30th October 2000

EAST ANGLIA’s leading Internet Service Provider, KeConnect, has teamed up with young Suffolk entrepreneur Oli Watts to relaunch the youngster’s website, www.pupiline.net, which has just been nominated for a national Internet Business Award.

Pupiline.net, an online magazine, written and produced by young people for young people, started life as an anti-bullying website earlier this year, after Oli was bullied at his previous school, but rapidly developed into an e-magazine covering a host of issues both serious and fun of interest to young people.

Ipswich-based KeConnect who supported Oli and hosted the website for free in the early days, have spent the last four months redesigning the site and, using the very latest in cold fusion programming, have turned it into a state-of-the-art professional website, which is fast, exciting and interactive.

Working closely with leading London-based design firm Design Bridge, it’s believed the site is being tipped to become one of the UK’s leading teen websites and KeConnect Managing Director, Robert Kemp, says it’s the biggest and most exciting website project the team have worked on to date at a cost of well over £100,000.

"Combining Oli’s great vision and the technical expertise and, dare I say it, genius, of the KeConnect team together with Design Bridge’s fantastic new logo, we believe we have created something very special. It’s also been wonderful to work on something which has really caught the imagination of so many different people from the youngsters who use it to teachers using it schools to businesses who recognise its commercial potential."

Robert, whose firm have a ten percent stake in pupiline, has now joined the youngster’s company’s board of directors and is playing a major role in advising the company on all Internet and technical matters.

Pupiline Managing Director, Oli Watts, who is busy juggling revision for his GCSE mock exams at the Gilberd School in Colchester with running a successful web business, is delighted with KeConnect’s input into the new look site. "We wouldn’t be anywhere without the help and support and 100 percent commitment that all the team at KeConnect have given us," he said. "They have turned my dream of what pupiline should be into reality and they’ve pulled out all the stops to do it."

Oli has just heard that pupiline has been short-listed for a national Internet award by Internet Business Magazine in the Young Achiever of the Year category.

He said: "This is yet another tribute to everyone who has played a role in getting pupiline to where it is now, and more than anything it is a tribute to the company who backed me and my idea from day one – and that is KeConnect."

ENDS