We are delighted to say that last night, FT.com won ‘best mobile site’ at The Association of Online Publishers Awards in London which celebrate the very best in UK digital media. The judges said that m.ft.com was

clear, clean, easy to use, with good use of personalisation while staying true to the brand. A thoroughly effective mobile site.

Assanka has been involved with the development of FT’s online services since 2006, and it’s fantastic that this, our first foray into mobile, has resulted in such a prestigous award. We took an uncompromising approach to developing the FT’s new-look site for mobile users. We knew that FT readers are big fans of Blackberry, and increasingly they’re also browsing on iPhones. The range of browser capabilities, particularly when you factor in corporations rolling out custom configurations to all their Blackberries, is daunting.

We developed a set of interchangeable templates that mapped to various device capabilities, to suit the CSS and HTML rendering peculiarities of the various mobile browser technologies. Another challenge is charting. On some devices, we have quite a high resolution available, and can include charts and graphs with plenty of detail. On devices with smaller screens, we serve the same chart at a different size with less detail, to give the user a similar quality of experience and ensure that the graphic is well sized for the reader’s handset.

Finally, thanks to cookie support on many modern handsets, and the co-operation of many network operators that helpfully provide tracking data to us as they pass on the user’s requests to our servers, we are able to log in mobile users and attach their FT user account to their handset. This enables readers to customise their homepage, displaying their portfolio stocks and customising the regional focus of their news stories.

Overall, the site has been a big success, and a good couple of kilos of glass now says you don’t even have to take my word for it. Grab your phone and head over to m.ft.com and judge for yourself.

Assanka is delighted to announce that FT Alphaville has won Best Business Blog at the prestigious 2007 EPpy awards in Miami, Florida. FT Alphaville is developed, maintained and hosted by Assanka for the Financial Times, and features up to the second, cutting edge business journalism from a dedicated editorial team based in London and Tokyo.

Just seven months old, Alphaville appeared at the awards for the first time, facing stiff competition from the two respected BusinessWeek blogs “Hot Property” and “Brand New Day”. With a growing audience increasingly participating on the site and technology that reaches out to visitors through a daily email and live chat, Alphaville wowed the judges and took the title.

Assanka is proud to be associated with Alphaville and we look forward to introducing further innovative features in the months to come. As it stands Alphaville is a great example of using technology to generate and deliver relevant, high-quality information to readers faster and fresher than ever before. The next generation of Alphaville features will build on this success and cement the site’s reputation as the investor’s first choice for market news and opinion. In a world where every second counts, Alphaville always has the story.

Assanka director Robert Shilston comments:

“FT Alphaville’s recent success is brilliant news for everyone – it confirms our belief that the future of journalism is in the real-time delivery of stories, not the daily press cycle we’ve been used to in the past. Assanka’s technology ensures that the FT Alphaville site is always up-to-date, without needing visitors to refresh their screen, and Markets Live takes this to the extreme — a live chat on the blog — and we know the public like it. We’re delighted that our technology has helped the FT with their recent award”

Having recovered from a few celebratory glasses of champagne on the flight back to London, Alphaville’s editor Paul Murphy is enthused by the partnership:

“We’ve cracked the mould with Alphaville and as a key partner Assanka is vital to the success. We value their insight and with a complex site like Alphaville it’s critical that we have partners willing to go that bit further to keep the wheels on the track.”

Other winners included BBC News Online, ESPN, The New York Times and CNN. Since 1996, the EPpy Awards has honored the best new media services from the newspaper industry. Each year, an independent panel of industry experts selects the top examples of interactive services in a variety of categories. The awards are co-sponsored by E&P and Mediaweek magazines.