The Objective Blog

Keep up with what we're thinking, reading, and doing.

Fusion Radar: February 27, 2013

February 28th, 2013 - by marissa - Salt Lake City, Utah

Keeping up with technology is a lot of work. Luckily, we enjoy wading through the noise just to find the gems of awesomeness sprinkled throughout. Fusion Radar is our gift to you, Current or Potential Client, so that you can enjoy all of the awesome without any of the drudgery. Unwrap it each week, and know that you’re loved by the geeks and pixel-pushers at Agency Fusion.

Anvil for Mac

We previously highlighted Hammer for Mac, and this tool operates along the same lines. Anvil is a lot simpler than its counterpart, however; it is a menubar app that makes accessing local development sites easier.

http://anvilformac.com/

Scripted

Although Scripted operates as a general purpose code editor, the initial focus is on JavaScript editing. This lightweight tool is a browser-based editor that runs locally on a developer’s machine with a Node.js server instance.

Scripted

Our Boxen

The team that created Boxen, a tool for automating and managing Macs, recently developed a template project called Our Boxen. It’s designed to help teams of developers fork and modify Boxen properly.

Our Boxen

Dropzone.js

Dropzone.js is a simple jQuery plugin that allows users to add a drag-and-drop file uploader to any website. It also comes with the handy addition of showing a preview of the uploaded files, and it supports the traditional file-picker uploading as well.

http://www.dropzonejs.com/

Mailbox App

Anyone who’s ever been overwhelmed by their inbox should check out Mailbox, and iOS app that gives you the ability to use a few quick gestures to clean out your inbox. Swipe to archive, delete, folder, or reschedule an email – for later that day or that evening, tomorrow, that weekend, and other times.

http://www.mailboxapp.com/

Browser Details

If you’re working in the tech or advertising industry, you’ve either asked clients, or been asked yourself, which browser, system, and version you’re using. Browser Details makes it incredibly easy to detect and report this information.

http://www.browser-details.com/

WikiCancel

WikiCancel is a tool anyone can use to learn what’s required to unsubscribe from dozens of different newsletters, services, and websites. Although it doesn’t do the work for you, it does take you through the (sometimes ridiculously complex) steps to unsubscribing.

WikiCancel

BLOKK font

Lorem ipsum is all well and good, but occasionally you run across people who can’t get past the Latin filling up their screen. That’s where BLOKK font comes in.

http://blokkfont.com/

Intel Cable

Say goodbye to cable subscriptions saturated with channels you don’t want or need, and say hello to Intel’s new cable TV model. Apparently, next month Intel is rolling out their new service, which allows users to select which channels they want to subscribe to and pay for.

Intel Cable

Getaround

Renting a car can be expensive and stressful, and actually impossible for anyone 25 and under. Getaround offers an alternative, where people put their own cars up for rent, anywhere in the country, and you can pay per hour to borrow them.

http://www.getaround.com/

Etch

We love finding sites that are well-designed, so here’s Etch, a site with original and well-executed organization. While it is responsive to viewport size, instead of shrinking text and images, it merely moves them around on the page so it can better accommodate your screen size.

http://etchapps.com/

3Doodler

It’s a pen that draws in three dimensions in mid-air. Reread that sentence, and then go to the site if you still doubt us. We don’t know what else you could possibly want, so this post ends here.

3Doodler

Fusion Radar: February 13, 2013

February 14th, 2013 - by marissa - Salt Lake City, Utah

Keeping up with technology is a lot of work. Luckily, we enjoy wading through the noise just to find the gems of awesomeness sprinkled throughout. Fusion Radar is our gift to you, Current or Potential Client, so that you can enjoy all of the awesome without any of the drudgery. Unwrap it each week, and know that you’re loved by the geeks and pixel-pushers at Agency Fusion.

Hint.css

Using only CSS and HTML, Hint.css is a tooltip library written in SASS that acts as an alternative to JavaScript. It allows simple, stylish tooltips on any element, particularly text, links, and images.

http://kushagragour.in/lab/hint/

AngularAI

AngularUI, designed to be the companion suite for AngularJS, adds directives for common UI elements or widgets.

http://angular-ui.github.com/

Gather by MailChimp

MailChimp is a well-known newsletter management service that helps you design, share, and track newsletters. And now, they’ve developed Gather, which does more or less the same thing, except with text messaging. It lets you keep your subscribers updated during events or communicate on an individual basis.

https://gather.mailchimpapp.com/

Character-Code.com

Remembering code for special characters is difficult; and trying to find the character online is time-consuming, unless you know the name of the symbol you’re looking for (and honestly, who remembers ’tilda,’ ‘diaeresis,’ or ‘cedilla’?). That’s why Character Code is such a refreshing, helpful site: it organizes characters according to how they look and lists the HTML code, hexadecimal code, and HTML entry.

http://character-code.com/

Docracy

We’ve posted before about where on the Internet to turn when you need legal help. Docracy is another valuable site when trying to work with legalese: it’s an open collection of legal contracts and templates (sorted by topic and searchable by keyword) that are free to customize and use.

