Starting a business can be trying at times, sometimes a little humor or advice can help us get through those tough times. This list will give you a little of both!
Read more:
Business Building with Twitter, Who Should You Be Following?
As the social-networking e-mail client Postbox approaches its announced general release date at the beginning of September, the cross-platform program updates with what looks to be more a “tidying-up” release. Available for Windows and Mac, Postbox 1.0 beta 15 introduces a new version of the Thunderbird calendar plug-in Lightning, improved contact searching, and other performance tweaks–but not much else.
Installing Postbox may require a reboot.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Derived from Mozilla Thunderbird, Postbox beta 15 will also let you drag and drop e-mails from one account to another and introduces a crash reporter that had been strangely missing until now. Search queries that return no results will now suggest alternative search terms, and more plug-ins have been ported over from Thunderbird, including ThunderBrowse, Virtual Identities, and support for Mozilla-client profile rescuer MozBackup. Frustratingly, Postbox now requires a reboot to work–at least, it did on upgrading my installation from beta 14.
The full changelog can be read here.
Originally posted at The Download Blog
View original post here:
New Postbox tidies up for final release
Postbox’s latest update builds on the add-on functionality that was introduced in the previous beta, supporting Thunderbird’s calendar plug-in Lightning, among others, and also comes with an announcement that the days of Postbox-for-free are coming to a end.
Postbox beta 14 for Windows and Mac has its own build of Lightning, which should allow users to communicate with both local and networked calendars. While Lightning works perfectly for me in Thunderbird, it wasn’t able to talk to CNET’s Microsoft Exchange server in Postbox. The Provider for Google Calendar plug-in, which gives users bi-directional Google Calendar access, works fine in Postbox–albeit with a slight hiccup when first loading the calendar.
Postbox gets it's own version of Lightning in beta 14, but it's still a bit buggy.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Postbox now natively supports Gmail-style conversation threading and e-mail message counts. So if you’ve got a collapsed thread, where you can only see one message, there will now be a number next to it telling you how many unread messages are in the thread. Unfortunately, when I clicked on the first message, even if it had already been marked as read, it automatically marked all the unread messages in the thread as read, too.
There’s a new Contacts sidebar, although the old Address Book is still available by hitting CTRL+2 or going through the Tools menu. The new Web services option, also available from the Tools menu or the Advanced Settings tab under Options, gives you more granular control over which Web services you’re logged into through Postbox. This is useful if Postbox isn’t your main Twitter manager, so you can keep your API count from exploding and preventing tweet updates.
Postbox Inc. also announced that they’re expecting to take the program to a premium-only status in early September, when the program graduates from beta development. A single-user license will cost $39.95, with a family pack option consisting of licenses for five people living at the same address costing an additional $19.95. A lifetime upgrades option can be bought for another $24.95. These prices are currently discounted for a beta sale good until August 31, at $29.95, $9.95, and $19.95 respectively.
Postbox isn’t the only Mozilla-based software to charge for downloading, but the list of programs that do isn’t exactly long. Rafael Ebron, spokesman for Mozilla Messaging, pointed out that some of them include TuneUpTwitFactory.
The full list of Postbox extensions is available here, and release notes for Postbox beta 14 are available here.
Originally posted at The Download Blog
Here is the original:
Postbox gets calendaring, and pricing
Thunderbird 3 beta 3 is now available to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. The beta introduces some significant improvements to the open-source desktop client, from performance to interface.
The new beta is built on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.9.1.1 platform, keeping it up to date with the latest changes that affect Firefox. Mozilla also claims that there are more than 500 changes in this version, and hints at more alterations to come by stating in a press release that many of them are ”laying the groundwork for future changes”. On his blog, Chief Technical Officer of Mozilla Messaging Dan Mosedale said that many of the improvements will help support the new global database search engine. Based on these comments, more betas of Thunderbird 3 are expected.
The interface and behavioral changes in this beta are significant and should be easy to spot for longtime ‘bird-watchers. The biggest is that Thunderbird now supports e-mail tabs. If you’ve checked out the highly unstable Shredder version of Thunderbird, or Postbox, a competitor that’s based on Thunderbird’s own open-source code, you’ve known that this feature has been due for a while.
Hitting Enter or double-clicking a message will now open it in a new tab and make it your focus. Middle-click an e-mail to open it in a new tab but retain your focus on the current tab–usually the folder pane. You can switch tabs via the hot key combo CTRL+Tab, and the new tab menu button on the right side of the tab bar will help you manage your tabs.
