Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

font posts

Filed under: Time-Wasters, Web

Time-Waster: Cheese or Font?


If you're looking to prove your culinary or typographical know-how (I mean, when aren't you?) then this time-waster might be just up your street!

Very simply, Cheese or Font displays the name of either a font or cheese - all you have to do is correctly choose which! Whilst you won't get a score as you play - you can simply keep on playing ad inifitum - the game does tell you the percentage of folks who gave your answer (say, 50% of folks foolishly guessed that Absinette is a cheese) whilst serving up another name for you to identify.

Via Slashfood

Filed under: Fun, Text, Weird Wednesday

Weird Wednesday: how to make a font with your car


Ok, so maybe you don't have access to all the necessary equipment to pull this off, but if you did...It would look a lot like the contents of this Flickr gallery.

Professional race driver Stef van Campenhoudt, typographers Pierre and Damien of PleaseLetMeDesign, and interactive artist Zachary Lieberman collaborated to create iQ font using a compact Toyota hatchback and an array of computer and video hardware. You can watch things unfold in a Vimeo clip after the break.

The resulting font is actually quite good, with a hand-drawn, script look to it. You can view sample images of iQ font and download it from Toyota Belgium's web site.

Scriptiness is fine and dandy, but let's see if they can pull off something with a nice, scholarly feel to it like Book Antiqua.

Thanks for the tip, Ramin!

Read more →

Filed under: Text, Office, Freeware

Does SPRANQ's Ecofont really use 20% less ink?


There are plenty of ways to green up your computing environment, from power saving apps like Edison to waste reducers like HP's Smart Web Printing.

What about your typeface of choice? Can an intelligently crafted font really reduce your ink usage by 20%? SPRANQ - a Utrecht-based communications firm - thinks it's possible. To that end, they've put a lot of time and effort into designing Ecofont.

The theory is simple: remove as much black area from a font without adversely impacting its readability.

Ecofont appears a little heavier than the fonts I typically print with, but zoomed to 600% in Photoshop the difference is quite obvious. Ecofont's holes should lighten your ink or toner consumption. Time will tell, and I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

Apart from the font itself, SPRANQ offers a few tips we can all put to good use: remember the environment when selecting your paper, and always try to use efficient printing equipment. I'll add one of my own: for everyday printing, use both sides of the paper if you can (just make sure your printer can handle duplexing first).

[ via Freeware World Team ]

Filed under: Fun, Utilities

What the font?! identifies fonts from images

What the font?!
What the font from My Fonts is a web site designed to help you figure out the name of a font from a JPG file submission. For example, if you want to know what font DLS uses, capture a screen shot of some text, upload it on What the font and see what you find out.

It's pretty simple to use, just upload the image, fill in any missing letters and let the site do the work for you. I submitted several things - some that I knew the font name and some that I didn't - and always got a selection of possibilities.

There is also a forum so that if the online tool can't identify a font, other users can try their hand at it.

So, if you've had your eye on someone else's font and have been wondering what it is, now is your chance to find out.

Filed under: Design, Freeware, web 2.0

Fontspace Offers Free Social Font Downloads

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.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters

The Rather Difficult Font Game - Time Waster

The Rather Difficult Font GameYou 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?

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Font Frenzy cleans out unnecessary Windows XP fonts

Font FrenzyThe 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]

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Text

Canadian icons at their finest, for free

canadian icon font set

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.

Filed under: Windows, Office, Microsoft

Times New Roman retired in Office 2007

CalibriI 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]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio