Looks like someone has picked up Mozilla’s Thunderbird code and started adding to it.  This is a good thing as Mozilla is trying to pass off this application so they can focus solely on Firefox.

This is a quote from their site:

‘Apart from having e-mail, instant messaging and group calendaring, an ideal collaboration system should make ‘working together’ possible – like creating a proposal, launching a new product, developing software, managing group knowledge and publishing websites even while working from different continents. Spicebird - the collaboration suite developed by us, creates a platform to do precisely that. In addition, Spicebird makes customization easy and ensures that the software can be adapted to your business collaboration needs.’

Autoruns is a super lightweight application that allows you with a click of a button to enable or disable something from the Windows Bootup.  This is great for a new computer when you are trying to clean things up.  Unfortunately most of the things that slow my computer down are required to run by my company so not much I can do but I use this application all the time on other peoples computer when they are complaining about poor performance.

My favorite launcher application Launchy has come out with a new version.  This thing is a huge time saver and I don’t even use my Start menu any more because of it.  The new version has some much needed features.  My favorite feature is that you can use it as a calculator just by entering 1+1 and it works great and faster then launching calc.  Some of the new features include:

• A new look! New icons and skin thanks to Tyler Sticka
• Much better skinning support
• Options merged into a single, tabbed dialog
• Skin selection now shows previews
• Plugins much more configurable
• Launchy can hide when it loses focus
• Fade in/out effects
• Customizable transparency
• Optional shallow scan of directories
• Unicode support for Firefox bookmarks
• Vista support
• Can Run on Pen Drive

I almost forgot probably my most used application!  This one is a must have it allows you to batch add pictures and shrink them down in resolution.  That way you are not uploading 1mb-12mb files to your site or trying to email large files.  It also will convert image file types to just about any type.  It will let you put watermark images into your pictures easily, you can also rename your files in a snap.  This program has been super handy of the years.  It also comes in a nice portable version so you can take it with you on your pen drive!

Just in case I have attached the portable version if they decide to go to a paid model only like they did with the screen capture.

I love when software venders are smart enough to let their old versions go out for free.  This program is a pretty popular one for capturing images of your screen.  It allows you to do many options such as selecting a certain window, capture a scrolling page, draw a box.  Personally I like using FastStone’s Screen Capture which I posted in an older entry with the version that is still free as they seem to have jumped to a paid only model.  These applications are great if you take a lot of screen shots to send off to your admin team for help, or if you are trying to explain something to your parents and you are pulling your hair out!

So with having some extra time this weekend I looked a little deeper into Thunderbird and some of the new features that you can add to it.  One nice new thing is that you can install a plugin called Lightning which will add an Outlook type calendar to your Thunderbird install.  After installing Lightning as an add-on you can then download a Google Calendar plugin.  This plugin will allow you to select Google as an external calendar.  From there you re-launch Thunderbird and go to the calendar menu and add an external calendar.  Tell it you want to add it from your network then add the private calendar address you can get out of Google’s calendar settings.  This is a nice feature and brings Google calendar to Thunderbird and is always up to date.  Plus with Plaxo now syncing my work calendar and my personal calendars it is a very powerful addition to Thunderbird.  My only complaint is it is a bit slow.

Filezilla has been around for a long time and probably the application I use the most for my daily FTP needs.  It is super easy, light, portable and runs on any platform.  It also comes with a server part so that you can run your own FTP server super easily.

WinSCP is a new application that I have been using and comes with a PortableApps version as well.  The only difference is that WinSCP supports SCP file transfers while Filezilla does not.  So typically I use Filezilla unless I need SCP.  And oddly enough WinSCP is Windows only but will run under Wine in Linux.

As I am trying to write down all the applications I use on a daily basis I almost forgot the most important one.  I use Notepad++ probably every day and it is great for quick easy changes to just about any type of file.  I use it a lot to make quick changes to php files and stuff like when I don’t want to wait like 10 mins for this awesome dell laptop to boot up Dreamweaver.  It is a great time saver and super light and easy to use.  There is also a PortableApps version that is helpful to carry around on your pen drive.

Thunderbird has a default setting to hide remote images for emails that are not ‘trusted’  Since my email does all my filtering all emails I will download are trusted.  You can go into the configuration editor and change the setting for: mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image to FALSE and that will turn this feature off.  To get to the configuration editor, go to Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor (its a button)

This plugin is great it allows you to upload a file using WLW which comes in handy just for posts like this one.  It has a small footprint and is easy to use.  There are a certain list of files that you can automatically upload via XPI before you have to jump to FTP but it is a pretty comprehensive list.  To be safe just always upload a .zip file.  The list can be found in the file at /wp-includes/functions.php at line 1069 or so, you can add to this list if you want to.