My Own Biggest Fan

Linotype has made their formerly free software, the wonderful FontExplorer X, unfree. I have no problem with people asking for money for software, I have no problem with the trial version model, and I even have no problem with most companies changing something from free to pay. When FontExplorer X was first released, they essentially said “Look at what we did, we made something great, and we did it for FREEEEEE! Aren’t we the greatest?” and we all replied “Yes you are!” It was marvelous. They even supplied plugins to work with current versions of Adobe Creative Suite so that it could make our font experience as painless as possible.

Now, though, they’ve switched to a pay model, just at the time most places are upgrading to CS4. They’ve cancelled their support for the old version (although you can still get it from the website, which is a good thing) I know I’m not locked in, and I know they don’t owe me anything, but the whole business seems shady and it makes me angry. I don’t often feel a sense of entitlement for things that are free, but when the original “selling” point of the software was that it’s free, it makes it seem like we were using a “trial” version without knowing it.

I wrote a letter to the FontExplorer X people, and submitted it to their Support page.

My problem is that you create a piece of software which you shout about how great it is (rightfully), give it away for free, and then as soon as people are dependent on it, halt support for it. Now that we have to upgrade to CS4, and you are not making plugins for the free version to interact with it, you expect us to pay for it.

Shove it, you “bait and switch” jerks.

Incendiary? Yeah. A little aggressive? Totally. Somewhat warranted? You might not think so, I believe it is.

Because @superblue made a list, here’s my top 5 most played songs, according to iTunes, too.

5. Get Paid (Robots in Disguise Remix) — Rhythm King & Her Friends

4. Punks — Anthony Rother

3. Wolf Like Me — TV on the Radio

2. Wildcat — Ratatat

1. Driver’s Seat — Sniff ‘N’ the Tears

Recently I’ve fallen in love with the website Grooveshark. Essentially it’s the worlds biggest shared iTunes library. If you just go to the website you can pretty much listen to any song you might want. If you make an account, you can create playlists and mark songs as ♥ed.

I asked people on Twitter,

“If you had to make me listen to one song, what would it be? I’m making a #grooveshark playlist.”

I was pretty dogmatic about only letting one song per person in, I didn’t want any one person to influence it more than another. The resulting playlist which is, unfortunately, a little shorter than I’d hoped, actually turned out quite listenable.

I’m now posting iPhone pictures on my Tumblr account. I’ve started using Photo FX and Cool FX by the amazing Tiffen to edit my on-the-go photos; and I’ve been liking the results. If you want to stay updated, follow my Tumblr, Twitter, or check the Tumblr sidebar on the main page.