I just finished my WordPress plugin for Google Fonts and after a weekend of playing with Google’s new font service I thought I would share some thoughts on Google’s system as well as on the state of web fonts in general.

Since I have so much invested in Font Burner it may come as a surprise that I would embrace Google’s system, a direct competitor of Font Burner. Actually, I am thrilled that there is a new (and arguably better) solution to the dilemma of limited type options on the web. I believe that the font industry monopoly is at best selfish, and at worst damaging to the internet as a whole. Now that there is an open source option in which Google picks up the hosting tab, hopefully more and more font designers/foundries will loosen their grip on their typefaces.

When I created Font Burner two years ago I wanted to do anything I could to help expand the options for type on the web. While I am proud of the popularity of Font Burner, it has grown into a service that has stretched my resources significantly. The hosting move I made last week was a direct result of Font Burner and the hosting requirements it demands. Font Burner users generate over one million page views each month, and that bandwidth is steadily growing. With over 11,000 downloads of the Font Burner plugin for WordPress, the demand for alternative font options is obviously high. In attempt to meet this demand I also released an update to the Font Burner plugin that allows users to “self-host” their fonts. This should help keep my Font Burner servers fast (and affordable) along with reducing the risk of service outage for WordPress users. But enough about Font Burner…

Frankly, the Google Font service has several advantages over Font Burner (and the sIFR technology it uses.) First, it is easier to use. Just add a line of code to your web page, and then start using it in your stylesheet with standard css. You don’t have to convert fonts into swf files. You don’t have to mess with writing javascript. You can use it for body copy. You can style it with CSS. The fonts are hosted by Google. It loads quickly. And it is just going to get better.

The gorilla in the room is TypeKit. While some people have embraced this service, I haven’t. The reason is because this is a business venture. Unlike the free open source service of Google, Typekit uses commercial fonts with expensive monthly fees. While there are many commercial sites that may benefit from this service, it is not practical for the average website owner. Paying to use a font on your website (that you may even own already) is ridiculous. I can’t endorse a service that adds another middle man into an already overly complex and expensive system.

So, I really hope that Google Fonts takes off. I hope that the assortment of fonts grows steadily. Knowing Google, it will be the standard in no time.

I haven’t made a post in a while and I wanted to give you an update on some of my projects. You may have heard about Google’s announcment of a Google Font Directory and the Google Font API. It is huge news for the web and finally we are one step closer to font freedom (That link takes you to a post I wrote 4 years ago!). Yes, this might be the final nail in the coffin for my Font Burner project, but I welcome a real solution to the lack of rich typography options on the web. I expect to release one final Font Burner update before closing the doors on that project.

As soon as I heard Google’s font service announcement I started working on a WordPress Google Fonts Plugin to make it even easier for WordPress users to take advantage of the Gooogle font service. My plugin will be available in the WordPress plugin directory as soon as I get it approved. I will add the link here the instant it goes live.

The reason I have been silent lately is that I have been finishing another chess project that I will hopefully be announcing soon. It is a service that makes it really easy to share chess games with friends using Facebook and other social sites. It has been a fun project and I can’t wait to get it launched. Again, stay tuned.

The other big news is that I just completed a switch to a new web host. If you have been experiencing any outage on this or any of my other sites I apologize. I am moving from Media Temple to DreamHost. I will hopefully post a more detailed comparison of the two companies in the near future, but to make a long story short, Media Temple has been hitting me really hard with GPU overages and it didn’t make financial sense to stay with them. Not to mention they allowed my site to get hacked. And my sites have been intolerably slow. Yeah, I am not a happy camper. However, things are good so far with Dreamhost.

That’s all I can say for now. As always, thanks for stopping by, and next time I will have a real post and not just more teasers. I promise…

Andy Warhol is the last celebrity artist the world may ever know. While there are more artists living today than ever before, it is hard to imagine an artist personality today rising to the level of national awareness the way Warhol did. That is as much a statement about modern times as it is about the larger than life persona of Warhol himself. In the era of the blog Warhol’s insight that “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” seems more prophetic than ever. The implication that is often ignored in this quote is that if everyone is famous, than nobody is. Twenty two years after Warhol’s death, there are countless fifteen minute celebs, but not a single artist more famous than Andy Warhol.

