iCountry Media

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: slydial

Quick Pitch: slydial is a free voice messaging service which connects you directly to someone’s mobile voicemail.

Genius Idea: If you’ve ever dreaded making a phone call and anxiously wished for a voicemail greeting as you dialed, you know exactly why this app is a genius idea. It strips away the awkwardness of a voice-to-voice call while still letting you claim to have attempted direct communication.

How perfectly passive-aggressive! We can imagine this app going over well for:

• Breakups,
• Firings,
• The-morning-after apologies,
• Stalling on or avoiding a meetup,
• Making excuses to a boss,
• “Duty” calls to chatty friends and relatives,
• “Just touching base” reminder/nagging calls,
• 3 a.m. calls that don’t need to be wake-up calls, as well,
• And ever so much more.

Essentially, the app “creates the illusion of communication” without making you actually have to listen to other people, play politics or hear someone else’s side of an argument. In theory, it works just as well for the incurable narcissist as for the cripplingly antisocial.

Before you protest, it’s true that slydial isn’t the Ghandi of applications. But it plays into a powerful part of the human psyche: Our desire to avoid conflict. The makers of slydial have paved the path of least resistance beautifully, and we can imagine that quite a few people will be traipsing down that path in the months to come.

To use slydial, which is free and audio-add supported, just dial 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425) and enter the mobile number of the person you want to leave a voicemail. You can also try slydial’s mobile apps, which include offerings for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

We gave slydial a try, and it worked just as promised; the other person’s phone didn’t so much as twitch while slydial connected me to the voicemail box in question.

What do you think of this app? It is something you’d use when you don’t have the personal fortitude or wherewithal to make voice-to-voice contact?

[img credit: djou]

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

More About: App, Mobile 2.0, slydial, voicemail

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Have you ever searched for a way to make a WordPress.com blog more robust? How about a way to make a WordPress hosted blog or site more secure and simpler to set up and maintain?

A few WordPress superstars have teamed up to create WPEngine, a new and very exciting platform that promises to do all of the above and more.

WordPress has become the killer platform for many bloggers, small businesses and developers/consultants with multiple clients.

However, there’s a middle ground between a WordPress.com blog and a hosted WordPress site that a few apps are attempting to cover. This middle ground includes people who don’t have the technical skills of a WordPress developer or even a website administrator but who still want to take advantage of a greater part of the WordPress ecosystem of plugins and other benefits.

About the Product

WPEngine offers a WordPress VIP-type experience for smaller-scale websites, and it includes top-notch support, one-click backups, optimization for speed and scalability, and security features that include automatic software upgrades. Also, you’ll be able to use any WordPress plugins, themes, custom CSS or JavaScript you like.

The platform gives users a set of specially curated plugins that have been vetted for security and have the WP Engine team’s absolute recommendation. “If there is a plugin that isn’t in our list,” reads the site, “you should feel empowered to use it anyway.”

Most of all, WPEngine promises its users simplicity and a seamless transition and integration experience.

The platform seems like it will work for bloggers, for businesses, and also for small dev shops that need to keep an eye on several WordPress-based sites.

About the Team

While the product sounds fabulous and, indeed, just what the WordPress ecosystem needs, product is only part of what makes a good startup; the company also needs to have a great team. WPEngine was developed by Aaron Brazell, a well-known figure in the WordPress universe who authored The WordPress Bible; blogger and developer Jason Cohen; and Cullen Wilson, an Austin-based developer. The startup is also under the wing of Ben Metcalfe, who has made a habit of picking good bets in the startup world. His last pick, NutShell Mail, experienced the Silicon Valley version of a Cinderella story and was acquired recently by Constant Contact. Altogether, it’s a bit of a dream team for a WordPress product.

Finally, the platform got the following 140-character thumbs-up from WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg this afternoon: “I think it’s a nice complement to first-party solutions, especially for businesses that use [WordPress] as a CMS.”

About Signup and Migration

We talked a bit with some of the WP Engine team today about migrating blogs — including themes, customized TypeKit fonts, comments and more — over to the WP Engine platform, and it’s a process we’re eager to test. We’ll be trying it out soon, and we will report back on the results.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more, sign up for WPEngine’s beta program. The platform will be open to the public very soon. You can test the platform for 15 days free of charge, and it costs $50 per month thereafter. There are no contracts, and you’re free to move your blog elsewhere at any time.

What do you think so far? Is this something you’d be interested in trying? Do you think it will be useful for businesses and WordPress developers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: aaron brazell, ben metcalfe, Wordpress, wpengine

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If you’ve ever been snickering over the latest YouTube viral video on your smartphone in the evening and ended up frustrated by slow load times and a congested network, you’re not alone — and that’s exactly the problem.

New research from mobile web optimization firm Bytemobile shows that more and more of us are making demands of our devices, our mobile carriers, and video-hosting sites such as YouTube by consuming large amounts of video content on our phones. Our video consumption tends to peak around 10 p.m., at which point bandwidth takes a nosedive and stalling cripples our viewing experience.

In other words, we get the worst possible experience exactly when we want most to have a good experience.

This viewing experience is even worse when videos aren’t optimized for mobile devices. In these cases, for a 60-second video, the average viewer on a 3G network connection would have to deal with around 10 seconds of stalling.

Video optimization, the report said, can reduce stalling to almost zero seconds per minute of video.

End users have been dealing with stalling by choosing to view lower-quality videos in exchange for faster load times. Around 95% of mobile video viewers watch at resolutions between 176×144 and 640×480. Less than half a percent of mobile video viewers are watching what could be considered high-quality videos.

According to these findings, Flash is by far the most popular mobile video format, accounting for a full 90% of total video traffic. That’s one strike against Apple’s no-Flash marching orders. Another is the stats on adult content; four of the top 10 video sites accessed from mobile phones contain only adult content. So much for “freedom from porn.”

However, even when you include adult content sites, YouTube is the most popular video content site, accounting for 36% of mobile views. A distant second is Google Video, which grabs just 6% of mobile video views.

If you watch videos on your phone, do these finding match up with your viewing experiences?

[img credit: larskflem]

Reviews: Google Video, YouTube, video

More About: Mobile 2.0, mobile video, report, stats, video

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We’ve been reading reports tonight that the popular European music service Spotify has hit yet another delay in making an entry in the U.S. market.

According to Billboard, Spotify’s negotiations with U.S. record labels have broken down and are “back to square one.” Apparently, the startup is still aiming for a 2010/early 2011 U.S. launch, but there’s no telling how long label negotiations could take or if they will be successful at all.

When we last heard from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek at SXSW 2010, he projected a Q3 U.S. launch and the unveiling of several new mobile applications. And while the service’s social and music features just keep getting better, the company is actually farther from a U.S. debut than they were this spring.

In Europe, Spotify operates under a freemium model. Users can get unlimited streaming music in an ad-supported interface. Users can also choose to pay for an ad-free experience that also includes mobile access. But elements of this model have been sources of contention for the major record labels stateside, notably Warner Music Group, according to Billboard’s sources.

In the meantime, Spotify competitors abound — Pandora in particular stands out as having been able to navigate political and record-label hurdles to keep itself operational and profitable. And Google and Apple are both rumored to be working on streaming music solutions, too.

Perhaps the larger question is whether American music lovers will still care about Spotify once it finally comes to our shores… if, indeed, it ever makes it here.

What do you think: Will Spotify’s leadership be able to play nicely with American record labels and launch their highly anticipated app in the U.S. this year? How about next year? Feel free to share your speculations in the comments.

Reviews: Google, Pandora, Spotify

More About: music, spotify, Warner

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Google has indicated it’s going to be working with developers on checkins for location-based applications through its Places API.

This spring, Google announced Places as a revamping of its local and local-business listings. Originally, we saw Places as a SEM/user review mechanism, perhaps a Yelp competitor.

However, with the recent preview of the Google Places API at Google I/O, the company showed developers a whole world of geographical, commercial and social information attached to each Place on its vast radar.

In a May blog post, Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell wrote, “Each Place Page consolidates together everything we know about a single Place, be it a business, point of interest, or geographical feature such as a city or neighbourhood. We believe that this unified concept of Places more accurately reflects the way that Maps users see the world, and are working to bring an awareness of Places to the Google Maps API.”

Based on developers’ interest in the Places API, Google is going to begin offering access to certain apps. Mitchell wrote today that while his team has seen “applications looking to show a user Places around them and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps,” what intrigued the company most were the applications that offered a checkin function — easily one of the hottest features of present-day social media.

