codegent

Boomerang (part of the Cartoon Network) asked us to create a site to promote the new series of two of their children's TV shows: 'My Spy Family' and 'Life with Derek'.

In response Codegent designed and built Ask the Cast (www.askthecast.co.uk). The idea was to get children to engage with the characters by allowing them to upload videos of themselves posing questions to the characters in the shows.

Using our FilePipes system, which allows users to easily upload videos either from a webcam or from their phones or videocam and then encodes to flash on the fly, children can record themsleves asking the question and submit it to the site.

Codegent has a wealth of experience working with user-generated content and young people. For Boomerang, we introduced a parental consent stage to uploading the video. Users can rate videos but cannot write comments.

The site has only just been launched and video questions are appearing on the site as they are approved by the Boomerang team.  Once the best questions have been answered, the TV characters will answer them online and on the TV shows.

This is a great example of online and broadcast content working together to create a fun and engaging experience for the audience.

We recently re-launched Meet the Author's interview site as Authors' Lounge TV.

The site had been around for about 5 months and had built up a decent following from the blogosphere. It made sense as fans are quite likely to write about exclusive video interviews of their favourite authors.

With bloggers in mind we introduced a few cool social bookmarking and embedding tools to help syndicate the content around the web, as well as overhauling the look and feel so it felt more like an Internet Television Channel.

In the two months since re-launch the traffic has tripled on average and the number one source of referrals are indeed blogs, with natural listings on Google a close second. Well you have to chuck in a bit of SEO haven't you?

We have recently launched The Nutrition Program, a new website to help people understand more about what they’re eating and how nutritionally balanced it is. You can create and save recipes and diets as well as generate graphs to show detailed nutritional analysis.

To build this we used an up and coming technology called Flex, which is basically Flash with a heavy data requirement. And it looks pretty as well!

Using Flex our developers can build more functional Flash applications, including lots of data and math, without excessive coding lead times. This means the app can look slick like a Flash site, be highly interactive, easy to use and can also perform complex data analysis and comparison.

As testament to this wonderful technology, and our wonderful new site ;) we have been featured on Flex.org, which showcases new and interesting Flex sites. Check us out at - http://flex.org/showcase/

We've just produced our first Facebook application for iFan. The good old game of keepy uppy is given a contemporary setting.

For us, we just wanted to see how you go about getting an application onto Facebook and be able to watch the viral effect, and for iFan it's a great tool for raising awareness and driving people to their site.

Check it out for yourself: the Facebook "iFan Football Ball Control" game

Codegent has launched a series of seven websites under a group umbrella for the rebrand of ICM, Europe’s leading privately owned, full service talent agency, to Independent.

The largest site of the group was for the modelling wing - formerly ICM Models. We decided to move away from flat html and design a richer flash experience that allows the user to fluidly browse through the model catalogue and pick the relevant, or most attractive, for their personalised casting room. The casting couch idea has been phase 2'ed unfortunately!

The re-brand was launched from the web so we hope their new, sexy online presence gets them off to a great start :)

Independent Models »
Independent Group »

We have to tell you about Magic Breakfast because it's such a great idea.

Carmel McConnell, who started the project, became aware that many of our children in areas of London were going to school without having had much to eat at home. The result was that they were rocking into school with no energy and no ability to concentrate on what they were being taught. Kind of hard to believe in one of the leading capital cities of the world. It just goes to show that Jamie's school dinners only reveals part of the problem.

So what did Carmel do? Well, she started Magic Breakfast: a charity that provides bagels and breakfast cereals to primary schools. The breakfast clubs are run by teachers and children, no matter what their circumstances, are encouraged to come in before school and eat a breakfast that will release energy throughout the morning, making it easier for them to learn.

We went to see a Magic Breakfast school in action and speaking to the teachers we saw first hand how incredibly valuable they saw the breakfast clubs being. Not only did they provide many children with food, but they also improved punctuality by providing a reason for children to get to school on time.

We were so impressed with this cause that we decided to build them a website for free as part of our our pro bono initiative. The resulting site can be seen here. The content managed site is W3C compliant and we hope it will help raise awareness of this great project.

It also means that we're now looking for our next pro-bono project. So if you know of anyone that would find a brand new website useful please let us know! The only criteria is that we have to think it's a great cause and they have to be in a position where they cannot afford to pay to have a site built themselves.

Magic Breakfast »

In this age of spiritual emptiness have we lost the resources to be inspired by religion? And what can centuries old manuscripts teach us about the world today?

Codegent was hired by the British Library to help support the launch of their most ambitious exhibition of the year. "Sacred: discover what we share", which brings together the biggest collection of Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy books. The exhibition contrasts and compares beliefs and teachings to show that faiths share much in common.

In this major exhibition, the rarest and most exquisite sacred books and manuscripts presented and explored, side by side, for the first time.

A major event required a major bit of thinking from a smart digital agency. We're guessing that's why they called on Codegent.

Check our portfolio for a bit more information on how we worked with the British Library to support the exhibition online.

British Library 'Sacred' exhibition »

According to New Media Age, Codegent is 'one to watch' for this year. So what are the big predictions for 2007?

Prediction 1
Lot's of video based projects, we've already built 18 Doughty Street and we're in the final stages of a fabulous project for Youth Music. More on that in the next few weeks

Prediction 2
We've made the decision to do our best to work with clients as early on in their decision-making process. In a recent advert in Revolution, we described ourselves as "Digital Shrinks". Talking to people and helping them bounce ideas around is what we do day in and day out and it's what we love.

Prediction 3
We're almost 3 years old now and like any 3 year old, we want to show off about all the great things we can do. So far this year we have got good press coverage in Marketing for the Detox with Evian site, New Media Age for our Youth Music win, BBC's Newsnight for 18 Doughty Street and The Guardian for meettheauthor.co.uk.

We're hoping that in 2007, we'll do more great work, win more lovely clients and get more recognition for it. In short, we're hoping to prove New Media Age right. So, if you fancy popping in for a chat about how digital is working for you or even a moan, we've always got the kettle on and a friendly ear.

Codegent gets Paxmanned!

We have been working on the online political TV station 18 Doughty Street for the last couple of months and launched phase 1 last week. It seems to have taken off rather quickly and is already getting quite a bit of attention from other parts of the media.

The new campaigns section of the website will be discussed on tonight's edition of Newsnight on BBC2.

"The creators say that the mainstream political process is ignoring huge swathes of public opinion - a niche they propose to fill by running attack adverts (campaigns) sponsoring arguments on both sides of the political debate (or so they say).

Is this the start of a new Americanisation of British politics or have the authors misjudged our political culture?"

Well I guess we will find out the result tonight!

Oooooo its enough to make your eyes water!

Well that is what we are hoping to find out! Codegent have launched a site for Premier Foods to relaunch the Pickled Vegetables range. A UK tour of supermarkets and city centres is currently underway challenging people to try one of the products from the new range and then recording their reactions.

The footage is played live through a plasma screen in the store, and then uploaded to the website a day later.

In addition users can upload or MMS their own pictures to the site to win a prize. Visitors to the site can vote on which of the submitted pictures has the 'Branston Factor'.

The campaign was developed by Sales Promotion agency The Big Kick. The UK tour is being managed by Live Marketing agency Sense and the website streaming is provided by Groovy Gecko.

Branston Factor »