Onlineability is very proud to support Radio Riel through its sponsorship programme.

Radio Riel: stretching the boundaries of online broadcasting

The project started out as an innovative way to bring content into virtual worlds and is now well on its way to being a fully-fledged internet-based public radio station. Listen here.

The station, which grew from a means of providing historically-accurate music at virtual events to a five-stream service incorporating an eclectic range of music, spoken-word and other programming, is celebrating its third birthday this week.

On the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it’s a tremendous achievement by founder Gabrielle Riel and everyone else involved. And we think it’s a template for the way content might come to be served up to users in the next iteration of the internet.

Just two reasons why we’re happy to be associated with Radio Riel and why we hope the association will continue for some time to come.

Happy third birthday to all at the station! Here’s an excerpt of the anniversary post from the station blog:

Radio Riel’s 3rd Anniversary and Radio Riel Reverie!

Three years ago, on June 1, 2007, Edward Pearse, Mitsu Figaro, Red Caliber and Gabrielle Riel launched Radio Riel, an internet radio station based in the virtual world of Second Life. Radio Riel’s goal was to provide historically appropriate music at events in the 19th Century, Victorian, Steampunk, Second Life community, The Independent State of Caledon.

Radio Riel was initially a single audio stream that we used for live events and to play Victorian music daily from 4:00pm – 8:00pm SLT. That Fall, the additions of Diamanda Gustafson and Elrik Merlin took us to a new level of providing music 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Soon afterward, Otenth Paderborn and Soliel Snook joined the team.

In 2007 and 2008, Radio Riel established itself as the premier source for historically appropriate and specialty music on the Second Life grid. Our Presenters knew how to provide the perfect soundtrack for any event, from a Medieval bonfire to a Baroque masked ball to a 1920′s speakeasy dance to an early 90s rave.

Read the rest of Gabrielle’s post here.

Cars, and more cars...

If it had closed then the country would have lost one of its best facilities, for fans of both four-wheel and two-wheel racing. The track is widely regarded as a classic, not least because of its gradients and swooping, flowing curves.

And Donington Park, lying as it does so close to East Midlands Airport, is less vulnerable than many circuits to the kind of peripheral housing development and subsequent noise complaints that have imposed severe limitations on tracks around the country.

Over the last few weeks the future has been looking increasingly brighter with a big show of fan support, the commitment of owner Kevin Wheatcroft to restoring the track for racing by August and finally the announcement of a new leaseholder with a seemingly realistic plan for bringing racing back.

Just before that happened, however, Donington played host to an event that attracted hundreds of keen racing fans. It was a festival of slot car racing – a whole world of single-seaters, prototypes, road cars, trucks and almost any other vehicle you can think of played out in miniature.

It was great to see the public back at the Park, even if the track itself wasn’t yet available for racing. We went along and had a great day. Here’s a taste of our report on the event:

Donington Slot Car Festival: size isn’t everything

“Every day after school, you’d go around there to play it, hoping to compete for some kind of championship. But it always took about 15 billion hours to set the track up. And even when you did, the thing never seemed to work.”

This frustrated feeling, immortalised by the band Half Man, Half Biscuit, was often exactly what slot car racing turned out to be like, at any rate when we were kids.

Bear in mind that when we were kids you were dealing exclusively with snap-together track sections whose metal tabs had a tendency to get bent and not line up properly, and with power that came via transformers whose wires plugged directly on to the underside of the rails. (After all, when we were kids, Space Invaders and digital watches were radical and exciting novelties.)

And, like children of any era, we were a bit short of patience for painstakingly troubleshooting dead track sections. We were rather heavy-handed when it came to the delicate cars and there were some embarrassing breakages almost directly out of the box.

As kids we tended to want instant results rather than the longer-term rewards of creating a layout and then getting to know its characteristics with different types of cars. In short, slot-car racing had flashes of brilliance that hinted at how much fun it could be. But it often ended in disappointment – and that’s if you were lucky enough to own your own Scalextric set.