Warhol’s fascination with the notion of celebrity is simply one chapter in a body of work that explores dehumanization, consumerism, cultural desensitization, and materialization – all very “American” virtues. His charismatic life was so intertwined with American society that a study of Andy Warhol becomes a sociological commentary on American culture itself. Warhol recognized his connection saying, “I feel very much a part of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.” In many ways Andy was the American dream. He overcame poverty, physical flaws, and pathological shyness to become the king of pop culture. But Warhol’s story is even more than a rags to riches tale. Andy Warhol packaged himself as a product for consumption just like the cans of soup and bottles of Coke that he painted. Andy Warhol’s life was just as much a work of art as his paintings.

Pick any of the many books written about Andy Warhol and you will observe that nobody really ever has a solid grasp on who he actually was or what he was trying to do. Was he the voyeur he claimed to be or critic of the culture he commented on? Was he sincerely promoting beauty of ordinary objects or was he showing the absurdity of consumerism? Was he really callous towards life and death, or was he pointing out how valuable our lives should be? Was he a shy socialite or a cunning businessman? Was he the ultimate hipster, casually dismissing the importance of his art, or was he a philosopher with a firm grasp on art history? To fall for any single side of these arguments is to oversimplify his art. His popularity can be attributed to how easily it is for anyone (from art critic to blue collar worker) to add their own meaning to his work.

Andy, the non-stereotypical artist
Even if we have deep respect for art, most of us also carry a negative stereotype around with us about artists. Have you ever listened to an artist gush about their work talking about things that couldn’t possibly have any relevance to your life? You probably rolled your eyes and questioned the sanity of this person. When a person’s words don’t align with their artwork and the art fails to connect with the audience you have a recipe for irrelevance. That is the real genius of Andy Warhol. His artwork could be appreciated by almost anyone. When questioned about the meaning of his work he could have said something like, “I feel that the pressures of society have polluted the beauty of the common object irrevocably and I want to represent the impact that the ordinary has had on the bourgeois blah blah blah.” Instead he let his artwork stand on its own merits and allowed the audience to decide for themselves what it is all about.” That’s why Andy’s most memorable quotes are contradicting thoughts like:

“I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”

“In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

“I am a deeply superficial person.”

“I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.”

“It’s not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.”

The exception to the self-contradicting element in his work is his least successful work done in the 1980s. His portraits of celebrities were not very well received and are criticized for being too commercial. The irony of course is that this was exactly why Andy chose this subject matter. It was the same reason he painted Coke cans and soup labels – celebrities are also products of American consumerism. Nevertheless, Warhol’s work in the 80s does feel less timeless than his earlier work and there is truth to the notion that Andy was existing more and more as a business man and less as a pure artist. Had he not died in 1987 it is interesting to speculate about whether Warhol’s work would have continued towards the “business” side of the spectrum or if he would have regained a second wind and taken his art in a brand new direction.

What if Andy Warhol were still alive?
The thought of Warhol living in 2010 is worth a couple final thoughts. I joked with a friend recently that had he been alive today, Andy Warhol would most certainly have been a judge on American Idol. This position would give him the ability to single handedly dish out fame to people neatly packaged in fifteen minute packages. What else would Andy be involved with if he were still alive?

Perhaps Andy’s blog would be regularly updated with long posts about his cats and other less than fascinating insights into his life. The posts are tediously detailed and never talk about art directly. It is unclear whether Andy writes these posts himself or if he has assistants that help with the writing.

Andy Warhol wouldn’t have a twitter feed, instead favoring a more visual micro-blogging format. Andy Warhol’s flickr stream would be massive with photos of everything he consumed. The photos would be neatly categorized into collections like shoes, candy, weapons, condiments, and toiletries. All his photos are uploaded at high resolution and are released under a creative commons license that requires only that his name be displayed prominently with the reproduction.

What else do you think Andy’s life would include if he lived today? A reality show? Product endorsements? I am curious what you think, so please leave a comment if you have more ideas.