“We are going to focus initially on check-in applications,” Mitchell continued. “These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience… We have now begun reaching out to developers who have expressed an interest in building checkin applications using the API, including those working on client applications for the Buzz API.”

We can’t wait to see who gets to work with the Places API and what kinds of apps they build. Devs, what do you expect to come from Google’s interest in checkins?

And what do you think this new direction bodes for Latitude? Could a better, Places-based app take its place as Google’s de facto location-based service?

Reviews: Google, Google Maps, Yelp

More About: checkin, geolocation, Google, google places, lbs, location, places API

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According to several reports and data from Google, the search engine is fully blocked in mainland China as of today.

Also fully blocked are ads and mobile access. Image search is partially blocked, as are Google Docs, Google News and Google Groups.

Other sites and apps that were previously and remain blocked include YouTube, search suggestions, Google Sites, Blogger and Picasa.

Google and China have been at odds since at least the beginning of this year, when a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” was conducted on Google’s corporate infrastructure; the attack originated in China. As a result, the search engine, which had been serving censored search results to comply with the demands of the Chinese government, announced it would no longer be modifying search results.

The company said it would even be willing to pull out of China altogether if search results were to be censored.

However tense relations were between the company and the country, negotiations continued — even past the point where some felt that Google’s stand for freedom of information had been compromised. Our Ben Parr wrote in March:

After Google was hacked, it was put in between a rock and a hard place. Its actions, while still bold, will not change how things are done in China. Its indecisiveness with how to proceed has made the pressure on China all but evaporate.

Earlier this month, we were told that China and Google had reached a satisfactory conclusion to the search-and-censorship negotiations; Chinese authorities had renewed Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license after the company found a loophole which allowed them to display search results and also allowed China’s Golden Shield Project (a.k.a. the Great Firewall) to block those links at will.

Now, however, it seems China/Google relations have once again broken down.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told press earlier this month, “Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government. I don’t want anyone to be confused about that.”

The only confusion we at Mashable have surrounds questions of timing: Why now? What new developments have caused China to change its position on Google?

As Google continues to lose market share in China to competitor Baidu, we’re sure a few Googlers are wondering the same thing. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update this post as more details become available.

UPDATE: A Google spokesperson has told us, “Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.”

Let’s hope Google and China maintain this rather tenuous status quo. YouTube, search suggestions, Google Sites, Blogger and Picasa are still fully blocked, and other services and features are partially blocked.

Reviews: Google, Google Docs, Google Groups, Mashable, Picasa, YouTube, blogger

More About: ban, block, china, Google, Search

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A Day’s Outing, a website dedicated to helping users find nearby day trips, weekend get-aways or quick excursions across the U.S., has just launched its new iPhone app [iTunes link], making it easy to find ways to spend these dog days of summer, whether you’re traveling with family, in small groups or on your own.

We got a chance to play with the app to see what it offers and how it compares to other location destination apps, like Goby. We’ve also got 100 copies of the app to give away to our readers (it normally retails for $2.99).

Many mobile applications utilize location, but most of them utilize it for finding a specific place, checking in as part of a game, or reading and leaving reviews.

While there is a nice niche of mobile travel guides, what’s less common are applications that are designed to help you find destinations or activities nearby. The immediate use-case for this sort of application is when you are visiting a new city or on a vacation. Say you decide to go the beach for a few days, and then it starts to rain (or I don’t know, some catastrophically awful oil leak gunks up the beaches) — if you’re not in a big city or a place that is a known tourist destination, figuring out how to spend your time, especially while on the go, can be difficult.

A Better Family Vacation Tool

The website, which is free to use and access, is a great way to find different parks, museums, theaters, special events, historical landmarks, zoos and more. What we really like about the app is that it isn’t just made for big cities, it’s for smaller cities too.

The app is pretty easy to use; it can select your location automatically, or you can enter in your location by city, zip code or street address. Then you select how many days you want the search to cover and how many miles you want your search to encompass.

You can also just search for a specific event if you have an idea of what you are looking for.

The results are brought back in a list by category, and you can also view the results on a map to see where things are in relation to your starting point.

