A quote to put near your desk

The best products aren’t the ones with the most features. The best products are those whose features are tightly integrated with the solutions they provide, making them the most usable.

- From Apple’s Fundamentals Guide to User Experience (pg 31)

Free Audio Books

In the past couple of years, I’ve decided that I absolutely love listening to books on tape, or listening to other people read stories. It’s a great way to pass the time on long road trips and, more recently for me, a great way to pass time while waiting for public transportation – or while on it.

LibriVox.org is made up of a group of volunteers reading on their own time and for the listeners enjoyment. Most of the works they offer are oldies but goodies. Recently, I listened to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin and then Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. As I write this post, I am downloading the full zip file that includes all chapters in mp3 format of Uncle Toms Cabin. That way, I don’t have to worry about downoading chapter by chapter and listening through a browser…I’ll just unzip the folder of mp3’s and dump it into ITunes. Good deal.

Just another quick note, since the readers are volunteer, you don’t always get one person reading the whole book (though with Pride and Prejudice you do – thank you Annie Coleman!). So it can be jarring to have someone with a great reading ability, doing voices for each character one chapter, and then a obviously young squeaky voiced boy the next. All in all, its never unbearable and the readers usually do a superb job throughout.

Typeface vs. Font

This is something that puzzles me still to do this day. A lot of people use these two words, font and typface interchangeably, most likely to the point that Grammar Girl will have to comment on it soon. I was taught there is a difference and since have forgotten it, but perhaps if I write about it, the truth will stick eventually.

Typeface – A set of fonts in the same style. Or, in other words, a font family. Ex: Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Arial.

Font – A single kind of typeface. Ex: Times New Roman in 10 point size is a font, and Times New Roman in 14 point size is also a font. Times New Roman in Bold is also a font. (Basically designating a specific type inside of a typeface is a font.)

So that clears the air a bit. So, if you are looking at typography in a magazine, or during a presentation and happen to like it, you could ask “what font is that sentance set to?”, or if you think the whole page of differing point sizes is in the same family, “What typeface are you using for this presentation?”. It seems instead of using font and typeface interchangeably and being wrong, you might be able to use the phrase font-family and the word typeface interchangeably.

Test

Hello Hello

Hello Hello

Hello Hello

Hello Hello

Hello Hello

Hello Hello