Lose Your Mind Development
Newsletter #11 - October 2003

An update to our customers and friends on happenings at
Lose Your Mind Development
Font Management Software for Microsoft Windows

http://www.loseyourmind.com

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You are receiving this newsletter from us because you either purchased a copy of our software or have contacted us for information. If you wish to no longer receive this newsletter, please send an email to helpdesk@loseyourmind.com. Bryan will promptly remove your name and you won't hear from us again. Lose Your Mind Development has never and will never share our customer list with any other third party. Thank you.

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Table of Contents
1. Current Happenings & Change of Address
2. News Feeds Via RSS
3. Printer's Apprentice 7.56 Released
4. Printer's Apprentice - Upcoming Features
5. Newsletter Special - 20% Discount on Printer's Apprentice
6. Printer's Apprentice Resources
7. FontReview Resources
8. Font-Related Resources on Microsoft.com
9. Contact Information

1. Current Happenings & Change of Address
Welcome to the 11th edition of the Lose Your Mind Development newsletter!

If you have been to the web site lately, you probably have noticed that we have been busy at work with various projects.

One thing we are working on is improving the lines of communication between ourselves and our customers. If you are interested in our software, we are trying to make it easier for you to get more information about what we are up to.

To improve communication, we are working on a few fronts -

  1. Email - The primary way to get to us is through email to Bryan at helpdesk@loseyourmind.com. If you send an email to us, Bryan is working to get back to you within 24 hours. Considering the volume of mail we receive, this is not always possible.
  2. The Web Site - Bryan hopes to communicate "behind the scenes" information about Printer's Apprentice through the web site on a regular basis. This will most likely be published in a weblog of some form. Watch the web site for new about this.
  3. RSS Publication - We recently launched two news feeds on the Lose Your Mind Development web site. One feed is for general news, the other is for the Printer's Apprentice change log. RSS is a new publication format that allows you to read content from a wide variety of sources using a piece of software called a new aggregator. We are quite excited about the potential uses for RSS. More information about this topic can be found below.

If you have any other suggestions for how we can improve communication with our customers, please let us know. We are interested in hearing from you on this topic.

Lose Your Mind Development recently moved. As of October 1, 2003, our address is as follows:

Lose Your Mind Development
P.O. Box 184
Berwyn, PA 19312-0302

Keep reading below for information about our RSS feeds and the recent release of Printer's Apprentice 7.56.

Until next time....

Bryan & Suzanne Kinkel

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2. News Feeds Via RSS
In the early days, we used newsletters as the primary medium for keeping our customers informed about new products and upgrades. However, email newsletters are just not the effective tool that they used to be.

There are several reasons for this. But it comes down to the fact that the noise level in a personal email box is just too high. As a software author, my email address is readily available to anyone that wants it. This means the helpdesk@loseyourmind.com address is a magnet for junk mail of all sorts. Weeding through get rich quick offers, herbal Viagra ads and hundreds of sobig worm generated emails every morning makes it tough to get to the email that counts. Our various accounts had over 3,000 messages waiting for us after a week long vacation.

And I'm sure our customers deal with the same problems.

We feel it is important to let our customers know when we release a new version or have a bug fix that needs to get out there. So we are embracing a new publication standard as another way to receive information from us.

Depending on who you talk to, RSS can stand for a couple of different things. We like the "Really Simple Syndication" name. RSS allows us, a content publisher, to make our news feed available in a structured format. Sites often display a little orange XML logo to indicate RSS content. Software programs, called news aggregators, are used to read the news feeds. You can use a news aggregator and read stories from many different web sites without even starting your browser. It is a fantastic way to keep tabs on your favorite web sites.

How is Lose Your Mind Development going to use RSS? We are going to publish all of our news updates via RSS. We are also going to use it to maintain the change logs for Printer's Apprentice and our other products. (Currently this information is kept in a text file). If you subscribe to our Printer's Apprentice version information new feed, you will always know when there is a new release available to download.

The best resource on RSS has been put together by Chris Pirillo. His RSS Quickstart Guide is required reading. This article is part of a larger resource center for RSS information.

So how do you get started with the Lose Your Mind Development news feeds? The general idea is this:

  1. Download a news aggregator and install it. You can find a great list of choices here http://rss.lockergnome.com/resources. Some are free, some are shareware. We recommend FeedDemon.
     
  2. Add the Lose Your Mind Development feeds to your news aggregator. The URLs for our feeds are:
     
    General news: http://www.loseyourmind.com/rss.aspx
    Printer's Apprentice Change Log: http://www.loseyourmind.com/rss-pachanges.aspx
     
  3. That is it!

I think once you try receiving news from your favorite sites via RSS, you will be hooked. It is an effective, time saving alternative to browsing web sites one page at a time.

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3. Printer's Apprentice 7.56 Released
On October 6, 2003 we released Printer's Apprentice 7.56. This is a free upgrade for registered users.

Changes included in this version:

  • Added new tooltip balloon that provides additional information about a font file. The tooltip is activated when you hover the mouse over an item in the Installed Fonts list, Uninstalled Fonts list, or the font list below the Font Group listing.
  • Fixed a problem with the Font Information tab. If no font was currently selected, it was still displaying data. It is now cleared if no font is selected.
  • If no font is selected, Printer's Apprentice displays a small, yellow message that reads "No font is currently selected." On occasion, this message box would appear not centered on the screen. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed a problem with the message box at the end of uninstall operations. It now reports the number of fonts uninstalled, copied or moved with improved reliability. (Under some circumstances, it would report "0 fonts uninstalled.")
  • Updated our mailing address throughout the program and documentation.

You can upgrade by downloading and installing one of the following packages:

Full download, includes setup program -
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/prnapp75.zip

Executable file only, no setup program -
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/pa75exe.zip

Note that you will need to re-enter your registration code when installing the full or minimal packages. So have it handy.

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4. Printer's Apprentice - Upcoming Features
Even though we just released Printer's Apprentice 7.56, we are already working on new features. Here is are a couple of screen shots from the next version.

More information and details can be found on the web site.

Improved Font Information tab:
  Resizable Font Lists:

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5. Newsletter Special - 20% Discount On Printer's Apprentice
If you have not purchased a copy of Printer's Apprentice, we invite you to place an order TODAY and receive a 20% discount.

You can order Printer's Apprentice TODAY for US$ 20.00! Click a link below to take advantage of this offer.

Order Printer's Apprentice for 20% Off The Regular Price

Secure Order With Your VISA/MC/AMEX/Discover

Secure Order With Your PayPal Account

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6. Printer's Apprentice Resources
Printer's Apprentice is our full featured font manager for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 and XP. The current version is 7.56, released October 6, 2003.

More product information and a full list of features can be found at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/pa75.aspx

A complete list of recent changes can be found at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/pa75/changes.txt

To place an order for Printer's Apprentice please see
http://www.loseyourmind.com/order.aspx

Full download, includes setup program -
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/prnapp75.zip

Executable file only, no setup program -
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/pa75exe.zip

Note that you will need to re-enter your registration code when installing the full or minimal packages.

A Frequently Asked Questions file is located at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/pa75faq.aspx

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7. FontReview Resources
FontReview is a font viewing and printing application that integrates directly into the Windows Explorer interface. With FontReview installed, you can preview, print and install TrueType fonts from the right-click pop-up context menu. FontReview is for Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. The current version is 2.61.

More product information and a full list of features can be found at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/fr26.aspx

To place an order for FontReview please see
http://www.loseyourmind.com/order.aspx

A complete list of recent changes can be found at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/fr26/changes.txt

Full download, includes setup program -
http://www.loseyoumind.com/zipfiles/fonrev26.zip

A Frequently Asked Questions file is located at
http://www.loseyourmind.com/fr26faq.aspx

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8. Font-Related Resources on Microsoft.com

You might want to check out the following font related links from Microsoft.

Core fonts for the web
http://www.microsoft.com/typography

Microsoft's Core fonts table
http://www.microsoft.com/typography

Fonts supplied with Microsoft products
http://www.microsoft.com/typography

Fonts supplied with products from other vendors
http://www.microsoft.com/typography

Microsoft Typography (a great resource)
http://www.microsoft.com/typography

I hope this list of fonts and links helps you in your quest to trim down any font overload that might be present on your system. If you have any questions, drop me a note at helpdesk@loseyourmind.com.

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9. Contact Information
Address:   Lose Your Mind Development
P.O. Box 184
Berwyn, PA 19312-0184
web site:   http://www.loseyourmind.com
support:   helpdesk@loseyourmind.com
sales:   salesinfo@loseyourmind.com

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