Archive for February, 2009
Chi.mp Invite Wanted
I heard about this site a while back and I’m pretty sure I signed up to get a beta invite but as time goes by I’m not so sure that I did because I haven’t recieved anything. I’m really interested in trying this service out, I’ll probably also write up a small review of the service when I get my invite.
For readers who do not know what the chi.mp service offers here is a brief explanation taken from their own website
Chi.mp’s service lets you register your own .mp domain and gives you a free Web site that serves as a hub for your content across the Web. Your chi.mp site also gives you one place to bring together and manage all your contacts in one “Ultimate Black Book”. Chi.mp lets you own and define “digital you” and to share different versions of “digital you” with your selected contacts. More than a life-stream or an aggregator, chimp allows you to take control of how you share your self with the world.
With chi.mp, you own and control your identity, your content and your contacts. This is not the case with typical social networks.
If anyone can help me out with a beta code/invitation then please leave a comment or alternatively send me the code through my contact form
Fontcase App
I’ve been using Fontcase for a few weeks now and thought I would write up a quick review.
I heard about this lovely little app when Elliot Jay Stocks sent out a tweet mentioning that he was trialing it. As I do with most of the links Elliot provides, I clicked on it with great expectation. Immediately, I loved what was infront of me but because at that present time I didn’t have a Mac, I decided to make a mental note of it. The basic idea behind Fontcase, is that it lets you use tags and smart collections to manage your fonts, making it easier to quickly enable and disable fonts by sets and usage.
A few weeks later, I was in the position where I had enough money to buy my MacBook Pro, and immediately downloaded the trial version. Due to my notebook being a new purchase I hadn’t got everything set up the same as I had on my previous machine, and as such I wasn’t going to be able to test the application to it’s full potential.
To ease myself into the world of fontcase, I decided to visit a few of my favourite font websites and install a few of my more commonly used downloads into the application to test out some of the features that are offered.
Importing/adding/deleting your fonts proved to be a very easy operation, by simply dragging and dropping them into the fontcase window they automatically become added to your library within the fontcase system. Once the fonts have been added, users can then browse through them in a visual gallery type layout. The image above shows what your library will look like, with fonts being encapsulated in their own box, showing an example of that font. However, that’s not all, users can also test fonts in pretend sentences to see their overall look and appearance. Fonts can also be exported in .pdf format to show clients what the end product will look like by once again dragging and dropping the font from the application to the users desktop.
Another brilliant features incorporated within fontcase is the ability to turn your fonts on and off. In most font applications, once a font is installed it is ‘turned on’ until it is deleted. However, as I have already mentioned, fontcase allows users to store all of their fonts within the application and then allow users to turn off they fonts they have no need for at that present moment. The option to turn off a font is as simple as flicking a switch. This is an incredibly useful option as it can save alot of hassle, particularly when browsing for a specific font.
As I have already mentioned, I am still relativly new to the fontcase application but from the small amount of functions I have utilised so far I can already tell that this is going to be an incredible useful piece of kit. Everything from the application itself down to the logo have been crafted with alot of love and care. If you’re looking for a piece of software dealing in font management for Macs I thoroughly recommend this one. If you have any hints, tips or shortcuts for this piece of software please feel free to leave a comment documenting them because I would love to find out more.