Once you find a place or outing that looks interesting, you can access more information, including the phone number and address, and visit the website for the destination all in the app. You can also see how much admission and parking is.

We do wish that there was a way for users to leave reviews of different destinations, because that would be helpful, especially for people new to a specific area.

Although A Day’s Outing is similar in many respects to Goby, it’s focus on more family-oriented activities and historical landmarks sets it apart. We really think that families are the types of users that would most benefit from the application.

100 Mashable Readers Get the App Free

If you want to try the app out but don’t want to pay $2.99, go to this page and enter in your e-mail address. The first 100 readers will get a code to get the app for free. You can then redeem that code in the App Store.

What do you think of location-based applications that help you find local destinations rather than just restaurants or places of business? How do you find things to do when visiting from out of town?

Reviews: App Store

More About: a day's outing, goby, iphone apps, location apps, travel

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Thank the deities! The Sad Keanu Reeves meme is back — and this time instead of a sandwich, everyone’s favorite Little Buddha is sporting a helmet. (Yup. He was just asking for it. ) With such a setup, the possibilities for parody were endless. However, we’ve reined ourselves in and chosen only the best for your early evening pleasure.

Last month, the Sad Keanu photo meme hit the ‘net with the force of a particularly fierce tropical storm — of the ilk that devours sandwiches, rather than towns. Folks seized upon the iconic snap and bent it to their own devious purposes. Our own Shane Snow even created a Sad Keanu URL for charity (that fiend).

Well, we had all but forgotten about the rise of the deadpan one when the above picture crossed our virtual newsdesk. The picture recently showed up in a Reddit thread titled, “Oh, sh*t, not again,” and has spread all over the web. Still, it’s an old picture — it appears to have cropped up in 2005 in a post on gossip blog The Superficial.

Whatever its origin or meaning, this snap has prompted the creation of some genius altered photos, and we’ve gathered them together into one smoothie of viral goodness for ya. Check it out, and submit your own in the comments if you’re so inclined.

Sad Keanu Papercraft

Courtesy of: F*ck Yeah Albuquerque

X-Wing Pilot Keanu

Courtesy of: Shopped Sci Fi and Joost5

Speed Racer Keanu

Courtesy of Reddit User: SameDifference

Star Wars Keanu

Courtesy of Reddit User: BenjaminBoba

Easy Rider Keanu

Courtesy of Reddit User: P_ro

Keanu-zilla

Courtesy of Reddit User: hoteinokodomo

Where's Keanu?

Courtesy of Reddit User: eater_pay

‬

[via The Daily What]

More About: celebrities, humor, keanu-reeves, Meme, pop culture, reddit

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Online travel site Orbitz has named Publicis Groupe's Optimedia its agency of record in the U.S. for its $36 million media planning and buying account.

Mashable’s Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Urban Spoils

Quick Pitch: Urban Spoils aggregates and recommends fantastic daily deals from 100+ social buying websites.

Genius Idea: If you’re Internet-savvy and love a good bargain, you’ve probably already subscribed to a number of daily deal newsletters, like Groupon and LivingSocial, and/or signed up for rush buying sites like Gilt, which posts deep discounts on designer clothing at noon ET every day.

Consequently, your inbox is likely flooded with e-mails promoting all of these deals every morning, which can be difficult and time-consuming to navigate.

Urban Spoils is a 20-person, Seattle-based startup that aggregates all of the group deals from sites like Groupon, Gilt, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe, Ideeli, Tippr and more. You can log on to their site or sign up for their newsletter to easily view the day’s best deals at once. The site serves more than 60 U.S. cities and is preparing to go global.

The selections are both human-curated and based on your preferences (similar to the Personalized Deals option Groupon rolled out today), features that should prove increasingly useful as more sites and businesses move into the group buying space.

What do you think of the service? Would you prefer to get deals from select sites, or use Urban Spoils’s aggregator?

[img credit: alancleaver_2000]

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Reviews: Internet

More About: bizspark, gilt, gilt groupe, group buying, groupon, LivingSocial, spark-of-genius

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Travelocity and its lead creative agency of seven years, McKinney, are parting ways due to a wide-ranging review the online travel site has launched on its more than $80 million advertising account.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Eric Silver is being replaced in his post as chief creative officer of DDB, New York, a little over a year after he jumped into the role to replace the office's longtime creative leader, Lee Garfinkel. The Omnicom Group agency has appointed Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB, Australia, to take over Mr. Silver's duties, while Mr. Silver is moved elsewhere within the network.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Dean Foods' CMO, Rick Zuroweste, talks about how the consumer is changing marketing in an interview for Fast.Forward.

