It’s a new year so time for another season of sports fixtures, all delivered directly to your calendar applications.

Over the last few years, you may have noticed I’ve been building quite a collection of sports-related calendar services which allow you to download or subscribe to certain sports fixtures throughout the year, making it easier to organise your social life. This year is no different.

6 Nations

The first sporting event of the year we’ll be embracing is the 6 Nations rugby competition between the Home Nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland), France and Italy. This all kicks off on Saturday 6th February 2010 between Ireland and Italy at Croke Park and continues through to Saturday 20th March 2010.

To make sure you don’t miss any fixtures, download or subscribe to the 6 Nations fixtures calendar. Not much has changed on the website since last year with regards to design or functionality but, if you have any ideas for improvements, don’t hesitate to send them through.

Formula 1

Just as the 6 Nations competition comes to an end, the Formula 1 season will be starting with the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir on Sunday 14th March 2010.

Working with the talented Andy Higgs, we’ve now updated the website inline with the new season and you’re now able to download or subscribe to the Formula 1 season calendar for 2010.

We’ve got a few improvements planned for the user interface later in the year but, to make sure you don’t miss any of the schedule, the calendar is readily available.

UEFA Champions League & Europa League

Last year, a team of us including Brian Suda - the inspiration behind all these calendar services - worked directly with UEFA on a dedicated solution for delivering the entire fixture schedule as downloadable UEFA calendar files, for both the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup (now know as the UEFA Europa League). Users were also able to access individual club calendars to focus specifically on a club of interest.

The original service was so well received, UEFA were keen to build on the service and offered us an opportunity to extend the functionality for the new season. Our proposal for Phase 2 was well received by the organisation and their Media & Technology department so we are now in full swing on the improved system architecture and additional functionality, scheduled for a three phase rollout over the next six months.

Everyone involved in the project is really excited about some of the upcoming functionality and, hopefully, the large user demographic will enjoy it as much as we will.

World Cup 2010

On the 11th June, the biggest football tournament in the World starts in South Africa - World Cup 2010.

With the huge success of the original World Cup KickOff - the first sports-based calendar service we built - we would have been foolish to ignore this opportunity.

Work has already began on the updated solution with Gareth Brown (from One Black Bear) working on the user interface while Brian and I continue to work on the development.

We’re also lining up an interesting partnership with London startup which should add some really special value to the user experience. It’s too early to say at this stage but, needless to say, it is going to be exciting.

We’re planning to launch this project for May 2010, giving you a month or so to plan your World Cup social calendar. If we can release it sooner, we certainly will but it’s better to be realistic than optimistic some times - best follow @worldcupko on Twitter for updates

The Formula One calendar commences in Sydney, Australia next week. If you already knew that, chances are you’ll be quite interested the latest addition to the KickOff series of sports calendar web apps…

F1 Calendar is a quick way to check Formula One race times and dates for the entire season, either on the website or directly from your own calendar application.

Similarly to the previous KickOff services (which include Six Nations Kickoff, Euro Kickoff and World Cup Kickoff), all the dates and times can be downloaded straight to Outlook, iCal or even your iPhone - basically any software or mobile device that can recognise the industry standard ICS file format.

Not only can you download the race times but - if you’re software or hardware allows - you can subscribe to the remote calendar file which will automatically update as and when any changes are made to the schedule.

F1 Calendar also introduced full support for world time zones, changing all the times to your local settings. It also remembers your recent selections so you can go straight to the upcoming times quickly and easily.

Not only that but we’ve also allowed a level of customisation to your calendars: you can even decide whether to include just the race times or the qualifying rounds as well.

Working with Andy Higgs this time round - an amazingly talented web designer & developer - we approached the project with a relatively simple design, targetting the typical demographic who are interested in Formula 1. By incorporating the existing grey and red image associated with racing, it established a familiar look for the intended audience.

Focussing on the core functionality as getting the data quickly and easily, the most prominent feature was the Download and Subscribe functionality. We didn’t want to isolate the users who just wanted an online reference though so the schedule list had to be present and simple to understand. Each event focussed on the actual race but the user could easily drill down to qualifying times by clicking on the event title.

It was great to collaborate with Andy on this project as it was the first time we had worked together since meeting at The Multipack several years ago. Andy was a joy to work with, showing huge enthusiasm for the topic and real initiative throughout the development process. No doubt I shall work with him again on future projects.

If you like F1 Calendar and find it useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious or any other social network you’re on.

There is also a dedicated @f1cal Twitter account so feel free to follow us for updates or send us any suggestions.

