Jordi Romkema

Today the first public beta of the TMF Video Player was launched. The TMF Video Player is an interactive desktop application made with Adobe AIR. With this application you can watch the latest music videos, watch your own playlist, read the latest gossip and showbiz news and watch previously aired episodes of television programs created by the Dutch television channel TMF.

The application will also notify you when there’s a new music video, a new blog post by one of the TMF presenters or a new news article at the TMF website.

The TMF Video Player was designed and developed by me but wouldn't be possible without the help of Bert Hagendoorn, Serge Jespers and Klaasjan Tukker from Adobe Benelux. I would like to thank them for their wonderful support they have given in the development process. They have supplied me with lots of information on how to get the best performance out of this little application and how to use the Adobe AIR framework.

The TMF Video Player was made entirely in Actionscript 3.0 with Adobe Flex. The application retrieves Flash video streams served through a Flash Media Server.

You can download the TMF Video Player here.

On September 1st Comedy Central will launch a new digital television channel in The Netherlands called Comedy Central Family. The channel will air a broad selection of local successful productions and international hit series for the whole family 24 hours a day.

Comedy Central Family differs in a lot of ways compared to its bigger brother Comedy Central: It has a different target audience, more family oriented and the design is also more colorful and more playful.

Moodtape Comedy Central Family

To support the launch for this new television channel a small website was created to supply viewers with information regarding the television shows and a TV guide. The site has the same structure as the Comedy Central website launched a few weeks ago yet looks completely different as you can see below.

Comedy Central Family - Homepage

Today, the website for Comedy Central in The Netherlands has been completely renewed as part of an extensive online and on air rebranding campaign. The change in the look-and-feel of the television channel (which will happen today at 8pm) will give the Comedy Central a more personal and fresher appearance.

A change on air also means a change online which was the main reason why the site was updated and refreshed. The new website differs in many ways with its processor launched in 2007: There’s now much more information and more visual elements from each television show. The television guide contains much more information and now you are also able to print your own television guide so you can sit back and relax on your own couch without having to turn the computer on to check what’s on Comedy Central.

The channel is home to proven success shows such as Californication, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Frasier, Reno 911!, Scrubs and much more.

Below you can see a screenshot of the new website but obviously it would be best to visit it yourself! In other news, Comedy Central will launch a new television channel next month called Comedy Central Family which will also get its own website. But more information on that as soon as it happens...

Comedy Central - Homepage

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McJunior Club is an interactive playground for kids containing lots of games, fun facts, movies and promotional contests. The site has been created for McDonald’s together with Nickelodeon. The primary goal of the website is to offer the kids a form of entertainment, to stimulate the kids to play games and do sports.

A new logo was specifically designed by me to be used on the website and on promotional items such as posters and in-restaurant placemats. The site was also designed by me and features several different sections each with a specific layout: Movies, games, Happy Meal, birthdays and Ronald McDonald. Every month the site’s look and feel is updated to match the current Happy Meal theme (as you can see in the screenshot the current theme is promoting healthy food options such as water, carrots and apples. Other times the theme is around an upcoming movie, a big event such as the Olympics, a television character and so on… The site is very popular, especially the flash games.

McJunior Club - Homepage

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TMF Reaction is a very popular television program made for teenagers/young adults and can be seen on a daily basis on the television TMF. With TMF Reaction the audience is in control and they influence the content of the show.

The show is presented by a changing group of VJ’s: Nikkie, Sascha, Saar, Damien & Valerio. Every day after school they discuss the funniest and hottest facts of the day regarding celebrities, fashion, sports, school, music, games and more. In between different topics and items on location the newest and best music videos are shown.

TMF Reaction has its own website where the viewers can join in on the show with their webcam. Through the webcam they can interact with the VJ’s, ask questions to famous guests in the show and play games and win prizes with each other. TMF Reaction can be seen every day between 16:30 and 17:30 on TMF but the show continues on the web through active blogging by the VJ’s. Throughout the day they post their news, videos, photos, etc.

The design of the site was made by me and every VJ has its own variation of the homepage design. The design and colors correspond with the topics the VJ’s are interested in. Below you can see the different variations.

TMF Reaction - Homepage

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The Nickelodeon Cartoon Creator is an interactive application where kids can create their own Spongebob Squarepants. They are literally the director of their own cartoon: they decide on the story, how the characters will be animated, what the set looks like, what background music is playing and much more.

The kids can edit and customize their cartoon, save it and come back later to work on it again. If they’re happy they can decide to publish their cartoon online. This will send the cartoon to Nickelodeon for moderation because every cartoon must be checked for explicit content first. When this is done the cartoon can be seen online and they can send it to their friends.

The Cartoon Creator is entirely made in Flash/Actionscript. The cartoons aren't actualy saved as cartoons or movie files, instead the keyframes are saved into an XML file. So everytime you view a cartoon it needs to be build up from the XML data. This has the advantage that resources used in the cartoons such as characters can be swapped by newer version anytime whereas regular movie files are static.
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On February 20th Nickelodeon launched a new website in The Netherlands and in Belgium. We created a new interactive playground for the kids. We got fed up with the old site, especially when it came to the content management system. Besides the CMS the site desperately needed a new and fresh design because the navigation on the old site was terrible. Anyway, now all of that is in the past and luckily the new site is a huge success. Read the rest... »

From their classic Beatnuts albums like Intoxicated Demons, Street Level & Stone Crazy, Take It or Squeeze It, to the underground smashes like Al Tariq's God Connections and Missin Linx's Exhibit A EP, the trio has always been a favorite amongst Hip-Hop fans. Psycho Les, a Hip-Hop veteran and producer extraordinaire, has a production record not to be overlooked, boasting classic Beatnuts production credits like: Off The Books, Watch Out Now, and No Escapin This. Al Tariq aka Fashion, although some may not know, was a founding member of The Beatnuts and played an important role in the group's first 3 Albums. In 1998, he left the group to pursue a solo career, so this recent formation of Big City is the unofficial reunion of Tariq and Les since the late '90s. Most remember Problemz as a member of the group Missin Linx, as his lyrical double time flow is reminiscent of The Golden Era of Hip-Hop. Read the rest... »

On April 30th MTV Networks launched the new television channel Comedy Central. Due to the success in the United States and the recent successful launches in Poland and Germany, Comedy Central can now also be seen in The Netherlands. Comedy Central airs as of April 30th between 8 pm and 2 am and replaces the channel The BOX Comedy, which in turn replaced The BOX. Read the rest... »

As of December 1st 2006 The BOX no longer exists. Due to the shifting of channels by owner MTV Networks and Talpa in The Netherlands the channel no longer airs 24 hours a day but now shares a channel with kids entertainment channel Nickelodeon, also owned by MTV Networks. Nickelodeon airs until 20:00 and after that The BOX Comedy takes over with an all comedy programming. The interactive music video request system The BOX was known for disappears completely and from now on the channel airs comedies such as Chappelle’s Show, South Park and Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. Read the rest... »