After only two months of being live www.skjarinn.is, the website of the Television Company Skjarinn, was voted the best recreational web of 2005 at the Icelandic Web Awards.

This award was provided by the Icelandic Web Academy, who on a yearly basis, choose the best of category sites from the Icelandic region. The vote is a truly democratic, asking for nominations from both the public and the Icelandic web and marketing communities.

Site Overview

Skjarinn launched the new site to provide an online guide to programming and promote the launch of their new video on demand service. The site includes a wealth of interactive features such as streaming video, flash video, interactive programme guides and interactive tutorials on their new video on demand service.

Magnus Ragnarsson,managing director of Skjarinn commented “Our objective for the site was to create a truly unforgettable interactive experience and increase subscriptions to the new video on demand service. All indications, from both clients and fellow professionals, indicate we have succeeded and we are extremely pleased that the site has been officially recognised by the Icelandic Web Academy.”

The site was implemented on VYRE Unify, which has provided a flexible framework for the management of a wide variety of both structured and unstructured information. As the launch of the site had to coordinate with the introduction of the new branding, the time schedule to complete the design and build of the site was extremely pressured at only two months.

Ruth Knight, VYRE, Business Development Director, stated “VYRE’s ability to combine the traditional benefits of content management with total freedom in creativity and the powerful management of media rich assets has enabled Skjarinn to bring to life all of their ambitious interactive ideas in a record timescale, its fantastic that the efforts of all parties involved in the build of the site have been credited by this award.”

The Skjarinn site was created by the combined talents of Gagarin, who provided the creative designs, and TM software, VYRE’s Nordic partner, who built and deployed the site on VYRE Unify.

Skjarinn

The Icelandic Television Company was founded in 1993 and started broadcasting it’s popular freeTV channel ScreenOne in 1999. ScreenOne grew tremendously in it’s first year of operation and is currently the third largest channel in Iceland with a reach of almost 90% of households. ITC acquired the rights to the FA Premier League in 2004 and launched a sports payTV channel in the fall of 2005.

Iceland Telecom started buying stock in the company in 2004 in preparation for it’s IPTV launch in the fall of 2005. ITC is now fully owned by Iceland Telecom and has been rebranded as Skjarinn. Current services include ScreenOne, EB (sports payTV), 60 satellite channels sold in subscription and VOD
The Icelandic Web Academy

The Icelandic Web Awards have been awarded to outstanding Icelandic websites since the year 2000. The awards are backed by the ÍMARK (Association of Icelandic Marketing "Workers/People") and a few other entities from the grasroot of the Icelandic web industry.

VYRE

VYRE brings a unique approach to the online management of digital information and assets by offering high end functionality at a cost-effective price and exclusively using open standards technology to offer the highest level of performance and flexibility.

VYRE Unify is the result of over 10 years of experience in the field of web content management and digital asset management. It is a mature and proven fourth generation solution, which is designed to mange many different types of content and assets through its unified framework.

VYRE’s clients come from every business sector and include: Diageo PLC, Icelandair, The Association of Accounting Technicians, Lowe & Partners Worldwide, Straumur Investment Bank, RUV and Grey Worldwide, Quocirca and The University of Central England.