2009 February | Irish Internet Entrepreneur - Smemon

23 Feb 2009

18 FREE Font Resources

Tags: design, font, Graphics, Typography
Posted in Work | 6 Comments

The designer in me has come back to life recently. My last webmaster resources post is dated July 08. I’ve been toying around with photoshop cs4 however this week – properly ‘studying’ it. If you’re an average Joe using a PC, you’ll most likely stick with the default font for every single bit of text you create…

Whether it’s Microsoft Word, forum posts, emails, paint or photoshop – most people don’t bother with fonts. They can make or break a design though. A few weeks ago, i told you how to create your own custom made font. Easy.

Now i’m gonna list some pretty cool FREE font resources i’ve come across recently;

1. Fontcubes

There’s plenty of free font sites out there, but fontcubes keeps it simple and only display quality fonts. This is one of my favorite font sites.

2. Font Squirrel

Another free font site with some quality fonts on show. Site was only created last month, so it’s not as large as the others but still worth bookmarking

3. Facelift

This transforms your standard text on a website in to any font you want (it then converts the new font to an image). For webmasters, they’ll see the value in this straight away. A couple of lines of code changes that Arial font to something more snazzy – no worries about browser support of invalid CSS – you’re effectively using images, not text. Handy for headers, titles etc…

4. Safe List

This page displays a list of browser safe fonts and their names in both Windows and MAC. Every webmaster needs to know this – if you’re going near fonts or CSS – it’s a link worth bookmarking and reading and referring to.

5. Da Font

Possibly the biggest source for your free fonts. There ain’t many fonts that you wont find here. Just bookmark it – you’re probably gonna download the entire site if you haven’t done so already

6. 1001 Free Fonts

Another simple site which is nice and easy to use. Big previews and nice big download buttons – the way it should be.

7. Urban Fonts

This is a beautifully designed site with a huge collection of free fonts. If you’re not in to browsing and wasting time, head straight for the kill with the top 100 fonts section.

8. Abstract Fonts

Nice AJAXy site which makes it easy to use. Click on any font to reveal more information. You can sign up and favourite / vote for font’s too.

9. Simply The Best

I’d question whether it lives up to it’s domain name or not, but this collection of fonts is certainly worth a look.

10. Neat Fonts

Not the biggest or prettiest font site out there, but it does the job and it’s worth a look.

11. Misprinted Type

Small, personal collection of free (mainly grunge) fonts.

12. Show Font

This site has over 2700 diggs. Enough said really… large collection of quality, free fonts.

13. Creamundo

creamundo-finished

Massive collection of free fonts. Site design/usability could do with some work, but if you stick around you’ll find some really cool fonts here.

14. Webpage Publicity

Overlooking the ugly site design, there are a few nice fonts here and quite a large collection of free fonts.

15. DSG 4

Collection of pixel fonts – handy for flash sites or those with limited space…. and old school retro games fans

16. Smeltery

Small collection of free fonts – most of them extremely creative and unique.

17. Font Struct

This is a really cool font resource. Create your own font, download fonts other people have created… check it out and bookmark it – fontstruct is one of the best font tools out there.

18. AMP Font Viewer

I have over 2000 fonts installed on my home PC. One major problem with having that any fonts is trying to pick the right one. AMP Font Viewer makes life easier and allows you to view all of your fonts, plus it makes fonts easy to install. Without it, the average user will have trouble installing and viewing fonts properly. It’s free, it’s pretty and it’ll make your life easier. Don’t think, just install it now and thank me later

22 Feb 2009

full throttle tomorrow

Tags: Killer Post, traffic
Posted in Work | Leave a comment

I’ll be putting my server through it’s paces tomorrow in what i hope will turn out to be another killer post. The post is now fully complete and it’s titled ’18 free font resources’. It’ll be going out tomorrow as soon as i get home from college – about 6.30pm GMT. It’s taken quite some time to put together, but the blog should reap the benefits in the long run.

photo credit: Vern Norrgard

I had to take 18 screenshots, crop, uniform and optimize them all – that eat up most of my time today. I’m expecting an explosion in traffic as soon as it’s published and the site could well go offline for a while if it’s anything like my last killer blog post

There’ll be another one coming Friday and between the two, i’m hoping to prove to myself that i know how to get traffic and how to blog for traffic. I’ve never really sat down and said to you guys – “I WILL get traffic, now sit down and watch me do it” – that’s exactly what i’m saying this week.