(…part of my continued conversation with Jason Simanek, following up on his post at bohemianalps.com where he posted “Fine Art in Museums: Tigers in Zoos“)

I am lucky to have an assortment of art to cover the walls in my home. I don’t own a Pollock or a Warhol – most of it is work done by friends or myself. On the rare occasion when we have guests over, I think it is interesting to give people a tour of the house and see what artwork – if any – people respond to. If the home is the “natural habitat” for art, then perhaps the response people have to art in this context is more authentic than it would be in a museum. Here is what I have observed…

When confronted with art unexpectedly, most people will say something safe like, “Did you do that?” or “I love all your artwork.” They are very careful to avoid directly interacting with the art on my walls. The exception is photography, especially photos of our family which aren’t art at all. These responses sounds like, “Look how young you guys were,” or “what kind of camera do you have?”

If “religion and politics” are the top two topics that people try to avoid talking about in polite conversation then art has to be a close third. I think art is intimidating to non-artists. That is the only way to explain the popularity of mass-produced reproductions and non-interactive visual junk. People are afraid of empty walls – but they are just as afraid of walls that make any kind of statement. Paint it beige and hang a Georgia O’Keefe print and nobody will ask any questions.

A few years ago I had an art show where I created prints of different faces of Jesus Christ that I scanned and enlarged from old Sunday School posters. (Thank you for coming to that show, Jason, by the way. It meant a lot to me to have you there.) Anyway, one of the more memorable pieces from that show was a 4 foot wide print of Jesus with a crown of thorns and a somber expression. Needless to say, it has made quite a statement hanging above our dinner table in the kitchen. The surprising thing is that this print hasn’t started any real conversation outside of Betsy persuading me to move it down to the basement. Perhaps, the subject matter is too intimidating. Frankly, I think it is kind of funny to sit under a 4 foot photo of Jesus’ face and pretend it isn’t there. That metaphor might be stronger than what I had in mind anyway.

Sometimes “art” feels irrelevant in the same way that I struggle with organized religion. People just prefer to ignore it. I think that is sad, because both art and Christianity have the power to rise above the mediocrity of everything else. It is much easier to ignore the meaningful things in life and embrace the “safe” stuff. As a result the kitsch rises to the top and things with substance get attacked – or worse yet ignored – because these things are uncomfortable. The people who create and have passion for them seem absurd because they have the guts to be different. People don’t have time to wrestle with deep thoughts when there are simpler ways to entertain themselves. Why would anyone want to stifle an endless stream of gratification by confronting things that aren’t easy to understand or appreciate?

With that I will toss it back to Jason’s blog. This one ended on a dark note, so next time I will try to focus more on the positive, I promise…

I am not sure if I am just nostalgic for design conversations like in the good-old days, or if I am looking for an excuse to reconnect with old friends, but I have been corresponding by email with people that have influenced me significantly over the years, particularly in regard to my creative development. One of those friends is Jason Simanek, a talented designer/artist/thinker that I went to college with at Concordia University. I have fond memories of sharing a studio with Jason and the many conversations where we pushed each other in hopes of understanding what art was and what it meant to be an artist. I can’t believe that was almost a decade ago and I am still wrestling with the same ideas. I wasn’t surprised that an email to Jason sparked some interesting ideas. We decided that it would be fun to make our conversation public and experiment with a blog-to-blog conversation. The first fruits of this experiment can be seen on Jason’s blog at bohemianalps.com. Here are links to the first two posts:

In Search of a Truly Creative Occupation

Fine Art in Museums: Tigers in Zoos

I hope you enjoy our thoughts, and watch for me to post the next chapter in the conversation soon…

Last week I quietly released my second chess plugin for WordPress and I wanted to make a quick post to tell you a little about it. You may remember I tested out a plugin a while back that allowed you to display chess games in your WordPress posts. While that plugin worked okay, I wasn’t impressed and was looking for a way to customize the chess board interface. Unfortunately there wasn’t a WordPress plugin like that available so I decided to make one myself.

I found a great open source javascript called JSPgnViewer that give me a very functional PGN game viewer to build on. For those of you unfamiliar with “PGN,” that is the standard format (notation) that chess games get saved as. It is basically just text that shows the moves of a game. With the heavy lifting of creating a PGN viewer already finished, I was able to focus on building the customizable skins for the chess pieces and boards. Another feature that I am pretty happy with is the ability to add your games through a WordPress quicktag. All you have to do is click on this button in the HTML side of your WordPress editor and paste in your code. More information about the chess game viewer plugin is available here.

