Chameleon tidies Waste Watch

Chameleon Net wins the March CRN/Syscap Approved Technology Innovator of the Month award

Web developer Chameleon Net has won the March CRN/Syscap Approved Technology Innovator of the Month award for an integrated document and content management system which provides easy public access to information on waste disposal and recycling.

The system has been custom-built using Microsoft's C# and ASP.net environment.

It enables Waste Watch, a project backed by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF), to store thousands of documents digitally and make them available on the site, quickly and easily.

Designed to strict NOF guidelines, the system uses an intelligent searching method called Dublin Core which makes it easier and quicker for users to find the documents they need.

The XML-based Waste Watch system converts all documents into HTML format and stores them in a simple directory structure. It then converts HTML to XHTML to enable access from a wide range of browsers and devices.

Vicky Reeves, managing director of Chameleon Net, said indexing all the different types of documents and providing a fast and effective search facility was a challenge.

"They have thousands of documents, all in different formats. By using Dublin Core we have been able to design document properties and develop an intelligent search at the front end," she said.

Suzie Peleg, information officer at Waste Watch, said the Chameleon Net approach had been extremely creative.

"We knew we needed to present this online library of documents and we had to do it in a particular way to meet NOF requirements. What we had not conceived was how to do it in an easy-to-use way for the public," she said.

Chameleon Net is this year's third winner of a monthly Technology Innovator award. The monthly winners will be put forward for two annual awards, one for the public sector and one for the private sector, to be presented at the Channel Awards in November.