Digsby

James — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:20:21 +0000

Following on from my previous post where I took a look at social networking and how interaction has changed on the Internet over the years, I came across a few programs which tie in chat programs, email and social networking in one neat package. I used Trillian years back, and cannot remember why exactly, but no longer have it on my system. Probably just got left behind as upgrades, new drives and new machines evolved. There are quite a few of these all-in-one programs available now though – Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda and Meebo – as examples, but the one that really caught my eye was Digsby.

From the authors’ themselves:

digsby is an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as ‘Delete’ or ‘Report Spam’ with just one click.

digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.

First impressions are quite good, with the only problem as yet being that the Twitter connection keeps dropping, but I like the interface and the flexibility of the product overall. If anyone has any tips on getting the most out of Digsby, please drop me a comment.

Gee Mail!

James — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:06:12 +0000

Once upon an eon ago, I used a webmail product called Hotmail. Truth be told, I think I still have an account or 50 in place, but none of them are ever used. I have also used Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, a work-based Outlook Web Access [OWA] and numerous other email options. But one stands out head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion, the monster we all know as G-Mail [or GoogleMail for some]. For more information on why it is called G-Mail in some places and Googlemail in others, do a quick search on Google itself.

And why do I choose G-Mail? Basically, it works. It rarely has any downtime, it is so easy to set up and use and it’s quick, reliable and does everything I want. The fact it is web-based has obvious benefits in that it is accessible from any location with an Internet connection and it has all the functionality and features that I need.

The ‘but’ though comes from my personal wish to set up an email account in my own fashion. Functionality is excellent and so is the ability to use it as your base email portal – by directing all other email accounts to this one location. The one downside in my opinion is that it offers little in terms of personal design. We all have our little hang-ups about font size, colours and shading, and G-Mail is not hot in this department. Sheesh, even Outlook has a few colours and themes to satisfy most tastes.

All is not lost though. For users of Firefox and the myriad of addons at your fingertips, there is G-Mail Skins, which I have used and it looks great. The only trouble is it seems to just drop off on occasion and right this munute it just will not work at all [for me anyway]. There is an issue with the language setup it seems, but you can chase that up if you so desire.

An alternative to GMail Skins is G-Mail Redesigned and personally I like this much better. The skins/themes are are very professional in ‘feel’ and very simple to install. You will need to install the Stylish addon [another great tool] and it is then a simple matter of loading your skin.

And if you are looking for some other really handy ideas and ways of getting the most from your G-Mail account, take a look through the links below.

http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/gmail-tips-and-tricks-monster-roundup-198488.php

There are many more sites but these two will give you enough to do for a full day anyway…

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Digsby

Gee Mail!