The Objective Blog

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

Fusion Radar: August 22, 2012

August 23rd, 2012 - by brittany - 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.

Mettl

Mettl is an online assessment platform. It allows companies to test and measure the skills of potential employees. It tests ability, aptitude, technical & functional skills, and behavioral & personality skills. Mettl also provides real time assessments allowing companies to get instant feedback.

Geekli.st

geeklist is a global developer community helping developers (geeks) to share their work and discover others’ work. It provides a way for developers to grow targeted communities based on their work and credibility.

Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle is a bio-alarm clock app for iOS devices. Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to monitor sleep movement. By analyzing the data from user movements and sleep patterns, it wakes users up when they are in their lightest sleep phase. By waking users up in the lightest sleep phase with soothing ambient noises, Sleep Cycle allows users to feel more rested and relaxed.

App.net

App.net is a pay-for-membership social platform. App.net charges users $4 a month for participation. Because the network gains its revenue from membership fees, the service does not support ads from outside companies. Will users think an ad-free social platform is worth paying for, or will they continue to use free services like Twitter and Facebook and ignore the ads?

The Internet Map

The Internet map is well…a map of the Internet. It is a bi-dimensional presentation of 350,000+ sites from 196 countries. Every site is a circle on the map, with sizes and colors defined by web traffic and country respectively. The map also effectively clusters sites based on semantics or content. Have fun exploring.

kippt

kippt is a service that allows users to find, read, store, search, and share information in the form of links. Similar to services like pocket, instapaper, and readability, kippt allows users to save and share links they’ve come across while browsing. kippt allows users the ability to sync with services like Twitter, Facebook, app.net, GitHub, tumblr, etc. and then have the ability to search them later. It is also cross-device compatible, so whether on mobile, tablet, or computer, users can access their information. If kippt does all it claims, our ability to learn just increased.

Foundation

Foundation is a responsive front-end framework. It allows users to define a grid system and quickly build HTML+CSS prototypes that respond to whatever device they are being viewed on. The best feature is the speed at which users can prototype because of the dozens of predefined styles and elements. Users can iterate quickly and easily change prototypes into production code once the layout has been perfected.

Maxthon

Maxthon is a web browser from China. The latest release supports both Trident and Webkit rendering engines, meaning well designed/developed sites look pretty. It is also reported to be incredibly fast, stable, and secure. The company is trying to break into the US market with a new office in California. So, while our crew is pretty set in our love for Chrome and Firefox, Maxthon may become a contender depending on its ability to deliver on its promises.

decrypt

decrypt is a program that makes the user look like a computer genius to coworkers, friends, family and random strangers. Running the program on a computer will cause the piped content (or input file) on a machine to slowly become visible and take over the screen. In short, it will make a user look like every TV show hacker they’ve ever admired.

Piecon

Piecon is a small JavaScript library used for dynamically generating progress pie charts in favicons, possibly useful for showing the loading progress of media heavy sites, downloads, etc. It is currently supported by the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Sorry, IE users, progress will be shown as title updates instead of the Piecon.

ASCII Street View

ASCII Street View is a real-time ASCII art conversion of Google Street View. It uses WebGL, so users will have to use a browser that supports CORS WebGL textures: Chrome, Firefox 8+, or other. It combines the use of Google Street View Panorama library, and three.js.

Fusion Radar: August 8, 2012

August 9th, 2012 - by brittany - Salt Lake City, Utah

Colossal

Colossal is “a blog that explores the intersection of art, design, and physical craft.” It captured the interests of some of our team when they discovered a post about pencil lead carvings. We loved the elephant’s shadow.

Visual News

Visual News is a site that provides daily, visual inspiration and information. A recent post about data tracking on the web caught our eye. If you want to know how some of the most popular sites are using data, check it out.

147colors

147colors is a list of colors available in CSS3. When designing or developing, 147colors can be a reference for available colors and their names, which will help cut down the number of CMYK,RGB, or hex codes you have to remember for a site.

Find Your Greatness.

Nike recently launched a campaign called “Find Your Greatness.” The video for the campaign shows how well known and developed brands can refocus and add a new dynamic to the “brand personality.”

Zurb Responsive Tables

Tables have always been the bane of developers’ existence. That fact was further solidified with the advent of mobile web browsing. The team at Zurb hopes to ease developers’ pain with responsive tables. Their tables allow the first column to stay in position while the subsequent columns can be scrolled through with a swipe, thus saving the user from having to remember what each row represents.

Css3, please!

CSS3, please! is a cross-browser CSS3 rule generator. It allows users to learn and test CSS3 rules by showing updates instantly in their browser. Users can also copy and paste styles into their own stylesheets for quick editing.

Google Chrome Frame

Google Chrome Frame is a plug-in that brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. Users with Google Chrome Frame can now make use of HTML5 elements, like canvas, that aren’t yet supported in IE 6, 7, 8, or 9. If you are one of the unfortunate souls still using IE, this plug-in might make the experience more bearable.

spreecast

spreecast is live video conversation tool. Users simply need an account, an up-to-date browser, and a webcam, and they’re in. Whether users are interested in creating video chat sessions, video interviews, or topic discussions, spreecast can do it. The experience is similar to Google hangouts, but for those who still aren’t sold on Google’s social network, spreecast is an alternative.

Fusion Radar: August 1, 2012

August 3rd, 2012 - by brittany - Salt Lake City, Utah

Olympic Fever

Bearsfightingbears.com recently posted a how-to on their blog for anyone in the US wanting to watch a live stream of the Olympics. The site gives step-by-step instructions on how to proxy through to a server in London for online live streaming.

jsFiddle

jsFiddle is an online web editor that supports JavaScript, MooTools, jQuery, Prototype, YUI, Glow and Dojo, HTML and CSS. The tool lets you save and run your applications within the web browser. “jsFiddle is a playground for web developers…One can use it as an online editor for snippets, a sharing and bug isolation tool, and a learning tool.”

SkillShare

SkillShare is a site that allows users to discover or offer unique classes in their area. The categories represented vary based on location, but can range from creative arts, lifestyle, and entrepreneurship. So go ahead, “learn anything from anyone,” from “a community of learners: teachers and students fueled by common interests and driven by a passion to share real world skills.”

NOTE:

Zaarly is a site where users can buy and sell locally, which also offers options for learning and teaching.

zapier

zapier a tool for syncing data and apps on the web, in order to make your life simpler. zapier allows users to create, manage, and delete zaps (combinations of triggers and actions) on their handy dashboard. Users can create zaps using various combinations of the now 67 supported web apps. Give it a try if you are busy and want more time for selling, marketing, coding, designing, writing,…you get the idea.

iconmonstr

iconmonstr is a collection of free, simple icons to use on your next project. Ranging from a plethora of social icons to media player icons, these simple black and white icons could be implemented in wireframes or actual designs.