Fontcapture - Your own handwriting as a font!

Enough of the old outdated fonts such as Comic Sans MS! In fact, enough of pre-formatted fonts that come in the Microsoft Office pack! Downloading new fonts to further customize your paperwork, slideshows or website is an old trick. Sites such as 1001fonts or Urban Fonts offer a (very) wide choice of fonts, ranging from professional ones to free ones.

However, creating your own font was for a while only reserved to designers. Not that it was difficult, but the vast majority of people just couldn't be bothered!

Well now, there is a very simple way to create your own font. And what's more customizable than creating a font from your very own handwriting?

Fontcapture.com now offers this very useful and easy-to-use service in 3 steps! Basically, all you need is a printer and scanner:

1. Download their PDF table
2. Fill it in (see screenshot)
3. Scan it and upload it
4. Download your brand new customized font!

There you go, I hope this will let you design some great fonts! Don't hesitate to share some of your designs below! You can download mine here :) Read the full post

Collection of Australian Google logos

I arrived in Australia in March 2008. It now seems like ages ago and this post confirms this feeling! With time I have seen the google logo change in many diverse forms, often to represent a national holiday, some invention or famous person's anniversary.
What started as a little folder with 3 or 4 logos quickly grew bigger! Obviously, I haven't been on Google EVERY SINGLE day for over a year so it is likely that I have missed several of them! Also, I am not 100% sure of the description/date behind each and every logo (you are welcome to comment to rectify any mistakes I may have made!).

Anyway, this is my Friday afternoon post that will bring back some memories to some of you geeks :)
Enjoy!

10/11/2009
Sesame Street Birthday

07/11/2009
Sesame Street Birthday

05/11/2009
Sesame Street Birthday

31/10/2009
Halloween 2009

07/10/2009
Barcode

27/09/2009
Confucius' Birthday

28/09/2009
Google's 11th Birthday

21/09/2009
H.G. Wells Birthday (Google blog post)

15/09/2009
Google UFO Mystery

05/09/2009
Google UFO Not quite sure of the reason behind this one

25/08/2009
400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope

14/08/2009
Hans Christian Ørsted discovers electromagnetism

12/08/2009
Perseid Meteor Shower

21/07/2009
Moon landing 40th Anniversary

10/07/2009
Tesla Coil (anniversary?)

07/07/2009
Marc Chagall's birthday

22/05/2009
Mary Cassatt's birthday

10/05/2009
Mother's Day in Australia


25/04/2009
ANZAC Day 2009


22/04/2009
Earth Day 2009


17/03/2009
St Patrick's Day


12/02/2009
Chinese New Year

12/02/2009 (?)
Charles Darwin

22/12/2008
Christmas!

21/11/2008
Magritte

27/09/2008
Google's 10th Birthday

10/09/2008
Large Hadrien Hadron Collider

07/09/2009
Father's Day

08/08/2008
Beijing Olympics opening

17/06/2008
Igor Stravinsky


06/06/2008
Diego Velasquez birthday

04/06/2008
First hot air balloon in 1783 (in France :)

29/05/2008
First ascent of the Everest

18/05/2008
Walter Gropius birthday

16/05/2008
First laser birthday

11/05/2008
Mother's Day

30/09/2008
Design by Jeff Koons

27/04/2008
Morse code anniversary

25/04/2008
Anzac day

22/04/2008
Earth day 2008

03/03/2008
Graham Bell birthday

My Australia

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Media facts and figures: New video

Following my post a month ago that featured a couple of videos about Social Media and other web facts, here is a new version of the now famous Did you know? video. This new video features updated statistics and new figures illustrating what the digital world has become in 2009.


Enjoy the video!

Did you know? 4.0

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Is Twitter killing RSS feeds?

This is a question I have been asking myself for quite a while now:

With Twitter becoming a major way of sharing content and becoming one of the main tools to drive traffic to your website, are RSS feeds meant to disappear?

I have been using RSS feeds for years, maybe even for a decade now. I've always loved it, for its simplicity of use and for staying in touch/up to date with many websites. I have used it for news, for blog updates, ranging from SEO/SEM to photography or entertainment. I know many people are big fans of Google Reader, but I have always used Netvibes especially for its large collection of widgets and tab browsing. In fact, Netvibes has been my default browser homepage for years.

However, since I have been using Twitter, I barely look at my RSS feeds anymore. I log in Netvibes perhaps once a week and that's it. Most websites whose RSS feed I used to be a subscriber of, now offer a parallel Twitter account to follow.
And for this exact reason, what's the point of following the same content on two different feeds?

I will still keep my RSS subscriptions though, for the simple reason that it makes it easier for me to know what has been read already... or not. In Twitter, as soon as you start following a good number of people, the feed quickly becomes messy, over populated or even over polluted.
So yes, applications such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop let you organise your Twitter feeds into different groups such as News or Sports but if you haven't been online for a couple days, it's very hard to check what's been shared in the last 48 hours, and that you haven't read yet.

With other services such as RSStoTwitter or Twitterfeed helping you automate your Twitter posting using your RSS feed, it seems like we are currently witnessing a transition from one communication tool to another. In 2009, real-time search and communication has become a major innovation in the online world, Twitter and smartphones being the main reasons of this change.

I am aware everyone has different ways of using Internet so don't hesitate to let me know what yours is!

• Do you think Twitter is a RSS killer?
• Which of those two do you follow the most closely: your number of RSS subscribers or Twitter followers?
• Do you believe both RSS and Twitter can live side by side?
• Which one is currently driving the most traffic to your website: RSS feed or Twitter?

Thanks for sharing your impressions! Read the full post

Sydney goes Sepia! Red dust sunrise

This morning was quite amazing and nothing like I've ever seen! Around 6:45am, I woke up by a bright red light coming from outside. Still half asleep, I thought to myself a sunrise like this would make a nice picture. So I got up and this is what I've witnessed like hundreds of thousands of Sydney residents... It has been going for over an hour although it is slowly fading away.

Click to enlarge

This is not a color effect! It is actually caused by heavy dust brought by winds throughout the night, mixed with a morning mist and a sunrise.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sydneysiders have woken to a red haze unlike anything seen before by residents or weather experts, as the sun struggles to pierce a thick blanket of dust cloaking the city this morning.
"The reason for the dust is we had some really strong winds in the inland areas of NSW and in South Australia for a sustained period yesterday," said Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jane Golding."
The reddish haze was expected to fade as the sun got higher in the sky, Ms Golding said, but it was not known what would happen to the dust.

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