The Objective Blog

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Fusion Radar: November 27, 2013

November 26th, 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.

Pencil

Put simply, Pencil, by FiftyThree, is a really good-looking stylus. However, it does have a few cool features that most styluses don’t; for example, there’s an eraser on the opposite side of the stylus (just like, well, a pencil). Pencil’s app, Paper, has “palm rejection,” so you can use it without worrying about your hand touching your device as you write or draw. It also allows your device to differentiate between Pencil and your finger – so you can use Pencil to draw and your finger to blend, just like you would on paper.

Pencil

Sovereign

Sovereign is a set of Ansible playbooks that allow users to build and maintain their own personal cloud. It’s based on open-source software, and lets you keep your email, calendar, contacts, files, IRC bouncer, VPN, and more all in one place.

Sovereign

Coin

Coin is a device designed to replace all of your credit, debit, and gift cards with a single card that stores all your payment information. It looks and acts like a credit card, but you can store all of your other cards and pay with any of them simply by tapping the button on Coin’s surface until you’ve selected the card you want to use. It also syncs with your phone and notifies you if you ever leave it behind.

Coin

The Invisible Bike Helmet

The invisible bike helmet was a master’s thesis that eventually grew into a viable business called Hövding. It’s difficult to explain how these helmets work, but to put it simply, they’re wearable airbags that deploy when they sense a crash happening.  We’d definitely recommend checking out their video here, and you can also purchase one of these “helmets” on their site currently.

The Invisible Bike Helmet

#Lookup

British Airways recently unveiled a huge video billboard in the middle of Piccadilly Circus – which wouldn’t really be worth mentioning except that the billboard also has a built in radar and weather feed that allow it to interact with planes flying overhead. After scanning the plane and matching it to flight schedules, the billboard displays live information like flight number, destination, and details like the current weather at the destination or pricing.

#lookup

Keen IO

Keen IO is a powerful API that is built to collect and store massive amounts of data from many different sources – including websites, apps, servers, cars, smartwatches, and just about anything else that connects to the internet. The data collected can be anything from signups or upgrades to purchases or errors. And as soon as you’ve sent the data to Keen IO, it’s available for analysis.

Keen IO

DataHero

DataHero is a competitively-priced alternative to services like Chart.io. Subscribers connect their site to DataHero’s “Data Decoder,” which then helps analyze data and create graphs. Although its list of features is not as robust as its competitors, DataHero is an excellent choice for a moderately-priced data analyzer at only $29 a month.

DataHero

Boxed

Boxed is an app that’s aiming to replace long trips to wholesale warehouse stores with overnight bulk-item delivery. Although they obviously can’t deliver perishable food items, they do have a wide selection of household goods (e.g. diapers, toothbrushes, cleaning supplies, shampoo and conditioner, etc.) in addition to non-perishable food. As another incentive to try it out, the app download, Boxed membership, and shipping are all free.

Boxed

Sketch for iOS 7

A few weeks ago, we talked about a Photoshop alternative called Sketch. Now teehan+lax, creators of the popular Photoshop templates of iOS UIs, has released a Sketch file of GUI elements for iOS 7. The Sketch file is just as comprehensive as the original PSD, and it’s free.

Sketch for iOS 7

Why Facebook is a Bust for Brands

This PandoDaily article does a great job explaining why Facebook pages just aren’t profitable for brands. The author, Joseph Pigato, breaks it down into 5 main points, which include: the fact that publishing doesn’t equal interaction, brands’ inability to tailor messages to individual users, and the fact that any given post only reaches around 16 percent of fans.

Why Facebook pages are a bust for brands

Fusion Radar: November 20, 2013

November 20th, 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.

Better Errors

Better Errors is a tool that replaces the standard Rails error page with an “upgraded” version of error reporting. It gives developers more detailed debug information, and shows realtime responsive error pages. Better Errors also includes full stack trace, source code inspection for all stack frames, local/instance variable inspection, and live REPL on every stack frame.

Better Errors

InVision

InVision is a prototyping and collaboration tool that makes it easier to design and plan apps. Users can do anything from create simple mockups of apps to create interactive app demos that viewers can use to explore the app’s functionality. And because of the collaborative nature of the tool, anyone you grant access to has the ability to make changes or leave notes anywhere on the pages.

InVision

Signature Pad

Signature Pad is a jQuery plugin that makes it possible for developers to embed an HTML5 canvas that will record mouse- or touch-drawn signatures. What’s unique about this software is that it smooths the lines as you sign, which results in a much more accurate, less jerky, digital signature.

Signature Pad

Free Vector Maps

This is a site that offers downloadable vector maps that are free with attribution. Maps come in both color and grayscale, and you have the option of viewing maps of states, countries, and continents (or the entire world). There’s also a Premium option, which gives users access to more detailed vector maps that don’t require attribution when used.

Free Vector Maps

Knock

Knock is an iPhone app that enables you to simply knock on your phone to unlock your computer (as opposed to manually typing in a password). The app uses a Bluetooth connection between your phone and computer to operate, so you have to be nearby to use it. It’s available for all of the newer models of iMacs, MacBook Pros, and other Apple products.

Knock

HealthSherpa

The launch of HealthCare.gov was something of a letdown – apparently only 6 people in the country successfully signed up for health care within the first 24 hours of the site’s operation. In response, a trio of developers created an alternative called HealthSherpa. Although their site doesn’t integrate with multiple health care and government sites, it does offer a simpler way to search for health care plans available to you.

