The Objective Blog

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Fusion Radar: December 25, 2013

December 23rd, 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.

Myth

Myth is a preprocessor which lets developers and designers write pure CSS without giving up the benefits of tools like LESS and Sass.

Myth

Estimote

Estimote is a small wireless device that broadcasts Bluetooth 4.0 signals to smartphones in the area. When the phone recognizes Estimote, it then displays “micro-location” based notifications for users. For example, a department store might place several of these throughout the building and use them to send personalized messages, special offers, and reminders when the Estimote detects someone’s phone nearby.

Estimote

Progress Style Buttons

A while ago, we talked about some tools from Codrops that offered code for creative button styles and animated checkboxes. Now, the same team has developed some progress button styles with similar smooth effects. It’s worth checking out if you’re ever looking for an alternative to the standard loading bar.

Progress Button Styles

Google Zeitgeist 2013

For the past few years, Google has released its version of the year in review–which typically includes the most searched phrases. This year they’ve also put out a well-made video and an interactive globe that allows you to explore trends all over the world at a city level.

Google Zeitgeist 2013

Devtools Terminal

Devtools Terminal in Chrome is a simple but useful tool that allows you to open your terminal as just another tab in Chrome. This could be a great solution for anyone who’s ever been frustrated at having to go back and forth between their Terminal and browser windows.

Devtools Terminal

Litmus

Litmus is an email testing and tracking system that has a few more powerful features than other email marketing tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact. Although it’s a bit pricier than some of the other services we’ve seen, it does offer features like comprehensive design testing for 30+ email clients and devices, spam testing for common ISP and corporate filters, and thorough email analytics.

Litmus

NBA Stats

Linked below is an example of the NBA website’s powerful game summary feature. Not only does it break down points by quarter and player, it gives a play-by-play of everything that happened during the game, complete with linked video clips of the events. It details everything from jump shots and blocks to turnovers and fouls. The data analysis and processing behind this is pretty staggering.

NBA Stats

Back of a Napkin

Back of a Napkin is an interesting way to test how ready you are to start moving forward with a new idea. Filling out their survey (which asks who’s on your team, what you’re building, and a few other questions) automatically creates a document that everyone on your team agrees on and signs. We’d still suggest hiring an attorney, however.

Back of a Napkin

A Moment to Breathe

Many of the topics and tools we talk about on this blog are geared towards helping you work more efficiently; but it’s important to remember that work isn’t everything and that sometimes we just need to take a moment to breathe. This article describes a few things we can do throughout the workday to stay sane, as well as some guidelines for life outside of work.

A Moment to Breathe

Arby’s Logo Change(s)

A few weeks ago, we talked about how JCPenney changed their logo three times in three years. Now, it looks like Arby’s is following suit after they drastically changed their logo last year, then reverted back to a more traditional logo a few weeks ago.

Arby’s Logo Change(s)

Fusion Radar: December 18, 2013

December 18th, 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.

Lookback

Lookback is an analytics tool that allows iOS developers to see how people use and interact with their apps. Once you install Lookback’s SDK, you can send your app to test users, who then select when and how they’re recorded to provide you with feedback. More specifically, Lookback can record the screen, front-facing camera, all touch interactions, sounds (via the microphone), and more; and once the recording is complete, Lookback uploads it to your account for viewing and analysis.

Lookback

CommandLineFu

CommandLineFu is a neat resource for discovering and sharing useful command-line tips.

CommandLineFu

Elementary OS

The creators of Elementary OS wanted a Linux OS that was beautiful as well as usable, and that focus on design has made it “the Apple of Linux OSes,” according to one Wired article.

Elementary OS

Explainshell

Explainshell is a tool that lets users type in a command-line and view what each portion of the command does. It’s a quick, well-designed way to look up commands rather than searching through Linux man pages.

Explainshell

Screenhero

Screenhero is a free app that allows two people to collaboratively share one computer screen. Although there are a lot of other resources to share screens out there, like Screenleap, Join.me, and even Skype, Screenhero is the first one we’ve seen that allows both parties to click, type, and explore simultaneously.

Screenhero

What Screens Want

What Screens Want is an insightful, lengthy exploration by designer Frank Chimero of the past, present, and future of digital design. The article, which is an adaptation of Chimero’s talk at Build 2013, uses a variety of resources to explore what it means to natively design for screens. Although it doesn’t offer a lot of concrete answers, What Screens Want proposes a lot of good questions about what good design should and shouldn’t do, and what it might do for us in the future.

What Screens Want

Ngrok

Ngrok is a tunneling reverse proxy that captures and analyzes all traffic over the secure tunnel it establishes for later inspection, replay, and analysis. It enables users to accomplish a few unique tasks: temporarily sharing websites that are only running on a development machine, demoing an app without deploying it, and running networked services on machines that are firewalled off from the Internet.

Ngrok

Sprite Cow

Sprite Cow is a free resource that helps you get the background position, width and height of sprites within a spritesheet. You simply click or click and drag to select sprites, and then Sprite Cow produces a few lines of copyable CSS for you to use.

Sprite Cow

@NeedADebitCard

“Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people,” reads @NeedADebitCard’s Twitter account. This account is dedicated to retweeting photos users post of their own debit cards, presumably to teach them a lesson. They don’t produce any original content because they don’t need to; every couple of days, another clueless Twitter user will post a photo of their card, sometimes including the security code number in the text.

@NeedADebitCard

Fusion Radar: December 11, 2013

December 10th, 2013 - by marissa - Salt Lake City, Utah

Color 101 at Agency Fusion

Instead of our usual fare of cool links and useful software, this week Agency Fusion focused on the topic of color: how it affects us, its influence on branding, and how we can utilize it.

It turns out that the human eye can see up to 10 million different variations of the standard rainbow of colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). Some might look at this fact and start sifting through a million different shades, looking for one unique color that will represent their brand and make it stand out from its competitors. However, think of how many influential brands actually use the same colors.

Target, Coke, Netflix, Virgin Mobile, and YouTube all share roughly the same shade of red; yet each brand has a distinct identity. Dell, HP, and IBM – which are all in more or less the same consumer category – have similar blues in their logos. Even purple has its share of competition, with Nexium, Yahoo, Ally, and Craigslist clustered together.

Because of this, some brands get very possessive of their branding colors; there are dozens of brands that have slapped a copyright on their own particular RGB combo. Tiffany blue, T-Mobile magenta, and John Deere green are all officially defined and owned by those companies.

However, in our experience, while colors can have a powerful effect on brand identity, it’s more important to focus on consumer experience. Brand colors can change, but it’s much harder to change a brand’s reputation. After all, while J.C. Penney has changed its logo (including colors) a handful of times in the last few years, its reputation hasn’t recovered, and its sales are still sluggish. On the other hand, it wasn’t so long ago that Apple was using a wide spectrum of colors in their branding; and public awareness and opinion of Apple has steadily improved, due to their customer service and quality products.