I spent a few days putting together a couple small services which highlight some of the capabilities provided by the TicketStumbler API. These were services we wanted to offer anyway, so we figured it’d be cool to show off the API by releasing them both under the MIT License rather than rolling them directly into TS.

Seats Tweets

The first app is Seats Tweets. This app is quite simple, in fact it doesn’t have a “backend” whatsoever, just some HTML, CSS, and a small Python script. Simply put, it sends out tweets about upcoming sports games (MLB, NBA, and NHL currently) and ticket pricing, it then links back to TS (imagine that!) where you can get tickets. It’s a really simple and non-intrusive way to keep up to date with who’s playing around you, and how cheaply you can see ‘em.

Inboxtix

The second app is Inboxtix. This fills a gap left by Seats Tweets in that it allows you to subscribe (via e-mail) to any team, artist, performer, sport [...] that you want. Again, it is rather simple: sign up and it’ll send you e-mails with ticket data for upcoming games, performances, etc.

Freedom!

As I said, we’ve made both these apps completely free to alter and reuse to your heart’s content. Both are available via my github page which, in time, I hope to add even more useful software to. I’ve been lax in my Open Source duties this past year and I hope to eventually have time to rectify that. For now, this will have to suffice. Even if you don’t have a use for the source, it’s still a good opportunity to insult my code

All feedback regarding these can be sent to api [at] ticketstumbler [dot] com. Let us know what else you want from these apps!

Behold! Now venue pages allow you to easily get directions and find the nearest watering hole before games. Venue pages also offer the ability see where the closest restaurants, coffee shops, gas stations and even parking lots are located. With Flickr’s help you can see what the venue looks like before getting there.

We’re still thinking of additional features and information to add, so please leave a comment if you have any suggestions.

A new feature we started rolling out over the weekend is Seat View. Basically, it lets you get an idea of the view you’ll have from a given seat. This feature will only be available for sporting events and will be rolled out gradually across all sports. Currently, almost all NHL games have this feature.

On supported events, you will see a little camera icon () next to seat sections. All you have to do to hover your mouse over the camera and an image will be shown to you. Not all sections will have images due to a lack of strict naming conventions on the part of ticket resellers, but most will and we’re always working to improve accuracy so please report issues!

Finally, a quick screenshot:

Update: After a very long night, NBA seat views are up as well:
http://sports.ticketstumbler.com/new-york-knicks/2009-4-15/new-jersey-nets-at-new-york-knicks-12787/

Update 2: MLB seat views are now up!

Today I am incredibly excited to get yet another task off of my long list announce a new feature: The initial launch of user accounts! Admittedly, the feature list is a bit sparse (check out the registration page for a list), but we have BIG plans for this feature and I’d like to go over the initial 2.5 we’re offering right now:

Alert Management

If you create a ticket alert whilst logged into the site, that alert will be associated with your user account. You may then visit your alerts dashboard to delete or edit said alerts. How is this useful? Well, if you decide you want to change something about an alert you can do it from that page rather than having to create a whole new one. Time is money, so we’re saving you money here! Also, you can delete them. And they fade off the page, like a ghost. OOoooohh! That’s my best ghost impression, so f– moving on!

Custom Locations

Your location dashboard allows you to add and delete custom locations. Add a single location to override the automated location we pick for you when showing upcoming events. Add multiple locations, and choose between them when visiting the “upcoming” pages. We plan to make these locations more useful in the future, but for now they should primarily be useful for those of you who’s locations are not determined properly (maybe like the person who sent us feedback e-mail that said, simply, “IT NOT WORK FOR ME.” We wish it would have worked. For you.)

Additionally, the location dashboard provides convenient links to search for and see upcoming events around your chosen areas. Money saved, yet again!

Recommendations

We are psyched to start providing custom recommendations for events you may enjoy, hopefully as frighteningly accurate as Amazon, but first we need to collect data on your event-going habits. By creating an account, logging in, and using the site as you normally would, you will be helping us collect the data necessary to give you recommendations in the near future. Don’t worry – we aren’t going to share your viewing habits with anyone, unless you want us to!

Well, that’s all for now boys and girls. Until next time, don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cooooooold out there today!

Things have been a bit crazy around here recently, so I apologize for the late update. This week, we have a couple of minor additions for you. Firstly, select ticket providers’ listings are now updated in realtime. This means we go out and get fresh listings for them whenever you load a listings page. This process gives more up-to-date information at the expense of slightly increased load times.

Secondly, we now have “venue pages” which, for the moment, simply supply a list of events which are happening at the venue. You can find links to these pages on the homepage, search results, and other places where events are listed. Just click on the venue name (it’s underlined!) and you’ll be sent to the venue’s page. In the future we will be updating these pages with more information, such as address and driving directions.

Finally, we’ve had to disabled the new interactive venue maps for now. Hopefully we will be able to go into why in the future (as well as re-enable them), but for now I will only say that disabling them highly irritated us and was not done as a result of any issue on our end. In any case, we hope this doesn’t adversely affect you finding tickets through the site in the future.