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.
Marvel
Marvel is a free iOS app that lets users create app demos by turning simple sketches into interactive, tappable prototypes. All users have to do is take their app screens that they’ve drawn on paper, whiteboards, napkins, etc., and take a photo of each one. All that’s left to do is link the screens together using hotspots.
Pitchpigeon
Pitchpigeon is a service that helps apps and extensions get some much-needed attention from over 200 popular tech blogs (including Mashable, Engadget, Wired, etc.). Although there’s no guarantee that these sites will then write about or feature your app, it’s a great way to get started. Pitchpigeon also allows you to track which blogs have viewed your app.
Scrutinizer
Scrutinizer is an inspection platform that runs, measures, and analyzes continuously, reporting to you and your team when it finds a way to improve your code quality. It has a clean, clear interface that gives your code an overall quality score, highlights potential problem areas, and generates code metrics.
Nod
Nod is a well-designed gesture control ring that allows you to remotely control just about any tech. It uses fairly intuitive hand and finger motions to perform actions like turning lights on and off, changing the temperature on the thermostat, and even controlling your smart TV without a clunky, traditional remote control.
Nod
Artist’s Notebook: Ramsey Nasser
Programming in anything other than Latin-based languages is tough; most software tools expect text encoded as ASCII. Despite knowing this, Ramsey Nasser was not deterred in his quest to find a way to write code in Arabic. And after trying out multiple software tools and coding syntaxes, Nasser succeeded in finding a tool/syntax combination that allowed him to write Arabic code that looked good and performed smoothly.
Artist’s Notebook: Ramsey Nasser
Color Mixing in the 1600s
In 1692 (that’s 322 years ago, and 271 years before the first Pantone book was published), Dutch artist A. Boogert wrote (and painted) an incredibly detailed book about color. More specifically, he used almost 800 pages to demonstrate how to mix watercolors to achieve even very slight variations on a single color. The only remaining copy is in a museum in France, but can be viewed online here.
Google Explains Why It Scans Your Email
Thanks to multiple lawsuits that have broken out over Google’s implicit email scanning policies, the search engine giant has now changed its Terms of Service agreement to include explicit language explaining how and why they scan your email. To no one’s surprise, it turns out that the email scanning is automated, that it’s done so they can serve personalized paid ads to you, and that they do it in every step of the email process (including composition).
Google Explains Why It Scans Your Email
Disconnect
Disconnect is a web app and browser extension that allows users to block sites that track them throughout the internet. The Disconnect toolbar button (at the top of your browser) constantly shows you the number of sites attempting to track you, and allows you to individually select who you want (or don’t want) watching you. It also has a sister app — Disconnect Search — that lets you search the web anonymously through a VPN.
Beddit
Beddit is a new gadget that allows you to track your sleeping patterns without wearing any sensors. You just place a thin film sensor underneath your sheets, and Beddit can detect heart rate, breathing, snoring, and movement all throughout the night. In the morning, Beddit reports to your mobile device and tells you how you slept, and how you can improve your sleeping patterns.