While Microsoft Windows and Office come with a hefty amount of fonts preloaded, there are always those occasions where you can’t find just the right font for your project. There are literally thousands of free fonts out there that you can install- and it’s really not all that difficult.

A Word of Caution: when applications start, they must load the list of fonts upon startup. So if you have thousands of fonts installed, it may start affecting the startup times of applications that use fonts. With that, there are two basic ways to use a font- and I’ll cover both here.

Here are some sites I use to download free fonts…

Urban Fonts
This is my new favorite with over 8,000 fonts- and it lets you type in your own text to see a preview of that text written in the fonts!

1001 Free Fonts
Another great choice with a wide variety and a custom preview!

Simply the Best Fonts
Another great choice- easy to browse!

Type Now
Although the site has commercial fonts thrown in, just use the drop-down menu in the upper right of the page to navigate to the free fonts of your choice!

Font Stock

2200 Free Fonts
What more is there to say?

And there are more and more and more. You’ll find overlap in most of these, so there’s no sense going on and on. Some sites allow you to download all the fonts in one zip file. Almost all the sites deliver the font to you in a zip file. If you don’t know what to do with the zip file, click here.

2 Ways to use Downloaded Fonts

Temporary Use
If you are just going to use the font for a specific project and chances are low that you will use the font frequently, don’t install it- you don’t have to! Here’s what I do- I create a folder in my Documents folder titled “Fun Fonts.” And that’s where I store the fonts I don’t use often.

When you want to use the font, just double-click on the font’s icon. When you do this, the font’s preview window opens.

Now, minimize the preview window to get it out of your way. Any application you start after opening the preview window will allow you to use that font! Remember, if you already have an application open when you do this, you must restart that application!

Installing for Permanent Use
There are some fonts that you run across that you will use over and over multiple times in multiple applications. To make these available, you must “install” the font. This means nothing more than moving the font file to the Fonts folder! It’s that easy!

Open your fonts folder:
Start — Control Panel — Fonts (Classic View) OR
Start — Control Panel — Appearance and Personalization — Fonts (Category View)

Once the font folder is open, just drag your font file and drop it in there! That’s it!

When you look at a list of files in a folder, you should be able to see the file extensions (the parts of the file name after the period). Notice, we can’t see the extensions on these files:

To change this, follow these steps:

1. Open any window such as Documents or Pictures.

2. Click on the Organize button and select Folder and Search options.

3. Next, click on the View tab.

4. Uncheck the box that says to hide the file extensions.

5. Click the Apply button and close the window.

Your file extensions should now appear on all your files!

In any case, you can make a PDF out of anything you’d normally send to the printer- and you can do it for free!  First, you must get your computer the software it needs to make a PDF with one of these options:

- Office 2007 has the built-in ability to make PDF’s (Office button — Save As — PDF). This is only true if you have downloaded and installed the free PDF add-in. This will add the PDF option for Office applications only. You’d still need additional software for other applications such as browsers, email, etc.

- Mac OS X already has PDF functionality built-in. Sorry PC lovers, Mac got this one right! (Of course if Windows had done this, lawsuits would be in the works!)

-For PC’s, download a free PDF Maker such as CutePDF or PrimoPDF. There are others- and they all work basically the same.

To create a PDF from within any application (that has the ability to print):

1. Go to File — Print (Ctrl+ P) or any other method you’d use to print to a printer.

2. The PDF Maker is a “virtual printer” and will appear in the printer list. Choose the PDF Maker as the printer you want to “print” to.

3. Click on OK to “print.”

4. A Save dialog box will pop-up asking you where you want to save the PDF and what you want to call it.

And that’s it! There’s no need to spend money just for the ability to make a PDF document. The free software is out there and readily available. Now if you need to make fillable forms and use other fancy PDF functions, you’ll need other software.

To print this URL and have someone type it in the browser is inviting a mistake (not to mention that it takes way too long). To remedy this, try using a free online website such as TinyURL to shorten the URL. This site allows you to enter (or paste) a URL into a field then creates a shorter link. It turned the above link into: http://tinyurl.com/yuogfh. 

This can come in pretty handy!

To accomplish this (on a PC):

1. Go to the control panel (Start –> Control Panel) and select the mouse properties.
2. On the Mouse properties screen, select the Pointer Options tab.
3. On the Pointer Options screen, check the box for “Show location of pointer…”

Be sure to apply your changes, then every time you press and hold the CTRL key, concentric circles will highlight your cursor/pointer.

To do this same thing on a Mac, you will need to download a free utility at http://www.2point5fish.com/. While this won’t highlight the mouse with animated circles, it will highlight the mouse with colored circles or other customized accents. And it’s free!

Enjoy!

1. Open your Powerpoint file and choose File à Save As (versions 2004 and prior) or choose Office ButtonàSave As à Other formats

   

2. In the Save dialog window, choose either JPG (recommended) or GIF format.

3. Once you click Save, you’ll be asked if you want to save only the current slide as an image or save all of them.

4. All of the images that you chose to convert will be saved in a folder in the location you selected.

Following these procedures will let you save your slides as images for use in other programs like MovieMaker, Word, Photo Story, web pages, etc.

Photo Story creates a WMV file by default, which is not suitable for podcasting on most sites. Instead you need to get it into the format required by the site hosting your podcast. In this example, we use PowerMediaPlus.com as our host. Here’s how to pull this off (it’s really not that hard)!

