We’re excited by this because, as part of the partnership, Fulvio is helping us to develop our range of services for racing drivers.

Working with established drivers in this way is one way we can make sure that we’re offering what’s needed and that our services are backed up by knowledge and experience of the market.

And Fulvio certainly knows his stuff. With experience in both open-wheel and production car racing, he’s been signed up with the YourRacingCar.com team for the last two years.

In 2009 he impressed in his first full season in rear-wheel drive racing with a fourth place in the Ginetta G50 championship. This year he’s contesting the Elf Renault Clio Cup with the Milton Keynes-based, fan-powered squad.

Both series support the British Touring Car Championship, one of the most popular and entertaining race series in the UK, and one that visits circuits all around the country. That ensures there is plenty of accessible wheel-to-wheel action to keep fans involved season-long.

Learn more about the team and its season here >>

Onlineability director Lisa Hutchins said of the partnership: “We’re looking forward to working with Fulvio. He’s hoping to be able to develop a really innovative site that communicates straightforwardly with fans, business partners and everyone else that he needs to reach.

“He’s already given us lots of useful insights into what racing drivers need from their websites and communications materials. As a result we’ve been able to improve the services that we offer.

“We met him as a result of YRC’s Deals on Racing Wheels sponsorship scheme for small businesses. In terms of marketing spend, this has been really effective for us, and we would definitely advise speaking to team principal Hannah James about what’s on offer.”

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.

Duncan Tappy

Duncan is one of Britain’s most complete racing talents. Twice nominated for the country’s most prestigious racing prize, the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award, he is a past winner of the Formula Ford Festival, the Formula Renault UK title and a former BRDC Rising Star and Superstar.

When he needed to update his website for the 2010 season, when he returns to Superleague Formula with the Brazilian club Flamengo and racing for a full season in the Auto GP series for DAMS, he worked with Onlineability to produce what we feel is one of our strongest designs to date.

The site is based on the WordPress platform which means it will be easy to update and upgrade and will perform well in search engines. And the content and design are managed separately which means that, when the time comes for a new look, it can be achieved with minimal disruption.

Duncan said: “In motorsport, image is everything, especially in regard to potential teams and sponsors. Drivers need a site that looks classy and professional and that is easy to keep updated.

“I’ve got a busy few months in front of me, with a full season racing in Auto GP plus appearances in Superleague Formula – so, most of all, I need it to work smoothly and be easy to access on the move. I’m confident it will do this.”

Onlineability director Andy Darley added: “It’s been a pleasure to work with Duncan. Not only does he have one of the best racing CVs around but he’s also a great ambassador for any company, with a mature and professional attitude. The benefits to us of partnering with him have been powerful.

The new site built for Duncan by Onlineability

“We were looking to create a site that was distinctive, contemporary and eye-catching, but also easy on the user, capable of providing all the information on Duncan’s career that fans, investors and the racing community could want in as accessible a way as possible. I am really pleased with the result we have achieved.

“Now, with Duncan embarking on his first full season of racing since his 2008 Superleague Formula season with Tottenham Hotspur, we want to make sure the site keeps working really hard for him in the future.”

• You can follow Duncan’s career as well as those of other exciting British motorsport talents by visiting our racing site BritsOnPole.com.

Onlineability is working with Sam Bird in 2010

Sam is one of the most exciting up-and-coming talents in British motorsport, competing during 2010 in the GP2 series that supports Formula One.

Our brief on taking over management of Sam’s site on behalf of his management company CJ Motorsport was to provide an update to his existing design that reflected his needs for the 2010 season.

We did this with new photography and branding that recalls the livery of his new team, GP2 front-runners ART Grand Prix, as well as integrating a regular podcast feature.

The site, which also carries frequent image updates and reports of Sam’s race performances, should provide an essential resource for fans who want to keep up with his career.

Onlineability director Andy Darley said: “Sam’s site is one of the best designs for a racing driver out there and we are really delighted to be working on it with CJ Motorsport.

“The challenge of this project was to keep the elements that work so well already while making sure it still reflected the needs of Sam, his team, his sponsors and his fans.

“I’m pleased with what we’ve been able to do and hope that it will prove to be a must-visit destination for race fans this year.”

The Nurdler's new custom wordpress theme

We had several aims with this project. Firstly, we needed to reflect The Nurdler’s growing profile with a custom look that showcased our design skills better than its existing off-the-shelf look.

We also wanted to try our hand at a particular design style and reflect the fact that The Nurdler tries to be an authentic voice for cricket fans – that’s how we came up with design features like the scoresheet and pen.

