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.

Everywhere you look online nowadays, there’s a new social network for a certain niche. Whether its for photographers, music lovers, dads, mums or even children - you are bound to find a website that you will feel comfortable with.

So when I got an invite to Footbo - a social network for football fans - my natural reaction was to sign up and see what it was all about.

The bullet points on the homepage sum it up quite well…

• Connect with your friends & other football fans from around the world
• Receive live scores, fixtures and personalized news
• Blog about your insights and emotions
• Predict games and challenge your friends in prediction leagues
• Read-up on and contribute to your favorite teams and players

The website relies quite heavily on user-generated content. If there are teams or players missing from the system, you just add them. It’s an interesting concept to get around the legal wranglings of the Football DataCo with their rules about publishing football data. Who owns the content? The user or Footbo? It would be interesting to see what happens when the 2008-9 season starts and the scores and fixtures become heavily used.

I also like how there are sections dedicated to leagues and teams, with content feeding in from other news sources and YouTube for videos (although with the current lawsuit between The FA and YouTube, I’m not sure how long that will last).

While the user interface is fairly intuitive, I have found the occasional “feature” that could do with some extra attention in terms of usability. For example, some of the consoles on your user page such as the friend and group requests could have worked better with some AJAX calls rather than entire page loads.

Only time will tell whether Footbo will survive in a social world dominated by MySpace, Facebook and Bebo but I seriously think with some good publicity in the right audiences, Footbo can really appeal to the commercial market of football. Football is one of the most valuable markets in the World with some of the strongest and most passionate communities you shall ever find. If that passion can be transferred to the Internet, and specifically to Footbo, there could be a real opportunity for Footbo to work.

Not exactly the headline you’d want to see on a night when England had to deliver just a draw against group leaders Croatia.

But it was a dismal performance from our lads in white while the Croatians out-played, out-performed, out-classed us at Wembley tonight.

So where does this leave English football? What does it mean for Mr McLaren? What the hell are all the hooligans going to do next Summer while the rest of the continent enjoy watching their teams in Austria and Switzerland? More importantly, what does this mean for the follow-up to World Cup KickOff? Should I bother spending time developing a website that I wouldn’t even use myself?

Lots of questions and not many answers. It’s a time to reflect on the so-called Beautiful Game and what it means for “Engerland”. It’s the first time England haven’t been in a huge football tournament in 14 years (think back to World Cup USA in 1994) so maybe it’s time to give the team a chance to sort themselves out.

Commiseration blog post is over. Well done for trying England but it wasn’t looking likely from the start was it?

Update: I’ve just been invited to take part in a Football Fans Census survey regarding the England team. It might be worth sending your opinions as well.