1. Download and install the free iPod video converter.

2. Convert your completed Photo Story (WMV) file with the converter utility. Click Add Files, find the file, then Convert!

3. The converted file will be made into an .mp4 format. You could also select .mov if necessary. Some podcasts hosts will allow you to upload these file types. For our purposes, PowerMediaPlus requires another file type: .m4v.

4. Simply change the file extension so that the file is renamed: movie.mp4 à movie.m4v. (Note: if your file extensions are not showing, you will first need to show your file extensions.)

5. Now you’re ready to upload the file to your podcast hosting site!

Here’s an example Photo Story that I have turned into a video podcast: http://tinyurl.com/2a2e7o

If you are using Firefox, simply click on the link and it will launch iTunes and subscribe you to the podcast. Otherwise, open iTunes, navigate to Advanced à Subscribe to podcast then enter this URL into the dialog box:

If you convert a Photo Story into a video podcast, I’d love to know about it! Leave a comment below.

There have been many attempts at creating a great website for online photo editing- but until now, they have all been mediocre at best. Picnik is changing that!

This online editor makes basic image editing a breeze for the average user. Imagine the ability to resize your photos, add cool effects like sepia tones, black & white, vignettes, etc. You can add text, shapes, frames, etc. then save the edited image to your computer, send it via email directly from the website, or upload it to an online photo storage site like Flickr. While many of the features on Picnik require a premium membership ($25/yr), the features included in the free service are plenty for the average user.

It’s not Photoshop (or even GIMP), but it’s free, easy to use, and pretty cool! I look forward to using it more! You can check out the picture I edited by clicking here: Edited Caddo Picture

Many files that you download will be in the format of a zip file- a file with a (.zip) file extension. (Note: if your computer’s setting is set to hide the file extensions, you may not see the “.zip”) Think of these like a simple grocery bag. You put your groceries in a bag to get them home, unload the bag then throw the bag away.

Files that you download from the internet are often groups of files that are easily packaged into a virtual grocery bag (this is the .zip file). When you are ready to “unpack” the zip file, simply double-click on it. Your zip file may appear similar to one of these:

When you double-click on the ZIP file it will quickly go through an unpacking process using the default unzipping application on your computer. For Windows XP and Vista, this will most likely be set to “Compressed (Zipped) folders” built into the Operating System. It could be some other application like WinZIP or Alladin Expander.

What happens next depends on which application was used to unzip the file. If your computer uses the built-in Windows XP Compressed (Zipped) folders application, it will immediately open a window so that you can view its contents. If your computer used another application, like Alladin, it will create a new folder in the same location with the same name as the ZIP file. For example, if your zip file resides on your desktop and Alladin unzips it, a new folder will be created on the desktop with the same name as the ZIP file as shown. Windows Vista handles ZIP files in this way. When you double-click on the ZIP file, a new folder should automatically be created.

You can then double-click on the new folder to view its contents.

Important Note: if your computer immediately opens a window and displays the files, most likely your computer is using the Windows XP Compressed (Zipped) Folders application. When this happens, the files in that window are “Read-only” which means they can’t be modified in any way until you move the files into a new user-made folder. For this reason, you can’t rename these files, rotate pictures, open and edit a document, etc.

• Move a file from one computer to a network location (home folder on a server)
• Get files from a camera’s memory card and bring them over to a computer
• Move a file that you hastily saved on the desktop to a proper place in My Documents
• Transfer a file from one computer to a USB flash drive then to a home computer, etc.

The list could go on and on. The skills needed to perform these common file management tasks are invariably some of the weakest skills of most computer users! It all boils down to File Management. Where did you save the file? What did you call the file? Did you copy the file or move it? All the issues involved in file management goes way beyond the scope of what I want to cover here. This posting is intended to answer one question:

When I move a file from one location, how do I know if it moves the file or if it copies the file?

First, let’s define what we mean by each of these:

Moving a File- this happens when you drag a file from location A to location B. It removes it from location A and relocates it to location B.

Copying a File- this happens when you drag a file from location A to location B. But rather than remove it from location A, it makes a copy of the file so that the file now appears in both location A and location B.

Moving from one folder to another on the same drive:

Dragging a file from one folder to another on the same drive of a computer will move, not copy the file. Notice in the video below that the file is removed from one folder and relocated to the other:

Moving from one folder to another that is on a different drive or drive partition:

In this animation, we are dragging the same file as above, but this time to a folder on a USB flash drive (the F: drive in this case). Instead of a USB drive this could have been any other location like a server, camera, card reader, external hard drive, etc.

Look at the difference! Before the file is dropped into the destination window you see the tiny “plus” symbol, indicating an additional copy is being made:

Pretty cool, huh?

If you wanted to force the computer to copy the file when dragging anywhere, even between two folders on the same hard drive, simply hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard while you drag and drop!

Just one more thing: If the icon you drop onto the new folder shows an arrow, that means you haven’t made a copy of it. Instead you have made a shortcut (link) that when opened goes and looks for the document in the original location and opens it.

If you were trying to backup a file to a server or other hard drive and the arrow is displayed on the icon, you haven’t made a backup of the file- you’ve only created a shortcut. That could be very sad!