We were very pleased to hear that the Charnwood Borough council website has been assessed in the 2009 SOCITM Better Connected survey as being one of only 13 Shire District Councils in England to have a website with "Excellent Content".

We moved CBC over to a new version of our Content Management System last year and it's great to see that the hard work, both within the council and at Cuttlefish, has paid off Well done all.

We have launched two new websites this week. The site for Procraft Design Ltd (www.procraftdesign.co.uk) is a CMS site with Flash elements. Graphic design was by our regular collaborator Jason Marriot Design.

The new Spark Children's Festival site (www.sparkfestival.co.uk) contains a full programme for the Arts Council funded annual festival, with on-line ticket purchasing.

Cuttlefish Digital Arts has launched 'Stench' a new online community aimed at digital artists and experimental performers. The website makes use of our 'cSocial' community building system and has full social network integration. Go to stench.org.uk.

Our new site for Andy Reed MP is amongst the first to make full use of the latest version of our 'sPortals' content management system. Andy is a keen user of so-called 'Web 2.0' tools and his new site integrates content from his Flickr, YouTube and Twitter pages, as well as providing him with full blogging facilities. Visit his new site at andyreedmp.org.uk

We have launched a new content managed website for insurance brokers Blythin and Brown. See their new site at blythinandbrown.co.uk.

2008 was an important year for Cuttlefish. We moved to a new office, we decided to end our "Calico" joint venture and focus on purely Cuttlefish Multimedia Ltd, and we welcomed on board some great new clients whilst maintaining our ongoing relationships with others.

Naturally it's hard to predict what the future will hold, but we think the coming year will be even more significant for us. There is the economic situation of course, which will put even more pressure on us to continue to deliver great value web sites. And then there are some very interesting technologies that we think will be big in 2009.

The first of these is the "location-based Internet". This will enable custom content to be delivered to a mobile (and desktop) Internet device based on it's geographic location. We think that this is very exciting and has the potential to revolutionise how we all use the Internet. We already have significant mapping expertise and have recently moved in to Apple iPhone development so are looking forward to the opportunities that this will bring.

Then there is "cloud computing". We expect this "on demand" approach to web hosting and web application delivery to become increasingly important and intend to release cloud-hosted versions of our Content Management Systems in 2009.

If you want to know more about these technologies and our other plans for 2009 then please get in touch.

We end the year with a couple of arts oriented Web sites. Gizella K Warburton (www.gizellakwarburton.co.uk) is a textiles designer for whom Cuttlefish has created a new site. A simple, clean and effective site we think.

CQart (cqart.leicester.gov.uk) is somewhat larger. It contains a full guide to the artworks that can be found in Leicester's new Cultural Quarter. It was commissioned by Leicester City Council.

Our new social network community for artists from abroad in the East Midlands has gone live. This is an important project for us since it is the first public outing of our new 'cSocial' web system. Watch out for a series of new cSocial sites coming soon.

Cuttlefish is currently developing a series of websites for North West Leicestershire District Council. The first of these to go live is an interactive consultation site for their Local Development Framework which became available for use today.

We have formed a new partnership relationship with design company JMD. Having already produced one website together we are looking forward to producing many more in the future. Visit our partners page for more information.