Manteka is a nice sans-serif headline font with a blocky style. Free for personal and commercial use.
Stocksy: A better stock photography resource
Photo by Micky Wiswedel
I’m always on the lookout for stock photography resources, and I tend to bookmark any stock photo site that shows any potential. But let’s be honest, client budgets aren’t what they used to be. Sites like Getty and Masterfile are just too expensive. At the other end, ThinkStock, Shutterstock and iStockPhoto are affordable but have a rather poor selection of images for high-end advertising use; they’re overloaded with cliché images with poor cropping and mediocre subject matter.
Enter Stocksy, a curated royalty free stock photo site run by the photographers themselves. By curated I mean that you can’t simply submit photos for inclusion on the site like you can at other sites. You have to be invited by the photographers that run the site. This ensures high-quality images, not high volume. (more…)
Free dry brush stroke brushes for Photoshop
12 awesome high-res dry brush stroke Photoshop brushes, from Spoon Graphics.
Supplement your OS X Finder with ClawMenu
ClawMenu is one of those apps that you see and just want to give it a try. It offers you a way to supplement the Mac’s Finder with it’s own system for navigating your files and folders.
It’s a bit difficult to explain, but basically it puts an overlay window on top of OS X’s Finder for basic navigation. It offers a shortcuts bar across the top and bottom of the overlay, and offers one-click opening of files and folders.
At $7.99, ClawMenu isn’t going to appeal to everyone, as it’s not really something you “can’t live without.” But it may appeal to some users, and there is a 7-day demo available, so I thought I would share it.
Smoothing harsh highlights with Photoshop
How to block text message spam on the iPhone
If you frequently get text message spam, you’ve no doubt considered sticking a pencil in your ear out of frustration. Before you soil a perfectly good pencil, take a look at OSXDaily’s excellent tutorial on how to block text message spam on your iPhone.
Add a little ambient sound to your day with Relax Melodies
Sometimes I just don’t want to listen to music. I just want some nice ambient sound to wash over me while I’m working. I’ve reviewed Elsewhere for the Mac previously, a free app for OS X which lives in your menubar and provides three ambient sounds, plus rain (with an in-app purchase).
Today I point you to two more great apps, both free, that provide ambient sounds (white noise) to OS X.
Relax Melodies brings 48 individual ambient sounds which you can overlay on top of each other to create the perfect background sounds to suit your style. Relax Melodies Seasons offers 33 sounds, including 8 Christmas-specific sounds like bells, fireplace, and popular Christmas tunes.
Both apps offer to add up to 100 sounds or more with an in-app purchase, but the built-in sounds are pretty darn good on their own. Both apps allow you to combine sounds and adjust the volume of those sounds independently. You can also save your favorite settings in both apps, but I prefer to explore new combinations every time I use the apps. And finally, you can set alarms and timers with both apps.
I love both these apps, though the regular Relax Melodies app is probably more than enough for most users. If I have one complaint about either of these apps, it’s that neither offers a way to hide the interface and the Dock icon and work only as a menubar app the way Elsewhere does. Still, both can help you relax during a busy day designing the next great ad, or writing the great American novel!
Touchfire keyboard turns your iPad screen into a responsive keyboard
The Touchfire iPad Keyboard fits right over the iPad’s on-screen keyboard and is completely transparent, so you can always see the keys underneath it.
It is soft and supple if you swipe through it horizontally – you can use your iPad right through it. Yet it is stiff enough vertically to let you rest your fingers on the home row keys without accidentally triggering the touch screen. When you type, the Touchfire keyboard responds with just the right amount of resistance and spring-back to feel like a lively and responsive keyboard.
If you use your iPad for emailing and writing, this look like a really cool thing to have!
Free font: Sina Nova
Write full emails using Siri on your iPhone
If you thought Siri was a gimmicky feature of iOS, think again—you can do more than schedule an appointment, check game scores, and search the web.
Paul over at OSXDaily has posted a simple tutorial to show you how to use Siri to author a complete email without touching the keyboard on your iPhone.
The trickiest part of using Siri is remember the commands necessary to use Siri to do a ton of different things.