Re: any free short intro LiveType tutorials on the web?

Yes there is a good short tutorial ovr at live type central. They just relaunched their web site. The url for the tutorials is:
http://www.livetypecentral.com/cgi-bin/livetypecentral.cgi/tutorials.html

Hope this helps. The best way to learn is to play with live type but having a visual start to your learning never hurts.