One of my Design II students (Ben? Farmer?) turned me onto What the font, this great free site that identifies type using a screen shot or graphic you upload. I tested it with Anivers, a great-looking font by Jo Boivenga that’s kind of obscure. I made a screen shot of the font at 72 points, in black with a white background. What the Font identified it within seconds, at the top of a list of 15 options. The next time you’re trying to figure out a font, check this out.

Eric McNew sent a link to this video with the latest color trends from Pantone. As we discussed in Design I, Pantone is a color specifying system that began with commercial printing inks and has expanded into other areas. All Adobe design software includes Pantone color libraries that allow colors to be matched on screen and on press. Interested in trying out these new color combinations? Here’s a lo-tech approach: Freeze the video, do a screen grab, open it in Photoshop, and use the dropper and info palette to get the approximate CMYK recipe. Then click on Color Libraries to match it in the Pantone  swatch book. Find the 3 or 4-digit code number and you’re good to go.

My Intro to Mac students are learning their way around Leopard, the latest version of Mac OSX. Actually, since it’s installed in the labs and not in our offices yet, I’m learning my way around it too. No need to fear! Apple has supplied a nice series of tutorials, beginning with Anatomy of a Mac. These online videos walk users through many of the features I’ll be discussing and demonstrating in class.

UPDATE: Since I posted this we’ve had huge problems in the lab with Leopard, and I’m now learning to hate it. Students can’t log onto their account. Print jobs stuck in the que and nobody can remove them them without an admin password. Servers drop off the network. Apparently Apple is promising a DNS patch, and lot’s of IT folks are getting a little testy.

Update: Registration is active. Let’s register and encourage Adobe and AIGA to do more of these!

Update: Here are answers to a few questions from our training.

• To create a 3-page spread in InDesign CS3, check “allow document pages to shuffle” in the Pages Palette menu. Use this feature to design a tri-fold brochure, for example.
• Looking for hidden shortcuts? Here is a downloadable PDF of keyboard shortcuts, including hidden ones that don’t appear on menus or tool tips.
• Video tips are available from Adobe here.

A student was just in my office asking about backup software, and this is the big kahuna I’ve heard so much about. Time Machine ships with new Macs and with an upgrade to Leopard. It lets you view past versions of your finder window to retrieve lost or crash-damaged files. It requires an external hard drive. If you’re like me and don’t have Leopard yet, Justin Williams at MacZealots has a helpful review of other Mac-friendly back-up solutions, including the free iBackup. Check it out and remember: the data you save may be your own.

I’m a big fan of Google Maps. The interface is simple and easy to use; the graphics are clean and sophisticated. But I’ve always wanted to create my own markers and maps. Now I can.

Above is a detail from my first Google My Maps project. The map is titled Tennessee Crowbar Krewe. I created the map for the Spring Break 2006 volunteer trip I organized to New Orleans and blogged about here. The map shows all the houses we gutted, along with the ACORN offices and my favorite Frech Quarter bar. Although FEMA closed camp Algiers a year ago, it is still shown in Google’s satellite photography. Click on the text link above to see my map, then click on the Camp Algiers marker, zoom all the way in using the slider, and click on the Hyrbrid button in the upper right. There’s Camp Algiers: the white tents, porta-potties, and temporary bathrooms we used in the summer of 2006. As with all Google maps, users can zoom in, pan around, and enter their address for driving directions.

The detail shown above in the blog graphic shows Katrina flood damage in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. Yes, those are houses still in the road months after Katrina.

Here’s all you have to do to create a Google map: 1) Sign up for a free account. 2) Search for an address. 3) Click on the thumbnail map in the search results. 4) If no “voice bubble” shows up, click on a colored point marker. 5) In the voice bubble, click on the new Save to My Maps link. 6) Create and save a map name. 7) After saving the point to your map, edit the name and description of the point. It’s all pretty simple.

There are lots of creative uses for the My Maps feature. How about an interactive map of your favorite places from a vacation? Or routes that you trace yourself without using the automatic driving directions feature? But My Maps can show more than just where things are and how to get to them. You could create a “Where I grew up” map showing hangouts that may have changed or disappeared over the years, or show a specific spot for a picnic in the middle of a park. I’m planning to have my college students create a My Map showing Civil War sites from a novel they will be reading in the fall. There are lots of creative possibilities, especiallly since there are tools for creating place markers, lines and shapes without having an address, and since the descriptions are completely editable.