Project: Mozilla Thunderbird

*Huge Sigh*

I am now exhausted. I feel like I had to fight Thunderbird the entire way.

A friend of mine told me about Thunderbird years ago. I couldn't understand what the heck he was talking about or why he had email on a flashdrive - how did he get Internet on there? After he explained it to me thoroughly for a while I finally just did the ol' smile and nod. Wow, here was a guy who knew his stuff (and was totally outclassing me on the techno front).

Lesson 1: It doesn't take much to impress the computer illiterate.
Lesson 2: After a sufficient amount of time has elapsed and expertise accumulated, attempt to incorporate Mozilla's Thunderbird into life, which will clearly by then need such a jaw-dropping, awesome, powerful tool.

Fast forward to now, a date at which I really could use a tool to end all tools in order to bring my computer and Internet experiences in check.

I'm going to call what Thunderbird is an email aggregator (Mac users: very similar to what happens in the Mail software that comes with your computer). I tell it my email address and password and it imports everything from said account. Then I tell it my information for another email account, and another, and so on. I can also put my RSS reader/s in there. Well, there's nothing like importing an inbox to make you notice that you have hundreds of emails sitting in it. My metnet account alone has over 1,400 because I gave it out to register for a free tube of lipstick once and now get emails from all sorts of companies. Ergh.

On that note, metnet wasn't really up to snuff for Thunderbird. TB warned me that my metnet account's security for outgoing messages did not use encrypted (enter words I am only pretending to understand here), and that it is a weakness that might allow others to get my passwords and other sensitive data. Stupid metnet.

Anyway, now I have to learn yet another email interface. AND - all of my careful, systematic use of folders in my gmail account? - pointless in Thunderbird. Sure, I can make new folders. Sure, eventually this will be the bomb because I will be able to have all of my emails from all of my accounts on a particular topic in one folder. But today...ugh, I just feel tired.

Thunderbird also offers all sorts of add-ons. I added one for playing music that wound up being pretty pointless, and a calendar add-on that made the Thunderbird interface look so much like Microsoft Outlook that I felt like I was at work on my day off and wanted to close the program.

One of the things that Mozilla advertises about Thunderbird are the themes and personas that User can customize the viewing experience with. I got the persona to install on my Firefox browser (one good thing out of this is using Firefox at home now instead of the default Safari, bleh) but I can't get it to go onto my Thunderbird page. I tried one of their themes but it brought me to an older (and larger, space-wise) version of Thunderbird, so I canceled it out.

After taking enough time to really learn how to use this, I could see my life as being much better organized personally and professionally. It could be a very powerful organizer/aggregator for me. It would allow me to stay current with all of my subscriptions and email accounts without ever leaving one inbox...with time going by faster and faster all of the, ahem, time, this would be useful. But I am totally disinclined to take the initial output of time to master it that it would take, when I see little benefit to the program that I don't have in my gmail account already. In gmail, I already have aforementioned folders, a Google calendar, Google RSS reader, it signs me in to my blog, and so on. To get basically the same thing that Thunderbird offers me all I have to do is forward my other email accounts to my gmail account, and there it is.



Presumed public domain photo of non-Mozilla Thunderbird nabbed at: http://grizzledoldtraveler.blogspot.com/2009/07/thunderbird-photo-and-false-memory.html

Assignment: Google Docs

I have, at long last, figured out how to use Google Docs. Years ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to it so that the members of our writing group could collaborate on projects online (the group never met once in person, but I had a wonderful time talking to all of those incredibly interesting [and busy] people on the phone while I was trying to coordinate our meetings). I opened the link and saw – gasp – something new, something that was going to require EFFORT to learn *shudder*.

I fumbled about for just long enough to get utterly frustrated, without having tried to read the directions, never to return…until now. It is really, really easy to use! Especially if you take the ten-twenty minutes that it takes to read through the getting started guide. Seriously, if I’d taken the time to do that years ago when I received the link, I would have saved myself so much bother over the years as people have attempted to send me Google documents or email attachments have opened in that program. Sometimes being obstinate really comes back around to bite me.

The basic low-down on Google docs for those of you who haven’t checked them out or read another student’s blog about it already: upload existing documents into the program and go from there, or search through their thousands of templates to write your own document, spreadsheet, drawing, or form (I sound like an advertisement!). They have also added “Drawings,” but I didn’t spend much time exploring that since I can’t draw for the life of me, and if I could, I don't know why I'd want someone to collaborate on it with me. Once you’ve got some type of document with which to work, you can invite people to either view or edit it with you (easy privacy control) – up to ten people at a time can be collaborating on a project at the same time, and 200 people are allowed to the same document total.

This is a truly powerful tool. I don't see myself as using it professionally for the main reason of having a shared intranet here on campus that allows us to save onto shared drives in the first place, and the chances of having a collaborative team large enough to warrant Google Docs seems far-fetched. But personally…I’ve been working on free-lance editing, and this is a great way for me to work with an author to keep straight the latest mark-ups without getting lost under emails (very similar to the Common Craft Show’s scenario but I am being serious).

What do I want it to say about me? My documents will be speaking for me. Beyond that, it will also probably say that I spend a lot of time online. :)