Whilst covering the final round of the 2010 MotoGP season at Valencia in November, I was lucky enough to score an amazing interview with Sergi Sendra – he’s the Director of Dorna Sports TV Production, and I’d spent a while organising the interview so that I could publish a feature across my various MotoGP sites on the story of just what it takes to produce the international MotoGP TV feed.
He was a great guy, incredibly helpful, and it was a fascinating hour or so of learning a great deal about a subject close to my heart.
It’s a nice long read, and if you’ve any interest in MotoGP or TV production, then I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Here goes…
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Today’s a special day. Yep, it’s someone’s birthday.
And no I’m not talking about former MotoGP 125cc and current World Superstock 1000 rider Pere Tutusaus – happy birthday Tutu, by the way – No, I’m talking about my own baby VROOM MEDIA which turns one today.
It’s going to be a day like any other really – I’m in the middle of a raft of wireframing for an iPhone application for a travel company, and also doing some printwork design for CBBC, Children’s BBC. So it’s going to be a long and busy day. But that’s good. And it’s something I’m very thankful for after a year of kicking off a completely new business in somewhat tough times. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a MotoGP fan and an iPhone (or iPod touch) user then one thing that you really should put on your device is the MotoGP 2010 game.
It’s a fantastic 3D experience featuring the 17 riders from the 2010 MotoGP grid including Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa, and comes with the official bikes and all 18 tracks which make up this year’s calendar. There are a host of other excellent features too which make this a must-have for both gamers and MotoGP fans. Championship mode allows players to compete for the 2010 World Championship, with two camera angles giving amazing views and acceleration controls that replicate the lean angle of the bikes through accessible handling. Racing like a professional allows players to unlock all 18 circuits, and the game’s iPod library support function allows an individual soundtrack to be created.
When you put a game like this on your iPhone it’s very easy to just dive in and enjoy the experience, but given my interest in things like design and what happens to bring the sport and everything that goes with it to the fans I wanted to find out a bit more about the game and what it takes to create and deliver such a piece of work. So I had a Q&A with Tone Brennan from I-play, the producer of MotoGP 2010 Game for iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s a fascinating insight into just how much goes into developing and delivering a game, and a reminder that it’s very easy to take this kind of work for granted… Read the rest of this entry »
This news kind of falls somewhere between shameless self-promotion and genuinely useful stuff for MotoGP fans. So I’ll try to sound really really altruistic and say that it’s definitely the latter, and tell you about the new improved MotoGPLinks.com…
As I – and friends and colleagues at Vroom Media – run a few MotoGP and motorsport related websites, we’ve often found it important to have loads of different sources at our fingertips. It was this need that originally drove the build and launch of MotoGPLinks.com – a site we hoped could become the ultimate web directory for MotoGP fans around the world.
Basically, that’s what it has become – and it goes far beyond MotoGP too; taking in many other championships and country events.
Its main focus however remains MotoGP itself – all three classes, and all the rider, team and news sites related to them, along with all key blogs, forums and other sites out there that could possibly interest the true MotoGP fan. Official bodies, merchandise – MotoGPLinks.com pretty much has it all.
Nonetheless it came time recently to look again at its whole build and structure, and I’m really chuffed to say that the newly relaunched version is now fully live and up and running – bigger and better than ever, more user friendly, and still the best directory out there for MotoGP and bikesport fans.
So next time you’re needing to track down a MotoGP related site – official, unofficial, whatever… then go straight to MotoGPLinks.com and give it a go. And if you know of any sites that *aren’t* on there, then click the “Submit Site” button and make sure they get listed.
This has been going on so long it no longer feels like news to me.
Nonetheless it *is* news and it’s good news.
Say hello to VROOM Magazine – my latest web launch and a project that I have really enjoyed developing along with stv21 (that’s Tamara to you and me) – who helps run the BatiFans network of sites as well as her own blog, Sonrisa de Talavera.
VROOM Magazine has been in build since late 2009, and has been the subject to ongoing development, content backfilling and design tweaks to bring it up to a really spiffing launch standard. And of course that’s all well and good, but the key question is *what is it*?
There are plenty of websites out there dedicated to MotoGP (mainly the top class admittedly) and to bikesport in general.
VROOM Magazine was built because in running BatiFans it became apparent that fans who support one Spanish rider quite often support or follow or take quite an interest in others – often, many others, too. It’s not everyone of course – and we all have our likes and dislikes – but it has definitely been a genuine and widespread phenomenon.
And basically we thought it was worth exploring… Was it worth publishing a full-blown webzine whose mission is to focus solely on Spaniards? Read the rest of this entry »
