The Official
Planet Argon
List
O’
Favorites 2014
Hello and congratulations for making it to 2015! The team at Planet Argon has put together a fun list of our favorite things from this last year* and wanted to share it with the world!
* You may notice not all of these things are from 2014 and we hope you will forgive us for this.
Favorite
Song
Favorite
Album
Favorite
Movie
A group of intergalactic criminals are forced to work together to stop a fanatical warrior from taking control of the universe.
When Hiccup and Toothless discover an ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace.
As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse.
A mysterious outsider's quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. Proving himself an amateur assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.
A documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs earned her a posthumous reputation as one of the most accomplished street photographers.
The special bond that develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax, and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.
A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.
The adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous hotel from the fictional Republic of Zubrowka between the first and second World Wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.
Favorite
Brunch
Favorite
Restaurant
Favorite
TV Show
The lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana.
Former Daily Show Correspondent John Oliver brings his persona to this new weekly news satire program.
A man in his early 30s struggles to find a balance in his life between being a new dad and his involvement in a motorcycle club.
A Congressman works with his equally conniving wife to exact revenge on the people who betrayed him.
Since the dawn of time, humans have always wondered: does a perfect world exist? Now, we get the chance to build one. Will it be ultimate happiness or utter chaos? Fifteen pioneering Americans leave their everyday lives and move to an isolated, undeveloped location - for an entire year - where they are challenged to create their own civilization from scratch.
The story behind Commissioner James Gordon's rise to prominence in Gotham City in the years before Batman's arrival.
Derek is a loyal nursing home caretaker who sees only the good in his quirky co-workers as they struggle against prejudice and shrinking budgets to care for their elderly residents.
Before there were parenting blogs, trophies for showing up, and peanut allergies, there was a simpler time called the '80s...
A man struggling with his faith is haunted by the sins of his past but is suddenly thrust into the role of defending humanity from the gathering forces of darkness.
Favorite
Video
Favorite
Coffee Shop
Favorite
App
Lorembuilder
LoremBuilder is an ultra-lightweight, advanced placeholder text editor specifically created to help developers and designers in their daily tasks.
With a single click, LoremBuilder allows you to effortlessly copy the desired amount of random text to fill empty layouts, documents and visual presentations.
Moz.com
Moz has a series of tools on its SEO Toolbox page, including a Term Extractor, which shows the importance of words or phrases and what HTML components keywords show up in. It also has a tool to determine the relevance of a page based on sampling.
moztrust compares how trustworthy a website is compared to others. mozRank is an alternative to Google PageRank. Moz also has a tool for researching popular search trends and a community site called YOUmoz.
Google Apps
Google’s popular web applications including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.
Strava
Upload runs and rides from GPS devices, keep track of personal records and compare segment times against those of other athletes on foot or by bike.
1 Password
1Password gives you the security you need in today's online world without slowing you down. 1Password makes you more productive while simultaneously increasing your security with strong, unique passwords for all your accounts and keeps all of your important information encrypted and secure.
JIRA
JIRA is a software that Planet Argon uses internally to track all our tasks and communicate with each other. JIRA is the tracker for teams planning and building great products. Thousands of teams choose JIRA to capture and organize issues, assign work, and follow team activity.
Overcast
A powerful yet simple audio podcast player, with features such as Smart Speed, Voice Boost, and Smarter Playlists to help you listen to more podcasts in more places, try new shows, and completely control your experience.
Mint
Mint gathers all your financial information into one place, giving you the whole picture in a way that’s easy to understand and take advantage of. Add the accounts, cards and bills you’d like. See what you have and what you owe. Track your spending patterns, investments and more.
Favorite
Gadget
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 isn’t simply bigger — it’s better in every way. Larger, yet dramatically thinner. More powerful, but remarkably power efficient. With a smooth metal surface that seamlessly meets the new Retina HD display. It’s one continuous form where hardware and software function in perfect unison, creating a new generation of iPhone that’s better by any measure.
