The Objective Blog

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

Fusion Radar: March 27, 2013

March 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.

Ancestry

Ancestry is a gem for Ruby on Rails that follows the Materialized Path design pattern to track and store each object’s “ancestors” directly in the database. Essentially, it’s a highly-efficient tree implementation that makes database lookups and organization much easier.

Ancestry

PaperTrail

Here’s another gem that can make using Ruby on Rails easier: PaperTrail tracks changes to your models’ data and allows you to revert it to any version or undelete your model’s data after it’s been destroyed.

PaperTrail

JavaScript/jQuery and Better Typography

You don’t have to be terribly familiar with the design and development world before you realize that coding typography to look the same as it did in the original print designs is a little tricky. This is an article with a few plugins that can help make web typography just as beautiful as print.

JS/jQuery Typography

World Wide Maze

A lot of the links we share are useful plugins, cool articles, or crazy gadgets. And then there’s some stuff that doesn’t fall into any category – stuff that’s just too bizarre and wonderful not to share. World Wide Maze is one of those links – it’s a Chrome Experiment than turns any website into an interactive, 3D maze that you navigate using your linked smartphone.

http://chrome.com/maze/

Pack Store

If you’re only reading our posts for the cool gadgets we showcase, then you’ll want to skip the rest of this and go directly to Pack Store, a repository of sorts for the kinds of gadgets we love – automated, electronic, remote-controlled, wifi-connected tools and toys that do everything from find your keys to connect everything in your home to a wireless network (controllable via smartphone).

Pack Store

Codecademy

Last week’s post featured code.org, a site for a non-profit organization that promoted the expansion of programming education. Codecademy, one of the resources code.org suggested, is a simple yet interactive way to learn coding languages like HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and others. It’s engaging, based on user-content, and free.

http://www.codecademy.com/

SignNow

Faxing is an obsolete technology, yet it’s not quite as dead-and-gone as we’d like. SignNow offers a simple alternative to faxing someone an official document to get their signature. Instead, upload your document to the site, note where you need the document signed, and send it to others via the site to get their signatures.

https://signnow.com/

Presefy

Speaking of obsolete technologies, PowerPoint presentations aren’t quite there, but they are quite difficult to manage when presenting to a large group, or to a remote audience. Presefy solves those problems by allowing you to store and share presentations on their site, as well as broadcasting your presentation to anyone with an access code, and controlling the presentation with your smartphone.

http://presefy.com/

VoiceBunny

VoiceBunny is a site that aims to make creating voiceovers a simple and relatively cheap endeavor. Users can post their project and get a voiceover in just a few hours, auto podcast articles for even faster results, or search their database for specific voice talents and hire them to do a voiceover in about 1- 2 days.

http://voicebunny.com/

Best of 2012: Typefaces

Here’s an interesting article with a list of some of the best typefaces of 2012. Some of them, like Stanley, may seem fairly standard or familiar; while others, like Serge, Sodachrome, or Hipster Script, are surprising and new. Any of the typefaces in the article, however, could easily be a solid choice for your next project.

Typographica

Google Keep

Keep is Google’s answer to the leader of the “mobile post-it” industry, Evernote. It’s a simple app designed to help you keep track of thoughts and to-do items via notes that you can organize, color-code, and check off or archive. Keep will also transcribe voice notes, and all of your notes are stored in the cloud so they can be accessed from any computer or phone.

Keep

Fusion Radar: March 20, 2013

March 21st, 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.

