Today the primary purpose of my contract was released into the wild: the BBC Sports F1 application for Virgin TiVo. The public release of this application means that I am finally allowed to talk about it which is a great relief because not being able to talk about such an exciting project was really quite difficult!

The application enables users to watch all the BBC’s interactive coverage for major sporting events such as Formula One, Wimbledon, Euro 2012 and London 2012 with live streams, on-demand video and other additional content.

More information can be found on the BBC’s internet blog.

Finally, if a picture is worth a thousand words then a video must be worth a thousand pictures. With that in mind, here’s the official introduction video!

Once again the project was developed from nothing more than Photoshop designs, and although I had lots of the code already written from the last one this project was very challenging because of an incredibly tight deadline and of course the fact that I’m working 9-5 at the BBC!

I’ve been there for two weeks now, working on some very exciting projects in the Future Media and Technology department. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to discuss the work at all for obvious reasons but I just wanted to post something to explain why my freelancing output may be a little lacking for the next few months!

I had forgotten all about the project until I received a related enquiry last week, so here are some screens:

Parents upload a photo of their child and enter information such as name, age, where they live and what they want for Christmas and a video is generated that shows Santa consulting his Naughty or Nice book which contains the child’s bio as well as their Christmas wish-list.

I developed the application in its entirety, working from nothing more than a flow diagram and few basic graphical mock-ups.

The screenshots below show the app with some example graphics supplied by Andy Quick, but the point of the app is that it allows website owners to quickly and easily replace those graphics with their own so that the avatars that users create match their website’s look and feel, whether that be cartoon graphics, photo-realistic graphics or whatever.

Here are some key points:

• The avatar can be exported both to an image and to a database.
• For image exports, both the crop area and scale of the resulting image can easily be configured to generate images of any size and shape – ideal whether used for full-screen profile pages, forum icons or anything else.
• Webmasters can easily add new categories i.e pets, make-up etc.
• Webmasters can also pass settings to the app to force it to default to either gender (for instance in cases where the gender of a logged in user is already known) or they can let the user select their gender before getting started.
• If no previous avatar is found in the database or if database saving has been disabled, the app will randomly generate an avatar for the user to edit as a starting point.

To play with the app please click here.

Please note that for demonstration purposes the app has been set to offer your avatar for download. This setting can easily be disabled when the app is deployed on your website.

If you’d like to buy the app or would like to discuss the provision of new avatar graphics to match your website, please get in touch.

The application allows users to either record a personalised message via webcam or to upload a video they have on their computer. A QR code is generated with the video’s location, and both the video itself and the QR code are then passed to BFIG’s back-end system for eventual insertion into a physical greeting card.

Again I worked from supplied designs, converting the graphics into vector form before developing the front-end Flash application.

This is a really exciting project that is going to change personal greetings cards forever!

It’s a Flash-based prospectus that allows students to learn about the many exciting opportunities available at the college through an interactive, media-rich interface. Some of its features include:

• detailed course information
• teacher and student interviews
• image galleries

My responsibilities included developing the application and reproducing the graphics supplied by BFIG in vector form. The content was supplied by the college itself.

My brief on this was pretty minimal and specific requirements were limited only to the use of certain colours, songs and the logo. The portal structure, breakdown, content, features and functionality is all my work while the graphics were all once again provided by Andy Quick, apart from the character graphics which were supplied by iPublicity.

The Mononas are a group of stylised South American girls who act as role models for kids, with healthy interests in education, healthy living, the environment, fashion and animals.

The Mononas portal is broken down into separate islands, each with its own purpose or theme:

• A home island allows users to customise their avatar and play dress-up games, while a built-in messaging system allows them to communicate with each other in a safe environment without sharing personal information like email addresses.
• A school island provides the means for users to earn points by answering questions on maths, languages, geography and general knowledge.
• A funfair island allows users to earn points by playing games that require quick reflexes and skill.
• A mall island provides learners with different stores in which they can spend these points to buy clothing, accessories and pets for their online avatars.
• A studio island allows them to play art- and music-themed games as well as create their own masterpieces to share online. They can also watch video content.
• A beach island provides games based on the environment.

There are several plans for further expansion in the near future, including tying the site to real-life Mononas dolls which are going on sale in certain parts of South America shortly.

The quizes read their questions from an XML file before randomising the order of the answers to provide more of a challenge for repeat players. Of course usernames like the ones on some of these screens cannot be obtained from just a mobile number so where do they come from? They’re actually randomly generated and are designed to encourage participation. The list updates at random intervals for added realism.

The SMS communications is handled by mBill and the graphics were all provided by Andy Quick.