This series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.

Video is a tricky spot for most blogs and personal sites, especially when that video is meant to represent you. While everyone likes to watch videos (just look at the exponential growth and popularity of YouTube), it’s a little more difficult to create, edit and host your own videos. This isn’t to say incorporating a video into your online presence is an impossible feat, but to do it properly requires some digital finesse and forethought.

Technically speaking, simply making a video is pretty easy. Hit the record button, stand in front of the camera, turn the lights on and say something. Instant video. Unfortunately, that alone won’t make it a good video.

Video is about content and production: What’s in it, and how it’s presented. For most personal blogs, it’s more important to provide great content (some of the most popular viral videos have some of the shoddiest production values), but much depends on what you want your video to accomplish. Is it an online resume? Clips of your work? Or just something funny for your audience to chew on?

Below we’ve got some quick tips on how to enhance your online presence with video.

Utilize Video Resumes and Introductions

Using video resumes and introductions is a great way to make a first impression. It’s also a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. You could be (and probably are) intelligent, charismatic, ambitious, and attractive, and thankfully, a good video will help you stand out. But beware, a bad video could hide your best characteristics.

Most sites give general, but useful tips on how to set yourself up for success if you’re going to create a video resume. Be organized, dress professionally, speak clearly — all things your parents told you to do and all things you would do in a real interview. The tips are general because you need to tailor your resume, and video, for each job application.

A video introduction, a brief video embedded into your homepage, uses many of the same concepts. It is intended, however, to give a general impression of who you are: Your motivations, passions, and what readers can expect from your site. If someone clicks on your video, it’s because they want to see you, the person behind the site.

Some of the most important tips for these personal videos are: Keep your video to no more than two minutes, find a space where you feel comfortable filming, and avoid having too much clutter in the shot — we want to see you. Lastly, know what you’re going to say and what you want your audience to get out of the video.

Supply Sample Clips

Adding clips of your previous work is perhaps most useful if you have a profession that requires you to be in front of or behind a video camera. Including these clips can be a good way to connect with your readers by showing them real samples of what you do.

The biggest obstacle is usually getting over the fear that people will hate your work. It’s a legitimate, but often unwarranted concern. If you’re a pro, odds are you’ve already built out a video section on your site. For amateurs, think of your clips as a great way to get crowdsourced feedback.

Add a comments section below your videos, and encourage responses to your work. You’ll find that readers will often give good criticism if you ask for it in a courteous and honest way. Of course, there will always be trolls. But odds are high that you’ll get more useful feedback than people calling you a n00b.

Curate Videos from around the Web

Aggregating videos can show your expertise or interest in a specific field, in much the same way that aggregating news stories can. Posting a selection of videos from the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, for example, can show readers your interest in classical music, collaborative arts, or the intersection between classic arts and new technologies. However, if those are your interests and you post random fail vids and cute cats, your readers might not get a good sense of who you are.

Anything you post on your blog or personal site is a representation of who you are. Video’s can be a great way to show your personality, previous work, or interests, but require the same patience as any other medium (you wouldn’t post a blurry or embarrassing profile pic, right?).

Your best bet is to think of video as an extension of your portfolio, a video cover letter where you can share a little bit of who you are. It’s certainly not required, but a video done well can do a lot to enhance your online presence.

Let us know how you are using online video to showcase your work or interests in the comments below.

Series supported by Gillette

This series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kaisersosa67

Reviews: YouTube, iStockphoto, video

More About: better profile series, blog, brand, crowdsourcing, feedback, trending, video resume, web video, youtube

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It seems that one key feature of Facebook -– the ability to tag friends in status updates by using the “@” symbol –- has been broken since the social network rolled out a new publisher in conjunction with the new Facebook Questions product on Wednesday.

In an e-mail to Mashable, Facebook says that the company is “working to fix the issue” and that it only affects users who have the new publisher enabled (like most major new features at Facebook, the rollout of Questions and the new publisher is a gradual one).

