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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.