If you were having to constantly beg friends, cousins or older siblings to give you a go, because your parents simply could not be brought to appreciate the importance of your personally and exclusively owning this desirable toy, then it was a dead loss as you were repeatedly outclassed by those with greater experience.

Read the rest of this article here…

Whether it’s joining police dog handlers on a busy shift or MPs in the Houses of Parliament, riding in the cab of a train or talking to Bomber Command veterans, our chosen careers have given us some wonderful insights over the years.

The Puretech Racing simulator in action

These days we’re more often or not a fixture behind a computer doing all those tasks you need to do to keep a company running, as well as looking after our clients and keeping our own websites up to speed.

Which makes the chances to get out with a notebook and pen all the more valuable.

So, when we were invited to drive down to Horley in Sussex for the launch of Puretech Racing’s new simulator centre, we only had to think about it for around 30 seconds before agreeing.

And 29 of them were spent wondering about the route.

We had a great day meeting the people behind the project, which aims to create a new fan-friendly sport allowing participants to race against each other, form teams and leagues, and generally get much more closely involved in motorsport than has hitherto been possible without a massive commitment of time and resources.

Also present were some of the racing drivers that use Puretech’s simulation technology to work on set-up, learn new tracks or hone specific skills. As well as chatting to them we tried the simulators for ourselves.

Although with considerably less effective results.

Give it time…

We covered the experience in some detail on our racing site Brits on Pole – you can find links to all our coverage here.

We hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as we enjoyed getting out of the office and reporting on it.

Well, we say Formula One. Actually it’s leading British driver and 2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton, in partnership with one of his personal sponsors, Reebok.

The 25-year-old is allowing himself to feature as a character in a large-scale online game world which invites players to uncover clues, interact via text messages, Twitter feeds, emails and websites with characters and writers, and even attend live-action events.

This is exciting stuff. The game is slated to take place across most of this year’s Formula One season and its biggest challenge will be to find an audience among gamers who might not be very interested in the sport and sports fans who might need to make the leap to gaming.

We’ll be watching with great interest – and hopefully playing too. We’ve looked at this at length for our motorsports site Brits on Pole:

F1: Will you be the one to uncover Lewis Hamilton’s secret?

A slightly-built young man dodges through the shadows, face partly hidden by a black hoodie. But even as he tries to conceal his identity, there’s something incredibly familiar about him. What is he doing?

If a new website called Secret Lewis is to believed, the 2008 F1 World Champion and 2010 McLaren title hope is leading a secret existence foiling international art thieves, as well as helping their victims recover their lost and priceless treasures.

Ridiculous? Implausible? Well, yes.

But nevertheless, we have some quite substantial evidence to convince us this is what is going on. For a start there is the photo to the right and a YouTube video showing him in action. as well as a website quoting him at first hand.

Lewis Hamilton, international crime fighter. It’s an enticing if somewhat incredible prospect. So, what is really happening?

Well, of course it is a marketing exercise, on this occasion featuring his personal sponsor Reebok.

But it’s one that offers fans a tangible reward for getting involved – engaging and interacting with Hamilton in ways they may never before have dreamed were possible.

Welcome to the world of Alternate Reality Gaming.

Continue reading this article.

More than 50 female competitors, marshals, officials and volunteers gathered at Silverstone, home of British motor sport and the 2010 Santander Formula 1 British Grand Prix, to support the Motor Sports Association’s Women in Motorsport Group and to highlight women’s importance to motorsport.

Women in motorsport visit Silverstone for International Women's Day

According to the Motor Sports Association (MSA), the UK’s official governing body, motorsport is one of the few sporting activities in which men and women compete alongside each other on an equal footing.

Yet, as they make up only 8 per cent of registered licence holders, women are hugely under-represented among motorsport drivers.
 
There are nevertheless an estimated 50,000 women actively involved in British motorsport. Their roles include organising events, heading teams, running clubs and associations, timekeeping, marshalling and fulfilling a host of other support roles without which the sport itself could not continue.

