[CQ-Contest] The Next BIG Step in contesting

[Doug Smith W9WI]

It looks to me like we're talking about more than one thing here.  What
do we want?

- Real-time scoring?
- Instant final results? [1]
- More detailed real-time information?
  (do you want to know I have 348 QSOs in 35 sections, or do you want 
   to know my last QSO sent "507 Q K4TCG 98 TN"?)

You have to define what output you want before you start setting
standards & writing software...

Since someone's going to ask...  How detailed can we get before someone
decides to cheat?  Do we need to worry about it?  (if I post that my
last QSO sent "507 Q K4TCG 98 TN", is someone who worked K4TCG but
didn't get their check going to do a Google search on K4TCG & fill in
their missing info?  OTOH, is it practical to do so?!)

TRLog has provisions for automatically copying the log to a separate
file every n QSOs.  I've hacked together a Perl script that will read
the backup & write a HTML file showing my score, rate, recent mults &
band changes, and the calls of the last ten stations worked.  For
curiousity's sake I'll run it during phone SS.[0]  It'll be on
http://www.w9wi.com/articles/realtime.html .  (there's a test page on
that URL right now, left over from testing this morning)  

It doesn't prove a whole lot, other than that existing off-the-shelf
contesting software can be used with simple add-ins [2] to provide
useful real-time information to the Web.  

I think this is an exciting idea.  We just have to come to a consensus
about which exciting idea it is!  
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[0] Many of you know how I feel about domestic phone contests.  This
will not be a high-rate operation!

[1] I wonder whether this is within the current means of the contesting
community?  Checking one log at a time is well within the capacity of
modern computers.  Checking *ALL* the logs at the same time is a much
bigger task!

[2] I wrote this in about an hour, and I'm a Novice Class programmer...
-- 
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN  EM66
http://www.w9wi.com