iPhone Sold Out in the UK

The Carphone Warehouse has confirmed that it has sold out of 8GB and 16GB iPhones. It is also rumoured that O2 has also sold out and that both stockists will not be replenishing their stock.

Kind of makes it clear that a new version is on the way, does it not?

Fonting Hell

Typography is a sadly overlooked element of design these days although it was a bedrock of the graphic design revolution. So, in an effort to resurrect its importance, I thought that I'd highlight a few little utilities to help you fine readers get to grips with type.

First off, it is worth clarifying terms for, although they are often used interchangeably, a font and a typeface are different technically.

A typeface is the actual family name, e.g. Arial. The font is the style within that family, e.g. Arial Italic. So, the standard Arial typeface has four fonts: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic.

As someone who started his design life as a print designer, I have an abiding fascination with typefaces. Trying to spot and name the font used in various ad campaigns and logos is something of a hobby for me.

These days, I actively attempt to stay away from free font sites (such as DaFont or FontStock) or else I will suddenly find myself in a downloading frenzy and, when one already has over 6,000 fonts, adding tens more is probably a bad idea.

Mac OS X has a built-in Font Manager, FontBook, which is entirely adequate; especially now that it has got to grips with the concept of automatic switching on of fonts when an application or document requires it. However, since I started using Mac OS X before FontBook existed, I still use Linotype's Font Explorer X (and it is also available for Windows).

Most of my work involves web design these days, wherein fonts do not matter so much: one is essentially limited to the standard thirty or so typefaces that are standard across Mac and Windows systems. But in both web and print, there is one element that is key: readability. Type conveys information and if people cannot read the type then they cannot be informed.

There have been thousands of typefaces designed and there are still font foundries (the word is a hangover from the days of hot lead typesetting) producing beautiful products today. You can even design your own typeface using an application such as Font Forge (requires the X11 environment in Mac OS X).

There are a couple of blogs dealing solely with matters of typography, such as Typographer and Ministry of Type. The latter, in particular, has rekindled my love of type, and I can already feel my fingers reaching for those oh-so-dangerous font download sites...

Boarding Passes in Your Phone

The NY Times has an interesting story about airlines using 2-dimensional barcodes on your phone as your boarding pass.

The technology being tested by Continental uses a two-dimensional encrypted bar code, which is much tougher to copy than the one-dimensional bar code used by many airlines for boarding passes printed online. And that is a major reason the T.S.A. is expected to embrace the technology.

Read the full story

What I'm About to Tell You Could Change Your Life... Well, Your Calendar Anyway...

A week or so ago saw the launch of the Google Calendar Sync tool, which takes your calendar on Outlook and publishes it to your Google Calendar account automatically.

Then, when you're on the move and want to access your diary online you will have the most up-to-date and correct information. You can also add something to your Google Calendar when you're out and about and it'll synch to your Outlook when you get home and turn the computer on.

If you have a laptop as well as a desktop you will find the tool useful for keeping everything in order.

The real beauty for me, however, is that it will now enable me to synch my Google Calendar with my Windows Mobile device. When I turn the computer on at home it will get my Google Calendar stuff for me and put it into Outlook. Then, when I dock my Windows Mobile device ActiveSync will automatically send the information from Outlook to the PDA. I can then do the same in reverse.

All that Google need to do now is work on a Windows Mobile version of the tool for Pocket Outlook and we're laughing. I suppose a BlackBerry app doing the same thing wouldn't hurt either.

More on the tool here: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/calendar-sync-now-available.html