Download of the Day: Jomic Comic Book Reader

If you are like me and enjoy a comic book from time to time a great graphic novel, it no surprise that you can download them off the internet now. Doing a search for ebooks or pdfs will result in a bunch of series that you can download. The problem is reading on your desktop screen. The desktop is not a good medium for reading a comic book but a laptop is a different story - especially if you can change the orientation. Using a good comic book reader like Jomic on a laptop and you'll be set up. This is Jomic installed on my system. Under the View menu, you can change the orientation and just by placing your mouse pointer on the "Next Page" button you can click the mouse button which will flip the pages. Take a look at Jomic - a viewer for comic book archives if you are interested.

IPode Diagnostics: Help for your iPod

Methodshop.com has posted some tips on how to run IPod Diagnostics on your iPod. If you feel that your iPod has been acting up - look no further than this site. You can access Diagnostics Mode quickly and easily by following their easy instructions. I tried it on mine and it was no surprise that it wasn't working properly. I have an old 1G iPod that has been acting up since I got it. But considering that I got it when it was dead in the tomb - I'm surprised I was able to ressurect it up to this point.

Download of the Day: GuitarShed

Whether you are using PC or Mac, if you are a guitarist, the application for you is GuitarShed. This little app is the best. Check out it's features:

Chromatic Built-in tuner
Tuning - with different alternate tunings
Tuning for different instruments including Banjo
Keeps Tab for you with an autoscroll feature
Metronome with different sounds and timing
Song Jam - load you favorite song and jam along with it. Song too fast? No problem just slow down the song with the tempo adjuster.

Oh all of this for $18.

GuitarShed

Design Tip: Create your own font with Fontifier

Ever wanted to create your own font, here's how you do it:

HARD WAY:
1. Open Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand
2. Design each letter and save them as an AI or EPS
3. Open Macromedia Fontographer and plot each of the characters in.
4. Export your type set as a font.

EASY WAY:
1. Go to Fontifier.com and print out their nifty little font layout page.
2. Write, draw or cut/paste your font onto the sheet of paper.
3. Scan the sheet into your computer.
4. Upload it to Fontifier.com and choose what type you want (PC or Mac)
5. Download it.

This site is great and at $9 a font, you can't beat that. Sure beats the price of Fontographer plus the time to plot each and every letter in it.

Software Tip: Throw away Adobe Acrobat

If you are not using Adobe Acrobat to compile different sets of files as one PDF document, do yourself a favor and throw it away. Adobe Acrobat, in my humble opinion, is one of the worst programs out there. Why? What's wrong with a PDF creator? What did it ever do to piss me off?

Before I go into complaining about this program I want you to understand why I'm posting this - to get you to switch to 2-3 other PDF/maker/reader applications that do the same thing as Acrobat (except for the Document Merge function):

Mac - OSX - Use the PDF reader that comes included with the OS. Need to make a PDF, just go to any window and hit "File -> Print -> Save as PDF"
PC - Foxit Reader (excellent quick application to read PDFs)
PC - Cute PDF (nifty little PDF generator)

Going back to my complaint:
There is no reason why this program needs to take up so many resources on my computer. Everytime I am going to view a PDF document, it takes a while to load. That's just to see it. I hate the fact that it has to check for updates online too and if you are like me and turned it off in the preferences, well, next time you manually update the program, guess what option is turned back on - Automatic Update. The update feature destroys all system resources in addition to being redundant. Why does a PDF generator/reader need to be updated on such a frequent basis. I treat PDFs as just any other type of file. I don't need to update my notepad to read text files. I don't need to update my Firefox on a consistent basis to see the latest HTMLs. Yet, Acrobat requires a checkup every time I'm online. Enough is enough.