http://www.docracy.com/

DietBet

If people are more likely to lose weight when they write down their goal, they have to be doubly motivated when they’re actually betting money on it. DietBet uses the motivating power of pride and cold hard cash to get people to compete to lose weight.

http://dietbet.com/

Photojojo University

Photojojo is now offering a 4 week course that teaches you the principles of photography through the lens of your phone (a.k.a. phoneography).

http://photojojo.com/university/

Fresh

Due to anonymity, you often don’t know which reviews online you can trust. Fresh is trying to correct this by setting up a site where you have to log in with your real name to review products.

http://getfresh.com/

PopSlate

PopSlate is an e-ink phone case that becomes a second screen by connecting to the back of your iPhone 5.

http://www.popslate.com/

Convertible Desk

We joke about taking naps under our desks here at Agency Fusion, but Athanasia Leivaditou took the joke to a whole new level. He created a desk that folds apart to create a small, comfortable sleeping chamber.

Convertible Desk/Bed

Hessian

Hessian is an interesting site because it contains a full brand experience – logos, design, t-shirts, phone apps, ads, and more – for a brand that doesn’t exist yet. It’s an off-the-shelf brand that’s up for grabs for the asking price of $18,000.

http://hessian.tv/

Fusion Radar: February 6, 2013

February 7th, 2013 - by marissa - Salt Lake City, Utah

Keeping up with technology is a lot of work. Luckily, we enjoy wading through the noise just to find the gems of awesomeness sprinkled throughout. Fusion Radar is our gift to you, Current or Potential Client, so that you can enjoy all of the awesome without any of the drudgery. Unwrap it each week, and know that you’re loved by the geeks and pixel-pushers at Agency Fusion.

Bacon.js

Let’s start this week’s post with something we all know and love: bacon. More specifically, Bacon.js, which acts as a small functional reactive programming (FRP) library for JavaScript. Bacon.js is designed to clean up code by switching from imperative to functional – as in, switching from working on individual events to working with event streams instead.

https://github.com/raimohanska/bacon.js

Grit

Grit is a Ruby library for extracting information from a git repository in an object-oriented manner. As its main goals are stability and performance, Grit interacts with Git repositories either by shelling out to the system’s ‘git’ command, or with pure Ruby reimplementations of core Git functionality.

https://github.com/mojombo/grit

TestObject

TestObject is a tool with the admirable goal of making mobile testing more efficient. The site allows you to upload your app and record a test case simply by interacting with your app, while TestObject tracks your steps, records a script, and performs automated testing and will ping you when there’s a bug.

http://www.testobject.com/

CSS4-Selectors

We know that CSS3 isn’t entirely supported yet, but apparently that doesn’t matter to the guys of CSS4-Selectors. They’re already sharing information about the coming Cascading Style Sheets Level 4.

http://css4-selectors.com/

Authy

Security is often a top priority when building websites, which is why Authy is at least worth looking into. Authy is a WordPress plugin that protects sites and users with a powerful and flexible Two-Factor Authentication platform.

https://www.authy.com/

Modern.IE

Internet Explorer is a bit of a joke here at Agency Fusion, so it’s always fun to find new sites and tools associated with it. This week, we have Modern.IE, which is a site that makes testing for IE easier by scanning a webpage and reporting potential problems for IE as well as possible solutions.

http://www.modern.ie/

Instinct

Forget Guitar Hero – developers Blake Jennelle and Brian Stoner have created a way to gamify playing the guitar, while you actually learn to play the guitar. With courses, riffs, and a tuner available, plus avatars to create and points to earn, users can skip the guitar lessons and play around online to learn the instrument.

http://getinstinct.com/

Robotify.Me

If you’re one of those people who’s a little wary of robots taking over the world Terminator-style, you may want to steer clear of Robotify.me. This entertaining website takes you through a series of questions and creates a custom robot meant to represent your web presence. In their own words, it’s like “if a tamagotchi got on facebook then took steroids”.

https://www.robotify.me/

Little Printer

This ridiculously-adorable little device synchronizes with your smartphone to set up subscriptions and then print out a customized, miniature newspaper. You can also use your phone to print messages from your Little Printer, or receive messages from friends.

http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/

82nd & Fifth

New York’s Met museum has launched an innovative website that allows site visitors to explore artwork in three dimensions. Examine sculptures, view extreme close-ups, and watch custom videos about unique pieces of art.

http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/

DNA = New Big Data Storage?

DNA has the capacity to store petabytes of data in just a few grams, which makes it an appealing option for data storage, as long as it’s reliable. By synthesizing DNA and recreating large sequences, scientists can create synthetic filaments that store reliably-encoded information that will not decay or tarnish for thousands of years.

DNA Storage

Gifs, gifs, and more gifs

Lastly, if you’ve looked at nothing else in this post, at least check out this site. It features 10 fascinating, educational gifs that we just can’t stop watching.

http://mashable.com/2013/01/30/educational-gifs/