TQT: New Fonts…

The internet can be a scary place. The most terrifying thing you can do is type the word “free” into Google. An excellent example is if you want a few font on your computer and you end up searching for “free fonts”. There is an excellent chance that if you proceeded to the resulting links, you would probably end up with at least one virus on your computer.

Last week, I needed a cool font for a project I’ve been working on, so I did some research for a great place to get fonts that wouldn’t damage my computer. Here’s what I found: dafont.com.

From dafont.com, you can easily search for free fonts, fonts that require a donation to use, or even demo fonts that you can purchase. The search can also filter for styles (gothic, fancy), effects (distorted, metallic), or even dingbats which are just symbols and pictures. I ended up finding exactly what I wanted: an old-school typewriter font.

What do you think of the results?

I also want to include a little warning. If you end up downloading new fonts and using them in a shared document, the person you’re sharing with may not be able to view the font unless they have it install. However, they will be able to see it if the document is first printed as a PDF or saved as a picture, like mine above is. Otherwise, you will have to “embed” the font in the document (check out this article for more info).

If you do find a font you like, it is simple to install and every page on dafont.com give instructions that look like this:

• Windows 7/Vista: Right-click on the font files > “Install”
• Windows XP: Put the font files into C:\Windows\Fonts
• Mac OS X: Double-click the font file > “Install font” button.

Let me know if you find any great fonts out there as I’d love to have some other great fonts to use on various projects I work on from time to time. Also, if you have a go-to site for fonts, stock images, or other design elements, feel free to share with the other readers.

Friday Night Links (4/23/2010)…

I’m going to tear down the four or fifth or twelfth wall (or whichever one we are on at this point) and let you in on a little secret: I don’t have to be present to hit the ‘publish’ button to send these posts into the wide open internet. Thus, I am actually typing this post up on Thursay night, but it will be published without my intervention at around 4pm EST on Friday. Crazy, I know, but it is totally true.

Alright, enough of these shenanigans, let’s get some links.

• Crazy Chess Story – Of course it SEEMS like an oxymoron, but this chess champ actually had an amazing journey trying to get from Frankfurt, Germany to Sofia, Bulgaria. When not watching Lord of the Rings: Super Extended Directors Cut edition, they were dodging countries requiring travel visas, getting pulled over, and avoiding some of the worst potholes in Eastern Europe. It’s an incredible story.
• Compound Butter – Next time you bring home a nice salmon fillet or spicing up some veggies, make it quick and tasty with some compound butter. Just add some spices, garlic, lemon, or a plethora of other flavors to butter and – BAM! – compound butter.
• Medical Toys – I am a sucker for a good gadget and I’m also a health nut, so when those two things cross paths, you can be sure I’m there. My two favorite items mentioned are the sleep monitoring alarm clock with the silly headband and the wifi scale. I bet you readers can’t wait until my scale starts posting the ups and downs of me standing on the scale. Yikes.
• You’re Doing It Wrong – Mrs. Digitante and I bring up those commercials where the person is trying to strain a pot of spaghetti, but the noodles all dump out in the sink until they get that handy-dandy pot with the lid that has holes in it. The terrible acting and mock frustration the “doing it wrong” people show is pure hilarity. Now you can watch a wonderful tribute to all those suffering souls – giant red X’s included. If you can’t see the video below, click right here.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/08xQLGWTSag&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

FYIJSYK: Facebook Privacy Update…

Look at this: two FYI-just-so-you-know posts within the span of a week. That is certainly a record. It’s for good reason though.

Facebook announced the other day that they are changing some aspects of Facebook – “Share on Facebook” is giving way to “Like on Facebook”, further integration between third party sites like CNN will be implemented, and your privacy on Facebook is becoming even less important than it already is.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke about this at the Facebook conference called F8. To read about the stuff that he unveiled, you can check out this PC World article which gives a very similar voice to my concerns.

Here is my main thought though: When I post on Twitter, everything I post there is going to be publicly seen. I know that and so I’m cautious about what ends up there. With Facebook, I post things there and I expect a level of privacy. Why? Because I specifically went in and adjusted my privacy settings to my preferences. Too bad that during a redesign, Facebook decided to make me re-opt into my privacy settings, but actually changed them all to be much more revealing than my originally chosen settings.

As a result of my concerns, I posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone would miss me if I closed my Facebook account and nobody responded. I probably won’t go as far as to close it, but I certainly am considering removing a good portion of the information I put there. Additionally, I am removing any applications I have loaded and will continue to monitor my privacy settings.

Facebook has destroyed a large portion of the trust I had built up with them when it was just my friends and those in my closed network (college, city) that could access my information. Now it feels like it is going to be the whole world.

Have you re-evaluated your privacy settings in Facebook? How do you feel about Facebook integrating into the rest of your online world? Let me know in the comments.

TQT: Queue YouTube to a Specific Time…

Ever have a long YouTube video that you want to share with others, but the good part is at the end? Well here is a nice little fix for you.

Since I gave my iPad the boot last week, I thought it was only fitting to demonstrate this technique with a Blendtec video of an iPad getting bent in half, shoved in an industrial blender, and pulverized into a powder.

The link for the video usually looks like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko

If you click that link, you will end up watching entire 1 minute and 40 second clip. It’s very entertaining and you should definitely watch it.

If you want to get straight to the good stuff, you would want to start the video at the 55 second mark. You can easily have YouTube do that for you by adding the following to the end of the link:

#t=0m55s

You can modify the 0 and the 55 to whatever you want. The final link will then look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko#t=0m55s

Bam! iPad demolished!

If you want to watch another cool video starring The Digitante In Action!, check out the video below. If it doesn’t show up, click here to watch it at the YouTube site.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/JC5Qyqy7Pyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

Friday Night Links (4/16/2010)…

I’m teetering on the edge of a food coma after filling up on heavy Italian food at Buca di Beppo. Whatever! I’m still bringing you two food links tonight in the FNL. Get ready to be hungry.

• Make Your Own Sriracha – This is the sauce of the gods. Instead of being fiery hot just for the sake of being fiery hot, Sriracha sauce adds some fantastic garlic flavoring. If you want to tweak it even further you can add your own flavors. Personally, I’m thinking some sesame oil might be great.
• Cool Stuff – If that description sounds like it is generic and non-specific, then you obviously haven’t clicked on the link yet. I linked directly to the gadget section, but there are some amazing things in the other sections. How about these hotel rooms?
• Earthquake Notification – Live in a subduction zone? Not sure what subduction means? Well, if you live on the West Coast or along the Mississippi River, there’s a chance you are at risk of encountering an earthquake. The US Geological Survey actually has a text message or email notification service so you will know if an earthquake hits your area. It requires an email address, but you can actually have an email sent to your phone via text message by following the instructions at this link.
• Food Porn – Don’t let the name scare you: this link is safe for work. It is just ridiculously awesome looking (and tasting, I’m sure) food laid out in all its glory for you to lust over. On recommendation of my wife and regular Digitante commenter Jenny, we clicked through for about 15 minutes and our living room was filled with constant ‘Ooo’s and ‘Ahh’s. See? It’s sounding more and more like porn now, isn’t it. Do yourself a favor and click though the pictures. You won’t regret it.

FYIJSYK: Your Tweets and the Library of Congress…

Did you know you are published in the Library of Congress? Well, if you use Twitter, you soon may be.

On their blog, the Library of Congress announced that they will be storing every public tweet ever. This quite obviously does not mean Direct Messages or any tweets on accounts that are set to private.

Just so the LOC knows what they are getting into, they can expect gems like this from me:

Uh oh, I’m totally self-conscious. I had to put a different flavor of deodorant on each pit. Please don’t make fun if you see me today.

None of the archiving has been done yet but it sounds like more details should be forthcoming in the near future. Get tweeting so you can secure your place on the shelves of the Library of Congress!

iPad: Here and Back…

About a week and a half ago, I stood in line for about an hour and a half waiting for an iPad at the local Apple Store. I brought it home and Mrs. Digitante was very excited, as was I.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out and I’m going to share with you why. First though, let me tell you that this is my opinion of why it didn’t work for ME. However, it may fit your needs great and I already know of a number of people who have an iPad and love it and are spending many hundreds of dollars buying apps and accessories for it.

The Pros:

• The screen is amazing. You really haven’t ever seen a screen that is this crisp and pleasant to look at.
• It is super fast. Granted it can only run one application at a time, but I never had to wait for anything other than webpages to load.
• Simplicity is the name of the game. One button on the device, little icons on the screen, and minimal options to change are all Apple hallmarks. There really isn’t much thinking or learning involved.

The Cons:

• Lack of Flash video. Honestly, I didn’t think this would be a huge deal, but the problem is that it ruined my flow of work. I enjoyed reading Twitter on the iPad, but during a reading session, I would come across at least one or two videos that I wanted to watch, but wasn’t allowed to. This means that I had to mark the tweet as a favorite, get on my laptop later, and then watch the video. It just wasn’t convenient.
• Basic staples such as a file system are missing. I purchased an eBook in pdf format on my laptop and put it in my Dropbox because I knew there was a Dropbox app for the iPad. I was sorely disappointed when I found that I couldn’t just save the pdf to my iPad and open it with the default pdf program. Instead, I had to purchase an app that would allow me to access the files in my Dropbox app and open it in the pdf reading app. I only knew this because I know other techies that have had to do this. Otherwise, I would have been stuck. For all the simplicity Apple loves, this simple task was really complicated.
• The iPad costs $500. Over the last week and a half, I’ve tried to come up with $500 worth of usage scenarios and I just can’t do it. If this thing was $300, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about buying it, but $500 really makes me hesitate.

So after a couple of days of both me and Mrs. Digitante playing with it, I asked her what she thought. We were on exactly opposite ends of the spectrum but came to the same conclusion: it was more than she needed and it was less than I wanted so we decided to eat the $50 restocking fee and return it.

When I say “it was more than she needed” she was looking for an eReader like the Kindle. Having all the apps and other features weren’t appealing to her and really over complicated it for her. When I say “it was less than I wanted” I wanted to be able to pick up a device and have it do everything I required. Type a reply to a  Wordpress forum post? Nope, no text boxes were editable. Watch video linked in Twitter? Nope, sorry, Flash doesn’t work. Install any number of applications that I wanted? Nope, only what Apple approves through the App Store using their clandestine and inconsistent rules.

Will I miss it? Most likely not. It’s been sitting in our bedroom, unused, for the last three days. Normally I get all giddy and can’t put gadgets down, but this thing turned old hat very quick.

Did you buy an iPad? What was your opinion? Let me know what you think of the iPad, even if you don’t have one.

Tungle Yourself…

Before you go and thing I’m some sort of perv, I want to describe what Tungle is. It is a website that syncs with your calendar (Google Calendar or Outlook, for example) and then shows your free time to the world.

Don’t worry though, no one will know why you are doing in the time that is marked as busy, but they can easily select a block of time, an appointment time length, and submit it to you to schedule a meeting. Very convenient, especially when you think about all those back and forth emails with people:

Me: I’m free on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening.

You: Hmm, I can only make it on Wednesday during the day or Friday all day.

Me: Wednesday only works late and Friday is out of the question. I’m on vacation all next week also.

All of this headache could have been saved just by me sending a tungle.me link. Then you could consult your schedule, block out some times that work for you and I would confirm them, automatically adding them to my calendar.

Let’s check it out more in depth though. Head to the Tungle website and click the big, purple “Sign up free” button.

The main thing to figure out here is what you want your Tungle.me link to be. Mine is http://tungle.me/thedigitante.

Once you are signed up for Tungle, you need to fill out your profile. This will is when you will select your regular availability, fill out your profile with contact information, add any other public profiles such as Twitter and Facebook, and adding any exceptions to your availability such as vacation.

Selecting your regular availability is as easy as using a little paint roller to paint the times you can meet. It even turns to a little eraser if you need to delete some availability.

Once you are done filing out your full profile, you can also sync your Tungle calendar with Outlook or your Google Calendar.

Additionally, there is an iPhone app available and a BlackBerry app that will be coming out in the next little while (I’m actually testing the Tungle for BlackBerry beta).

The only thing left to do is share your calendar with others who want to meet with you!

Do you want to meet with The Digitante? Why not visit my Tungle site to set up an appointment? Do you have a Tungle site? Post your link in the comments and I’ll add you to my Tungle contacts!

Friday Night Links (4/9/2010)…

YES! It’s Friday! It couldn’t come quickly enough either. I’ve got some awesome links that I scrounged up this week and you can prepare to be amazed.

• New Revolution: Old People – There are some pretty amazing statistics contained in this article, if they are true. Supposedly, of all the people to ever live past age 65, half of them are alive today. Not only that, it is really shocking that the birthrates in many of the worlds most educated countries is on a major decline – well below the rate needed to replace the aging population as it dies off. If there was any concern in the world about over-population, I recommend putting that concern to rest after reading this article.
• Leftover Food Solution – Admit it, you throw out food that could be used because it is all by its lonesome with nothing to put on it or mix it with. No more of that, now that you have the Lifehacker guide to “Iron-Cheffing” your leftovers. I just did this tonight sort of: brown rice from last night, add some tomato sauce, turkey pepperoni, and some cheese and you have yourself a nice little meal. My favorite advice from the article is when in doubt about whether you will use something before it goes bad, toss it in the freezer.
• Make Your Own Girl Scout Cookies – Is it really that time of year again? Yep. Instead of spending a fortune on a tiny box with a couple of cookies, why not make your own? My favorite? I love the Samoas (which the article calls Fijis). A rose by any other name is still as sweet, delicious, and coconutty.
• Running: Average vs Pro – You know, you watch athletes on TV and it looks like they are working hard and running fast, but do you ever think about how good they actually are? This video composites a TV analyst against a variety of college football players in the 40 yard dash. The results are amazing. Even the analyst vs the slowest guy is not really even close. The analyst gets blown away EVERY TIME! Link directly to the video in case you don’t see it embedded.

  http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/3Ye2MV3LayI&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

TQT: iPod charging…

Since Tuesday came and went without a post (actually, this entire week came and went without a post), I figured I’d try and squeeze in a Thursday Quick Tip. Let’s just say you are lucky there are two days that begin with the letter T.

Tonight’s tip refers to charging an iPod, but this advice is equally applicable to many of your electronic devices, especially your phone. The USB port on your computer can not only be used to transfer data to your mobile device, but it can also be used to charge your mobile device.

When I’m traveling, I like to do everything I can to not have to check a bag. This inevitably leads to me cutting back on as much stuff as possible. To do that, I generally take a USB cord and simply plug my cell phone or iPod into the USB port of my computer to charge. This saves me from having to take a cord with a big bulky plug with me.

Additionally, there has been a movement in the last year or so to standardize the charging ports for cellphones and other devices to use a connector called micro-USB. The beautiful thing about that is instead of taking a cord for your cellphone, a cord for your camera, a cord for your wife’s phone, etc, you will be able to just bring one cord and charge all your devices. Convenient!

Got your own tips on how to charge various devices or how to pack lighter for a trip? Let me know in the comments!