Linked List: February 11, 2009

Wednesday, 11 February 2009

MyFonts’s excellent WhatTheFont tool is now available as a free iPhone app:

Ever seen a great font in a magazine ad, poster, or on the web and wondered what font it is? Whip out your iPhone and snap a photo, and WhatTheFont for iPhone will identify that font in seconds!

Works great in my quick testing. (Via Swiss Miss.)

Panic’s Founders Room ★

Buzz Andersen on the “Founders Room” in Panic’s new headquarters in Portland. He neglects to mention that said Founders Room is behind a secret door. (I posted a few photos from last weekend’s grand opening festivities on Flickr.)

‘Whiskey’ vs. ‘Whisky’ ★

Eric Asimov successfully petitioned the editors in charge of the NYT style guide to allow the use of “whisky” when referring to Scotch and Canadian liquor. His original piece on the topic is worth a read, too.

Sirius XM Prepares for Possible Bankruptcy ★

Doesn’t look good:

Sirius XM, which never turned a profit when both companies were independent, is laden with $3.25 billion in debt. Its business model has been dependent, in part, on the ability to roll over its enormous debts — used to finance sending satellites into space and attract talent like Mr. Stern (who was paid $100 million a year) — at low rates for the foreseeable future until it could turn a profit.

The company’s success and failure are also tied to the faltering fortunes of the automobile industry, which sells vehicles with its radio technology installed and represented the largest customer base among Sirius XM’s 20 million subscribers.

‘Criminally Stupid’ ★

John Siracusa on Apple charging $30 for QuickTime Pro, back in 2005:

But please, Apple, give up on the QuickTime Pro thing. It’s always been annoying, but when viewed alongside today’s suite of bundled Apple software, it’s downright ridiculous. Worse, it makes the Mac platform look bad when the bundled QuickTime Player application can’t do all of the things that make QuickTime so cool: cut, copy, and paste together different kinds of media into a single file, extract and recombine tracks, import and export a huge number of formats, and yes, view video in full-screen mode.