The Objective Blog

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

Fusion Radar: August 13, 2014

August 14th, 2014 - by Objective - 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.

Amazon Local Register

Amazon is entering Square’s turf with the release of Local Register, an app and card reader, with an initial transaction fee of 1.75%.

Amazon Local Register

Wifi-Sniffing Cat

That neighbor’s cat wandering through your backyard might be up to no good. Security researcher Gene Bransfield outfitted a cat with Wifi sniffing tools to see which neighbors had unsecured or vulnerable Wifi networks.

Wifi Sniffing Cat

Responsive Dashboard Layout

Responsive marketing sites are everywhere, but dashboards haven’t gotten the same device-friendly redesigns in many cases. Here’s an open source responsive dashboard if you’re in the market.

Github Project

Rails Wizard Gem

Wicked is a Ruby on Rails gem that helps you create a step-by-step user-flow in your web app while keeping your controller code clean.

Wicked

Google Classroom

In Google’s continuing effort to worm their way into every aspect of our lives, they’ve created Classroom, a suite of tools for teachers and students who use Google Apps for Education. Classroom lets teachers distribute and collect assignments, provide feedback, and share grades digitally.

Google Classroom

Spectacle

Mac users: if you don’t use a window management app, you’re missing out. We’re fans of both Divvy and Slate, and we just discovered another app for controlling window size and position: Spectacle.

Spectacle

Using Design to Change Behavior

Brian Wansick believes menu design can be used to encourage patrons to choose healthier food options.

Full Article

Guacamole

Most remote desktop control gateways require a client app to be installed in order to access the remote server. Guacamole leverages HTML5 to facilitate access through a browser.

Guacamole

Fusion Radar: August 6, 2014

August 6th, 2014 - by Objective - 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.

The Word “Just”

We have a saying around the office: “Just is a dirty word.” One of these days we’re going to write a post about why this is true, but in the meantime the folks at A List Apart have an article which touches on this same subject.

Full Article

The Gender Gap in Tech

Wired is featuring an article about some of the gender problems in the tech industry, particularly when it comes to getting funding.

Full Article

The Simpsons in CSS

If you aren’t familiar with CSS, it stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and developers use it to help control style, positioning, and appearance of elements in HTML. Take our word for it that it’s very impressive to render the Simpsons characters using nothing but CSS.

Simpsons Characters in CSS

Devices in CSS

While we’re on the subject of CSS, someone else has rendered 8 different mobile devices using pure CSS. Also impressive.

Devices in CSS

Behind the Scenes: Google Code Search

Although Google has now retired its Code Search product, this interesting write up from a developer who helped create Code Search is a technical but informative read.

Google Code Search

OpenGrok

Another code search find: OpenGrok is a fast and usable source code search and cross reference engine for Mercurial, Git, SCCS, RCS, CVS, Subversion, and more.

OpenGrok

Navdy

Hands-free, with a heads-up display projected in front of you, Navdy looks like a great solution for using your mobile phone while driving safely.

Navdy

Responsive Logos

Most responsive websites keep the logo fairly static, or at best, scale it down a bit. Some dude named Joe Harrison created an experimental demonstration of responsive logos. Resize your browser to see the logos adjust to your browser’s changing viewport size.

Responsive Logos

Facebook Flux

We use MVC design patterns and frameworks on a regular basis. MVC isn’t a silver bullet for all app development needs, though, and Facebook has open-sourced Flux which offers an alternative to the model-view-controller paradigm of MVC.

Facebook Flux

Office Lovin’

If you’ve been to our downtown SLC office you know we value a great office space. This site highlights other great tech office spaces if you’re looking for some inspiration.

Office Lovin’

Terraform

If you’ve used Vagrant before, you’ll be interested in reading about HashiCorp’s newly-released product, Terraform. Terraform lets you define and build infrastructure programmatically from multiple service providers like AWS, Heroku, and more.

Terraform

Manything

Use any iOS device as a home security camera.

Manything