WRAL.com’s Storm Tracker recently won a Horizon Interactive Award. |
The Hurricane Tracker not only helps WRAL.com attract visitors in search of storm information, the feature recently picked up a prestigious Horizon Award. The Hurricane Tracker won a Bronze award in the Flash category for the Best of 2008.
The Horizon Interactive Awards (HIA) is an international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media products. The 2008 competition drew nearly 1,000 entries from almost every U.S. state as well as many countries from around the world.
“The 2008 competition was the most competitive to date,” said Mike Sauce, founder of the Horizon Interactive Awards. “The work in this year’s competition is at such a high level that the judges really had their work cut out for them.”
WRAL.com Multimedia Producer Nathan Clendenin did the front of the piece, which includes the navigation, animation, etc. A third party provides the data on hurricanes, but CBC New Media Group’s tech team, headed by WRAL.com Chief Software Architect Jason Priebe, does a lot of work to gather this data a deliver it to the Flash application to display. Priebe and his team keep the Storm Tracker up and running smoothly.
“The graphic is great at tracking current storms – and will show you the projected path of the storm,” said Clendenin. “But you can also view historical storm paths and related data as far back as data exists (starting in the late 1800’s!). There is also a list of major N.C. storms as well as a list of category 5 storms to view.”
WRAL.com visitors can access the Storm Tracker year round, but the section is highlighted during hurricane season.
“It was an exciting piece to work on, as it is both quite useful and also entertaining,” said Clendenin.
“All of the winning entries displayed a high level of sophistication, aesthetic creativity, technical excellence and clear purpose.”
In its 7th year, the Horizon Interactive Awards competition takes place in the spring and winners are announced in May.
“Horizon honors the most talented developers of interactive media,” reads the mission of the HIA. “The competition provides a level playing field to all participants regardless of company size. …Our mission is to shed the spotlight on that work and the people who made it happen.”
