Website tip of the week: Know thy fonts

A request we often receive from clients wishing to build their first websites goes something like this: “Can we use a cooler font for the site's main text?”

Unfortunately, 99.2 percent of the time, the answer is … no. If you opt to use a fancy font for your site's main text and one of your visitors does not have that particular font installed on her computer, she'll not be able to see the site the way you see it. For this reason, there is a small subset of fonts commonly used for the main text found in websites.

Care to learn more about this peculiar website rule? Visit http://tinyurl.com/lzqobm

Social Media Site of the Week: Pictid

At Pictid (www.pictid.com), visitors can “visually explore spots of interest around the world.” Pictid allows anyone at all to upload, view, and share photos (and videos) of popular restaurants, cafes, hotels, and other tourist attractions in any city or country.

As this is a relatively new site, I noticed there's a definite lack of shots showcasing the beauty of Summit County, Colorado. Anyone interested in sharing their photos with the world?

Grab Bag: Your Five Links of the Week

1. http://tinyurl.com/6yr7yj — Anyone like optical illusions? How about lots of optical illusions?

2. www.decidealready.com — THIS IS AWESOME. DecideAlready.com is a free online tool that “makes it easy for organizations and groups to come to a decision about anything.” No more rounds of inefficient group e-mail responses when trying to answer questions such as “Where should we meet?” or “What time works best for everyone?”

3. www.gotvoice.com — Read all your voicemails in e-mail or on your phone instantly by having GotVoice automatically convert them into text. No more dialing in to voicemail or leaving/interrupting meetings to find out if the voicemails left for you were important.

4. www.tweetbeep.com — Keep track of Twitter conversations that mention you, your products, your company, and pretty much anything else you'd like to keep track of. The perfect (and free) tool for Twitter reputation management.

5. http://web.archive.org/collections/pioneers.html — Browse through some of the pioneering websites from the past that shaped the character of the net during its early years. Anyone remember The Well? What about the mid-1990's official White House website?

eRin pheiL is the primary creative of timeforcake (www.timeforcake.com), a web design and development studio in Frisco, CO. She can be reached via email at info@timeforcake.com.