Posted by: Fred Boyle on Thursday December 18, 2008
Recently we found ourselves with a bit of a problem. Safari was not storing a session id cookie from ExpressionEngine. Firefox, however, was. Missing cookies are trouble.
After tons of googling and testing we were able to find the culprit…time. More specifically the server’s time was incorrect and Safari seems to be quite strict with cookie expiration. The server was sending a cookie expiration date in GMT that was already expired. This made Safari ignore the cookie and prevent things from functioning.
With this discovery we were able to work with the server admin and fix the time issue. After correcting the time on the server, the cookie was back and the site was working.
This solution will most likely help with other Safari cookie issues, so keep it in mind if your cookies are enabled in Safari but things aren’t working.
0 Comment(s) Filed under: Code, ExpressionEngine, Interweb
Posted by: Carl Smith on Tuesday December 16, 2008
As 2008 comes to a close it’s time to look back and try to figure out what the hell happened.
Redefining what we do
Taking a page out of Gordon Ramsay’s book we looked at our menu and realized we had too many entrées. So we decided to get out of the application building business. This couldn’t have come at a better time as we started working with great developers like Hashrocket and Zetetic. Our ability to help clients focus on what matters and how to make things simple for the end user was a perfect fit with the developers who know how to make crazy complicated things work. As a result we’ve refined our process even further and have more tools to choose from based on the needs of a project.
Great clients
We couldn’t be happier with the clients who selected us to be a part of their evolution on the web this year. Our updated portfolio highlights many of these projects, while there are many more to be included in the coming months. The biggest shift this year was getting to work with more clients who both understood their users needs and had great corporate personalities.
Hanging out with the cool kids
This year we traveled more than ever before. It started in late January with the whole gang going to Vancouver for Web Directions North. From there we headed to SxSW in March where Varick cleaned up as the best bowler and we were asked to illustrate the now infamous jQuery Rockstar. April found nGen represented in New York at the GEL Conference and in May we took a scout party to RailsConf. In August we headed on a short trip to Gainesville for Summer of Web and the end of our travels were in October as we headed to Camden, Maine for Pop!Tech.
Getting a chance to talk
We were also fortunate this year to be asked to speak at various events. We joined some Razorfish peeps in talking to The University of Texas. AIGA invited us to participate in several panels as well as presenting at re:Charge 08. The University of Florida invited us to talk about Jazz & Agile at the Summer of Web. We were also excited to be interviewed by Subvert on what it takes to run a successful web business as well as being selected for the Superest Guest Spot.
Giving back to the web community
This year we also started giving back to our fellow designers and developers by launching Structure for ExpressionEngine. Not to geek out too much for our non-technical readers, but Structure provides a simple interface to edit all of your site’s content in one location. It also provides dynamic output of navigation and breadcrumbs. Along with offering Structure to everyone, we were thrilled to have an extension we developed included in the release of ExpressionEngine 1.6.5.
New faces
In 2008 we welcomed two new nGeneers, Lori Averitt aka Super Glue and Fred Boyle aka Grease Monkey. They’ve been helping from day one to keep us in line and get things done smarter. Happy to have you crazy kids on board!
Celebrating 5 years
Perhaps the craziest realization is we aren’t really a start-up anymore, but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to stop acting like one. Things in this world and this industry change too fast to sit back and do the norm. For those of you that didn’t make The Space Between party, you missed a hella good time.
What’s next?
Who the hell knows, but it’s gonna be fun. We’ll keep refining our process and if history is any indication we’ll find ourselves talking with more and more cool people. Happy Holidays everybody!
9 Comment(s) Filed under: Business, nGen News
Posted by: Carl Smith on Friday December 12, 2008
On behalf of my fellow nGeneers I’d like to congratulate Natasha Chapman on winning the 2008 Grimes Foundation Award for Environmental Activism. We met Natasha earlier this year when she contacted us about helping with Sustainable Jacksonville’s identity and web presence. Since then we’ve come to know her passion and dedication to making Jacksonville, and the world, a better place for the next generation. We’d also like to thank her for educating us on what it means to be sustainable. We’re proud to be affiliated with her efforts and look forward to even better things for Sustainable Jacksonville in 2009.
1 Comment(s) Filed under: Interweb
Posted by: Carl Smith on Monday December 8, 2008
Howdy everybody.
I wanted to let you know I heard from Mark Hurst and company last week that some of the videos from the 2008 Gel Conference are now online. This conference, much like Pop!Tech, is a must for anyone who can make it. My rave review on GEL earlier this year doesn’t do justice to seeing the speakers live, but you can get a flavor by watching the videos.
Personally, I think Terry Border, Kelly Dobson and Alex Lee are the must see videos. That said, it’s really about what you find funny or fascinating so watch all of them.
Fingers crossed, the video for Rhett and Link and Sam Brown will be up soon. Both were supa good. Also be sure and check out the great intro animations from Grow Design.
I guess no plug would be complete without mentioning the lineup they’re putting together for GEL 2009.
If we don’t free tickets to the conference now I don’t know what we have to do. Enjoy!
1 Comment(s) Filed under: Business, Interweb, Resources
Posted by: nGen Works on Tuesday December 2, 2008
nGen Works recently received our present from Yahoo! Yodelicious, one of six Purple Pedal Bikes that are part of their promotion going on all over the world.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Yahoo took some cool bikes, painted them purple, attached a solar panel, GPS, digital camera and modem to them and now they take pictures and upload them to PurplePedals.com for everyone to checkout. We’ll have the bike throughout the holidays, so make sure to check the Yodelicious flickr page for all the fun going on. Maybe we’ll leave it by the chimney on Christmas Eve so we can capture a shot of Santa!
0 Comment(s) Filed under: Interweb
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