Find my Font, a very useful desktop font identifier application, is giving away 5 Pro licenses ($69/each) to WRD readers.

Details on joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post and here is what this tool offers:

What is Find my Font?

We sometimes see a beautiful logo and wonder which font is used to create it. Guessing and try-catches is the popular method for reaching to a result but it takes time and usually hard.

Find my Font is a desktop application (with Windows and Mac OS X versions) that can identify a font used in images and helps browsing your font library.

It works by selecting the letters in the image and asks us to type these letters and runs a quick scan within the fonts in our system (any number of font folders can be defined) to find the ones with the closest match.

The great thing is that the application doesn't only return a single result but also lists and orders the fonts according to their similarity score which is handy for finding alternatives.

Find my Font has an easy-to-use toolbox for taking screenshots, rotating images or selecting letters to make sure that the image to be analyzed is ready for a scan.

As mentioned previously, the application is also a font browser where you can type a text and quickly see how it looks. Also, the scan works during browsing fonts so that the alternatives to the system fonts (or their duplicates) can be instantly catched.

How to join the giveaway?

Find my Font is giving away 5 * Pro licenses and it is enough to comment for joining this giveaway -and let us know you favorite font in the comments which can help other commenters meet new lovely fonts – totally optional : )-.

Winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 13 Dec 2011 (a week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2602 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all.

And, the winners

The winners are selected and here they are:

• Aldo (comment #454823)
• Josh D. (comment #457922)
• NRL (comment #454441)
• Robert Barcus (comment #454262)
• Webster (comment #455313)

Congratulations..

GAget is a Mac OS X widget for anyone willing to see the important Google Analytics stats quickly and frequently.

It displays the number of visits, new visitors and bounces with a chic interface.

The widget is not limited to a single site and it is easy to switch between profiles (also, multiple instances can be used).

Antialiaser is a free application that eases OpenType and TrueType font visualization and customization for using them inside Flex and AIR projects.

Using the application, it is possible to use any font, fine tune them and get the generated CSS.

Its interface shows the system + embedded fonts, standard + zoom view and has various options like activating transparent background, comparisons and snapshots.

Advanced and beginner Flex developers will probably both find the application useful for a better typography in their projects.

Antialiser comes with versions for for Windows and Mac OS X.

When it comes to the world of Mac, "free" is not a frequently used word as most of the softwares are paid.

For web designers and developers which require many applications (like an IDE, image editor, FTP and DB manager, etc.) for the job, they can sum up to a serious budget.

However, to the contrary, there are some free (even open source) and high quality Mac applications for web designers/developers which can easily create an alternative.

WRD brings you a huge list of (50+) these free Mac apps which can easily be as powerful as the paid apps you may be using. Just check them out and bookmark for using in the future (if not starting to use instantly):

Image And Graphic

Pencil

An open source application (works on Windows and Linux besides Mac OS X) that enables us to create hand-drawn animations (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor which works in all major platforms and offers the features of a high-quality vector drawing application.

With a slick interface, the software supports lots of advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and editing nodes or performing complex path operations can be simply handled.

Read the rest of this entry »

When creating a web application or a software, it is usually a good idea to search for resources, like snippets, plugins, etc., that can ease the job.

Cocoa Controls is a website which offers this functionality to iOS and Mac OS X developers by listing open source and custom UI components for these platforms.

There are already 150+ controls (like this awesome iCarousel) where new ones are added regularly. Also, you can submit new resources as well.

P.S. What would be greater is a categorization of the controls so they can be found much easier.

Hub List is an open source to-do list application that works on the desktop.

It has versions for Windows, Mac OS X + Linux and a mobile one that mostly targets the iOS platform.

The application supports creating folders>sub-folders and tasks>sub-tasks for an unlimited hierarchy.

Hub List is currently in beta status and working on impressive features like auto-synchronize data to any private cloud, collaboration and importing-exporting data.

Unify is a software, powered by Deutsche Telekom, which provides a common API developing cross-platform applications that will look and feel like native ones.

It makes use of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and other resources like qooxdoo, PhoneGap, Adobe AIR and Sass.

The code can be re-used between platforms and supported ones are iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows and Mac OS.

Unify also eliminates the traditional limitations of the web browser and can detect the current geo location, access the file system, etc.

Bowline is an open source framework (not a platform like Adobe AIR or Titanium) for creating desktop applications with Ruby, HTML and JavaScript.

It respects MVC, views can be designed in HTML5/CSS3 and then you can bind them to your Ruby models.

There's no request/response cycle. Any changes in models automatically get reflected in the view.

Applications built with Bowline currently works in Mac OS X + Linux and Windows support is on the way.

BrowserLab, a web-based service by Adobe, enables you to test websites on multiple browsers and OSs.

It is possible to create a custom browser set where the screenshots will be created only for those browsers (also helps speeding up the results).

Screenshots can be previewed in 2-up or onion-skin views which makes comparing multiple versions easier and x/y rulers can be used for sensitive measurements..

The service currently supports different Firefox, Safari and IE versions for Windows and Mac OS X. However, it is still in beta and new browsers are added within time.

BrowserLab is part of the Adobe CS Live and free for 1 year if you sign-up before April 30, 2011.

Sequel Pro is a free MySQL management tool for Mac OS X.

It offers full table management (including indexes), supports MySQL views, imports/exports from SQL/CSV files & compatible with MySQL 3/4/5 databases.

The application supports SSH tunnel connections besides standard local & remote connections for reaching databases behind firewalls.

It can connect to multiple databases at the same time, offers automatic syntax highlighting for your custom queries, supports ~30 different encoding options & much more.

P.S. The project is open source & you can check the source for improving it further.