LaTeX resources

LaTeX is is a great way to create papers, presentations, and publications – but often all of those can have more than one author. That’s where a site like WriteLaTeX would be useful; it’s an online collaborative LaTeX editor that includes tutorials, templates and demos, and works with Google Drive and Dropbox. And for a more complete list of LaTeX help, check out LaTeX Templates, which is a great source for free templates for articles, books, calendars, lab reports, and other documents.

https://www.writelatex.com/
http://www.latextemplates.com/

Intro.js

Intro.js provides users with a clean, visually-interesting way to introduce and explain websites and site features. It allows you to create a step-by-step highlighted guide for anything on your site.

http://usablica.github.com/intro.js/

OverAPI

If you’re looking for a coding cheat sheet – whether it’s Python, node.js, PHP, Ruby, or any of about a dozen other languages, then OverAPI is your site. Besides an alphabetical list of cheat sheets (from .NET to Objective-C to Zen Coding), it also includes other developer tools and a Chrome Extension.

http://overapi.com/

Google Takeout

With the news of Google getting rid of Google Reader, there are some people who are going to want to export their RSS feed list to another product. Google Takeout is a good way to do that. It allows users to take their data out of multiple Google products (like +1’d sites, Blogger, Reader, and even Google+ profiles and Picasa web albums) quickly.

http://www.google.com/takeout

Code.org

Code.org is a non-profit foundation dedicated to expanding computer programming education. It offers free tools online, and has resources for students, teachers, professionals, and anyone else.

http://www.code.org/

Homesnap

Sites like Zillow and Trulia already allow you to search for home values by address. The Homesnap app takes it a step further by letting users search for home values based on a photo.

http://www.homesnap.com/

Tiny Habits

BJ Fogg, a professor at Stanford University, developed a system called Tiny Habits, built to help you change your behavior. The idea behind it is simple – you choose the behavior you want to change and anchor it to something that is already a habit. For example, “After I {close my front door}, I will {hang my keys on the hook}.”

Tiny Habits

Airbnb

Airbnb is an interesting idea – it’s much like the CouchSurfing site we’ve mentioned before. Like other infographic-obsessed companies, they’ve done a good job making their 2012 annual report visually interesting.

https://www.airbnb.com/annual/

Automatic

If your car is something of an enigma to you, you’re not alone. Automatic is a gadget/app combo that sends all kinds of information about your car straight to your smartphone. This includes things like interpreting what your check engine light means, helping you remember where you parked, and ways you can modify your driving to save on gas. It also will automatically call 911 when it detects a crash.

http://www.automatic.com/

Fusion Radar: March 13, 2013

March 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.

Unheap

Unheap is a useful repository of jQuery plugins for front-end design and development. The site itself is well designed, and includes plugins for interface, inputs, media, navigation, and other front-end code.

http://www.unheap.com/

Apache Tiles

Tiles is a templating framework developers can use to avoid copy and paste programming and instead define page fragments that are assembled into a complete page at runtime.

http://tiles.apache.org/

Draft

Whether it’s school or work, collaborative projects can be tough, especially when you need to work on a document at the same time. Draft attempts to soothe the headache that can come from trying to track changes using Google Docs or emailing Word docs back and forth. With it, you can keep a master doc, approve suggested changes, and revert to previous versions of your document.

https://draftin.com/

Proto.io

Sometimes still-frame wireframes just don’t cut it when it comes to client presentations. That’s why Proto.io could be such a useful tool: it allows you to add animations, screen transitions, and interactivity (like pinching to zoom or swiping to scroll) to your app prototypes.

http://proto.io/

Hook.js

Put simply, it’s a pull to refresh for the web; meaning that when you scroll all the way up a site, it’ll refresh the page.

http://usehook.com/

Arrival.io

It’s happened to the best of us: we finally break down and buy that Apple gadget we’ve been wanting for the longest time, only to have a new version of the device come out a few weeks or even days later. Arrival.io is a site that can help you avoid this by predicting when the next version of MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads will come out.

http://arrival.io/

Coffitivity

Studies show that working in a quiet space can actually be detrimental to creativity – and music can often be too loud or distracting. If you’re the kind of person who needs a little white noise to concentrate, you might want to try out Coffitivity, a site that provides a moderate level of ambience. Essentially, listening to Coffitivity makes you feel like you’re sitting in a coffee shop, no matter where you’re actually working.

http://coffitivity.com/

ArduPilot Project

There’s been some talk lately about the government using drones – autonomous aerial vehicles used to spy on people. ArduPilot is a way for you to create am unmanned drone of your own (not that we’re recommending you actually spy on anyone) with any RC vehicle.

