Having built quite a few calendar-based solutions over the last four years, the majority of which for major football tournaments, you can imagine my surprise when UEFA approached us to develop and integrate a similar calendar solution for their organisation.

As one of the largest football bodies in the world, it was clearly going to be a huge project that required immense planning and a thoroughly thought out solution. That didn’t deter us though.

Teaming up with Brian Suda, the developer who made the likes of World Cup KickOff and Euro KickOff possible, we put together a plan that would not only deliver what UEFA wanted but also impress them with our ideas.

Over the course of the last year, we have been working closely with UEFA to build the calendar system, using a suite of tools including their comprehensive internal infrastructure as well as a host of solutions we have been building over the last few years.

One of the biggest challenges was supporting all the international languages UEFA currently offered  including French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, German and Russian. By using a selection of translation tools and some rigorous testing, we found a reliable solution that worked perfectly for everyone.

After a hugely successful testing phase during the end of the 2008-9 season, UEFA were more than happy to keep the relationship going with us continually consulting and developing the bespoke calendar solution into the 2009-10 season.

You can read more information about the UEFA Calendar project or head on over to the UEFA Calendar service itself to find out more and download or subscribe to the calendars of your choice.

For a long time, this website became dominated with content for the One Phat DJ Podcast. While it was good regular content about fresh funky house music, it was distracting from my main focus in life - the Web and digital media.

The One Phat DJ website has been available for quite a few years now - the first instance was setup way back in 2001 - but has usually been a single page pointing visitors to the podcast and connecting services such as Twitter , Facebook and Last FM.

A few months back, I decided it was time to migrate all One Phat DJ content to a dedicated website to highlight a clear distinction between my two different “guises”.

With the introduction of the Funky House Finesse brand and a regular slot secured on Lifted Radio, I gave myself a weekend to setup a basic website using my favoured CMS WordPress, plugging in all the existing content with minimal effort.

The project is evolving (like most good websites) and is sure to grow over the coming months but, for the time being, if you are more interested in the musical side of my life than the digital media, I suggest you pop on over to the One Phat DJ website, put it in your bookmarks and download the archive of mixes directly from there.

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.

Since the family acquired Cooper Gallery in Bideford just before Christmas, we’ve all been working extremely hard over the last few months to build the business up from near-to-nothing.

My mother - a very creative and ambitious woman keen to start her own business - had the responsibility of managing the gallery, including establishing the company objectives, building up a new catalogue of artwork, as well as get to grips with the running of a gallery. Needless to say, she has been working endless hours through the Winter months in time for the fast approaching peak Spring season.

My sister - who has firmly established herself as an outstanding graphic designer, working alongside some of the most influential business people in the UK - was responsible for creating a striking and appropriate brand, including production of all the necessary merchandise such as signs, letter heading and business cards.

Myself - I was to take responsibility of the online presence for the gallery. Knowing the previous website was doing very little for the gallery, the challenge was to create a simple and elegant website that was easy for my mother to manage, complimenting the brand my sister developed and - most important of all - generate more business for the gallery using whatever techniques were available at a low cost.

After several months working between the three of us, the new Cooper Gallery website was launched earlier today. For further information of the first release, I’ve documented the process we went through in my online portfolio.

Many improvements are planned for the website over the next year, including an initiative to sell items via eBay in an attempt to get maximum exposure for the artwork and gallery, but we are all extremely happy with the first phase of the website.