Scrapbook wins Best Technical Innovation award as Channel 4 moves more apps to the cloud.
Scrapbook, the online platform launched by Channel 4, was built by Channel 4 and Thoughtworks in just 19 weeks, the global custom software company can reveal. The service was awarded Best Technical Innovation by the prestigious Online Media Awards last month.
Scrapbook allows Channel 4 to present viewers with curated ‘bookmarks’, grouping interesting and relevant links for key programmes and presenters and allowing users to collect and store their favourite bookmarks. Viewers can quickly and easily gain more from Channel 4 talent and shows, from finding anything from recipes in the latest Gordon Ramsay Cookalong to house buying tips after Location, Location, Location.
The platform was built in just 19 weeks by Thoughtworks teams in London and India using continuous delivery and design techniques. It was also a pioneering project C4 designed to be based on open source NoSQL database system MongoDB. Thoughtworks collaborated with an in-house team and design consultancy ClearLeft on the front-end design.
Barry O’Reilly, consultant at Thoughtworks, comments, “We have a long relationship with Channel 4 and have worked closely with them on a number of past projects, so we were delighted to be chosen to help build Scrapbook. Scrapbook is a great example of what can be achieved when combining continuous delivery with a lean product development approach and we’re extremely proud of the results, especially the scalability enabled by the cloud, which will allow the site to easily grow and develop in the future”.
Scrapbook has attracted many registered users since its launch last year and was built to deal with the extremely high volume of traffic expected from one of the nation’s most popular TV channels. Hosted entirely on the cloud, the site is capable of handling more than 2,500 page views a second.