Digsby Worth Checking Out

Digsby is a neat little communications program that combines IM, email and social networking websites all in one. I’ve been using Pidgin for my IM predominantly, but the addition of Twitter to Digsby makes it an attractive alternative.

For IM, Digsby handles AIM, Yahoo, Google talk, MSN, ICQ and Jabber. It seems to have most of the basic features you’d expect from an IM client and I haven’t encountered any problems yet.

You can add Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail, AOL/AIM mail, POP or IMAP accounts. I’ve just used it with a Gmail account as a way to be alerted when there is incoming email, but I’m curious about the IMAP and POP functionality. One neat feature is the ability to send emails right from the IM window, without having to open another application or webpage.

For social networking, you can add your Facebook, Myspace or Twitter accounts. I currently just use Twitter, and Digsby provides me with updates to recent Twitter activity, and lets me update my status. If you use Facebook or Myspace, Digsby will alert you to new friend requests, messages and other activity.

With Twitter, the interface isn’t as customizable as Twhirl or Snitter, but so far has been more stable than either of those and doesn’t require AIR. Digsby’s Twitter pop-up notifications display all recent activity, placing @s first. There isn’t much customization available for the Twitter interface, but it handles the basics well.

For me the real strength of the program is having all these things tied together in one package. You can turn off pop up notifications and sound for any or all accounts if, for example, you only wanted to be alerted for emails and not Twitter, or you only wanted sound and no pop-ups.

Digsby is still in Beta and could use a few more features and options, but right now it behaves well and has been reliable. I’m impressed!

Using Multiple Google Accounts

I have two separate Google Gmail accounts. One I use for my close friends and important business and the other I use for everything else. Unfortunately, you can only be logged into one account at a time when using most Google services, like Blogger, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and many others.

Advanced Firefox users may have used Greasemonkey to run various scripts to make switching user accounts easy, but I didn’t care for this approach when I tried it. The various scripts available for download weren’t always up to date and were extremely temperamental and buggy. Here are a few other options available to you.

1. Use two different browsers

The simplest solution. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera and other browsers often store their cookies in different locations on your computer, allowing you to have different cookie profiles for each. If you open up IE and FF at the same time, you could be logged into two different Google accounts, one for each browser. If you use the same browser for each account (for instance my GoOrange profile for Firefox and my JeffK profile for Internet Explorer) you don’t have to worry about logging in and out repeatedly, simply use the browser set up for the appropriate account.

This method is extremely simple and only requires that you have two browsers installed on your machine. The downside, similarly, is that you will be opening two different programs at various times, or will have two browsers running at the same time instead of just one, which will use up more system resources. Still, for many novices, this may be the best approach. This method is limited to one account per browser. If you have three accounts, you’ll need to have three different browsers running, or else sign in and out with one of the browsers.

2. Use the IE Tab extension (for Firefox).

This is my method of choice. If you primarily use the Firefox browser, there is an extension called IE Tab that is available for download from the Mozilla site. What this extension does, is with a simple click of a button, it switches Firefox from the default Gecko rendering engine to an IE rendering engine. This is a very useful extension to have and it comes in handy with those few websites that only seem to display properly in IE. This extension enables you to view them in FF just as they would be displayed in IE.

The reason this works for multiple accounts is that the IE Tab extension, when activated, uses your Internet Explorer cookies rather than your Firefox cookies. Therefore, with the press of a button, a page is viewed with your IE cookies (set up for a different Google account) and with another click of a button, the page is viewed with your default FF cookies. This is a simple one-click way to alternate between two different accounts. You can have these open on two different tabs, or simply switch back and forth using the same tab.

This method is limited to two Google accounts, one for your IE cookie profile and one for your Firefox cookie profile.

3. Install Greasemonkey and appropriate scripts into Firefox.

This is a popular option for many people and has a more flexibility in certain areas. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to download and run various user scripts that alter the way Firefox works with certain webpages. I won’t go into a detailed explanation between scripts and extensions, but they are very similar in the results they produce.

