What's New With Us

Here's some of the stuff we're talking about

What's New With Us

Here's some of the stuff we're talking about

News From Blend

Gadgetopia

E-Textbooks as Big Brother

CourseSmart E-Textbooks Track Students’ Progress for Teachers: Using electronic textbooks mean the professor can essentially look over your shoulder to make sure you’re doing the reading. They know when students are skipping pages, failing to highlight significant passages, not bothering to take notes — or simply not opening the book at all. […] In the

Gadgetopia

Image Forensics and the World Press Photo of the Year

How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop: Here’s the analysis of how the winner of the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year apparently faked the image. It’s an interesting look at image forensics. Now, the event itself isn’t a fake — there are lots of other photos online

Eating Elephant

“Life in Folders,” an article for Offscreen Magazine

The fine people at Offscreen Magazine asked me to write about something - anything - and I landed on the weird junction of computer memory vs. human memory. It's about photography. It's about information architecture. It's about my faulty memory. It's about organization, its place in our life, and why it matters.

Gadgetopia

Big Data meets The Screenwriter

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data: A computer might write your next movie. […] a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of

Blend News

Now What? Conference 2013 is Over!

Close to 160 web and marketing professionals descended upon the Belbas Theatre at the Washington Pavilion last Thursday to experience the first ever Now What? Conference. We don't want to brag, but we think it was a rousing success.

Attendees have shared with us their takeaways - including a better understanding of content strategy, a clearer view on how content governance can be handled within organizations or with clients, and the realization that web professionals really like cats, speedos and mid-90s punk lyrics. But it's not over.

We're already planning next year's conference. If you want to keep up on the details, sign up for conference emails today!

Gadgetopia

Disaster Social Network

San Francisco Is Building A Social Network For Emergencies Only: This is another idea down the line of recovers.org – a social network and communications system to be used when a disaster of some kind occurs. What’s become clear over the last year is that there’s is a need for disaster and crisis coordination online,

Gadgetopia

The Kenguru

An E.V. That Wraps Around a Wheelchair: This vehicle is essentially an exoskeleton that goes over a wheelchair, and “wraps” it so it’s able to travel on the road. It’s a great idea. The Kenguru is seven feet long — nearly two feet shorter than the dinky Smart Fortwo — and five feet high. There

Blend News

Joe Kepley Joins eZ Publish Community Project Board

Blend partner and Development Director Joe Kepley was recently voted to eZ Publish's 2013-2014 Community Project Board. He represents Blend as a community member, along with three other developers. The rest of the board consists of representatives from eZ Systems.

Blend News

Welcome Stephanie Uher, Newest Blend Intern!

We have an intern desk to fill, and we're excited to announce that Stephanie Uher is that intern!

Stephanie is a computer science major at Dakota State University in Madison, SD. She is on track to graduate this spring, and will serve as a development intern working on internal projects and select client projects.

Welcome to the team, Stephanie!

Blend News

Blend Wins the Trifecta for Texas Christian University

Blend Interactive came home with a trifecta of awards for our work for Texas Christian University's recent TCU Viewbook site from this year's South Dakota Advertising Federation ADDY Awards.

Thanks to design and implementation work we did in collaboration with The Lawlor Group on Texas Christian University's recent viewbook launch, Blend Interactive was awarded a Gold ADDY®, Best in Class for Digital Advertising, and overall Best in Show for Digital at last week's South Dakota Advertising Federation ADDY® Awards. The competition, which pits advertising agencies from across the state against each other in a heated battle for little gold A trophies, yields Dakota's top advertising honor. Needless to say, we are very proud to have been selected.

Eating Elephant

Conference Speaking and Defining Success

A lot of praise for Karen McGrane's recent column, a little notice about a post I wrote about speaking, and a whole bunch of excitement for our gradual shift toward audience-centered talks.

Eating Elephant

Clarifying our Vocabulary: The Words We Use

This article is the first in a series of thoughts on content strategy for the small business. Read others in this category. When I joined my first YMCA youth basketball team, I might as well have joined the French army. Every word was foreign. I was seven years old, and I though I had been a basketball fan for as long as I could comprehend…

Blend News

Silicon Prairie News Features Now What? Conference

We got a nice writeup for Now What? Conference 2013 from John T. Meyer and our friends at Silicon Prairie News. Read the entire article over at Silicon Prairie News.

Eating Elephant

On Attending Conferences

(Illustration by Sean Tubridy, courtesy of the Confab Events blog) Confab was a big deal for me in 2011. Hundreds of people I knew only from the wild plains of the Internet descended upon Minneapolis with one common goal – gather together and celebrate this blossoming industry. I reinforced a lot of assumed friendships and started dozens more, all while basking in the glow of…

Eating Elephant

Thinking Small: An Introduction

Our company isn’t small, at least not in the way a two-person start-up is small, but it’s small enough that we all take on a little more than what our job title describes. In my case, this means in addition to content strategy and information architecture I also handle our company’s site quality assurance process, advocating for users at both the ends of a project.…