As a director of Onlineability, Lisa is a supplier of web services to drivers and management companies, and a team sponsor through the company’s support of the YourRacingCar programme. She is also co-owner of the well-regarded Brits on Pole website, which reports on British drivers in open-wheel racing worldwide, and a supporter member of the British Women Racing Drivers’ Club (BWRDC).

Lisa at Silverstone

She said: “The most impressive thing about the day was the sheer range of women that attended. Racers in their 60s were lining up alongside teenagers. Every kind of car from karts to dragsters was represented.

“And it’s not only the women behind the wheel – it was inspiring to meet the marshals, officials and volunteers who keep the whole show on the road and give racing fans so many hours of enjoyment.

“I’m expecting the profile of women in motorsport to get dramatically higher over the next few years. Girls now take up karting before the age of ten, exactly as boys do, and are graduating in increasing numbers to junior open-wheel racing formulas – and many other kinds of racing.

“It should be an exciting time for motorsport and we are looking forward to reporting on these young women’s successful racing careers on Brits on Pole.”

Attending the event were Go Motorsport ambassador and ITV’s British Touring Car Championship presenter Louise Goodman, reigning Ginetta Junior Champion and 2009 BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year long-list nominee Sarah Moore – the first female driver to win a major British motor racing championship – and Formula Renault UK competitor Alice Powell.

Goodman said: “It was a fabulous experience to come together with all these other women involved in the sport to show that motor sport is not just for the men. I really hope that this inspires more girls to consider the sport; one of them might just turn out to be the new Jenson Button!”

Sue Sanders, Chairman of the MSA Women in Motorsport Group, said: “This has been a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate the diverse range of roles that women undertake within the sport at all levels.

“We believe that motor sport is truly fair and equal but there is plenty of room for more women. We hope that this gathering will celebrate those already involved and stimulate others that may be interested in getting started.”

MSA Chief Executive Colin Hilton said: “Motor sport still tends to be seen as a male-dominated activity, so we need to create female role models to inspire the next generation.

“We are seeing a substantial increase in female participation among the junior ranks, especially with the Let’s Go Karting initiative that gives young people a first experience of karting for just £5. Similarly, the Go Motorsport message that we are taking to schools across the county is aimed equally at girls and boys.”

• For more information on getting involved in motorsport, as a competitor, volunteer or spectator, visit the Go Motorsport website.

Founder Gabrielle Riel explained on the station’s blog: “I strongly believe that making Radio Riel a Non-Profit gives us our best chance to ‘make it in the real world’. Internet Radio is such a wild frontier. There are a few very successful commercial Internet Radio stations, such as Radio Paradise, SOMA FM and others.

“They have made businesses work on a model that bases their budget on listener donations, donations that are NOT tax deductible for the listeners. I want to give our listeners (albeit it will only be the American listeners) the ability to deduct the donations they give us from their taxes. And to do that, we need to be a Non-Profit.”

You can read her full post on the station blog here. Needless to say, we wish Gabi and crew all the very best in the next stage of their endeavour and will continue to be proud supporters of Radio Riel.

Following our recent project to create a new website for Cornish conservation centre The Screech Owl Sanctuary we are now working on a report into how the third sector is using the web to communicate its message.

We would like to hear from any organisations interested in working with us. We will analyse your web and social media presence, using only information that is already publicly available, and provide you with a report listing what works well and what could work better.

We will then use the findings in our report, which we intend to make freely available to all interested parties on our website, as a resource for voluntary organisations. They will be anonymised – for instance, we might refer to “an east London social care group” or “a Hampshire wildlife charity” rather than giving specific names or locations.

If this sounds interesting, and you’d like to take advantage of it to boost your organisation’s web presence, drop us a line with a contact name and email address (for returning the finished audit) and your website address. Details of any social media networks such as Twitter or Facebook would also be helpful.

The tournament, which is the regular Test meeting between England and Australia, dates back to 1882 and is one of the world’s most fiercely-contested sporting rivalries.

