gardening

Monotype Imaging has opened up a batch of 500 more typefaces for use on the Web and announced a partnership under which those publishing on Acquia's Drupal Gardens can use the service.

Web fonts, after languishing for years, are giving typeface makers a new business opportunity with the arrival of new abilities in the formatting technology called CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in modern browsers. With it, Web publishers can employ downloadable fonts to give their Web sites a more memorable look or to add some pizazz not possible with the limited number of "Web-safe" fonts that can be expected to already be installed on a browser's computer.

It's not that such typography wasn't possible before on the Web. It's just that it likely was done with graphics rather than type. Graphics, though, can be bulky to download, don't scale well to different screen sizes, aren't noticeable as text to search engines, and can't be copied and pasted as text.

Monotype Imaging now licenses hundreds of its fonts for online use through its Fonts.com site. Among the new arrivals to the online service is ITC Avant Garde Gothic, a widely used sans-serif typeface.

It seems likely that budget-minded publishers might steer clear of fonts with a fee, opting instead for free options such as Google's Web-font options. But Drupal Gardens also is used by corporations and others that might be more concerned about a refined look or proper brand identity.

Drupal Gardens also announced recently that it's now hosting more than 50,000 sites and that it's improved several publishing tools. … Read more

This weekend Apple hosted the grand opening of its largest store in the world, in London's Covent Garden. The new store, which houses every Apple product under the sun and employs hundreds of staff members, opened its doors at 10 a.m. on Saturday to a crowd of thousands of Apple devotees.

Spread over three separate floors and composed of a blend of original brickwork and shiny glass elevators, the new store features separate chambers for every kind of Apple product, from iPads, Macs, iPods, and iPhones to software and accessories.

There's also a kids area, with demos … Read more

Anyone who loves to garden knows that all that time spent stooped over ploughing, planting, and weeding doesn't always sit (stand?) so well with the back. Enter the Wunda Weeder, a solar-powered contraption that lets gardeners take their back-breaking work lying down.

Australian inventors Brendan Corry and Peter Sargent conceived of the Wunda Weeder as a new, environmentally friendly answer to an old problem: manual farming tasks can take their toll, especially on those who tend to large fields. Lying on the machine in an adjustable "bed" made from a converted outdoor reclining chair, the operator is … Read more

Archeologists and NASA scientists have "unearthed" a complete ancient Mayan city that employed a system of green urban architecture, the group announced Tuesday.

"The NASA technology aboard the Cessna saw beyond the rain forest and detected thousands of new structures, 11 new causeways, tens of thousands of agricultural terraces and many hidden caves--results beyond anyone's imagination," the group said in a statement.

The project was led by a husband and wife archaeological team from the University of Central Florida who have been in Belize manually excavating the ancient Mayan city of Caracol out from under … Read more

Longtime 404 listener Ammi took some time out of her busy vacation from Sweden to drop by our studios this morning, so we invite her on the show to tell us about her first trip to the United States...and also to help us locate Sweden on the map, because we're geographically hopeless. Ammi's only been here a few days so far, but her observations on the chaos and consumerism of American culture are on point. Like many foreigners that visit our country, she can't help but notice the obesity epidemic that we can easily trace back to the cupcake stores on every block in the city.

To Jeff's delight, Ammi also tells us that hockey gets much more attention in Sweden than it does in the US, although I'm pretty sure Swedish cable subscribers can't watch their games in 3D. On March 24, Cablevision will be broadcasting the New York Rangers vs. New York Islanders game in 3D, the first live 3D sports broadcast to hit the network. Don't worry if you're not one of the 11 people that actually own a 3D TV; Madison Square Garden will also host a viewing party on a big-screen 3D projection TV for 2,500 guests on the night of the big game. Hockey fans that can handle the real dimension can also just buy tickets to the live game.

We're all fans of old-school Pinball games, but we never thought we'd see a Bill Paxton Pinball Machine! Ben Heckendorn just put the finishing touches on a custom Paxton Pinball game that he's been working on since 2005. He even lists out the exact parts you need to make your own in a detailed "making-of" story and demonstration video. Nice work, Ben!

