Often I have seen graphics or images with text written in a very nice font, but I have been unable to identify the font that was used. There is a handy facility on the MyFonts website called WhatTheFont. This allows you to upload a graphic with text (or point it towards a URL) and it will attempt to identify the font. Even better, if the font is available in the MyFonts database it will provide you with the option to purchase the font. I find that it is best to crop the image so that only the text is visible (and no graphical elements) so that the font detection works best (you can find more submission tips at www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/tips.html). The WhatTheFont utility is available at: www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont .

I have a 3 year old Mac Pro running Mac OS X Snow Leopard which has proved to be much easier to use and more reliable than PCs which I have used in the past! However, it seems that the computer is running a little slower than when it was new and my previous PC experience indicates that it could be time to clean up unwanted files and other junk that is clogging up the hard disk, do a disk defragmentation, etc. How can I do these things on a Mac? (more…)

A challenge for teachers and educators is to find an easy-to-use learning management and collaboration system for classes. An excellent system which provides exactly these features is Edmodo (www.edmodo.com). This has a Facebook-like interface making it very easy to use, and allows for teachers to setup their own classes, collaborate with students and share files and other information. Best of all, the system is free for educators to use!

My Windows 7 computer with 2 GB RAM is constantly asking me to close programs as it says the computer is running out of memory. Also, on startup there seems to be no paging file allocated on the C drive. I followed the instructions on the Help page to manually set the page file but this doesn’t have any effect – I can manually set the allocated size of the page file, restart the computer, and the problem continues. (more…)

Late last year my computer was upgraded to Windows 7 and the technician who completed the upgrade also provided me with a complete backup of my computer on CD/DVD. Recently I attempted to once again backup my computer (as good housekeeping) but it stopped at 25% and advised that the backup had been unsuccessful. Thinking that the CD/DVD might require formatting I tried to format the disc only to be advised that the format operation was unsuccessful. Thinking it was due to the hard drive being formatted on FAT32 I attempted to backup to a USB flash drive, only to be advised that that operation was also unsuccessful. Another puzzle is that despite the technician providing a backup on CD/DVD the backup dialogue box advises that there has never been a backup. (more…)