The pros of this method is that you can switch between any number of Google accounts, using a drop down menu on the web page. If you have more than two accounts that you use frequently, this method will be more convenient than the previous two.

The downside is that these scripts can be extremely buggy, and don’t work on all Google pages. Depending on your patience and frustration levels you may find these to be too much of a headache.

While the IE Tab extension has been around a while and thoroughly tested by many people in the community, many of the scripts available for Greasemonkey are fairly new and untested. For security reasons, novice users should be very cautious when running scripts from an unknown source.

Windows Live Mail

Microsoft now has a replacement for Outlook Express and it’s called Windows Live Mail. It’s available as a free download and can be found at http://get.live.com/ on the Microsoft website.

Live Mail handles your email, contacts, RSS feeds and newsgroup subscriptions. I like seeing email clients being able to handle more and more tasks, like the RSS feeds, but for now I’m still reading my feeds on my Yahoo! homepage.

Live Mail integrates seamlessly with Hotmail and Live mail, and can use POP3 to grab your Gmail or other POP mail. If you’re a Yahoo user, there are third party applications to allow you to access your free Yahoo email account via POP3 client like Windows Live Mail. I’ve had good luck using YPOPS! which is a free download available here.

I like the overall looks of the program. It’s a more modern, Vista-like skin compared to the old Outlook Express. Similar to changes in IE7, by default the menu bars are gone (with your file, edit, tools, etc. menus), but the appearance can easily be configured to display them if you are old-fashioned like me.

There is a preview pane which can be configured in multiple ways like side by side or above and below. There are numerous options to tweak various features from email handling to appearance. The built in spell checker is a lifesaver. There is a separate menu for various safety options, and Microsoft has expanded on the security features of its new email client. There is a built in junk filter, phishing protection and a host of other options.

There were a few new features that really appealed to me. There is a “blog” button that makes it easy to post emails to your blog (but as far as I can tell, only your Windows Live Spaces blog). Another nice feature is the “send photo email” option, which makes the task of sending emails containing photos a little bit easier by automating a few tasks. These two features might not be that interesting for experienced techies, but can be handy for casual users.

I really was impressed by the way Live Mail incorporated itself with the traditional webmail accounts and Windows Live IDs. If you already have an existing Hotmail account you’re all set. If you don’t, or would like a new one, you can sign up for a free account @live.com.

Windows live mail lets you log into all your accounts at the same time (I have a Hotmail and a Live account) and manage them simultaneously. It will also sync your contacts list automatically. This feature is priceless. If you have a long contact list, you can easily access it from home via the Live Mail program or you can get at it from any computer with internet access because all of your contacts are up-to-date when you log into your Live Mail/Hotmail web mail. Also, if your computer crashes, all of your messages and contacts are backed up for you online.

The contacts stored locally are not in the same format used by Outlook Express or Outlook, but Live Mail can easily import them.

Wrapping things up, Windows Live Mail is an excellent free email client and a much needed upgrade over Outlook Express. It adds several nice features, looks sharp and is fairly versatile. I’d highly recommend it to anyone currently using Outlook Express.

Cheers

-Jeff

Upload Messages to Gmail

I recently stumbled across another way to transfer message files to your Gmail account online. There is a web app called gmailuploader that supposedly does this for you.

I haven’t had a chance to test it out myself (since I just went through the process when creating the earlier blog post about transferring messages from Yahoo), but it looks promising.

To use the service, you’ll first need to have the messages stored locally on your computer, so you’ll still need POP3 access (or YPOPS or Webmail depending on what mail service and client you are using).

If anyone has experience with this, let me know!

Cheers.

How to Transfer Your Yahoo Mail to Gmail

Gmail has a lot to offer, including free POP3 and IMAP access. With Yahoo, you have to pay for these services. If you want to switch over to Gmail, you may worry about losing all of your saved messages. There are a couple of ways around this.

The simplest method may be the most time consuming, depending on how many messages you have. From your Yahoo account, go through and select each message and click the “forward” button, filling in your new Gmail address in the window that appears.

