The Objective Blog

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

June 3Things Event

May 30th, 2014 - by Objective - Salt Lake City, Utah

3Things Lecture SeriesJoin us Tuesday, June 17th at 6:00 PM for our next 3Things Lecture Series event, featuring the following excellent presentations:

Lisa Tadje | Director of Marketing & Communications,
Rakuten MediaForge

Become a Thought Leader in 3 Easy Steps

Egan Metcalf | Sr. Material Designer, 3form
3 Ways Global Artisans Have Influenced My Creative Process

Aubren Johnson | CEO, SideKix
3 Lessons Learned While Our Business Became Reality Show Ready

 

If you plan to attend please RSVP to 3things [at] agencyfusion.com.

Date: Tuesday, 6/17/2014
Time: 6:00 PM (sharp)
Location: 155 N 400 W, Ste 460, Salt Lake City, UT 84103 (map)

Visitor parking is on the north side of the building. If there aren’t any visitor spots open, just grab an open spot anywhere that doesn’t say ‘reserved’. When you exit the elevator on the 4th floor, go through the door on the right side and then turn right down the hallway to the Agency Fusion office.

Fusion Radar: May 28, 2014

May 28th, 2014 - 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.

Why React is Awesome

Mozilla web developer James Long spent months studying frameworks and libraries in an attempt to find the best solution to his core problems of data binding and componentizing UIs. After research, development, and trying out frameworks like Ember, Angular, and React, Long finally settled on React as the best solution. The article linked below is a thorough explanation of his findings, and also demonstrates some of React’s capabilities.

Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome

App.js

App.js is a lightweight JavaScript UI library for creating mobile web apps. This cross-platform library offers developers a customizable foundation for web apps, and includes stack management and built-in widgets for general use-cases.

App.js

Async Software Development Manifesto

The Async Software Development Manifesto outlines the principles and priorities of async software dev (which is found in async collaboration tools like GitHub and Bitbucket). These principles promote a flexible work environment and usage of modern tools over the more traditional work environment of frequent meetings and standard office hours. A great example of why async development is more effective than standard office environments can be found here.

Async Software Development Manifesto

5 Rules For Writing Great Interface Copy

Google Ventures designer and writer John Zeratsky recently published an article detailing his personal rules for copywriting for the web. Those rules range from the commonsense–valuing clarity over cleverness or eloquence–to more complicated principles, like his claim that writing is a part of the design process. The article’s worth reading for anyone involved with web design or development.

5 Rules For Writing Great Interface Copy

Stamplay

Stamplay is a cloud platform that helps web designers build web apps without worrying about server-side logic. Using a visual programming language that allows you to customize templates and drag and drop modules, designers can create functional web apps and still remain focused primarily on their design.

Stamplay

What Are You Going To Do With That Degree?

Ben Schmidt’s interactive visualization, “What are you going to do with that degree?” explores the most common college majors and the professions those college graduates end up in. Clicking on any one degree or profession will bring up a more detailed visualization for that area of expertise.

What Are You Going To Do With That Degree?

Life, Below 600px

“Life, Below 600px” is an article that explores and attempts to debunk the commonly-held belief that when content is “below the fold”, it is largely ignored. The article relates websites to newspapers (which, incidentally, is where the phrase “below the fold” came from), and explains that while newspapers do put their most eye-catching content above the fold, they don’t cram all of their best content into that area. Just as a newspaper’s goal is to get readers to actually look at the rest of the newspaper, websites should be using the space above the fold to entice visitors to explore the rest of the site.

Life, Below 600px

RecruitEm

RecruitEm is a site that allows users to bypass typical site barriers and view social media information about anyone. For example, LinkedIn does not show its users the last name of people they’re viewing unless they upgrade to a paid plan. However, RecruitEm uses Google to search LinkedIn profiles and gives you the full profile of the user you’re looking for without you having to sign up for anything.

RecruitEm

Picturelife

Picturelife is an app that allows you to store and sync all of your photos and videos across mobile and desktop devices. Unlike other, similar cloud storage apps, Picturelife automatically uploads any pictures you take to the cloud. It also supports iPhoto’s and Aperture’s structures, and has a web app, so you can access your images anywhere you are, on any device.

