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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.