I’ve done it with other things like SEO, exam results etc… i’ve the confidence to tell people, in advance, i will succeed. It’s risky tactics as you then set yourself up for a massive fall, but i work best under pressure and coming back and saying “I told you so” is a great feeling

The blog itself is in need of updating, i realise that, i’m not happy with it. There’s too many pageloads, too much information on each page… i have big plans to transform it in to a leaner, meaner machine. It needs loads more AJAX, clever CSS tricks and the layout and overall navigation needs to be simplified.

Should these couple of posts do as well as i expect, they’ll probably give me the motivation to go ahead and start working on a new version.

21 Feb 2009

productive time wasting

Tags: Journalist, On the Web, Online Communities, social network, Twitter
Posted in Work | Leave a comment

: Image via CrunchBase

Even if i’m not doing something, i’ll be thinking about doing something. It is literally impossible for me to switch off and focus on nothing. I just can’t do it. I do spend a lot of time doing nothing though. Whether it’s free classes or laziness, i can waste time just as much as anyone

But i’ve managed to turn around that wasted time in to productive time over the last couple of months. I’ll use twitter & tweepsearch to search for interesting / useful contacts and follow them.

Now that i’m following over 1600 people, i can sit back and watch what they’re saying. If any interesting links or tips pop up, i’ll favorite that tweet and look at it in more detail at a later date. Here’s an example of a few cool links and articles that have come my way in the last 3 minutes (literally the last 3 minutes at the time of writing);

By adding more people, i’m also spreading my own profile around twitter, so people then follow me back. That means more people read what i have to say, which means that i can get more answers answers and get them quicker than if i just had a few contacts.

That’s just two main advantages to following people on twitter. I do that in what i call ‘wasted’ time – time i’d otherwise spend just browsing aimlessly or listening to music, playing games etc…

Due to the fact i’ve hand picked who i follow, i get quality information on a constant basis. Links like the ones above – that stuff is gold dust to me and i get it every day. Dozens and dozens of quality webmaster links and downloads. I usually bookmark or favourite them on twitter and then whenever i’ve got more time to waste, i’ll look at those sites and start downloading or studying the stuff i want.

Twitter is however taking a bashing by journalists i feel. There has been a lot of talk about twitter in the press recently (certainly in Ireland & the UK anyway). A lot of it is insulting to twitter users like myself… they’re making twitter out to be a place where people let the world know about what they’re eating for dinner or what they’re watching on TV.

Yeah that happens… but if you look beyond the celebrities, spammers and sheep, you’ll find a world of extremely useful information and services available on twitter – i know i have.

Write twitter off at your peril – the reality is it’s a major threat now for journalists and the media in general – i can get information faster than they can, for free, so can you! That makes their jobs harder and puts them at risk. What they write about tomorrow is old news… i’ve already heard about it today.

Unlike reading a newspaper in my free time, i’m reading targetted information which i’ve chose to read. As a result, a lot of it is interesting and valuable which is how i’m turning my wasted time in to productive time

20 Feb 2009

traffic up 250% and we’re just warming up

Tags: Killer Post, Twitter, Web development, Work ethic
Posted in Work | Leave a comment

I made a last ditch attempt today to get a killer post published, but it would just have been too rushed if i were to put it up now. On a Friday, everyone is getting off school and work and generally relaxing or going out. Same on a Saturday and Sunday. On a Monday, people usually have plenty of work left over from the weekend so they don’t have much time online. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays are probably the best time to publish something for maximum exposure online.

I’m pretty sure there are studies and stats to back that up but i’m not going to bother looking for them as it makes sense anyway – i doubt you guys are gonna argue with it

photo credit: richardmasoner

Anyway, i have about 90% of one killer blog post complete and what i’m going to do is publish that on Monday. I’ll then publish a second killer blog post next Friday.