Picturelife

A Plane Controlled By Your Brain

German research project Brainflight recently had a major breakthrough: seven subjects participated in a flight simulator where they used only their brain (connected via various nodes on the skull) to control a plane. Just by thinking of commands, the subjects managed to stay on the course outlined for them, and some of them even managed to successfully take off and land the plane.

Brain-controlled Airplane

Fusion Radar: May 14, 2014

May 14th, 2014 - 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.

Syncthing

Syncthing is a relatively new open-source replacement for programs like Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync. Although it doesn’t include all the features and tools that Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync offer (like an Android/iOS app, file distribution, or image hosting), it is a great way to synchronize and transfer data between desktops, mobile devices, laptops, and remote servers.

Syncthing

Perfect Icons

Perfect Icons is a quick and easy way to create colorful customized social icons. This simple site lets designers pick the size, spacing, color, shape, and effects of popular social network icons (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). It then produces a snippet of CSS that you can download and add to your style sheet to produce perfectly designed icons.

Perfect Icons

CSS3Ps

CSS3Ps is a free Photoshop plugin designers can use to quickly convert their Photoshop layers to CSS3. It currently supports common Photoshop features like text layers, border radius, and inner/outer glow, and the team at CSS3Ps is working on supporting more features every day.

CSS3Ps

Ten Addictive Typography Games

This recent top ten by the Interactive Design Institute is a list of some of the best typography games. Included in this list are games like Type:Rider, a game that explores the history of typography, The Font Game, which challenges users to identify fonts, and Kill Comic Sans, a game Agency Fusion built in which players get to shoot down the world’s most hated font.

Ten Addictive Typography Games

SONTE Film

The SONTE Film is new product that controls a window’s opacity with a smartphone. It’s designed for a user-friendly, do-it-yourself installation, so rather than replacing an entire window to get the effect, the covering can be sized and cut to fit any existing glass partition. This “digital shade” uses a mobile app on any smartphone to control the Wi-Fi enabled film, changing windows from transparent to opaque and back again with the push of a button.

SONTE Film

Marvel Developer Portal

The newly-released Marvel Comics API allows developers to access a library containing over 75 years of Marvel comics and materials. More specifically, it’s a RESTful service which provides access to comic book artwork, character histories, creator insights, and expanded stories for over 30,000 comics, 7,000 series, and 5,000 creators.

Marvel Developer Portal

Mink

Mink is a printer that could push 3D printing into a new industry; using the same basic substrates that many cosmetic manufacturers use, it can print blush, eye shadow, lip gloss, lipstick, and many other kinds of makeup. Users just choose any color online or take a photo in the real world, and use a color picker to locate the hex code. Once they have the code, they can put it into a program like Photoshop or Paint and simply press print. Although they don’t have an official release date yet, Mink’s CEO has stated that she hopes to come out with the $200 device later in 2014.

Mink

WADI

WADI is a small device that monitors the natural process of solar disinfection to purify contaminated water. (“Solar disinfection” is a process in which the UV-radiation of the sun inactivates harmful pathogens in the water.) All WADI users have to do is twist the device onto the tops of their PET-bottles full of contaminated water, and expose the bottles to the sun. WADI monitors the levels of coliform bacteria in the water and notifies you when it’s safe to drink.

WADI

World’s Largest Solar Array Set

Speaking of the powers of sunlight, the world’s largest photovoltaic solar power facility, Agua Caliente, was finally completed last week after $1.8 billion and nearly 3 years of planning and construction.  The Arizona power plant’s 5 million solar panels generate 290 megawatts of power — enough to power over 230,000 homes at peak capacity.

World’s Largest Solar Array Set

Fusion Radar: May 7, 2014

May 8th, 2014 - 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.

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.

Marvel

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.

Pitchpigeon

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.

Scrutinizer

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.

Color Mixing in the 1600s

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.

Disconnect

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.

Beddit