Do it Yourself Drones – ArduPilot

Lumi

Lumi’s Inkodye is a simple, creative way to print on fabric. The water-based dye is painted onto fabric, covered with a photo negative, and develops its color permanently when exposed to sunlight for about 10 minutes. They even have an app to help you through all the steps.

http://lumi.co/

Mind-controlled Exoskeletons

It sounds like something from a science fiction novel, but this technology is very real and is scheduled to be debuted in less than 18 months. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis is currently working on a “wearable robot” that will not only use the brain’s electrical signals to help paralyzed people walk, but will send feedback to the brain to allow them to feel every step they take.

Mind-controlled Exoskeletons

The MakerBot 3D Scanner

If wearable robots aren’t enough to intrigue you, maybe MakerBot’s new 3D scanner prototype will catch your eye. This device analyzes real-world objects and generates designs compatible with 3D printers. Basically, this means that you can scan any object small enough to fit in their scanner, then print out an exact (or scaled down) copy of it with a 3D printer.

MakerBot’s 3D scanner

Fusion Radar: March 6, 2013

March 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.

WebKit for Developers

Last week, Paul Irish posted an article on his blog designed to demystify the tricky subject of WebKit. His in-depth post describes what WebKit is, what it is not, and how to use it. It’s worth checking out, especially since Opera just moved to WebKit as well.

http://paulirish.com/2013/webkit-for-developers/

Typeahead.js

Typeahead is Twitter’s new, open-source autocomplete library that prefetches data based on the category you specify and can even autocomplete for different languages (including languages that are written right-to-left).

http://twitter.github.com/typeahead.js/

Emmet

Emmet is an editor plugin that uses a CSS-like syntax to create bulk HTML and CSS code quickly, with just a single line for coding. For example, it could transform the command “ul#nav>li.item$*4>a{Item $}” into an HTML unordered list with 4 items.

http://emmet.io/

Meldium

Sharing access to projects, sites, and accounts can be tricky within a company. Meldium is attempting to make things a bit simpler by allowing account owners to share their access without giving away their password. Users simply sign in through Meldium, and the app lets them access any apps or accounts that are available to them.

https://www.meldium.com/

Buffer

Buffer is a smart way for companies and even individuals to share links, articles, pictures, etc. on social media. Instead of bookmarking pages for later, or searching for things to share every day, you can do one quick sweep of relevant sites and add them to your Buffer account. Then, Buffer automatically shares your links throughout the day and tracks your subscribers’ responses.

http://bufferapp.com/

Tracker

We’re constantly looking for good project management apps and programs, which is how we stumbled across Tracker. Although it isn’t free, Tracker looks like it would be worth trying, with its simple, clean interface, collaborative capabilities, and color-coded, intuitive task and project statuses.

http://tracker.pm/

Guardian

Guardian is currently only a concept trying to generate funding on Kickstarter; but it’s an interesting concept. It makes wireless router management much easier and allows users, via an app, to revoke access to particular sites (maybe you don’t want your kids visiting Reddit, for example), setup additional networks, or time-based access rules (perfect for enforcing a wireless curfew).

The Guardian

MYO

MYO is an armband that sports the tagline “Unleash your Inner Jedi” (and if that doesn’t make you excited, we’re not sure what you’re doing reading this blog). It measures the electrical activity in your muscles to wirelessly control any digital technology, like computers, phones, cameras, and even video games.

https://www.myo.com/

Galileo

Here’s another gadget that allows you to control electronics–from all over the world this time. Galileo (which generated 70% more in pledges than they asked for on Kickstarter) is an iOS-controlled, robotic motion platform for iPhones. Simple, intuitive motions on your remote touchscreen allow you to rotate and move an iPhone or iPod touch that’s plugged in to Galileo. Remote-controlled video operation is one obvious use of this technology.

Galileo