We hope it will remind you a little bit of the pleasures of watching sport on a sunny summer day. And now The Nurdler is gearing up towards England’s next Ashes campaign (seems no time since the last one, does it?) we hope to have some equally good content for you too. Subscribe to The Nurdler’s RSS feed here.

Technically speaking, this is a custom WordPress theme – and it certainly proves that you can get a long way from the horizontal header image and white background that is associated with basic WordPress design.

We are always happy to create custom themes for clients so, if you are looking to commission expertise in this area, do get in touch and have a chat with us.

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.

Chatting with fans of his television shows and answering questions from customers of his health spas and gyms, exchanging photos from his phone with friends and family, joshing with celebrity acquaintences and promoting his charity projects, his Twitter stream @DuncanBannatyne is clearly by and about the man himself – and as far from a careful piece of PR strategising as can be imagined.

No surprise, perhaps, given that Bannatyne’s corporate brand is tied intimately to his personal one – and his personal brand is that of the plain-speaking self-made millionaire who started out with an ice cream van and built an empire by hard work and blunt directness.

That bluntness was much in evidence at the weekend when his wife accidently left behind on a Virgin train the custom-made dress she was planning to wear at a formal event that evening.

Mobilising his 55,000 Twitter followers with the offer of a £1000 reward, he made what initially seemed a rather optimistic call for help: “The dress is in a cream cloth carrier back in the middle 1st class carriage. C’mon peeps prove Twitter can do this good deed.”

He even directed a Tweet at Virgin’s Richard Branson, who was spending the weekend in Bahrain with his Formula One team: “@richardbranson C’mon mate find the bloody dress or I will have a miserable night.”

But Branson – unlike his rival team boss and airline owner Tony Fernandes of Lotus – was not Tweeting through the Grand Prix, and only silence followed. Meanwhile, Bannatyne’s attempts to deal with Virgin Trains were proving equally fruitless.

“@kyletaylor812 Tried that, waste of time… Virgin customer services have not proven to be very helpful in this… @SylviaTidyHarri yes but Virgin lost property is closed on a Saturday… @BarrieCrampton Yes completly useless”

In fact, events were brewing up into a potential PR nightmare for Virgin – until the following conversation ensued with Virgin employee John Power:

johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne Sir your wifes dress has been found and is in the lost property office at euston
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 Are you joking?
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 How would you know that and who can I speak to on phone?
johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne no sir im a Virgin Trains Manager and called the Euston team to find the dress
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 What number I have made loads of calls?
johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne My Colleagues Chris has the dress and is at the lost property office now if you need his mobile please DM me thanks
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 Done that now
DuncanBannatyne: The fantastic @johno4501 is a train manager on Virgin & he took the time to locate the dress. Thank you John, thank you very much
johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne Thank you Sur glad me and my colleagues could assist you hope your Wife and yourself enjoy your evening
DuncanBannatyne: Some of you have not realised yet but we found the dress, the power of twitter has yet to be fully realised
DuncanBannatyne: @YourStylist Believe it or not a member of staff at Euston found it on the platform 3 hours after it was left on the train
TheWineyard: @DuncanBannatyne I think @johno4501 deserves a promotion/bonus for that! Talk about doing the world of good for a company’s brand image…
DuncanBannatyne: listen @RichardBranson do you know what a great employee you have in @johno4501 ? You should personally call him & thank him for his work
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 hi John I need an adress to send you the reward
DuncanBannatyne: Please join me in following the great @johno4501
johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne Sir thanks for you kind offer i do not require any reward if you wish you can make a donation to Clic Sargeant charity
johno4501: @DuncanBannatyne which is one Virgin Trians chosen charity caring for children with cancer thanks again
DuncanBannatyne: @johno4501 Thank you John I will do I am alrady a big supporter of Clic Sergeant
johno4501: Wow thank you for all your kind messages re missing dress. I am amazed how fast this story spread around twitter and slightly embarrased!!!
johno4501: please also note other colleagues of mine were involved in finding the dress so thanks to them to.
pep1209: @DuncanBannatyne Thankyou for the retweeting this. this is my husband i am v proud. he would do it for anyone x

A happy ending all round, with Bannatyne later posting a Twitpic of his wife in the dress, and one of himself looking typically buccaneering in black tie. No word on whether Richard Branson actually has contacted Power but, with so many big brand names like Vodafone, Habitat and Rentokil walking face-first into damaging Twitter storms, he certainly ought to.

As social media analyst Mark Pack summarised it:

The lessons from all this?

• People don’t stop talking about your firm outside of office hours
• When someone talks about your firm online, many other people are listening in too
• Motivated staff who can display initiative are good for all sorts of reasons – but their ability to react sensibly to online discussion about the firm is another one to add to the list

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.