Thunderbird

So I started to just plain get tired of the built in Mail app. It’s a nice app and all, but the main problem I had with it was that it didn’t really like my google apps account. It got the folders mixed up and it was just confusing.

So I ended up using webmail for the longest time. My webmail is Gmail powered, so it’s extremely nice as webmail goes.

But one day on the Millennial Generation Entrepreneurs group someone posted asking what everyone’s favorite mail client was. So a new one that came up was called Sparrow. I took the same interface as Tweetie, and I liked it except for the fact that it was quite slow. So I rediscovered an old favorite: Thundebird. And now I’m happy.

There are a couple of things that I really like about this app.

First of all would be the tabbed interface. You can keep everything in a single window which becomes really convenient if you are looking over a lot of messages at once.

Second would be growl notifications. Whenever you get a new email it will show a small notification at the top right of your screen that has the sender and the subject, which is really handy so you know if there is an important message that you need to get back to ASAP.

And third and best of all would be tags.

Basically, you can tag messages and different tags have different colors. You can quickly tag an email by just selecting it and pressing he corresponding number key.

This is great because if I have a chunk of emails I can just hit the arrow key and say Hmm, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5? Facebook messages are alwas 5, order confirmations 1. Blog comments are always 2. You can add and customize different tags.

This is great because you can search by tags and also add multiple tags to a single email.

So lets say I have a really important message. Lets say that I move it into a folder called Important. When I need to find the email a month later, y first instinct is to look under the inbox. So I would search for what I *think* might be in the email, but I really have no idea. Luckily, instead of doing this I can just tag the email and just do a search for every email with that tag and I’m sure that it will come up.

Another fun part of this is that I can have a very colorful inbox 🙂

Name: Firefox

Platform: Crossplatform

Price: free

Homepage: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Screenshots:

Mail.appetizer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESevkOA2DCo&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
This is one of the best plug-in for mail in existence.

Those Microsoft Outlook users, [you really need to get a mac!] are familiar of when you receive a new email it shows a notification box saying that you have a new email and it gives you a little bit of info like some (or all) of the message, the sender, subject, and even more (i don’t remember, I stopped caring about outlook when i got a Mac). Well, people may want to see what the message is when they hear the message indicator from the mail app. That’s what this is. The version(s) for Leopard and tiger are in beta, but let me say–it ROX. No, not “rocks”, ROX”. when I get an email, i see a little box in the top right of my screen (you can click and drag the box to where you want the notification to appear) that has the sender, subject, and as much of the message as i want. you can change transparency, and in fact a lot. here is a screenshot of the preferences.

So now when I get an email, I have a little window that shows if it’s worth checking or leaving for later.

Yes, that’s it. I love it because hey, I have new mail! I’m too lazy or I’m busy so I can’t open the Mail application to check it. But what if it’s important? How should I know? Mail.appetizer. It is also incredibly customizable.
Incoming mail at a glance–Mail.appetizer

Homepage

Download for Leopard (beta)

Email: Empty or full?

According to the most recent NYT Tech talk podcast (my favorite), Responding to your emails quickly and moving them and archiving them immediately is very important. They also state that That empty inbox is a beautiful sight. But to tell you the truth, I have to disagree. I always love to get emails. Also, if you have one email you use for your work stuff and everything else, You know that it is hard to know on weekends when that email is useful to read or should wait until the next workday. For this I would highly recommend getting a gmail account and getting all of your personal emails there. Using outlook? On the Gmail help site they show how to set up your gmail account in outlook. Have OS X Mail? Just type in the full email address, not username (username@gmail.com) and your password. Mail will automatically set it up for you. Notice that this is a prime example of where Macs are so much easier than PCs. But the point is, delete the emails you never want to be reminded of, organize some of them into folders / mailboxes, and the rest? Keep is your inbox! Wondering where something is? There is a place for searches called a search box! I use mine all the time. But the question is, If you have an empty inbox, where does the rest go?? I love having stuff in my inbox. with a flick of 2 fingers (a scroll wheel on a PC!) I can go back in time and see some conversations from a long time ago. Do you disagree with me? I am begging of you to post your answer in the poll in the sidebar! Also, There are 2 comments on this whole blog. Please, comment! you can select anonymous, so you don’t have to give your name or anything! I will do my best to answer your comment/question. To add a comment/question, just click the 0 comments at the bottom of this post!