After what seems like an age, I can finally announce one of the projects I have been pouring my time in to over the last few months. Not only was I content with working full-time at Yahoo! as well as running a fortnightly podcast, after the success of World Cup KickOff, it seemed only natural to follow this up with its European counterpart - Euro KickOff.

Next month, from 7-29th June, Euro 2008 will be kicking off in host countries Austria and Switzerland - a tournament of sixteen countries competing for the crown of Champions of Europe. While none of the “home countries” have actually qualified this time round (which I’m sure most England fans are still blaming Mr Mclaren for), I couldn’t let that dampen my intentions of delivering what seemed to be quite a popular service among football fans around the World last time round. There are still 16 countries from around Europe who will be following their teams religiously next month and would love to have a one-stop reference (and download) of the all important kick-off times.

The Team

Rather than go it alone on this project, I had a great team to work with to make sure we delivered a top quality service. Thankfully, from the success of World Cup KickOff, I had established a great friendship with Brian Suda so he was really keen to get involved and lend his hand on the technical background of the project.

I also realised it would make sense to bring in another developer on the project to spread the workload so I roped in Klaus Komenda from Yahoo! (who is also from Austria so also had knowledge of one host country too). I have worked with Klaus on multiple projects at Yahoo! and I was certain he had the ability to deliver a high-end product with super efficient code.

On the design side of the website, I asked fellow Multipacker Gareth Brown from One Black Bear to go wild and create an impressive and memorable design the users were sure to remember. I think you can agree the design is absolutely superb, bringing together the nature of the website as well as harnessing the locality of the event this time round.

The Website

So now it’s all designed, developed and out there in the open, what does Euro KickOff actually do? Well, it simply allows you to download all the kick off times of Euro 2008 in to your calendar, whether you use Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird or your mobile device.

The fixtures are accessible in the generic ICS calendar file format so should work in most calendar applications. If your software is capable of subscribing to remote calendars, you can always subscribe to the Euro 2008 fixtures so they are automatically updated with final scores as well.

But rather than stop there, we’ve made it so the user can choose which fixtures they want to follow. Rather than just make you download all the fixtures, you can customize the fixtures by a chosen team or group, the later stages, venue or date. That way you only get the matches that matter to you.

Future Plans

We still have a few plans for Euro KickOff which will be released in the next few weeks.

We are currently working on a Developer API to access the fixture times of Euro 2008, allowing other people to build their own applications.

We are also hoping to release the website in other languages later this week (it seems quite cheeky to build a service in a language that none of the attending countries speak natively).

We are also in talks with quite a significant figure in the industry who want to collaborate on the project. More on that soon.

Spread The Word

So now it’s built, what now? Well, it just needs to be used.

I know many readers of this blog are from the UK so probably don’t have a massive interest in Euro 2008 this year. But think about this - won’t it be a lot more fun to support a team you’re not emotionally attached to and see how far they will go? Why not have a bit of a sweep stake with your friends or at work, pick a team from the pot for a quid and the winner at the end wins all the donations? You could use Euro KickOff to track your team to make sure you know when they are playing and have a bit of fun in the process.

You could also arrange when to meet with friends for a bit a social event around certain games such as your team’s fixtures, opening ceremony or big final. By having all the dates and times in one place, it will be a lot easier to arrange your visit to the pub, party or even flights to Austria or Switzerland. Any excuse for a few drinks…

 

Euro KickOff has been a really cool project to work on and I’m really proud of the finished product. The entire team have excelled themselves and I’m sure they all are very proud to see their efforts all come together. Fingers crossed for an exciting tournament now…

This afternoon, one of the biggest tournaments in the rugby calendar starts - the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Six Nations Rugby tournament.

To mark the occasion, I’ve developed a quick website to allow you to download all the fixtures to your personal organiser - it’s called Six Nations KickOff.

Using a similar technique to my original KickOff project, World Cup KickOff, Six Nations KickOff uses Brian Suda’s useful transformation script X2V to gather up all the calendar Microformats on a page and output them as the generic ICS calendar file format which can be loaded into most personal organisers, such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal or even your PDA or mobile phone.

For added functionality, you can even choose to follow just the one country by clicking on one of the logos at the bottom of the page. If you use the Subscribe functionality rather than download, it will even update automatically with the scores in your calendar.

It’s still only in the early stages of development so if you notice any problems, please let me know and I’ll get on to it as soon as possible.

This is the start of several spin-off KickOff products so keep checking back to my website or even subscribe to the RSS feed for further details.