Copenhagen Wheel
The Copenhagen Wheel transforms your bicycle into a smart electric hybrid, quickly and easily. The Wheel contains a motor, batteries, multiple sensors, wireless connectivity, and an embedded control system. The Wheel learns how you pedal and integrates seamlessly with your motion, multiplying your pedal power 3x—10x. It makes hills feel flat and distances shrink, so you can cycle just about anywhere.
Adobe Shape CC
Capture shapes with your iPhone and iPad. Or use images from your camera roll or Creative Cloud. Adobe Shape converts them to high-fidelity vectors that you can use in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Illustrator Draw.
Chairless Chair
The Chairless Chair is intended to offer weight support when the user feels tired rather than continuously taking on the weight. The current prototype of the Chairless Chair is made out of aluminum and carbon fiber. It weighs around 4.4 pounds and the 6-volt battery runs the damper for 8 hours on a single charge.
iPad Air 2
To create the astonishingly thin silhouette of iPad Air 2, we started by redesigning the Retina display, fusing what had been three layers into one. Not only did this make the display thinner, it made it better, with more vivid colors and greater contrast. Then we added an antireflective coating, giving iPad Air 2 the least reflective display of any tablet in the world.
Favorite
Book
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
- Skin Game by Jim Butcher
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- Mr Mercedes by Stephen King
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
- Console Wars by Blake J. Harris
- Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris
- Capital In The 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
The remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us.
Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day. Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier...
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again...
With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone...
Taking place during Batman's early days of crime fighting, this new edition of the classic mystery tells the story of a mysterious killer who murders his prey only on holidays...
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion...
A mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry...
For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology...
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy...
Favorite
Website
Polygon.com is an American video game website that publishes news, culture, reviews, and videos.
The Clymb is an outdoor retail website based in Portland OR that offers member-exclusive pricing on the planet's most sought-after outdoor brands and adventure travel experiences.
GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service, which offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features. Unlike Git, which is strictly a command-line tool, GitHub provides a web-based graphical interface and desktop as well as mobile integration.
Ariele Alasko is a furniture builder and woodworker living in Brooklyn, NY. Ariele started building furniture for her own apartment shortly after she graduated in 2009, and it swiftly grew from a fun hobby taking place in her small dusty living room, to a full time job.
Virgin America, Inc. is a United States-based airline that began service on August 8, 2007. The airline's stated aim is to provide low-fare, high-quality service for "long-haul point-to-point service.
Workfrom is the insider's guide to the best coffee shops, cafes, bars and coworking spaces to work from in a city. WiFi speeds, access to power and more.
Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, and is hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial tells one story - a true story - over the course of an entire season. Each season, we'll follow a plot and characters wherever they take us. And we won’t know what happens at the end until we get there, not long before you get there with us.
McMenamins is a chain of 65 brewpubs, breweries, music venues, historic hotels, and theater pubs. The chain is located mostly in the Portland metropolitan area, but has many other locations in Oregon and Washington.
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States.
Codecademy is an online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in six different programming languages like Python, PHP, jQuery, JavaScript, and Ruby, as well as markup languages including HTML and CSS.
As of January 2014, the site had over 24 million users who had completed over 100 million exercises.
Planet Argon is a multidisciplinary team of design, development, and deployment practitioners. We help our clients implement ideas and grow their business.
We are also a group of creative and logical thinkers who get together and create websites such as this one and many others!
Favorite
News
How 2014 Was the Beginning of the End for the Gay-Marriage Fight
It started with Illinois.
On June 1, 2014, same-sex marriage became legal in the state following passage of the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act by the state's Legislature the previous fall.
In less than six months, 18 other states followed suit, making 2014 the biggest year for gay-marriage legalization ever, and bringing the total number of states that allow gay couples to wed to 35, plus the District of Columbia.
DOMA: Get the Facts
The Supreme Court victory in United States v. Windsor striking down the discriminatory federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) affirms that all loving and committed couples who are married deserve equal legal respect and treatment from the federal government.
