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.
Aware.js
Aware.js is a surprisingly-simple toolkit that enables reader-aware design for your site. It’s a jQuery plugin that allows a site to customize and personalize the display of content based on a reader’s behavior and history.
http://xoxco.com/projects/code/aware/
Photobooth.js
This widget allows users to take avatar pictures directly on your site, instead of having to upload another file from their desktop or link to one online. Photobooth.js also offers editing capabilities (like saturation and hues) so your users will be happy with the image they take.
https://github.com/WolframHempel/photobooth-js
Brackets
Brackets, a fully open-source, community-driven project, acts as an editor for web design and development. Built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, this editor provides an uncluttered, user-friendly, quick way to design and develop with your browser as your design view.
InterTwitter
If you’re having trouble generating Twitter followers the old-fashioned way (that is to say, by producing genuinely interesting and useful content), don’t worry. For anywhere from $14 to $487, you can buy Twitter followers ($14 gets you 1,000 followers, and the price gradually increases until you’re getting 100,000 followers for $487).
Fake Follower Check
If the previous Twitter-follower-for-hire site seemed tempting, however, you should be wary of sites like Status People’s Fake Follower Check. Anyone can enter a Twitter handle and the site calculates the percentage of “fake” Twitter followers that account has.
http://fakers.statuspeople.com/
Sunrise and Clear Apps
Although these two apps have different functionalities, they do have a few things in common: nice design, great user interface, and the ability to help you get your life in order. Sunrise combines Facebook, Google Calendar, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites into one daily email. Clear is a simple to-do list app with an intuitive user interface.
Sunrise & Clear
Foldify
Although it isn’t available just yet, Foldify seems like an entertaining, interactive, fun-for-the-whole-family kind of app. It’s a sort of digital do-it-yourself origami, where you draw, create, and print 3D figures.
Police Pin Down Perps with Pinterest
Local police departments have found a new use for Pinterest: posting mug shots, sketches, reward offerings, and alleged crimes of police suspects. Apparently, this has led to a 57% increase in arrests!
http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/
DoorBot
A few weeks ago, we talked about Lockitron, a gadget that lets you open your door with your smartphone from anywhere in the world. Now, there’s another way you can avoid ever having to come to the door. DoorBot is a camera you place over your doorbell that notifies you when someone is at your door. You can then see and speak to the person at your door – it even coordinates with Lockitron, so you can open the door for them, even if you aren’t home.
http://mashable.com/2012/12/08/doorbot-iphone/
Square’s Wallet App Gift Cards
Square, a mobile app service that makes paying anywhere easier, just launched gift chards as the latest version of its Wallet app. It allows you to send and use gift cards to any of the vendors Square is partnered with, so there’s no plastic card you have to carry around.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/09/square-launches-digital-gift-cards/
ATOMS Express Toys
ATOMS (which just met their Kickstarter goal) are creative toys that, basically, let you build things that do things. Designed to work with toys kids already have (like Legos, action figures, even stuffed animals), ATOMS are iOS controlled construction sets that make other toys mobile and interactive.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atoms/atoms-express-toys
Arduino Esplora
The Arduino Esplora is another toy (albeit a more complicated toy) that acts as a microcontroller for . . . well, almost anything. It comes equipped with an analog joystick, a linear potentiometer, a microphone, a light sensor, a temperature sensor, and a half dozen other inputs and outputs that allow you to communicate with and control a variety of electronic or non-electronic devices.