Have Ball - Will Travel.

If you've ever wished that GPS could find a basketball court with a decent run, your dreams have now been realized. Seemingly the times you've trekked down to the local blacktop only to find no one there, have passed us by. Based out of Philadelphia, the folks at No Fouls.com have created an online community/interface to network basketball courts and the players that play on them. In their own words "No Fouls is a communication tool intended to accomplish one thing: Get other ballers to the court when you wanna play."

With an easy to use Google mapping system, you just type in your zip code (yes, it blows for everyone else internationally), populating the map with all nearby courts. If a court you know of isn't listed, you can easily add it to the database. What's more, you can get/give feedback on the quality of the court, competition, etc. and challenge other users to games.

Really a great idea, and it would appear an effective one, but using the Google Earth satellite system, it would only make sense for their database to be more inclusive. No Fouls is exciting, however the network will only be as good as how active people are updating and maintaining information, which of course remains to be seen. It makes the entire streetball experience easier, but it eliminates the excitement of discovering a court for the first time, and taking the locals to school on their home turf.

Thanks to Safari, for having a nose for the action.