We’ve noticed several other issues since the launch -– notably, our Facebook Page has been failing to display recent updates. There are also a number of usability improvements and features we’d like to see added to Questions, which we described in a blog post yesterday.

Are you having issues with Facebook since the rollout? Let us know in the comments.

thumbnail image via silvers

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable

More About: facebook, Facebook Questions

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Later tonight, MTV will uncork the second season of "Jersey Shore," the reality series that does for attentive laundry administration what FDR did for grand-scale public-works projects. Immediately after it airs, some serious-thinking person will take to the internet, bemoaning the Snookification of American youth and preaching the perils of cavorting in non-staph-guarded Jacuzzis. And he or she will miss the point -- not about "Jersey Shore," which doesn't exactly aspire to anything more than entertainment -- but about MTV itself. There's a lot more on the responsibility side of the ledger than its critics care to admit.

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Interpublic Group of Cos. reported that second-quarter net income more than doubled to $83 million, or 22 cents a share, from $31 million, or 4 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 9.7% to $1.62 billion from $1.47 billion.

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Interpublic Group of Cos. reported that second-quarter net income more than doubled to $83 million, or 22 cents a share, from $31 million, or 4 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 9.7% to $1.62 billion from $1.47 billion.

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Update: Google has just made this process significantly easier with the launch of its Font Previewer.

For years, we’ve been stuck with the same old fonts: Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Times New Roman — web-safe fonts that a majority of web users have installed on their computer.

But lately, the web design community is abuzz — and the source of the excitement is around web fonts. "Web fonts" is a generic term that refers to the method of serving font files — the same type of files you have installed on your computer — to your website visitors so that you can guarantee they’ll have the appropriate type faces you want displayed on your web pages.

In this guide, we’ll discuss a way of implementing web fonts using free web services collectively called Google Font API.

If you have any tips to add on using Google Font API, be sure to leave them in the comments.

Google Font API Basics

The API is easy to use and requires no programming skills whatsoever. If you run a website, chances are that already have the necessary knowledge of getting Google fonts to work. And if you don’t, grab one of your geeky friends for five minutes and ask them to implement Google Font API for you.

How It Works: @font-face

Google Font API uses a CSS property called @font-face. If you haven’t heard of it before, don’t worry, most people haven’t — you don’t need to be familiar with it to use Google Font API.

@font-face allows you to use font files (they have file extensions like .otf and .ttf) just like in desktop applications such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop.

The issue with @font-face has been that the various kinds of web browsers require different font file types. For example, Internet Explorer requires an .eot file (embedded open type), while browsers like Firefox need an .otf (open type font) file. Thus, developers have come up with workarounds to implement @font-face in such a way that works on all browsers, like employing conditional CSS that serves the appropriate file type depending on the user’s web browser.

Another issue with using @font-face is the licensing of the fonts themselves; it’s a gray-area legal issue where using a font file on your website — even though you have purchased it for your desktop applications — may not be allowed.

Google Font API solves all of these issues.

Benefits of Using Google Font API

Using Google Font API is a great solution for avoiding the many problems that exist when using @font-face in your website. Firstly, the web service simplifies the implementation of web fonts. With only one line of code to reference the font you want to use and some basic CSS, you can get yourself set up in a matter of minutes. No need to worry about web browser quirks, dealing with multiple types of font files, or understanding how @font-face works — Google Font API handles all of that for you.

The fonts are officially supported in all major browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari — which in turn suggests that other less popular web browsers (which are oftentimes based on major browsers) will support it as well.

Google fonts are open source and have been vetted by Google. This means that you can sleep better at night and not worry about whether you’ll get in trouble for using a font you weren’t supposed to be using.

There are also technological advantages for using Google Font API versus serving the font files yourself. Google’s infrastructure is highly regarded in the IT world for its extraordinary uptime and ability to withstand high levels of site traffic. The company is a pioneer and leader of website performance — developing best practices and tools for improving page response times, creating new standards and protocols to improve Internet speeds, and leading initiatives for making the web faster. In addition, if a user has visited another website that uses Google Font API, they might already have the font you need in their browser’s cache, speeding up the page response times of your web pages.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of all of this is that it’s free. There are no prerequisites (such as having to sign up or supply an e-mail address) to using Google Font API.