HealthSherpa

Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup

In this Medium article, Brett Martin, the entrepreneur behind the Sonar app, shares his thoughts on why Sonar was a failure. His insightful article details mistakes he made and what lessons he ultimately learned from each one of them.

Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup

Linky Dink

Linky Dink is a simple way for groups of people to share links with each other via Twitter. Users can subscribe to already-existing groups or create their own. They can also choose to receive link alerts, or the system will send out a daily email with a list of the links that were shared within their group.

Linky Dink

Peek Vision

Peek is a smartphone-based portable eye exam kit. Its utility is currently limited to use in countries where it would be difficult and expensive to offer typical eye exams. In addition to offering standard vision tests, Peek’s software has a variety of exams available to test for cataracts, contrast and color sensitivity, and other common eye problems.

Peek Vision

Hipster CEO

Hipster CEO is an iPhone app that lets you play as the CEO of your own startup company. You begin by choosing from a variety of products/services to sell, and then you use marketing and sales strategies, angel investments, and other tools to take your company to the top of the tech world.

Hipster CEO

Wasted Humanity

Wasted Humanity is a site that calculates how many years, collectively, people have spent watching any given YouTube video. The site also contrasts that number with the number of years it took to accomplish certain historical feats; for example, humanity wasted 14,636 years watching Gangnam Style, while it took only 10 years to build the Colosseum.

Wasted Humanity

Fusion Radar: November 6, 2013

November 6th, 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.

Dart

Dart is Google’s open-source programming language specifically designed for writing modern web apps. The language is object-oriented and optionally typed, and its core libraries provide all the basics you’d need for web app engineering. The main advantage Dart has over similar languages like JavaScript is that it is typically much faster.

Dart

Mozilla Location Services

Mozilla recently introduced its new Location Services – a pilot program that uses crowdsourcing to collect data about geo-location lookups. Although the project is still in the early stages and not much data is available, Mozilla Location Services will use publicly-observable cell tower and WiFi access point information to provide geo-location services. Since it’s such a young project, anyone can contribute to the data collection process by installing the MozStumbler app on their phone.

Mozilla Location Services

Lightbeam

Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that uses interactive visualizations to enable users to see the first- and third-party sites they interact with on every webpage. Although Lightbeam isn’t incredibly user-friendly, it is interesting (and a little scary) to see all the sites that follow you as you move around online.

Lightbeam

Sourcing.io

Sourcing.io is an online service that uses the combined social network of all of your company’s employees to find the best candidates for any software engineering openings you may have. The software analyzes your company’s social graph to provide you with referrals for candidates who fit your needs. You can also sort through the results it provides with filters for language, skills, and location.

Sourcing.io

Codrops

Codrops is a web design and development blog that publishes articles and tutorials, and provides free demos and downloads of interesting animations and effects. Linked below are two examples of Codrops demos.

Creative Button Styles and Animated Checkboxes

We Don’t Need Daylight Saving Time

Time changes can be tough to adjust to – and they might be even tougher once you visit this site and realize that there’s really no reason for them to exist. We Don’t Need Daylight Saving Time is a site dedicated to educating people on the negative effects of DST, and it even has a petition people can sign to ask the government to eliminate the time change.

We Don’t Need Daylight Saving Time

Sentry

Sentry is a realtime event logging platform designed to log errors and notify you whenever users experience them. Although there are multiple platforms out there that perform similar services, Sentry specializes in monitoring errors and extracting all the information needed to review and correct them without using standard user feedback loops. It’s fairly cheap, and it supports many popular languages and platforms (including Python, JavaScript, Node.js, and others).

Sentry

Sketch

Sketch is a professional vector graphics design app that offers much of Adobe Creative Suite’s functionality at a fraction of the cost ($50 compared to $1,300). Sketch, however, is geared more towards web and UI design, although some do use it as an alternative to Photoshop. Its best feature may just be the fact that it updates automatically – after the initial $50, every iteration of Sketch is free (while upgrading CS typically costs upwards of $300).

Sketch

SimpleWebRTC

SimpleWebRTC claims to be the simplest and easiest library available for WebRTC (an open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications capabilities via JavaScript APIs). It’s designed to make building apps with WebRTC easy for front-end developers. There’s an example of what SimpleWebRTC can do here.

SimpleWebRTC

3 Essential Tasks

Productivity is a commonly-discussed topic here; we’re always trying to find a way to make our workdays more efficient. 3 Essential Tasks is one method of ensuring that you finish all of your day’s most important to-dos. You start by writing down everything that needs to be done, then analyzing all those tasks and finally deciding on the three most urgent things that have to be done that day. Then put those at the top of the list, and don’t do anything else (no meetings, phone calls, emails, etc.) until those items are complete.

3 Essential Tasks

PhoneBloks

PhoneBloks is a quirky solution to a problem most of us have encountered: our phones only last a few years (at most) before they’re completely obsolete. Phonebloks proposes that instead of replacing the whole phone, we just replace components. Their phone is made up of detachable bloks – the camera is one blok, the battery another, the memory yet another – that can be removed and replaced with the newer version whenever you want to upgrade. Although the idea isn’t in production yet, it’s interesting to consider.

PhoneBloks