When we set up Assanka way back in 2003, we had a hundred quid and wanted to do cool stuff with web technologies. In the nearly nine years since then, we have taken on a huge variety of challenges, for an equally diverse range of clients, many of whom have become firm friends along the way. We’ve tinkered, experimented, hacked, built things that couldn’t be built, done things that couldn’t be done, broken stuff, fixed it again, and made it better the second time.

And we’ve grown too, with thirteen people now making up the exceptional group of engineers who call Assanka home (not forgetting Shadow the dog, of course). Together we built the UK’s first map based property search, and in doing so almost got our client sued by the British Government. We introduced Londoners to live blogging in 2008 for the mayoral election coverage in thelondonpaper, and for readers of the FT our tools power virtually all the social media, interactive data and charting, live chat and blogging features you’ll find through FT.com.

We also picked up three Webby Awards, as well as accolades from the Association of Online Publishers and Editor and Publisher Magazine.

Since our first involvement with the FT over five years ago, we’ve always been impressed with the organisation’s willingness to take risks – with new business models, new technologies, untested suppliers – and then measure, evaluate, learn and improve. There is no pressure to go with the flow, instead, conventional or currently fashionable ideas are challenged and questioned. The culture inspires people to innovate, both in terms of content and delivery, and the pairing of some of the world’s finest writers with an open minded approach to getting that content to readers makes for an excitingly potent combination.

It seemed natural for the FT to make the leap to advanced web technologies and HTML5 for publishing on mobile devices in a way that matches the effortless usability of native apps, and we were proud to be able to make that happen. The launch of the touch optimised FT Web App for smartphones and tablets actually changed many people’s views of what web apps were capable of, and we hope might have inspired more people to tread the same path.

Now, we want to do more, and with many exciting goals on the horizon, we were delighted to accept the FT’s offer to give us a new home. We’ll also shortly be unveiling a new identity and a new site which we hope will become a useful resource and a destination for developers who want to engage with the FT.

Assanka has always produced very bespoke solutions for individual clients, and we’re working with those clients and a number of carefully selected partners to ensure they continue to get a great service from a new supplier. We’d like to express our deepest appreciation to them and the many others who have made Assanka what we are today.

We started the year by developing a new site for thelondonpaper, a ‘freesheet’ newspaper here in London produced by News International (also home of The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World).  The team at thelondonpaper were keen to tap into our expertise in optimising workflows and page load times – which meant we got to spend some time making the site one of the fastest loading big media sites in the business.  One of the things we really like to do is spend time making things faster, and the more we speeded up the site, the higher the traffic figures soared.  Unfortunately later in the year the advertising slump finally took its toll on the paper, and News International closed the title in September.

In the spring FT Alphaville won a third Webby award in New York, for its combination of cutting edge tech and equally cutting edge journalism.

Our summer was filled with exciting new developments for the Financial Times, along with equally exciting developments for one of our founding partners, Robert Shilston, who got married in August.

With our help, the FT relaunched its mobile site, sourcing and publishing content from all the FT’s news operations, as well as providing near-live markets data, with mobile optimised graphing and charting.  Despite the difficulties in tracking hits from mobile devices, we delivered a site that is able, for the vast majority of visitors, to remember their login, preferences and settings, and even the correct global region where they normally carry their phone.

We also started to trial a new system we’ve been working on to help wealth and fund managers to operate their business and track their clients’ assets and portfolios.  A parallel run with the system we were replacing had to be cut short after the client’s staff found ours to be so fast that using the old system was painful in comparison.  That system is called Adnum, and you’ll be hearing much more about that in 2010.

It’s surprisingly difficult for a group of people that make their living telling other people how to make the most of the web to practice what they preach.  Thankfully, this autumn we set about the belated task of redesigning the Assanka website.  We’re not quite done yet, and we’re holding back some of the more original features until we’re good and ready, but we’re pretty happy with how it’s turning out.  We welcome feedback, so let us know what you make of the new look (or even the code, if you insist).

It’s been a year to remember here at Assanka.  We hope you had a great year, and indeed a great decade, and have many exciting things ready to challenge you in 2010.