codegent

We are ecstatically pleased to be able to announce that we will be developing the lead sales and marketing tool for the restaurant and bar at the top of the world famous 30 St Mary Axe building AKA The Gherkin!

We haven't exactly set an easy stall out for ourselves with our design solution as we intend to develop a truly immersive web experience that will simply rock your world! More details in due course...

Obviously this has required many codegent team trips to the top of the tower, usually around lunch time or at the end of the day... drink o'clock. Long may our on-site "Rekkies" continue and our client's fantastic hospitality last :)

Watch this space people!

Codegent's designs for the British Library's Sacred Exhibition (their main exhibition for 2007) has won an award for Outstanding Achievement in Website Development. This honour was bestowed on us by the Web Marketing Association, which was very nice of them.

To find out more, you can read our Case Study or visit the Web Marketing Association's site.

The digital industry's professional body, BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) held its AGM last week and elected none other than Codegent's David Hart to its Executive Committee.

BIMA strives to develop an internationally competitive new media industry in Britain. David is keen to foster more collaboration within the industry to encourage best practice as well as looking at ways to help smaller, growing companies in the sector.

www.bima.co.uk

We had to keep our mouths shut until after the event, but our very own David Hart was among the illustrious panel of judges for this year's British Academy of Film and Television Awards. David sat on the "Interactive Innovation - Service/Platform" category.

Whilst the calibre of the entries was really high, we're delighted that the BBC iPlayer picked up the award on the night.

Congratulations to Tony Ageh, Anthony Rose and Ian Hunter (pictured above).

BAFTA Televison Craft Winners 2008

It hardly seems any time at all since we were toasting our third birthday but another year has past.

Business folklore suggests that 3 solvent years proves you have a viable model and a market for what you do. Beyond that its all about what impact you make on your industry.

With that in mind, our objectives over the last year were to continue to strengthen the team with some senior hires, build our own brand and work with ambitious clients who want to push the boundaries in their online campaigns. It is all part of our ultimate ambition to become an aspirational agency.

It's a tough goal and we will keep on working towards that but picking up quality hires like Matt (creative director), Jenny (project manager) and Aidan (web dev guru) to name a few, add a lot to our constantly improving team. Clients such as the V&A, Skechers, O2, BBC, CBS Outdoor and Cartoon Network certainly help the portfolio section stand out as well. Sadly we can't even mention a few of our other biggies :(

Codegent also seems to be getting loads of press which has been a fantastic boost to HR and new biz. It's funny as I don't think any of us are exactly PR darlings, but long may it continue!

So anyway, an enormous thank you must go out to all of our great clients, friends in the industry (Susie at NMA - you're a star!) and of course, our wonderful staff.

Better get back to work now, we have even bigger plans for year 5 :)

Boomerang (part of the Cartoon Network) asked us to create a site to promote the new series of two of their children's TV shows: 'My Spy Family' and 'Life with Derek'.

In response Codegent designed and built Ask the Cast (www.askthecast.co.uk). The idea was to get children to engage with the characters by allowing them to upload videos of themselves posing questions to the characters in the shows.

Using our FilePipes system, which allows users to easily upload videos either from a webcam or from their phones or videocam and then encodes to flash on the fly, children can record themsleves asking the question and submit it to the site.

Codegent has a wealth of experience working with user-generated content and young people. For Boomerang, we introduced a parental consent stage to uploading the video. Users can rate videos but cannot write comments.

The site has only just been launched and video questions are appearing on the site as they are approved by the Boomerang team.  Once the best questions have been answered, the TV characters will answer them online and on the TV shows.

This is a great example of online and broadcast content working together to create a fun and engaging experience for the audience.

Most of the industry are predicting a breakout year for the mobile web in 2008.

For a long time, the mobile web has been unpredictable, costly and low on user take-up. The majority of campaigns I have previously worked on with any serious mobile element have just scraped the surface, tapping into popular SMS and MMS services.

So what is encouraging us to use our mobiles online?

Apple's iPhone, released in late 2007, has made mobiles very sexy again.

If you haven't heard of it (welcome back to Earth, the wall is down and the cold war is over) the iPhone is a revolutionary device that unites your calls, contacts, email, music, camera, web browser etc in a dynamic, touch-screen, curvy-edged box.... and regular people are using it in droves!

For many reasons it would be wrong to confuse the iPhone with most mobile devices, especially if you are considering building a mobile site, but it has finally united the idea of phone and web working together properly.

It's not just the technology that has pushed us. Major websites, search engines and social networks such as YouTube, Flickr and Facebook have placed mobile services at their core, tempting unsuspecting users into an ever-connected virtual world.

Location Based Services

We have been using Google Maps and Sat-Navs for a while. It makes perfect sense to be applying all this thinking to your mobile. Needless to say the iPhone already does a lot but what about the rest?

In 2007 Nokia acquired a mobile advertising firm and a leading navigation system company. It isn't hard to see where they see things going. The benefit to marketers is easily delivered, relevant, geographically contextual content to end users.

Open Platforms for Applications

It's not all about browsing! 2007 really brought home the possibility of the web app, widget, mashup etc. Vista followed the Mac's lead and introduced desktop feeds for your local weather, football scores, status updates (the list goes on forever) and we all became RSS junkies. Adobe launched AIR and iGoogle followed suit so even your default homepage can tell you everything about anything you want.

But what about the mobile phone? Geeks have been hacking the operating systems on their phones for years but there have been no open standards available for developers to really use the core features of a physical handset. Until now!

The Open Handset Alliance Project launched Android, an open, free mobile platform which is being supported by some heavy companies such as Google, Motorola, LG, Samsung and T-Mobile to name a few. Expect that to be supported as standard in most future handsets.

Apple decided to open up the iPhone Developer SDK last week so we can look to develop intelligent bespoke apps that can fully interact with the handset soon!

Mobile Web Standards

There has been a degree of convergence in web standards for mobile. XHTML-MP has become the default industry-supported language for the mobile web. Page load and the multitude of various screen sizes still need to be taken into account when designing but at least the code is behaving itself!

Codegent Mobile

So we thought after all that talking we should show you something. We have built a simple version of our own site for your viewing pleasure.
www.codegent.com/mobile/

Or you can navigate to it using your mobile barcode scanner on the funky looking graphic below. You will see these dotted around everywhere soon. The Japanese have been using them on outdoor advertising, business cards, print ads etc. for years. But don't feel too left behind, they also have robotic dogs that clean their flats whilst they micro-sleep :)

Geek out.

When it comes to opinions, we've got plenty! And none so more than our creative director,  Mr. Matthew Jukes :)

Today New Media Age have published his diatribe sorry, whitepaper, on the declining numbers of facebook and the future of the social web. It's a genuinely interesting read and will certainly get you thinking, you can download it here.

We're pleased to have won some work with the V&A. More details to come, but we're going to be using some funky technology to provide an interactive feature that we haven't seen anyone else do yet. Exciting stuff!

Watch this space....

Barcamp came to Thailand for the first time on Saturday. As codegent was one of the main sponsors (along with a couple of lesser knowns - Google & Microsoft) Matt and I felt it our duty to come out to Bangkok and join the fun.

Topics ranged from the seriously geeky (the virtues of streamlined ssh) to the seriously socialist (how Open Source can empower the common man) but in between we had some great discussions about RESTful web apps, PHP Frameworks and the most enthusiatic man on the planet eulogising about Twitter. There was even room to talk about online adult video.

The event was a huge success and undoubtedly Barcamp Bangkok II will follow next year. It's just cool to meet the people from around the globe who are as excited about this whole 'web thing' as we are.