The Love and Hate Relationship with Helvetica

By Ephrem on October 8, 2010 | Comments (0) 

What’s up with GAP’s new logo?  Check out the article below. Thanx to Nolawi who got me hooked with Helvetica but I am now beginning to hate it

Gap Redesigns Logo … But Why?

by Erik Hayden
Thursday, October 7, 2010

Some clothing companies adapt well to changing times, and Gap seemed to be one of those venerable brands.
Apparently not

With little fanfare, the company decided to redesign its logo and post it on its website. Not too long after, waves of criticism from design firms, mainstream publications and just-plain bewildered bloggers started rolling in read more here

DC Mashable Meetup on #SocialGood

By Hanna on October 5, 2010 | Comments (2) 

Yesterday the BLEN Fam hosted a DC Mashable Meetup at Funxion Fit Bar here in Washington, DC. We had about 30+ attendees participate in discussion around topics on Social Good. The conversation was led by three DC organizations, who came to talk about how Social Media has helped their organization reach their goals. Whether it was in regards to awareness, fundraising or both, each speaker spoke briefly about their projects and how they’re running their own Social Media campaigns.

Speakers included Benjamin Colmery from ICFJ, Maaden Eshete from DivasMPH, and Abezash Tamerat from Artists for Charity, the panel did an awesome job leading the discussion and engaging the audience. In short, we had a blast! It was great to have a mix of philanthropists, social media enthusiasts, and technologists in the audience. Here are some pics from our event!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-03

By Hanna on October 3, 2010 | Comments (0) 

Powered by Twitter Tools

DC Tech/Social Media Events

By Hanna on October 1, 2010 | Comments (3) 

These past few weeks have been filled with tech/SoMe events here in DC. Here’s my recap of some of my favorite events–

AutismOnline.Com Launch at AFI Theatre in Silver Spring 9/20
Our good friends at Danya International, Inc. invited out the Blen fam to a website launch event for Autism. Danya is an organization that strides towards creating and inspiring innovative solutions for social impact. And appropriately so, they were the masterminds behind Autism Online a website that connects communities and resources, before Autism Online, there wasn’t a one stop shop or resource to go to for families and friends who were living with someone with Autism. This resource is providing everything from academic tools, to support groups for family and friends. The launch was a beautiful event, it was good to see companies like Danya extend a helping hand to those who need it the most. To learn more about the organization check out their site.

GE’s Ecomagination Meetup-Happy Hour K Street 9/23
If you haven’t heard by now, General Electric (GE) has offered you a $200M challenge! Yes, it’s called ecomagination. GE’s Ecomagination Challenge is a $200 million call to action for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, and students to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world’s toughest challenges – building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century. I learned about the ecomagination Happy Hour from meetup.com, I attended and learned a lot Although I am not technical, by any stretch of the imagination, I did find it to be very educational. Like most people, and completely I’m guilty of this, I take a lot of things for granted, I expect the water to run when I turn my faucet on, I expect that the light will come on when I flip the switch, but what I never knew, is how much time, money, energy and most of all talent all of this requires to sustain. And now more than ever we need synergy to keep things moving and advancing, which is why GE has prompted us to look into the ecomagination challenge.

#Ignite DC 9/30
Yesterday, was my first time attending an ignite DC event. I found the intimate setting, and the diverse line up of speakers to be quite entertaining. If you’ve never been to ignite DC think of a Ted.com conference but about 10x smaller, a micro Ted conference if you will. Then strip away, the formality, and the grandiose feeling and you’ve got ignite DC. The speakers last night had 2 things in common the idea of the future of data plus advanced technology and the evolution of humanity. What I found interesting was that almost all the speakers had painted this picture of what the future would look like, with the increase of social media and access to human data. A lot of the scenarios presented were scary and sensationalized, but who knows it could come true, as one of the speakers mentioned, in the year 2040 we could be all waiting on a machine to tell us how our mother is doing after surviving a heart condition. Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen in this lifetime.

Well, there’s my recap. If you were in audience at the events listed above, leave us a line in the comment box, and tell us what you thought of the events!

The Two New BLEN’ers

By Mike on September 28, 2010 | Comments (0) 

It has been a progressive year at BLEN.

Amid the great recession, our business is holding it’s own. But, what makes this year more exciting than the others is the additions to our BLEN family.

