Fonts spring cleaning with Font Doctor

Whether you are an established graphic designer or a beginner who’s just beginning to learn the ropes, it cannot be denied that designers need their collection of fonts as much as they need their graphics software to survive. As such, the hundreds of fonts cluttering up your computer might end up corrupting your files if you don’t organize them in a proper manner. Numerous fonts with the same file names might prove to be messy and hinder your design process. One good counter measure is to spring clean your computer and organize your fonts using Font Doctor.

Font Doctor is available in PC and Mac versions. It acts as a janitor by scanning your hard drive, searching every nook and cranny for fonts and then becomes a “doctor” by “treating” “sick” files. Missing PostScript fonts are also sought out. Those with unneeded font sizes are also eliminated. Font Doctor also locates “cloned” fonts with same file names and alerts you of their presence so that you can delete them and thus freeing up space in your computer.

Your font collection can also be better managed once Font Doctor arranges your font library by alphabetical order or by fonts within the same category. This value added utility also helps you convert fonts in Mac format to PC format and vice versa.

Google Talk – Going Back to Basics

Let’s face it: most of us have, in one way or other, encountered Google in our daily lives. Be it accessing Google.com to search for an ideal French omelet recipe or making new friends amongst like-minded people in Google Groups, Google offers endless possibilities for the average netizen including Google Talk, a simple Instant Messaging program. It is still in beta stage and is free to download. Google Talk lets you access your Gmail account to automatically add contacts. I am charmed by how simple Google Talk is. Most Instant Messaging programs in the market are stumbling over themselves trying to outdo the competition by offering customizable user interfaces that will only serve to irk users. I dislike unneeded icons cluttering my chat programs and instead, prefer Google Talk’s simple and minimalistic outlook. Downloading it is also a cinch, and it won’t take up an awful lot of space on your hard drive. Right now, they have yet to provide video conferencing features but I’m already very satisfied with their text and voice messaging capabilities. After signing in to Google Talk, you can personalize your chat experience by adding your own Buddy Picture. You are free to upload photos in jpg, gif, bmp or png formats.