward with the merger to USBC.  In the middle of the 2006/2007 bowling season, USBC’s Sports program introduced the PBA Experience, which further gives the challenge of bowling on conditions that the professionals are shooting.  This has been a positive move towards bringing up the skills and caliber of competitive bowling.

If the casual bowlers are left to other pastures, who’s going to lead them?  The BPAA, who focuses on the centers or some other organization, may need to look at creating a bowling organization or program that caters to the casual bowler.  Perhaps building up the fun in the sport and expanding to support no-tap casual leagues would be a good idea as well.  

The one solid fact is membership has been declining.  What are the reasons, though?  Is it the perceived value of the membership charged each year declining?  This year, the USBC recently dropped its 299/298 awards and are making them part of the 11-in-a-row award, although recipients can purchase rings.  The range of lower average awards is good, but can it be made better.

Is there any work being done by the center or equally important, the league secretary, working at building up their leagues?  Or does the league secretary just show up at the counter and ask “so… who’s bowling the league this year?”  While many youth are working, instead of bowling, many just ignored as nuisances instead of being cultivated to become your next generation cash revenue. 

How about prices of lineage? Lineage has gone up over the years.  That’s a fact.  Then again, electricity, labor, parts, maintenance, taxes, insurance and many other things have greatly increased.  So you can’t blame the centers for raising their lineages.  With a conversation with a few proprietors, the high costs involved with the special needs of setting up the shots needed for the PBA Experience / Sports leagues has caused the centers to give the league a choice.  Pay more for lineage for the above and beyond TLC required… or don’t certify as that type of league.

There are a lot of opportunities for bowlers who enjoy bowling for its casual nature, while still providing a competitive atmosphere.  But is USBC devotes the majority of its efforts to the elite bowlers, it will definitely open up a lot of greener pastures. 

Well…  Unfortunately technology is progressing and along with that, many software companies are now faced with decisions on trying to spend resources on keeping the applications workable on older systems or cut them loose and make things easier to develop new features with more freedom.

Microsoft, in 2005, finally phased out all support, security updates and patches and the majority of technical documentation for Windows NT, which was primarily used in the corporate world.  This was long replaced by Windows 2000, which was replaced by Windows XP Pro.   Now, the current major operating system for businesses is Windows Vista Business.

In 2006, Microsoft finally threw out Windows 98 out with the bath water as well as Windows Me (to which many in the support fields nicknamed Multiple Exception fault).  Windows 98 and Me were geared more towards regular individuals and home users.  While Windows 2000 was a choice, Windows XP Home edition became the logical replacement for Windows 98/Me.   Now with Vista out, you have several choices to choose from.

One of the biggest improvements with XP and Vista is the core is built on a very solid foundation that is universal.  Windows 98/Me had a major different core than Windows Windows NT and Windows 2000.  Whats this mean to the average Joe?  Reliability and more applications that are compatible.

Should you go run out and buy Windows Vista?  No.  You don’t need to shirk away from Windows Vista either, but Windows XP should be the bare minimum you are using at this point.

With new viruses coming out and the imfamous loads of security holes found daily in prior Windows versions, Microsoft essentially is now devoting time to patching up XP and the new Vista, to which there are many fewer “holes” (at least so far).

Some of the technology used now by software developers have now phased out Windows 98, Me and NT.  Windows Installer technology, which has become the leading technology used to install software on computers has come out with newer versions, at the expense of incompatability with older systems.  Internet Explorer technology now is at version 7.0, which can only go so far back.  .NET technology programs now are using version 2.0 or 3.0, which can not be installed on older Windows.

Speed of computers have changed so much now that you can easily go out and spend a small amount on a new computer that may have last years technology that is good enough. 

 Hows this relate to CDE Software products?  For the past couple years the tools and code design of our products allowed us to install and operate close enough to the intended design.  While we don’t support the older operating systems, it may work.  As new products roll out, support for Windows installations prior to Windows 2000 will be discontinued.  We’ve finally reached a point where we can no longer hold back features just for the few (less than 1% of our survey base that used Windows 98 or Me).

If you are an individual league secretary, then its time to go shopping.  If you are a bowling center with an automatic scoring system, you should contact your scoring company and research options in obtaining another networked computer with XP Pro or Vista Business on it.  In most situations, if the scoring system computer that the CDE products are on (or other modern Windows applications) can not be upgraded to Windows 2000 or newer, then usually they can stay as they are and you just network a new computer in.

Web 2.0 is somthing that came about after the Dot-Com bust in 2001.  To one point, its used as a “cool term” for marketing.  In other cases, its used to earmark technology shifts from early generation web development to new generation development.

Using an example from Tim O’Reilly :

• Web 1.0 had Double-Click for advertising, which was primarily banner ads.  Web 2.0 is more like Google’s Adsense.
• Web 1.0 used download technology from Akamai. Web 2.0 uses BitTorrent.
• Web 1.0 referred a lot to Britannica Online.  Web 2.0 uses Wikipedia.
• Web 1.0 focused on everyone having personal websites.  Web 2.0 focuses on individuals having blogs (online “diaries”, such as what your reading here).
• Web 1.0 focused on advertising as being based on the number of pages viewd.  Web 2.0 focuses on the cost per click.
• Web 1.0 had Netscape as the major standard for search engines.  Google is Web 2.0’s answer.