Over the years, we have strived to remain true to our vision of creating a business that is filled with people that are artistic, smart, socially conscious and most importantly have volunteered in the past. We love volunteers! This is in no small measure of our personal experiences. Both Ephrem and I are direct beneficiaries of volunteerism and BLEN happened because of it.

Lucky for us, in the last couple of weeks, we have added two more bright, socially conscious and (part time) community organizers to our BLEN team. Please meet Hanna and Henok.

Hanna, a Seth Godin fanatic :) , is our Business Developer and Marketing Manager. With a passion for social media and social innovation, she brings a fresh marketing perspective to our team of technologists. Hanna is responsible for developing client relationships. When she’s not managing our marketing needs, she’s organizing tweetups, reading anything by Seth Godin and volunteering at a local non-profit, Artists for Charity.
Based in the Washington DC, Hanna can be reached at hanna@blencorp.com or follow her on Twitter @blencorp.

Henok is our application developer. He’s a seven year veteran of web/app development. He has worked on many different interesting projects in the past years, one of which is close to my heart: the ESAI website. Henok is a big history buff he loves to read books about 17th century Russia and The French Revolution. When he’s not reenacting scenes from “Peter the Great” he’s playing tennis, competitively, or so he likes to think :)
Henok will be working from the comfort of his home in Knoxville, TN. You can reach him at henok@blencorp.com

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-26

By Hanna on September 26, 2010 | Comments (0) 

Powered by Twitter Tools

The World’s First FREE Classroom

By Hanna on September 23, 2010 | Comments (1) 

The KhanAcademy is a way of educating thousands of people all over the world, for free, all they need is access to an internet connection and a computer. One man by the name of Salman Khan makes this all possible. It started out as a favor for his cousin. One day his cousin asked for help in math, and because his cousin was in a different city than Salman was, he chose to upload a video that explained step by step the math he had trouble understanding. Having access to this video, allowed his cousin to be able to control the lesson; he could pause, rewind and play the parts that needed repetition. This technique has been proven to be effective time and time again, making the Khan Academy by far one of the greatest and most accessible education tools to date.

To learn more about KhanAcademy check out this site.

Product based business vs. Service based, which one are you?

By Hanna on September 21, 2010 | Comments (1) 

A few days ago I asked this same exact question on facebook and almost everyone answered by saying they were a service based ‘business.’ A service unlike a product has the unlimited ability to change, it is agile and versatile, but a product almost always stays the same. Sure you can add on features and create accessories for your product but eventually it will wear out it’s appeal and even it’s purpose. Someone will come along and create something better, something faster, cheaper and more useful. Yet so many of us, we remain to be a ‘product based business.’ So many of us, refuse to think forward and innovate, rather we stay the same, we fit the mold and conform. We stay in line and cause little to no noise, creating not an ounce of impact in the world we live in. You see, the people that were once considered to have an attention disorder, who had hundreds of things going on at once, who couldn’t sit still in class, who had to learn things hands-on, those kids in class that were labeled as trouble makers, they created noise, but because society viewed them as trouble makers they were never allowed to fully explore their academic needs, rather they were pegged into the same hole we peg all of our kids in, so that they can be accepted as a ‘normal’ kid.

The problem with being ‘normal’ is that it doesn’t get you noticed, in a world of fierce competition, rarely does average or normal make it to the top of the pile. So, as the new school year begins, educators, parents, siblings and friends encourage the students around you to be who they are, to be a ‘service’ based business someone agile, ready for change, a true starter. Tell them that they’re not a ‘product’ which stays the same, and conforms but a human being who is bound to grow and change, with dings, dents and all.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19

By Hanna on September 19, 2010 | Comments (0) 

Powered by Twitter Tools

Making ‘Telephone’ field not required on magento

By Nolawi on September 16, 2010 | Comments (1) 

The onepage checkout on Magento Commerce cms is really complicated but from a user interface perspective it’s as simple as one would make it with ajax loading and navigational breadcrumb que for the user.

There are however too many unnecessary input fields in the billing and shipping sections; including second address lines, fax number and telephone number. The worst part is the fact that required fields increase the ‘Checkout abandonment’ in your application.

Here are the instructions to remove the required from any field; I will use the ‘telephone’ field as an example.

For both the shipping and billing section open up the file to edit the css reference as well as the required asterisks.

Continue reading Making ‘Telephone’ field not required on magento »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »