We love free fonts, but sometimes the process of finding half-decent ones can be pretty annoying. Fontspace.com tries to smooth out the rough spots for free font junkies.

Instead of simply categorizing fonts, Fontspace uses the good ol' tagging system - which provides easier access to similar fonts. The broad categories on some other sites (sorry DaFont) often lead to large, tiresome lists that require a boatload of time to sift through.

Registered users can also add fonts to their favorites ; thi can be extremely useful in the event that someone - your husband , for example - accidentally forgets to back up your fonts before a reformat.

You just have to love an online game that knows exactly what it aims to be. And the concept of this game is, well, rather difficult. The Rather Difficult Font Game tests your ability to recognize typefaces by showing you a piece of text and then four font names. Your job is to correctly choose the correct typeface.

As with any multiple-choice test with a limited set of answers, this game becomes rather less difficult as you go, if you're careful to remember what you've already seen. While we're certainly not font experts, by process of elimination we were able to score an 18 out of 30 on our first try.

Like any good time waster, this one can be done relatively quickly, like maybe during your coffee break. And if you are the type of person that feels guilty about the time you spend playing time wasting online games, you can tell yourself that at least with this one you're learning something. Whatever lets you live with yourself, right?

The more fonts you have installed on your Windows computer, the slower it boots. It's one of those basic facts of life. It's not fair, but it's true. Because Windows needs to read each and every font while it's loading, it can take 30 seconds longer to boot a system with 1000 fonts installed than one with 100.

It turns out Windows XP installs just 44 fonts. All the other fonts on your system were probably installed by other programs. And you can safely remove the majority of them. But who has the time to sift through all of those fonts one by one?

Font Frenzy simplifies things by letting you uninstall any non-Windows font with just a few clicks. Worried that you might accidentally delete fonts that you meant to keep? No problem, you can create a snapshot of your font directory which you can use as a restore point. You can reinstall all of your fonts or just pick and choose from your backup directory.

There's also a handy font viewer for seeing how various fonts look at different point-sizes, and a browser for adding and removing fonts on a case by case basis.

Keep in mind that this software is designed for Windows XP. There are several new fonts included in Windows Vista. So using Font Frenzy to remove all non-system fonts in Windows Vista could actually result in removing necessary fonts.

[via gHacks]

There are free icon sets and icon fonts all over the internet, but nothing is as special as one that represents the place you call home.

10four design based out of Vancouver BC has put up for the taking an iconic font that represents Canadian life. All things Canadian come together in this special set called Adanac, including beer, lumberjacks, kraft dinner, poutine, zambonis, beavers, toques and even John Candy. Nothing says Canada more than this set, and if you feel like screaming Canada in anything you are creating on your computer, make sure to use this set.

To grab the free Adanac font set, visit the site and fill out your name and email, and 10four will send you an email with an address and password for download.

I don't have any confirmation on this, but fadtastic says that for the first time in history, Times New Roman is not the default font in Microsoft Office, its status having been usurped in Office 2007 by Microsoft's pretty new star Calibri. The venerable and ubiquitous font is still included in the office suite, of course, and the new version of Office is still in beta and things may be reshuffled again in the months before its final release, but it's still a surprising shift for a company as stalwart as Microsoft.

[Via kottke.org]