During this year’s event, Onlineability’s cricket blog The Nurdler has provided a case-study in the effective use of social media, building a Twitter following of more than 200 at its peak, and initiating dozens of conversations with fellow fans. (The blog is named after a cautious batting technique deployed primarily in Test cricket.)

This built an audience for the blog itself, which offers a daily dose of cricketing news and humour, and helped position it as an opinion-leader in a forum that includes a good many professional and ex-professional cricketers, England team members, commentators and professional sports journalists.

Lisa said: “One time when Twitter really comes into its own is during sporting events of this kind, where fans can use it to share information, express their feelings and share the suspense of their team’s ups and downs.

“We feel privileged to have gained so many readers for The Nurdler during that time and to have shared such an exciting tournament with them.

“It shows how, far from being an elitist or minority sport, passion for Test cricket is alive and well – and the game is becoming more accessible than ever.”

The series was the first home Ashes since England won a closely-fought contest in 2005 – our first victory for 18 years – and the team celebrated with an open-top bus parade through London’s Trafalgar Square, a visit to 10 Downing Street and a strong showing in that year’s New Year’s Honours list.

But things rapidly came down to earth in 2007 when England travelled to Australia in order to be comprehensively thrashed 5-0. Thus the 2009 tournament was viewed with some trepidation – but also with the knowledge that many stalwarts of the Australian side were no longer playing and the visiting team was – whisper it – beatable.

Pitch conditions, the poor summer weather and vulnerabilities in England’s batting and bowling meant the team’s prospects of winning were a very long way from being a foregone conclusion. In fact, many fans did not dare to hope for a win until late in the fifth and final match, after Australia had set a particularly poor first-innings total with the bat.

Having worked for roughly 18 months to build upb the site, which supports British drivers in all major forms of open-wheel motor racing worldwide, into a respected and popular destination for racing fans we began to see that work pay off – in spectacular fashion.

We’ve been delighted to work with several prestigious international brands and motorsports names on promotional projects including Vodafone’s viral video campaign with McLaren, Shell’s bid to raise the profile of its V-Power fuel through its work with Ferrari and Philips’ competition run with Williams to put a fan in the cockpit of an F1 car.

Andy said: “This summer Brits on Pole has given us opportunities we never dreamed of – including visiting the Ferrari garage and motorhome during the British Grand Prix, getting to interview Williams’ highly-respected technical director Sam Michael and visiting that team’s private museum.

“It’s fantastic to see all the work we’ve put into Brits on Pole paying off as it becomes a respected destination for fans and a site that marketing professionals feel comfortable working with. We have big plans for its future and are looking forward to seeing it grow.”

Here are more details of some of the things we’ve done this summer:

Behind the scenes at Ferrari during the British Grand Prix

We were invited by Shell to visit the Ferrari motorhome and garage during this year’s British Grand Prix free practice day to find out how the two companies work together to ensure their top-notchracing success. This included a chance to watch the cars in action on the Silverstone track as well as an invaluable opportunity to meet some of the scientists and technicians

Goodwood Festival of Speed podcast

We made our first visit to the iconic British motorsport festival this year, not as press or special guests but as paying customers. We had a great time – and put together our first ever podcast, as a user guide for anyone who wants a taste of what to expect.

Superleague Formula at Donington Park

We visited the football-themed racing series, now approaching the halfway point in its second season, as accredited media during its English round at Leicestershire’s Donington Park circuit as well as attending a press day. We were thrilled to watch the powerful V12-powered cars driven by former F1 stars including Enrique Bernoldi and Antonio Pizzonia, as well as GP2 champion Giorgio Pantano.

Behind the scenes at Williams F1

Williams F1 – one of the most iconic racing teams ever to compete in motor racing’s top-flight series. Formed in 1977 by Frank Williams and Patrick Head, it is one of only three teams in Formula One to have won 100 races. It has also taken nine constructor’s titles between 1980 and 1997 and seven drivers’ championships. We were invited by its sponsors Philips to get a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the factory and team museum to help promote a competition it was running.

You can see our in-depth coverage of all these events here >>