Ket Lai is semi-hibernating

James Weiner and James Stewart are currently working full time on the government single domain project as part of the Government Digital Service and are not ordinarily taking on new work. If your project is especially exciting feel free to email, but please don't be offended if we take a while to get back to you.

Ninja Tune XX

Ket Lai

Ninja Tune XX

Promoting and celebrating pioneering record label's 20th birthday with a series of exclusive giveaways

Network London

Collaboration and networking site and tools to support this high-level citywide community of practice

Seiji Music

Music blog and podcast building buzz around this producer and DJ, growing audience and driving sales

Ket Lai builds applications and strategies, helping its clients make full use of and contribute to the web.

Who we are

Ket Lai was founded and is operated by James Stewart, a creative technologist who's been working with the web since the mid 90s. He was joined in early 2010 by James Weiner, a designer with years of experience working in the music and publishing industries. Believing in keeping things simple and flexible, James and James form a small core staff, but draw on the assistance and expertise of a number of seasoned collaborators to ensure that clients get access to the experience they need.

What we do

Our primary business lies in helping clients determine how the web can assist with meeting their goals and what they in turn can contribute to the web, and implementing appropriate responses. Sometimes that means helping make use of existing tools, but usually we build custom web applications. Ruby on Rails and merb (in use for this site) are our preferred tools, but we've used a host of others, including the drupal CMS so popular in the NGO world and the wordpress and textpattern blogging engines.

We stay tuned in to what's happening on the web, and strive to adhere to best practices. Our tremendous enthusiasm for the web means we've usually got something to contribute when you try to identify how the latest buzz tool or site might interact with what you're doing.

How we work

We try to stay flexible, which partly means adapting our process to your needs and capacity, and partly means bringing our expertise of web development to bear and starting with solid research and many questions.

We like to start with simple prototypes that are built out as you use them and identify what they're like in practice (rather than simply on paper or in photoshop). We write tests for our code so that it's robust and easy to change. We use version control so that it's simple to step back through changes. And we rely on a network of our peers to make sure you're getting up to date knowledge.

If you're interested in process, it's usually best to get in touch with a quick summary of what you're trying to do, and we can take it from there.

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