We've also got another story from the book of wacky DIY projects: the "Carpuccino," a converted Volkswagon powered by the carbon in loose coffee grounds. To prove its worth, the team responsible for building the Carpuccino is driving the car from London to Manchester using grounds collected from Costa Coffee. The adventure will take time and plenty of cash--the top speed is 60 miles per hour and costs a ridiculous 25-50 times more than using gasoline. Odds of seeing an official Ford/Honda/Toyota Carpuccino: zero.

Thanks again to Ammi, Samri, Sarah, and the rest of our Swedish listeners for supporting the show from abroad. We gave Ammi plenty of stickers to plaster all over the country, so expect to see some pictures of 404-branded Swedish Fish soon!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Product reviewers at CNET generally don't cover disputes between customers and Internet resellers, but a recent case revealed a new sales policy we've never seen before.

On January 26, we received an e-mail from a reader complaining about the sales policy of online reseller Home and Garden Surplus. He had ordered the LG BD390, but received an LG BD370, a step-down model with a list price $100 cheaper. The reader stated that when he complained about the switch, Home and Garden Surplus explained that its policy allowed it to make a substitution.

We're not shocked that a company would switch a product with one of a lower value--we hear reports of it all the time--but we were surprised to see that Home and Garden Surplus was actually telling the truth about its policy. On the product page for the LG BD390, it does state that the company may switch a BD370 for a BD390, although it's buried at the end of a long list of specs and there's not even a line break to separate it from the previous bullet point.

Furthermore, when we looked at the company's privacy policy page, the company elaborated on the substitution policy:

This policy was also recently added to the FAQ page--we're not sure why it's on the privacy policy page to begin with--but it's worth pointing out that this shouldn't apply to the LG BD390 anyway, as the BD370 is clearly a product of lesser value.

The reader who contacted us isn't the only one who's taken issue with the policy. … Read more

It seems like everyone has an application directory these days, and now Flickr is no exception. While not offering up paid third-party services (yet), Flickr on Tuesday unveiled a reworked services section dubbed the "App Garden" that better showcases photo tools, and the people who have created them.

The new apps directory page manages to squeeze just about as many applications into a smaller space than the old one did. It also gives each app its own page where users can add descriptive tags and leave feedback in the form of comments. In fact, these new pages act just like Flickr photo pages, including giving registered users a way to favorite certain apps, which goes towards promoting up-and-coming apps higher up in the showcase. They also double as a shortcut to viewing other apps made by that same developer.

One area where the new app system has not permeated just yet is in letting users see what apps their friends and contacts are using. For instance, Flickr's activity feed--which gives Flickr users a bird's eye view of what their friends are up to, does not show when a user has favorited one of these tools. Users will only be able to see what apps they themselves have favorited from within the App Garden, and not alongside their photo favorites. There is also no way to create collections of apps you like to share with others, as you can do with the recently-released gallery feature.

These things may come in time, but for now it's already a much better system than the previous API services page. Developers have more of a chance to try to convince users to give their app a spin before they ever leave the site, and other Flickr users are now able to chime in and recommend it, either through the new favoriting system, or in the comments. Whether Flickr decides to make some of this user activity a little more public is unclear.

After the jump: The before and after of the API services menu, and what's now the App Garden.… Read more

Room Arranger offers to help users by setting up a virtual room or rooms. While the controls require a steep learning curve, many users may feel that the exciting results are worth it.

This program definitely requires users without prior design experience to make a trip to the online Help file. Here, users will get a better idea of what the confusing icons and command buttons, which are scattered throughout, do. Designing a room was surprisingly simple after we got a feel for the program and did a little experimenting. Users choose the dimensions of their room and can even … Read more

It's hard to ignore the incessant messages to buy local, plant a garden, check for organic labels, and lead a sustainable lifestyle, yet most of us dismiss these suggestions as practices that require too much money, time, and effort.

And it's true--they really do.

Last summer I went through a green phase, heading to the plant store to purchase soil, seeds, shovels, pots, and everything else that Martha Stewart suggests I buy. Well, $120 and two weeks later, I had forgotten I'd even planted a garden and deemed my project a failure.

Thankfully, there is hope for … Read more