Cuttlefish Multimedia Ltd has joined forces with Leicester and London media company Channel 2020 to form Calico Interactive Ltd - a new company specialising in Internet video and social networking.

Cuttlefish's Sean Clark, a Director of the new company says, "This is a really exciting time for us. Cuttlefish has been developing Internet technologies for over five years and this new working relationship gives us the opportunity to apply our expertise to completely new business sectors."

He adds, "We identified social networking and Internet video as potential growth areas for us about two years ago and we've invested a lot of effort in ensuring that our content management tools support them."

The first applications of this new technology were the Nintendo Life, ClickOnGolf and OnlineClassroom sites, plus the new Pineapster 2.0 music community.

Cuttlefish Multimedia will continue to run alongside the new company, with existing and new Cuttlefish clients benefiting from the extra resources and expertise that Calico will make available.

Cuttlefish's Sean Clark was a speaker a today's 'Emerging Technologies and Creative Industries' event in Leicester. He spoke as part of the launch of the Leicester.TV project. Sean's presentation slides are available for download in PDF format.

We will be making some announcements about our new programme of 'Web 2.0' developments shortly. Please join our e-mail list for the latest information.

Much of Cuttlefish's focus over the past few months has been on the development of our new 'Pineapster' platform. We are now taking names and addresses of people interested in being involved in beta testing. Visit www.pineapster.com.

We have collected together a number of useful links for people interested in Web site accessibility. Feel free to make use of them.

Cuttlefish will be sending three delegates to the 'Future of Web Apps' summit in London on the 8th February. This timely event ties in to some of our key interests for 2006 and brings together many of the world's leading Web application developers.

At Cuttlefish we're really looking forward to 2006. Here are just a few of the reasons why:

• We have some great new Web sites and developments planned with our existing clients.
• We will launching a series of our own content-based Web sites.
• We are initiating a new business development and marketing plan.
• We will be announcing a new fully XML-based version of our Content Management System.
• Our sister company Cuttlefish Digital Arts is starting to develop its own profile.

It should be a good year!

We have just launched the new-look Charnwood Borough Council Web site. As well as a much brighter look-and-feel, the new site features a personalised 'My Charnwood' section as well as compliance with the latest eGovernment and accessibility standards.

Cuttlefish.Com Ltd has been fortunate enough to receive a development bursary from Creative Leicester Shire. The bursary includes a grant plus general business support and period of business mentoring.

Cuttlefish has developed a new Web site for A1 Plates. The site features and interactive 'number plate creator' that allows users to design and order custom car number plates.