Another new feature is the message summary view, which you can see when you select multiple messages at once. They’ll open in the message preview pane. Changes to folders include a Smart Folders mode, which gives users the ability to combine inboxes from multiple accounts, and the new ability to customize column headings on a per-folder basis.
Gmail integration has existed in Thunderbird for a while, but improvements to the feature in this beta include better recognition and integration of Gmail’s special folders. These include Sent and Trash, and non-English versions of Gmail. All Mail defaults in Thunderbird to the Archives folder.
The account setup wizard has been overhauled. Reachable under File, then New, Mail, and Account (Quick Setup), Thunderbird now looks to mozillamessaging.com to look for additional information on how to configure the account. Mosedale stressed in his blog that only the domain name from your e-mail address gets sent to Mozilla’s servers, and that the entire process falls under the Mozilla’s privacy policy. Nevertheless, it’s a move that’s likely to cause some concern among privacy advocates.
The compact header mode has been deleted, which is sure to annoy those who like using Thunderbird on smaller-form computers like netbooks. Mosedale cited bandwidth issues as well an ongoing need to improve the design and configurability of the feature.
In my own experiences with Thunderbird 3 beta 3 for half a day, users with large inboxes should be careful to note that Thunderbird now adds all your messages to its search archives. This can hamper performance until it’s completed. Also note that the calendar extension Lightning isn’t compatible with beta 3 unless you’re using the nightly build.
Originally posted at The Download Blog
Excerpted from:
Thunderbird 3’s latest beta out now
Google Calendar has quickly become one of my favorite online tools. I can schedule meetings quickly and it integrates seamlessly into my workflow. It’s a great service.
But I want more from it.
That’s why I’ve been sifting through Mozilla’s Firefox extension database trying to find some add-ons that take Google Calendar to the next level. Whether they enhance its usability or just improve its effectiveness, there are a handful of extensions that work quite well.
Better GCal After I installed Better GCal, I was extremely impressed by what it offered. From a new skin to little extras like week numbers and collapsible headers, it makes Google Calendar just a little better. The extension not only made me more organized, but the calendar became far more readable.
Better GCal has a great skin to try out.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
GCal Popup GCal Popup is a really neat idea. Instead of forcing you to open a new tab to add an event to your Google Calendar, you’ll only need to open the extension and it will display your Google Calendar over your current Web page. Input the event you want to add to your calendar and once you’re done, you can close the extension and go back to work.
GCal Popup is designed to make it convenient to add events to your Calendar and it succeeds. But beware that it’s an “experimental” extension, so it might cause some instability issues. That said, I haven’t experienced any such problems.
GCal Popup makes it easy to add events to your calendar.
(Credit: GCal Popup)
GoogCal GoogCal is an extremely simple extension. It doesn’t provide all the extras like Better GCal. But it makes it much easier to access Google Calendar by placing an icon next to your address bar in Firefox. When you click on it, it opens your Google Calendar in the tab you’re on. GoogCal easily beats opening a new tab, opening your Google Calendar, and interacting with it after that’s done. Speed matters in the world of calendaring and GoogCal delivers it.
GoogCal sits to the right of your address bar.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Google Calendar Notifier Google Calendar Notifier is an extremely simple tool. Once it’s installed, it sits in the status bar. After you start adding calendars to the extension, it will notify you when you have an upcoming event. You can set how often the app will notify you, when it should pop up in your browser, and more. If you want, you can also use the extension to see which events are coming up for the rest of the day. It’s an extremely simple extension, but it makes referring to events quite easy.
Google Calendar Notifer has several customization options.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
ScheduleOnce Google Calendar Add-on ScheduleOnce is one of the most powerful extensions in this roundup. The extension analyzes your Google Calendar to see when you’re available. When colleagues who also use the extension schedule a meeting with you, it will find a meeting time that will work for both parties. Once complete, it will send you both a message asking if that time works. If so, it’s added to the Calendar as a scheduled event. It’s a neat idea. And it’s worth checking out.
ScheduleOnce helps you plan meetings.
(Credit: ScheduleOnce)
1. Better GCal: With so many great features, Better GCal easily bests the competition.
2. ScheduleOnce Google Calendar Add-on: It takes the process of scheduling meetings out of your hands.
3. Google Calendar Notifier Being notified about a meeting makes missing those meetings more difficult.
Read the original here:
Extend Google Calendar with these Firefox add-ons
