The best email client available in my opinion is Thunderbird, sibling to the Firefox web browser. What makes it the best email client? Aside from being absolutely free and incredibly easy to setup with a Gmail account, one of the main reasons for it’s popularity is the same thing that makes Firefox so popular, extensibility.

The following is a list of add-ons that make Thunderbird such an essential piece of software for me.

• WebMail: allows Thunderbird to send and receive emails using a number of different web based email accounts including yahoo and hotmail
• Lightning: Adds a calendar to Thunderbird for event and task scheduling.
• Check and Send: Checks the address and contents of a message, this add-on is good for a variety of checks including checking a message for attachments if the message contains specified words, or checking to insure recipients are (or aren’t) in a specified address book.
• Auto Zip Attachments: allows you to easily compress files attached to the message you’re composing.
• Identity Reminder: reminds you to select the correct “from” address before composing messages
• Identity Select: from the same developer as Identity Reminder this add-on allows you to select a “from” address from a context menu on the write button effectively bypassing identity reminder if it’s installed (they work in conjunction)
• ImportExportTools: easily import and export email messages or entire folders.
• Provider for Google Calendar: allows two way syncing between Lightning and Google Calendar.
• More Functions for Address Book: adds the ability to copy contact information form the context menu, import and export vCards and much more.
• Google Contacts: sync your Google contacts with your Thunderbird address book.
• Duplicate Contact Manager: allows you to edit and /or delete duplicate contacts in your address book.
• Remove Duplicate Messages: removes duplicate messages.
• Select Address Book Text: add the ability to copy address book text without opening the properties dialogue box.

Are there any must have Thunderbird add-ons you use not listed above? If so please tell me about it in the comments section below.

The future of web surfing will not be powered by bots but by human indexed data sources. Why is social search the future of search you may ask, the answer is simple, collective human intelligence is better at determining how relevant information is than formulated algorithms alone.

When can I use social search? Chances are that you’ve already begone using it, and probably more often than not. Searching for information on sites like Delicious, Digg, and Twitter just to name a few, where users tag and / or contribute information is a form of social search.
The greatest issue for addressing in social search (as in every other form of electronic communication) is spam, but many sites are already implementing very effective anti spam measures.
Even the search giant Google is showing that it recognizes the value of human input in search rankings with its search wiki along with its What’s Popular iGoogle gadget.

What are your thoughts on social search? Do you have a favorite social search site (not necessarily your favorite social networking site) if so why?

If you’re like me then you’ve seen lots of comments on blogs about why one one social networking site  is better than another, but most of the time the arguments given aren’t about the sites them selves but about other users of the site, I’ve even seen arguments against sites which are a direct result of the users own actions. The following statements may seem like common sense but they are rebuttals to arguments I’ve heard on more than one occasion.

Please don’t complain about a sites network  being too public or less intimate if you’re the one adding hundreds of friends/followers whom you don’t know.

Every major social media site has privacy settings, its up to you to learn how to uses them. On that note, don’t post anything on the world wide web that you couldn’t stand to have made public.

Celebrities wont ruin your favorite network, the way they use it doesn’t have to change the way you use it, unless you feel compelled for some reason to do as they do.

Every network has its share annoying users, including your favorite one.

People are entitled to thir preferences, and many have legit and logical reasons for perfering one network over another, but if somone is going to make a case aginst a networking site then it should be against the site, not aginst some of its users, or the way others use it, or even the way they themselves use it.

APGN the acronym for Animated Portable Network Graphic is an extension to the PNG file specification which allows for 8bit and 24bit PNG animation while maintaining backwards compatibility with non apng capable web browsers and file viewers, so any program capable of viewing png files should display at least the first frame of an apng.

If you’re using the latest versions of Firefox or Opera web browser, you should see two animated images at the top of this post, and its easy to see the difference in quality between the smooth apng and the jagged edged gif, but as the case with bitmap images there’s is a trade off in better image quality for larger file size.

