If you are poised to make an online purchase, stay your hand a moment and check out this site. RetailMeNot is a collation of voucher codes for 50,000 plus online retailers, many volunteered by users of those services, others by the retailer themselves. Many of the vouchers don't work, but quite a few do, and deliver substantial discounts.  Users rate the effectiveness of each code. Australian retailers are also covered in the mix. As they say in the classics, why pay full price?

Maps abound on the Internet, but most of them are protected by copyright. If you are looking for a free, accurate maps of most parts of the world, the following two sources are worth checking out. The CIA (!) offer a broad series of maps in jpeg and PDF format of both regions and the globe. The project is associated with the CIA World Fact Book and does not seem to be part of a plot to control our minds (except by befuddling them with endless statistics). Still in North America, NASA offers the visualised data from a remarkable radar mission it flew on the Space Shuttle in 2000. The mission mapped the surface relief of the world with unprecedented accuracy, and NASA has set up a gallery of images of both individual continents and the world as a whole, in 3-D and 2-D projections. The colours are related to altitude and detail is stunning.

Cloud-based services are able to update and refine their offerings as frequently as they like -- no waiting for their user base to download software updates. However, sometimes users may not be aware of new features and therefore do not get full use from the particular service. Google's Apps suite (Gmail, Docs, Contacts, Calendar, etc) is subject to constant tweaking and extension. Users can keep abreast of changes by visiting the Google Blog, or more efficiently, signing up for an emailed update of posts relating to Apps updates.

Designers spend an alarming amount of time scrolling through lists of typefaces on their computers, or paging through font books.  Typeface previews within layout packages tend to be tiny and not particularly helpful. MyFontBook is a browser-based application that reads all of the typefaces installed on your machine, then displays the results  in a very easy to view grid. Click on a particular typeface, and sample line of text also displays at the bottom of the screen. The site allows registered users to add their own tags to any/all of the typefaces, which for those willing to put in the time, could become a powerful time-saver when trying to narrow down font candidates. Downsides include a significant wait when re-loading your typeface selection upon relaunching your browser.

Tired of plain-Jane text based emails? Feeling limited by silly decorative themes and plagues of emoticons? A program called Wrapmail (available for GoogleApps customers) allows users to 'wrap' their emails in advertising and interactive graphics. As the programmers point out, emails are major channel of communication for most companies, and it makes sense to leverage that channel. The emphasis is on informing and interacting with clients, rather than adding pointless graphic bling.

Our client came to us with a cover photograph, and we added title type in keeping with the image and content -- a 'distressed' stencil-style typeface emulating the traditional way of marking such crates. The result was strong and simple.

Blame Bill Gates for the dominance of Times New Roman. Designed in the 1930s and intended for use in newspapers, TNR was the default serif typeface installed on all Windows operating systems. Although Microsoft later tried to make amends by commissioning vastly superior PC and web-friendly typefaces such as Georgia, Verdana and Trebuchet, the damage was done. Times (and Arial) became everyone's idea of what a typeface should look like, and were often selected for jobs for which they were completely unsuited. Along with the hideous Comic Sans, they helped create a world of clunky and unattractive documents and websites. Here's a list of ten reliable, elegant and functional text typefaces worth considering: Garamond, Adobe Caslon, Arno Pro, Cheltenham, Dante, Electra, Fairfield, Adobe Jenson, Minion Pro and Warnock Pro. Each of these typefaces has a subtly different form and is particularly appropriate for certain kinds of content, different eras and design sensibilities. Arno Pro and Minion Pro have a robust unadorned style that makes them ideal for large blocks of information at smaller sizes. Fairfield is rather more delicate and rarified, and slightly more difficult to read. New Baskerville has a more classical, pre-nineteenth century feel, along with Caslon. Warnock includes both classical and modern typefaces elements: a true transitional typeface. An interesting discussion on the subject of book typefaces can be found here.

Millions of users take advantage of Google's free web-based apps: documents, calendar, tasks, gmail and more. Many are not aware that for a smallish fee, those apps can be operated under a custom domain name, along with substantial additional storage space. A business can have secure email running under their own domain name, a reasonably capable suite of office applications plus a calendar/tasks app -- all of which can be accessed in exactly the same form from any web-connected device, anywhere in the world. All of which must be causing something akin to terror among those who traditionally overcharge the public for less flexible services (Microsoft, anyone?). Yet another instance of the paradigm changing business model Google is successfully pursuing.