General Things is a team of developers, designers, and strategists dedicated to helping businesses use technology better. We have worked with companies both large and small, building everything from microcontroller software for custom devices to advanced e-commerce systems. We can help you and your business solve your technology problems.
We Solve Problems
Our primary business is generally described as “web-based software development,” but with that comes so much more. A proper software application starts as a set of real-world business processes within a company that is ultimately translated into software. In order to do that we need to get to know a lot about our customers. We need to understand not only the business processes in question, but also the business’s overall structure. We need to know the people and the personalities behind the business, the fears and the goals and the risks and the rewards. Only then can we get a clear enough picture of what is needed to begin building a proper solution.
For many of our clients, the software we create manifests as a social network, an online community, a blog, a content management systems (CMS), or an e-commerce site. For others it results in a an Android application or an interactive kiosk. For still others it is some unholy combination of all of the above.
Web Development
Our developers are specialists in a variety of languages and technologies. We’re experts in the requisite HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but also in Ruby, PHP, and Java. We particularly excel in building sites based on Ruby on Rails, Drupal, and WordPress, but we do sites on other frameworks, including custom-designed ones, as well.
Our work is broadly divided into the following categories:
Design
The designers at General Things have experience in just about every medium and have produced an amazing body of work. Along with our in-house team, we also have partnerships with some world-renowned design and experience studios like Albertson Design and Tolleson Design. We work with you to figure out what type of design best fits your needs and then bring in resources as needed.
Information Technology
Part of the development of any web application must take a business’s internal IT systems into account. As part of this development, General Things provides business and information technology strategy, development and management. We’re fluent in all forms of office, network, server and datacenter operations. We can design mission-critical high-availability systems, and we speak Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and other platforms.
Hosting
Designing web-based software also requires designing how it is hosted. We provide free hosting to all of our clients during development. We also either arrange and configure all of the hosting you need for your custom software, or work with your existing hosting provider to integrate our software into your setup.
Depending on your needs and the level of technical sophistication in your company, we recommend different options. For companies with a less-technical staff, we recommend our partner Rackspace, who is known for what they called “Fanatical Support™” (they really do have a trademark on the term). Rackspace is all about hand-holding and proactiveness, and it gives us access to the best datacenters in the world for both dedicated and cloud hosting. For more technical customers, we also love to work with Amazon Web Services and its various cloud technologies, including EC2, S3, and CloudFront.