How to Use Google Font API

Google Font API is documented well, but let us cover the fundamentals of implementing it on your website.

Basic Usage

There are two steps for using Google Font API.

The first step is to reference the CSS stylesheet you need within your HTML document; more specifically inside the <head> tags found towards the top. This reference should be in all web pages that will use the font(s) you request from Google Font API.

This will be a cinch if you use a content management system or blogging platform such as WordPress because you only have to do this once using your site’s theme template.

If you have a static HTML website, then you’ll have to plug in this code on all web pages, or if you have a global CSS file, you can use the @import CSS property within it.

In the example below, the <link> tag is where you are referencing Google API. The href value is the most important — FontName is the font we want to use in our web page. You can replace the FontName value with one of the supported fonts, which you can find in the Google Font Directory.

</head>
<title>Home Page</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=FontName">
</head>/>

The second step is to use CSS to specify how we want to use the font we’ve requested.

Let’s say that we want to use the FontName font on all paragraph tags in our web pages.

We would use the following CSS:

p {
font-family: 'FontName';
font-size: 12px;
}

For those not very familiar with CSS, it helps to read it out loud in plain English to understand what’s going on. What the code above is saying: "All [p]aragraphs should use the font of ‘FontName’ with a size of 12px."

Requesting Different Styles of a Font

Now that you’re familiar with the basic format of making a request to Google Font API, let’s explore some advanced ways of making requests.

By default, you will get the normal style of a particular font. But what if you wanted to use and display another style, such as italics or bold?

Easy. You just add a colon (:) at the end of the font’s name followed by the style you want. And if you need more than one style, you just separate them with a comma (,).

For example, if you want the italics and bold version of FontName, then your reference becomes:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=FontName:italic,bold">

The styles you can use are italic (italic or i), bold (bold or b), and bold italic (bolditalic or bi).

Requesting Multiple Fonts

Oftentimes, you’ll want more than one font. There’s no need to make multiple references if this is the case. All you have to do is append your request with an | symbol followed by another font name.

Let us say you wanted the bold italic version of FontName and the italic style of AntotherFontName; our link would be:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=FontName:bolditalic|AnotherFontName:italic">

That’s all there is to it!

Tools for Working with Google Font API

Google has created some tools for helping you work with the Google Font API, including the Font Directory, Previewer and Web Font Loader. Learn more about each specific tool below.

1. Google Font Directory

The Google Font Directory lists all the available fonts you can use. There are currently 18 fonts available, such as Droid Sans, Molengo, and Nobile. Clicking on each font preview will reveal more information about it, including the designer of the font, the license type of the font, a description for you typophiles out there, the entire character set, and more. Additionally, clicking on the "Get the code" tab shows you the code that you can copy and paste to get the font to work.

2. Google Font Previewer

The Google Font Previewer tool lets you experiment with each font. You can tweak font characteristics such as size, style (variant), and spacing. Once you like what you see, it spits out the code you need to use in order to render the Google font exactly the same way as your preview.

3. Web Font Loader

For web developers needing more control of their Google fonts, there’s a JavaScript library that you can use. It gives you event listeners at various stages of the font-loading process that you can bind JavaScript functions to.

Series supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

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Good news for everyone out there who’s ever thought to themselves: “A 10-minute video of my cat eating ribs on the kitchen floor is just too short.” YouTube announced today that it has increased its upload limit from 10 minutes to 15 for non-partners. So get kitty lookin’ pretty and start rolling!

So why add the extra five-spot now? Well, on the YouTube blog, the video-sharing site explains that it’s been beefing up its copyright protection tools of late, i.e. the Content ID system (which lets copyright holders have more control over their content). Therefore, it’s less likely that users can, say, upload large chunks of movies and TV shows without permission.

In celebration of this added time, YouTube is also launching a contest of sorts called “15 Minutes of Fame.” Basically, all users have to do is film a 15-minute vid, tag it with “yt15minutes,” and upload it by Wednesday, August 4. The chosen videos will be featured on the YouTube homepage.

We wonder what effect — if any — this new time limit will have on initiatives like YouTube Leanback. Do you think the extra five minutes will equate to better content, or merely more room to rant about video games, Twilight and the like? Let us know!

[img credit: cogdogblog]

Reviews: YouTube, twilight

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