I will wrap this up with a quick demonstration of the plugin in action. Here a few of the games I have enjoyed recently:

In the game above I was down a two major pieces and preparing for a loss until the water parted and I ended with a nice combination.

I almost took a draw in the game above at move 27, but then I saw a way to get my second knight involved to force checkmate. Move 30 puts my knight in harms way as a cocky way to finish the game. I am a jerk that way.

Sometimes your opponent just doesn’t want to win and they let you checkmate them with just a single knight.

Above is a terrible move at 27! Luckly, I still had a little life left. I love this ending.

I thought you might be entertained by the following exchange I had with a company called CodeWeavers. They produce a product called Crossover which lets you run some Windows apps on a Mac. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Crossover for Mac sucks, but I wouldn’t put it in the same category as other non-free applications that I whole-heartedly endorse (Love you CSSEdit!). Anyway, Crossover let’s you run IE6 and IE7 on a Mac without desecrating your machine by installing Windows on it. And that is what I occasionally used it for. The conversation below picks up after, to my surprise, they were going to charge me for a minor update to my copy of Crossover. Let the fireworks begin…

CodeWeavers,

I was disappointed to learn that I will be charged for an upgrade from version 8.01 to 8.03 of crossover. If this had been a major new release, I could understand charging for an upgrade, but as far as I can tell the latest update is addressing compatibility and stability issues, not introducing new features. Charging for extending a license just to get minor updates is a bad business model. Before I become a very vocal and visible anti-crossover customer, I thought I would give you a chance to remedy the situation. Thanks in advance for giving me access to your product upgrade.

Adrian Hanft

Adrian,

Interesting e-mail. Its a bit early for threats, isn’t it? Before you chastise our business model, I’d ask if you know our business model? Here’s the deal. When you buy CrossOver, you are really purchasing support. With Pro and Games, you get 12 months of support. With Standard, you get six months of support. Support includes all software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. When your time runs out, you have the option (YOUR OPTION) to renew your support. We don’t charge for any one particular update. We don’t charge for any one particular upgrade. We don’t charge for creating a help desk ticket. We package all of that into your support that expires on a specified date. When your support expires, you need to renew support regardless if the next update is major or minor. That’s our business model, and our customer tend to appreciate the way we do business.

So let me review your situation and clarify a couple of points…

1.) YOU NEVER PAID FOR CROSSOVER. You got a free subscription to CrossOver during our Lame Duck Challenge. You took advantage of our promotion, and you received one year of support. You upgraded your software accordingly from 7.2 to 8.0 so that you would have the ability to run on Snow Leopard. So to clarify, you haven’t paid for anything to date and gotten 15 months of joy from the software. And we fulfilled all our obligations as stated in this free promotion.

2.) HOW BAD OF BUSINESS CAN IT BE TO GIVE AWAY YOUR SOFTWARE? If you do decide to be very vocal and visible anti-CrossOver, I’d ask that you at least tell people that you got the software for free. That you received two minor updates and one major upgrade over the course of 15 months. Then, you threatened the company that gave you the free software and free support with bad PR when you were told it was time to pay for future support. After all, fair is fair.

3.) YOU KNEW THIS DAY WAS COMING. Everyone that took part in the Lame Duck Challenge received e-mail (most would say too much e-mail) with notices, special pricing, deal codes in regards to renewing their support. At some point (well before you tussle with Jack), you were notified that your support had expired or was about to expire. The timing of your support expiring had nothing to do with a minor upgrade to 8.0.3 and was going to happen at some point. It just so happens that your support expired on November 9, 2009.

4.) YOU NEED TO RENEW YOUR SUPPORT. The only way for you to acquire 8.0.3 (and the major 9.0 release) is to renew your support. Threatening me with being very vocal and visibly anti-CrossOver will do you no good. Actually, I find your comments to be quite incredulous considering you received the software and support for free (even more so when I go out to your website and see how you interact with your customers). Being that you have an illness that prevents you from being happy unless you are creating something, I hope that you can appreciate that for my developers to keep their hands busy and create new updates to our software they need to get paid. This is how our software improves which hopefully creates a better experience for our customers.

5.) STILL A CHANCE TO SAVE MONEY. If you wish to renew your support of CrossOver and support our business model, I’d ask you to use SPECIAL DEAL CODE: DEADDUCK this will save you 50 percent on your purchase of CrossOver Mac. That’s roughly the cost (actually a few pennies less) then what we ask people to pay to renew their annual support. For $35.00 (USD) per year or less then $3.00 (USD) per month or less the $.75 (USD) per week, you can continue to receive our software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. And with CrossOver 9.0 scheduled to be released by March 1, 2010, you will receive one of the better software upgrades as part of this support (no additional costs to upgrade to a major release). Just enter the SPECIAL DEAL CODE in the Special Deal Box in the cart screen (has to be the cart screen) of the order process. You’ll see the discount applied before you complete your transaction.

That’s the best deal that I can provide to you. If you don’t like the deal or feel that we’re still being unreasonable, I guess I’ll read about it on your many blogs (I’d just ask for you to spell my name right… its R-A-M-E-Y (pronounced RAY-me, not RAM-ee). Thank you again for your e-mail and interesting comments. My very best regards to you (and your father and son both named Adrian).

James B. Ramey
Vice President, Sales
CodeWeavers
[edit: contact info removed]

Dear Mr. Ramee,

Thanks for the email and personal attention. My email wasn’t meant as a threat as much as an attempt to show you the mistake you were making. You may not be aware that happy customers spread the word about great products. Disappointed customers complain and promote alternatives. That’s why most companies actually care about customer satisfaction. Word of mouth has the power to sell (or slow the sale of) products.

When I first emailed you I was on the fence about CrossOver and looking for a reason to get behind it. That’s why I tried your software in the first place. And yes, I tried it for free thanks to your promotion. (Actually, a friend referred me to you because he was a impressed with the concept of CrossOver – an example of word of mouth marketing in action!) Had it not been free I wouldn’t have tried it at all. So since it was free, I tried your software. And honestly, it is okay. I use it occasionally when I need to test a website on IE and I don’t have access to a PC. If you guys work out the kinks I would probably pay for the next major release. If you can get IE8 to run I definitely will. However, I will NEVER pay for support. Most people, like me, expect software to work – without needing technical assistance. Call me crazy.

The really funny thing about your business model is that it is almost the opposite of the traditional “free trial” concept. Instead of offering an enticing sample for free that persuades potential customers to part with their money, you guys are just giving your goods away and charging people for support – banking on what I assume is your inside knowledge that most people won’t be able to get CrossOver working. Why would a company base their pricing on support as their main product? Could it be that the software is so buggy that there is more money in helping people get it working? That is the only logical conclusion I can come to.

You can run your business however you would like, but here is some free advice. I owe you after all, for the 15 months of support that I didn’t use…

1. Don’t pull the plug on legitimate customers and hold them hostage with something as minor as basic performance upgrade.

2. Dont’ charge for customer service. That’s really what your support package is (and your thorough review of my billing records will show that I used exactly zero of it!) If you are losing money because you are spending too much time helping your customers, then take the product offline and put it in beta.

3. Sell software. Your products are your most valuable product, so sell it! If people need support, sell that separately.

4. Make it easy to upgrade. The majority of your users are Mac users after all, and they are used to user-friendly software experiences.

5. And most importantly… Oops, your subscription just expired. If you would like more free advice you will have to pay me for it.

Sincerely,
Adrian3

P.S. You probably didn’t spend enough time on my website to realize that I am not selling anything there. I contribute freely to several open source projects. I alone handle all support issues for Font Burner, a free service that asks nothing in return of my users. I actually feel guilty when I am unable to serve people as well as I should – even though I owe them nothing. I would never insult my users with the type of email you sent me.

Adrian,

Sorry to lose you as a customer. Best wishes to you in all your endeavors. Thanks for the advice. My best regards.