The demise of DOMA marks a turning point in how the United States government treats the relationships of married same-sex couples for federal programs that are linked to being married.
Sony hackers threaten terror attacks against people who see The Interview in theaters
The Sony hackers are threatening an attack on people who go out to see The Interview, writing in a message that they "recommend you to keep yourself distant" from movie theaters and other screening locations.
The hackers previously promised to deliver a "Christmas gift," and while that originally sounded like another trove of leaked data, they are now implying that it may be an attack.
UN Declares 2014 the International Year of Family Farming and Crystallopgraphy
The International Year of Family Farming aimed to stimulate policies for the sustainable development of farmer families, communal units, indigenous groups, cooperatives and fishing families.
The Year of Crystallography aimed to increase public awareness of the importance of crystallography; the formation and structure of crystals.
Marijuana legalization Q&A: What's next for Oregon?
Oregon voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a measure to legalize recreational marijuana. Here's a Q&A on what happens next.
Q: Oregon legalized marijuana Tuesday. Does that mean the marijuana stashed in a drawer in my house is now legal to possess?
A: No. The legal protections for recreational marijuana possession do not take effect until July 1, 2015. Until then, possession of 1 to 4 ounces is considered a misdemeanor and possessing more is a felony. Possession of less than an ounce remains a non-criminal violation through July 1.
Ursula K. Le Guin on reaction to her passionate speech: 'I went sort of viral on YouTube'
Le Guin's acceptance speech, in which she questioned the inevitability of capitalism and referred to Amazon as a "profiteer (that tried) to punish a publisher for disobedience," was greeted with a standing ovation and caused a sensation in the publishing world that spread across the Internet.
The 85-year-old Portland author was praised for her strong defense of artistic freedom and for her criticism of corporate power. A week later, she was still tired from the quick, hectic trip to New York but pleased with the reaction to the substance of her speech and glad she did it. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Girls better than boys at making story-based computer games, study finds
Teenage boys are perhaps more known for playing computer games but girls are better at making them, a study has found. Researchers asked pupils at a secondary school to design and program their own computer game using a new visual programming language that shows pupils the computer programs they have written in plain English.
Dr Kate Howland and Dr Judith Good found that the girls in the classroom wrote more complex programs in their games than the boys and also learnt more about coding compared to the boys.
Favorite
Video Game
Turn your racing experience upside down! Nintendo’s Mario Kart franchise comes to the Wii U console in full HD, introducing new racing circuit designs and anti-gravity karts that will have players driving upside down.
FIFA 15 brings football to life in stunning detail so fans can experience the emotion of the sport like never before. Witness the intensity of crowds chanting and cheering like on match day, and listen to commentators guide fans through the story of the game with Dynamic Match Presentation.
The Wolf Among Us is a five episode series based on the award-winning comic book series Fables (DC Comics/Vertigo.) This is an often violent, mature and hard-boiled thriller where the characters and creatures of myth, lore and legend are real and exist in our world.
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS is the first portable entry in the renowned series, in which game worlds collide. Up to four players battle each other locally or online using some of Nintendo’s most well-known and iconic characters across beautifully designed stages inspired by classic portable Nintendo games.
Inspired by the art of Yayoi Kusama, Dots was created with the notion that beauty and fun are not mutually exclusive. Dots is a minimalist game that was designed to be a soothing experience.
Survive an apocalypse on Earth in The Last of Us, a PlayStation 3-exclusive title by Naughty Dog. Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.
Sheathe your sword, draw your deck, and get ready for Hearthstone -- the fast paced strategy card game that's easy to learn and is based in the epic world of Warcraft! Start a free game on Battle.net and play your cards to sling spells, summon creatures, and command the heroes of Warcraft in duels of epic strategy.
Thank You!
Reaching the end of this year in 2014, we wanted to take a moment to thank a few of the people that helped us through another year, we couldn't have done it without you!