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

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.

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.