James B. Ramey

My love of chess and WordPress has collided over the last couple weeks and the result has been a breakthrough in geeky output. Apologies in advance! Anyway, I was surprised that there are only a few chess plugins for WordPress and one thing led to another and you know how it goes…

The first product I am proud to announce is a WordPress plugin called “Daily Chess Puzzle Widget.” The plugin is a simple way to add chess puzzles to the sidebar of any WordPress powered website. The only prerequisite is that the theme you are using needs to be “widgetized.” The official home of my plugin will reside at adrian3.com/projects/wordpress-plugins/daily-chess-puzzle-widget/

The Daily Chess Puzzle widget pulls its puzzles from shredderchess.com, a website that offers the puzzles for free. Each day they deliver an easy, medium, and hard puzzle. My plugin gives you a dropdown menu where you can choose the size of puzzle you want shown.

While this chess plugin is a relatively simple project it did teach me some valuable lessons that I am planning to build on in future releases. For example, this is the first “widget” I have created and that will be a valuable tool to have in my arsenal going forward.

The next chess plugin I am working on involves a chess game viewer that allows you to post a games into your blog post for people to replay. It will allow you to customize the style, color, size, and features of the chessboard. I am pretty happy with it so far and plan on releasing it in the next week or two so stay tuned.

Not sure how long I will stay in the chess plugin phase, but it has been fun so far!

[Update: After not being overly impressed with the available chess WordPress plugins available, I decided to create my own. If you are looking for a way to view chess games in WordPress, check out my Chess Game Viewer Control Panel which allows you to customize the board and pieces that you show in your posts!]

I have been playing chess online a bit more lately and have been looking for ways to incorporate chess into my blog a bit more. I don’t know what form that will take, but one of the things I have been experimenting with is a WordPress plugin called “Chess by Blog.” This WordPress Plugin allows you to paste a chess game in PGN format into your web posts. For example, the example below shows a game I played last week.

Here is my initial results from trying to use the Chess By Blog WordPress plugin. The plugin seems to work after a little bit of trial and error. For example, I had to manually surround my PGN code with the div class of “CBB-board” to get the game to show up. Perhaps I am missing something. In the HTML tab there is a “Chess By Blog” option that I couldn’t get working, either. I am in Safari right now so maybe I should try it in Firefox. It looks like you can create custom styles and themes for your board, which might be fun to play with. I will add to this post more as I figure out more features/problems with the plugin.

Just so I can leave you with a sample chess game, here is an example using my own Chess WordPress plugin (not Chess by Blog). Enjoy…

This was a fun game. I started out aggressive, but played sloppy leaving myself down several pawns and then a knight. Luckily I was bailed out in the end because my opponent didn’t see the checkmate coming. I plugged the game into the computer at move 37 and was surprised the computer gave me a draw despite being down so much material. I find that some of the most enjoyable games are the one’s where victory is snatched from the clutches of defeat. Of course it is never fun to be the person on the other side of the board when this happens.

There are a few bands that I am fanatical about. A quick look at my last.fm charts shows these bands to be Iron & Wine, Eels, Simon & Garfunkel, The Shins, and Ben Folds. When it comes to these musicians I will buy every track they put out, I will see them in concert, I will insist that friends listen to them, I will track down rare bootlegs, and I anxiously await their future releases. This last part, waiting for new releases, is the hard part.

For example, the latest Shins album isn’t a Shins album at all. It is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and James Mercer, the Shins frontman. They are going by the name, Broken Bells. I have known for months about the album, and waiting for it to come out in March is excruciating. Like most music, the Broken Bells album was leaked months before its release date and can be found on the Pirate Bay and other less than legal places. It is virtually impossible for a true fan to resist the urge to grab this music as soon as it becomes available. A true fan sincerely wants to give money to their favorite bands and the guilt that accompanies stealing music is extra heavy in this case.

I can only assume that the delay in the release of an album has to do with the music label wanting to reduce CDs on the same release date as digital files. The printing, packaging, and production of the CDs must delay the release.

I can tell you that the Broken Bells album is going to be worth the purchase. Here is a video of the first single:

If you can wait until March 9th, you can pre-order the Broken Bells album  from Amazon. I plan on buying it on Vinyl since I don’t really listen to CDs.