Some of the technologies in browsers have changed.  One is using a term called AJAX.  In the past, when you were going to select an item, such as a car manufacturer, it would reload the page with the list of car models.  When selecting the car model, the page would refresh and show further specifics on the model.  With AJAX technology, you can cleanly (no pun intended) update the information without reloading the page.  The magic behind the scenes allows you as the customer see things seemlessly as if the page was custom programmed for you out of the box.

Some of these technologies require updated browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6 or 7 or Mozilla’s Firefox 1.5.   Depending on your operating system, you may or may not need to upgrade your operating system or computer to use these browsers. 

Web 2.0, however, shouldn’t be confused with Internet2, which will eventually speed things up much further on the Internet as well as change to IPv6 technology.  For those who have no idea what IPv6 is, the concept is simple.  Currently, networking and the Internet uses what is called an IP address.   Think of this as a personal phone number that instead of 206.555.5555 it is in the form of 255.255.255.255  Each group of numbers seperated by the decimal point can be 0 to 255.  Essentially each computer or network device is given a unique number either “permanently” or “temporary”.  There are various rules that dictate groups of these addresses that are set asside for private internal network use and some that are public, so that they can be found, such as a website, such as this. 

The problem now, is that with the boom of the Internet… we’re starting to run out of these “phone numbers”, to which there can be a maximum of about 4.3 billion.  There has been different technology improvements to help with this, but we’re getting close to having to make a change.  IPv6 is simply a change in how the phone number is.  Instead of only numbers, it also adds the letters A through F (this is called Hexadecimal, by the way).  Instead of decimal numbers, it uses a colon.  Instead of 4 groups, it has 8.  Instead of 4.3 billion as the max, you have about 340 billion billion billion billion combinations.   To put it in perspective, there are approximately 6.5 billion people alive today.

What would this look like in your web browser?  For the most part, browsers always use the pretty name to represent this “phone number”.   When you go to www.google.com, there is a lookup process (think of looking in a big big phone book off in never land) that says Google is currently at this phone number.  This process is called DNS lookup.  The whole idea is that people can easily remember names, versus phone numbers. 

If I knew what Google’s phone number was, I could go to my browser and go http://127.0.0.1  (this will go to your computer, but if it was Google’s number, it would go to it).    With Internet2 and IPv6, you would go to http://[2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7344]/      Thankfully, though, we as simple folks who use the Internet, will never have to take memory pills to have to remember such a long thing because of DNS.

It’s quite amazing watching the Internet technologies continue to grow.  While my examples do leave out a lot of detail, I wanted to try and convey the jist of things.

First off, its important that both you as the center and the secretaries are using the most recent major version of BLS.  Each year, around August, we release a new major version of BLS that integrates various new features, improvements and support for that season’s USBC, CTF and TNBA rules, membership applications, certification application and award detection and printing.  Whenever possible, make sure that the program has been updated to the most recent minor version (update) available as well, so that you program has any issues or changes resolved since the program was released.

The center will normally have the A/S Edition (automatic scoring) of the software, whereas secretaries will have either the Standard or Pro editions.  The data from the same major version of BLS can go between these three editions very easily and there is no need for secretaries to purchase the A/S edition to interact with the center.

To exchange data from one location, to the other involves a simple process.  From the origin computer (secretary) use the backup league feature.  Save the backup onto removable media, such as a floppy disk or USB memory device.  On the destination computer (center), do the opposite and use the restore league feature.

This whole process can be done in reverse if the center has a league and you want to give it to the secretary.

A couple things to keep in mind.  If you are just making this a “one way” trip, then generally, thats all there is to it.  But if you plan on making a round trip, such as importing scores from the scoring system and then bringing that back to the secretary, then you need to “play ball”.  What do I mean by that?  When you hand the ball off, which in this case is the center, then the secretary should not make any further changes to the league, or they will become lost when the league is restored back from the center.  Normally this isn’t a problem, but if you have some last minute financials to enter, then you need to hold off until the league comes back.

Sun Microsystems, who is the main company behind the Java computer language, has backed a product called Open Office, which is… FREE.   It is very robust and continues to get code contributions from Sun and others. 

Visit OpenOffice.org and download the software.

I’m like many who miss the old days of turning on ABC in the afternoon to watch greats, such as Earl Anthony to Wayne Webb.  I remember watching the astonishing match, to which forever created the monicker “the Ballard board”. 

One of the things I’ve been noticing, when flipping channels and checking out ESPN or ESPN2 is the amount of attention and coverage to this big sport…..   Poker???  I even noticed that ESPN dedicates a category link to the “sport” of poker as well in the “other sports” category.

I can appreciate a good game of cards.  I can recognize the skill in bluffing and the mastery of knowing when and how to use it.  I can pretty much apreciate everything it has…. except the fact of it being called a sport.  Theres a good article on USA Today that discusses this.  Read it and see what you think.  If poker is a sport and brings that much attenction to ESPN, why not Go Fish?

Well.  What’s my beef?  Well…  considering that bowling is the sport that is what ESPN is supporting through its being the home of televised bowling, where is the category link to bowling?  I certainly do not expect it to be front page category, but certainly it merits listing as a category, don’t you think? 

While your at it, what about curling?

cnet recently posted a great article talking about the importance of remote support at http://tinyurl.com/2qc8a8

We have found this tool to be really usefull when sometimes things can not be duplicated or hammered out over the phone.