One topic is ‘Fonts’ the other is ‘Web Development’. It will be the first time this year that i’ve created blog posts designed deliberately to maximize traffic and viral effect. I do it every now and then but i’ve never published two in quick succession. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of traffic is generated next week.

In 2009 on this blog, so far, i’ve averaged 4000 unique visits per week or 570 unique visits per day. That’s up over 250% on 2008′s average of 1543 visits per week, 220 per day. So i don’t *need* to create killer blog posts to keep traffic moving in the right direction, but traffic means nothing really… quality and value is more important which is why i’m upping the game with these two killer posts.

The reason for the rise in traffic this year is quite simply my work ethic. I’m networking much more, learning much more, testing and trying things much more. I think my twitter account stats say it all… i ended 2008 with 40 followers, 21 friends. 7 weeks later, i’ve 755 followers and 1,605 friends

Attack Attack Attack! It’s the only train of thought that keeps you moving forward.

20 Feb 2009

Irish Dragons Den – First Impressions

Tags: business, Dragons Den, investment, Ireland
Posted in Work | 1 Comment

The first Irish Dragon’s Den aired tonight on RTE 1 @ 10.15pm. I’m a fan of the British version. I also spent a hell of a lot of time working on my own parody version last semester in college.

In summary, i thought the ideas/businesses lacked bang and wow factor. I don’t think any of them will make millions or go global… here’s a few of them (all bar the last received no investment);

Clean Cash

Cash register that cleans money – at first i thought “Hmm, that’s interesting…” until one of dragons pointed out that in order to take the cash back out, it has to be handled by 2 people – the till operator and the customer – making the whole idea somewhat useless.

Aqua Images

This was a great niche business – selling tropical fish & tanks to businesses and offering maintainence for a monthly fee. Would have worked 2 or 3 years ago, but not now… no business is gonna pay to buy and look after a fish tank – unless they lay off another staff member to cover the costs Might be worth a gamble though when the economy starts to pick up again – i can see hotels, restaurants, leisure clubs etc… investing in these.

Mums Town

I had a quick look at this site and what stood out for me is that it’s part funded by the EU and louth enterprise board. I’m curious as to how much actually went in to it I suppose it has legs – i can see it working somewhat but again it’s a really limited niche. The site could pay for itself but as a business – i can’t see anyone making a living from it.

Pedigree Cattle

I was impressed by these guys – they presented well and come across as passionate and hard working. Not surprisingly, 4 of the 5 dragons were interested, all offering to invest and they were spoilt for choice in the end. The site is pretty woeful if i’m honest but i’m sure it was created on a shoestring budget. Money won’t be a problem now however and i’m sure we’ll see it revamped shortly.

Thumbs Up or Down?

Watching tonights show just gives me another personal boost. My very own BeerChief, in my mind (obviously unbiased!), crushes every single one of these ebusinesses presented tonight. Speaking of BeerChief, not much has been done lately – i’m just too busy with college and i spend my free time learning about programming and photoshop- i’m trying to sharpen my skills all the time.

I have a week off though (first week in march) and BeerChief will get my full attention then. It’s a long, tedious battle but the site is coming together and i’m committed to it for the long haul. The main problem standing between me and BeerChief is college. College is, in effect, my full time job. Trying to look after my blog, gain new contacts through twitter and learn more about web development AND develop BeerChief at the same time with little or no cash is extremely difficult.

It will be done though.. no matter how long it takes. I’m quickly mastering photoshop which immediately saves me cash – most of the graphic work on BeerChief i can now do myself (in fact the current template was designed by myself and that was before i even started reading up on photoshop and started taking it seriously!).

Anyway, Dragons Den – Irish style, gets a thumbs up from me. At the end of the day, it’s helping to create business in Ireland and giving entrepreneurs a shot at fame and fortune. It’s a stage for anyone with ideas to announce their ideas and i’ve no doubt we’ll see a whole host of quality businesses spring up through the show. It’s a much needed glimmer of hope for many people and allows them to dream big and possibly pursue dreams – anything which enables more of that can only be good.

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Archive for February, 2009

13. Creamundo

Aqua Images

Thumbs Up or Down?