Today we discovered a Cold Fusion error and, for the first time ever, tried to contact Adobe customer support. We are entitled to support as users of Cold Fusion 8.

This apparently entitles us to be sent round the houses 2 or 3 times and then put on hold for one and a half hours. During this time we were serenaded with an interesting choice of music, presumably selected to induce suicidal feelings of remorse at having spent over four grand on software that doesn't work properly.

In the end we gave up. Which is of course Adobe's intention because they don't really want to offer any support on their bug ridden and extremely expensive products.

They don't even have the good grace to let you know you are in a queuing system and if you are likely ever to speak to anyone, ever!

Thanks for all your help with this problem Adobe. At least we know where we stand once we've parted with our cash.

On our own.

Want to know how much your website is worth? Here's an interesting little website that will tell you:

www.cubestat.com

Enter your site URL and it will do the calculation for you using a special algorithm. Just don't take the results too seriously!

AEGON Scottish Equitable asked Gencia to produce a viral quiz game to promote the launch of their new Income for Life plan.

With only a small budget, we produced a slick looking Flash based quiz game with a Formula 1 racing theme.

Henderson Rowe Limited is an investment management firm working directly with discretionary clients. They wanted a  clean, professional style for their new website.

They didn't have a budget for bespoke photography so we used some great London cityscape shots to theme the site and add some visual interest.

View the new site at: www.hendersonrowe.com

We have been tinkering with Bluetooth solutions for a few years now. More recently we have been behind some large campaigns. We think it's a great solution for students and young people. It's a very direct way to send offers to them.

We've had such success with recent campaigns that we've developed our own solution. A combination of state of the art hardware and fully featured software for the management of campaigns. We're presently talking to a Premiership football club about installing a complete solution at the ground.

We've called the system Bloowire and an overview can be found at: www.bloowire.co.uk

Gerry Westwood is a fellow marketeer and good friend of Gencia. He currently uses LiveWire Campaign (our bespoke DIY email marketing tool) to send a newsletter to his client base bi-weekly. He says it's a great way to stay on their 'radar' and when a suitable project comes up they immediately think of him.

His '1 minute reads' are always witty, intelligent and insightful but his latest effort really resonated with me. In fact you could say he was 'strumming my pain with his fingers' when he put pen to paper.

Here it is, in all its glory:

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Steve McClaren - a man who rarely fails to amuse.. and when he's not being funny, he's generally failing (except for the umbrella incident, where he was simultaneously failing and amusing).

Having moved to Dutch side FC Twente earlier this summer, we thought we had seen the back of him for a while, until his new side drew Arsenal in the Champions League qualifier, and who would've thought his pre/post match interviews could provide such entertainment.

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If you're short on ideas on where to take the family over the summer try localtreasures.co.uk

Designed and built by Gencia, with a powerful search facility based on Google maps, it features over 450 specialist museums, interactive exhibitions, boat and train trips, wildlife centres, activity parks and nature trails, castles, historical sites and beautiful stately homes and gardens.

It features a members scheme that gets one child in free with a full price paying adult at every one of the attractions featured on the site.

Gencia provide many and varied bespoke creative and technical solutions to suit the unique requirements of each of our clients. This post outlines the logical step-by-step process that we use to define the scope of a small to medium size development project.

At the beginning of the  process the client usually has one or more objectives in mind and a specific requirement, such as the development of a website. At this point the detail of the project has not yet been defined but, naturally the client wants to know what the solution will cost before they commit to the work. This creates a dilemma because it is usually not possible to accurately price the work without first completing a large proportion of it – namely the technical specification – which is the part of the project that informs the man hours and costs for development.

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