Winner Of Launch 2005 And Launch 2005 AOP Awards
Friday saw me at the London Hilton Hotel on Park Lane attending the 2005 AOP Awards.
Two websites I have been working on were nominated for awards, and they both won!
Firstly, the winner of the award for Innovation 2005 went to the Q Glastonbury Blog.
This was a site we put together to contain all our coverage of 2005's Glastonbury Festival. The site editors didn't want to lug around laptops or worry about trying to get an internet connection, so we worked with Nokia and we did it all using their Lifeblog product. Regular readers of this website will know my enthusiasm for this product, and it proved it's worth when the rains came and knocked out everyone else's coverage. Q was able to keep blogging and keep the site fresh as it happened.
Here's what they said about it...
By avoiding 'traditional' festival coverage, such as reviews and photos of artists on stage, the Q Glastonbury Blog became an evolving record of the colourful happenings the team encountered at the event, including cabaret, circus performers and hundreds of stalls. By offering uniquely personal and exclusive coverage, the blgo communicated with users on their own terms, but with the added element of backstage access.
The judges commented...
Q4Music.com/blogs are an innovation for the present, capturing content from the site's own audience. In a busy category, the service has surpassed its competitors and uses technology to its limits to add value for a dedicated community.
We were up against other worthy contenders such as the BBC's News Player, Blinx, Ad Genie, The Guardian's blog, The Sun's Video News, The Scotsma and VNUnet.com.
Our second triumph was Whatson.com's winning of the Lauch 2005 Award.
WhatsOn.com is a bit of a baby of mine, and one site where I was able to learn a lot of new technologies, as well as discovering offic politics, to build it.
Here's what they said about it...
WhatsOn.com provides a solution for the broadband generation that looks for content online that they may have previously sourced elsewhere. The site offers live streams for Emap radio stations such as Kerrang, Kiss, Smash Hits and Mojo, and provides gems of content, including: hour-long interviews and documentaries with some of the world's biggest artists; 'back-stage' features, download charts and an "Also-Playing' feature which sources content from Emap's extensive cross-media platforms. Since its launch in June 2005 the site has attracted an impressive 1.2million users, a figure which is steadily increasing.
The judges commented...
WhatsOn.com brings together a diverse range of online content extremely well. The site offers creative, relevant and easy to use material for the iPod generation, which is used to accessing an exlectic mix of music.
We beat BSkyB, CNET, Magicalia and The Scotsman to win this award.
All in all, it was a really good night. We're a small team, and it's great to see our hard work recognised by the industry, and better to win against some of the really big names out there like the BBC.