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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/