The following is a list of APNG capable software:

Web Browsers

• Firefox 3
• Opera 9.6

Creation and Viewing

• APNG Assembler (Web Utility)
• GIF Movie Gear 4.2 (Desktop Utility)
• APNG edit (Firefox Add-on)
• XnView (Image Viewer)

For more information visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG
http://animatedpng.com/index.php/about/
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/08/better-animations-in-firefox-3/
https://wiki.mozilla.org/APNG_Specification (Technical Specification)

Hi readers! Here goes my first contest ever.  This one will require a Twitter account to enter.

To enter all you need to do is post a tweet about this contest on Twitter, then post a link to the tweet in the comment section on this blog post,  along with the other standard comment info so I can contact you if you win of course. One lucky winner will be chosen at random on May 1st to receive a free ticket to the two day WordCamp Chicago event in downtown Chicago on June 6-7 2009 .

The rules are as follows:

• Contest open to U.S. residents only.
• Must be 18 years or older to enter.
• One entry per person.
• Winner must provide their own transportation to and from the event.
• Entry deadline is 04/30/2009 at 11:59pm U.S. central standard time.

Good Luck!  And feel free to follow me on Twitter as well @wardelldesign

I’ve just upgraded my GrandCenteral account to GoogleVoice while watching an episode of 24 on Hulu. For those of you who may not know GrandCenteral is a service best known for its ability to simultaneously froward calls to a number of other phones which you specify (home, office, mobile, etc) allowing you to answer which ever phone may be most convenient at the time. It also offers a number of other features such as voice mail, call transfer, call recording, and call screening.

The service was brought by Google some time ago which is now allowing GrandCenteral users to upgrade their accounts to the new GoogleVoice Service which adds the long desired feature of SMS messages. Upon upgrade you must change the settings to have SMS messages sent to your phone as well as your GoogleVoice account this setting is disabled by default, other new features include voicemail transcription, cheap international calling rates, the ability to make free US calls, and send free SMS messages from your GoogleVoice account.

One thing to note is that Google Starts you off with $1.00 of free international calling credit, additional credits must be purchased for your account through the GoogleCheckout service.

Microformats

Microformats are based on open standards and are a simple way to format data using standard (X)HTML so that it is easily read by humans yet able to be interpreted by computer software for various uses.

Some popular Microformats include hCalendar based on iCaledar and used for formatting calendar events, hCard based on vCard and is used for formatting address book / contact information, XFN is a way to specify your relationship with others when linking to their web sites and profiles this specification is built into word press and a number of other told and web services, hReview is a way to format reviews for products, services, movies and any thing else a person might want to review, hAtom is based on the Atom feed format and is used for formatting information which can be syndicated and hResume is a great way for formatting published resumes on a web page.

Microformats on this site can be found on my contact page (hCard) and my events section (hCalendar).

Microformat browser tools here are a couple of tools for using Microformats in the Firefox web browser: Tails Export has a nice looking interface and can export hCards and hCalendar objects as vCard and vCalendar files for address book software, and Operator allows you to insert contact information into your Yahoo address book, events into your Google calendar, and preform a number of other functions.

Here are a few tools for creating Microformats which you can be embedded a blog, profile, or static web page.

• hCalendar creator
• hCard creator
• XFN creator
• hReview Creator
• hResume Creator

Visit Microformats.org and the Microformat Wikipedia page for for information about Microformats.

Do you use Microformats? Are there any other tools you would recommend for exporting or utilizing Microformats?

IE Tester Screen Shot

IETester is a program which allows you to test web pages in multiple versions of Internet Explorer. This program is free for personal use, or a licenses can be purchased for professional use.

The current version 0.2.3 allows for testing in IE versions 5.5 through 8 beta2. IETester allows users to simultaneously test sites with each included version of IE. Results can be viewed tab by tab, or in a split window side by side by dragging a open tab into the viewing area of the window.

The program hasn’t made it to version 1 yet so obviously there are still some quirks, but in my testing I’ve found that the CSS and HTML render the same in the IE6 component of IETester as they do in the real deal, which makes IETester the best solution I’ve found so far for anyone trying to test for IE6 in Windows Vista or later.