Exciting times here at Codegent, we've just completed and launched a new website for Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon presented us with an interesting challenge, they needed a website that could showcase their on-air summer content. This content consisted of (amongst other things) a competition to find SpongeBob Square Pants' biggest fan. Here's an example of one of our favourite entries so far. The other main part of the site was TEENick, a magazine style show aimed at teenage girls.

The challenge came in finding a way to create a cohesive site that would encourage the 2 different audiences to engage and interact with these seemingly disparate elements.

We wanted to incentivise people to travel through to the different parts of the site so we designed 5 SpongeBob cards that we 'hid' on various pages. When a user found a card they could click on it and were then given the option to download and print the card. 4 of the 5 cards incorporated a marker which, when printed and held up to a webcam, would display a 2D message from a character from SpongeBob. Finding the fifth card unlocked an augmented reality, 3D SpongeBob which the user could interact with by pressing their space bar. You can view a demo of the SpongeBob AR here:

These cards helped us to tie the site together and to generate page impressions, however we didn't want to incentivise people to travel through the site if we couldn't be sure that they were engaging with the content, so we constructed a points system that rewarded good behaviour, such as commenting, rating entries, entering the competition etc. Points are accumulated during the visit and when you reach certain milestones you unlock Nickelodeon 'goodies'.

We also wanted the user to feel a bond with the site which is why we added a badge creator. This allows users to create a badge with their unique username and design, this badge is displayed whenever they leave comment on an article. Here's an example of the badges in action.

The competition has had hundreds of entries and from the stats we've got so far, page impressions and time spent on site is looking good. The augmented reality aspect has had great feedback in terms of how it looks but also how it gives the user something new, exciting and valuable in exchange for their time and attention.

Definitely something we want to do again soon!

This week we have launched the first phase of our new property website Tepilo, a joint venture with Sarah Beeny.

In the gloomy economic climate, the property market is suffering badly. People want to not only save as much money as possible, but also be in control of the way their property is marketed. Tepilo (an imaginary castle that Sarah's father used to describe to her when she was a child) was set up to give people a new way of buying and selling their property.

This is the first time we have joint ventured with a client for equity in the business rather than agency fees. We have been offered equity deals numerous times before but had always turned them down until now.

Sarah was an existing client who we had worked well with previously and arguably was in a prime position to start an online property business as host of Channel 4's Property Ladder and as one of the most trusted authorities on the UK property market. The brand building exposure she can produce is something that most start-ups lack or cannot afford to generate. The buzz has started already...

• Tepilo on Brand Republic
• Tepilo launch Webcast on Money Supermarket
• Hype on Property Portal Watch
• Tepilo noise on Twitter

As a result some really large brands have already approached us tabling potential partnership deals and mass exposure for the new site. Brand Beeny is certainly opening a lot of doors!

The full site launches in July and we will be hitting the mainstream press at that point as well. Watch this space for more info over the summer. In the meantime I would love to hear your thoughts on our decision to JV on this project - good or bad :)

www.tepilo.com or follow @tepilo on twitter.

Last week we launched Vikki Chowney's offical blog to coincide with her work at the G20 conference. It was also a great excuse fo us to further hone the new framework we have been developing here at codegent for the past 2 years.

Built in ColdFusion, but in a Rails style, the framework enables our developers to build up a system where core functions that the majority of websites use can be called from a central code store. It means that when innovative new work is done on a project that knowledge can be gathered and added to an ever improving system.

To give you an example Vikki's blog includes these cool new features which we can now use in future projects as standard:

• An Ajax based comments system that dynamically pulls user images from Twitter or Gravatar with a neat way of quoting other user's comments and responding
• A spam filter integrated with the Akismet anti-spam service
• Enhanced Social Bookmarking
• A dynamic content tagging system that I genuinely believe is the most intuitive I have seen
• An online image cropping tool so CMS users no longer need any photoshop skills to crop, resize and optimise images for the web
• A rich media system where users can either upload their own video for encoding on the fly, self-record through their webcam or embed a clip from YouTube or Vimeo

And much, much more! Check it out - www.vikkichowney.com

We build a fair few sites that facilitate all kinds of user generated content, but we wanted to share an absolute jewel with you!

We designed and built a competition microsite for Cartoon Network's Ben10, a program about 10-year old Ben Tennyson, who discovers a watch-like device with mysterious powers which allows him to transform into 10 different alien heroes. 

We created a site where users uploaded video impressions of their favourite Ben10 alien, either by recording entries using a webcam or uploading the video file straight from their camera or mobile phone.

In the words of Aidan, aged 5, from Sheffield, "My best alien is Heatblast because he's great at shooting fire at rocks!" And then Aidan himself shoots fire into the corner of his garden from his very own human fingertips! How he does this we are still trying to figure out ;) but we suggest that if you are ever lucky enough to meet awesome Aidan, you are don't get on the wrong side of him!

Check out Aidan's entry in the Ben 10 Gallery now!

If you wanna know more about Ben10, then check out the Ben 10 site on Cartoon Network.

We recently worked with Cartoon Network on another site, Sonic Chronicles:The Dark Brotherhood, where users have to search the site for Sonic the Hedgehog characters in order to win cool prizes!

This week we have launched our microsite promoting Bus Superside advertising for CBS Outdoor. The concept is pretty simple, whack whatever the hell you like on the side of a big ol' London double-decker and send it to all and sundry! The highest rated advert will feature as a Superside on a REAL BUS... the stitch up potential is immense!

Your "artwork" integrates with a real video of a bus rolling down Camden High Street so its quite a shock when you first see it. I can say that with authority after Jenny prepared this delightful number above for me (note to all: do not take her on at pool when there is a wager in the air!)

So far we have had a (possibly not entirely genuine) marriage proposal, a request to find Trevor Eve look-a-little-likies (Shoestring was class!) and a memo from the boss...

Check it out - www.talktothetown.co.uk

We love music here at codegent, there is always something playing through the speakers, and usually quite a mixed bag. ( unless Mark is in charge of the tunes :) )

So when we came across the Muxtape, we were very excited. Inspired by the mixtapes of our youth this is service where you can select 12 songs, upload them, and then share your mix with your friends. Or you can flip through the mixes others have put together. It’s a great way to discover new music, in a random way.

But it is this random approach which got in the way of the service stepping out of it niche music-nazi audience. Enter the Audience.

Members of the community have developed a serices of tools to make Muxtape so much better. MuxFind and MuxSeek have are search engines that allow you to search through all of the mixtapes available. This is the community taking something which is great, and making it better. This is the community taking control of their services, and making it what they want it to be. A similar revolution has gone on around Twitter. Companies such as TweetScan and Twhirl have developed their own businesses and services around the Twitter Tool.

This is what Web 2.0 is really about. And this is why this is why we love this thing called the internet so much.

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 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/