There was just a huge local high school football game. Our high school which has been on a tear not only this season but the fast few years (which is definitely a change in trend) were going up against the local private school powerhouse which consistently ranks well in all high school sports and typically rolls over the local high schools. This match up was genuinely up for grabs so needless to say, they move the venue to the local community college field and it was sold out. I wasn\’t able to go to the game as we had planned to go out to dinner with some friends but I still wanted to know how it turned out as soon as possible. There\’s the rub. Outside of getting an update from someone at the game, how would I track this down. This is where the Zipper comes into play for local sports news by bringing fast breaking local sports news directly to your smart phone in real time. I didn\’t have Zipper.

I first went to the high school website where I found the basic schedule \”This School plays That School at 7pm at this location\”. It was 11pm at night so the game far over. The local public high school did not update their website so that didn\’t help me much. I looked at the local newspaper and even though the game was big for the area (we don\’t have much going on here), they still hadn\’t updated the info. The small local newspapers probably have a time constraint as the their staff\’s have been cut relentlessly over the last few years with the internet encroaching on their advertising budgets. I know it would be in tomorrow\’s newspaper print edition but I didn\’t want to wait till then. In the world of instant-everything online, why should I have to wait till morning to find something out now about local sports news. My point exactly. The Zipper local news app was literally made for situations like this one. Now let\’s rerun this frustrating situation above in light of the new Zipper to see how I might have been spared all that nonsense.

It still 11pm and I just got back from my dinner. I want to find out who won the local football game so I don\’t sound too foolish when I see people tomorrow and there\’s also a part of me that wants to see the underdog finally give a little back to the local dominant team that practically recruits based on athletics. Okay…not practically. They do. No looking at government websites (sarcastic translation for local high school web) or waiting. I pull out the Zipper smart phone app for local news and local gossip. Since the game is such as a big deal, there\’s a good chance that related threads will be right there on the main screen since this is the primary spot for local news including local sports scores. The local news stories are ranked by freshness (how old), popularity (how active), and correctness (how confirmed). Based on the first two, the football game results will probably show up near the top until people are done talking about it.

Worse case, I run a quick search for the game results and a list of threads (there may be more than one) pops up. One even gives a play by play highlight history of the game which is pretty cool. I would never get that from the local paper. More importantly, I could get those updates as the occur in real time. Local sport scores have finally come into the internet era with ease of access via your smart phone. By the way, we lost 35-21 but the Zipper can only change so much of the world.

Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about local news and local gossip smart phone apps.