The second method takes a little more time to set up, but can be quicker if you have a large number of messages to transfer. You will need a local email client on your computer, like Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Eudora, or another email client. I performed this procedure myself using Windows Live Mail, which is available as a free download from Microsoft here.

Step 1: Install and Configure Local Email Client and Addons

Once you’ve got your email client installed, you’ll need to get another program or addon to be able to access your yahoo mail.

For Mozilla Thunderbird Users:
The easiest way is to install the Webmail addon for Thunderbird. It can be found here. Read the FAQ and Setup instructions on the web page. First download the webmail addon and then the addon for Yahoo from the downloads section. Next, open Thunderbird and install the webmail addon. Next install the Yahoo addon.

You’ll need to create a new account in Thunderbird. Detailed instructions are provided on the webmail page linked in the above paragraph.

1. From the main menu, select File -> New -> Account.
2. In the Account wizard select “Email Account”
3. On the Identity page set your name and email address.

4. Enter the following server information.
A. Server Type : POP
B. Incoming Server : localhost
C. The user name MUST include the domain
D. Follow the new account wizard to the end
E. If you changed the port number during the WebMail setup stage you must change the port number for this account in “Account Settings” (tools menu).
5. Open “Account settings”, select the “Outgoing server” option from the tree and press the “Add Account” button.
6. Use the following server details.
A. Server Name : localhost
B. User Name : username@domainFor Users of Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or Other Client:
You’ll need to download and install the freeware application YPOPs!. It is available for download here. Install and run the program.
1. Click on the icon in the system tray to bring up the options window.
2. On the “Receiving Email” page, edit the “Maximum number of emails to download per pass” box with a number you feel comfortable with. 100 worked well for me.
3. Go to the “Download Folders” page and type in the name of any custom folders you have in your Yahoo account that you wish to transfer messages from.
4. Next, go to the “Miscellaneous” page and tweak any settings you like (like telling the program not to start automatically at system startup).

The next step is to create a new account with your email client. The website ypopsemail.com has a page with detailed instructions on how to configure your email client. I’ll walk through the steps for configuring Windows Live Mail, but most of the steps should be similar for the other clients as well.

1. Open Tools -> Accounts
2. Click “Add”
3. Select “Email Account” and click “Next”
4. Enter in your Yahoo email address and password.
5. Make sure the “Manually configure server settings for email account” box is checked.
6. Set “My incoming server is a” drop down menu to “POP3″
7. Enter “127.0.0.1″ (without the quotes) for your incoming mail server.
8. Enter “127.0.0.1″ (without the quotes) for your outgoing mail server and select the “Outgoing server requires authentification” box below it.

At this stage you should be ready to download all of your Yahoo mail messages into your local email client.

Step 2: Configure Your Email Client for Gmail IMAP.

The gmail help page has detailed instructions on how to configure your Gmail account for IMAP access as well as how to configure your email client. Instructions for various email clients are found here.

First you will need to go to the “Settings” tab of your Gmail account, click “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” and make sure the “Enable IMAP” button is selected.

Next you will create a new account in your local email client for your Gmail. Again, detailed instructions are provided on the Gmail help page, but I’ll summarize below, going through the steps for Windows Live Mail.

1. Open Tools -> Accounts
2. Click “Add”
3. Select “Email Account” and click “Next”
4. Enter in your Gmail email address and password.
5. Make sure the “Manually configure server settings for email account” box is checked.
6. Set “My incoming server is a” drop down menu to “IMAP”
7. Enter “imap.gmail.com” (without the quotes) for your incoming mail server, check the “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)” box and make sure the port is set to “993″.
8. Enter “smtp.gmail.com” (without the quotes) for your outgoing mail server, check the “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)” box and make sure the port is set to “465″. Select the “Outgoing server requires authentification” box below it.

Step 3: Download Yahoo Emails

This is pretty straightforward. Before you do this though, doublecheck your account settings for the Yahoo account in your email client. Make sure you have checked the box for “Leave messages on server” (which is usually located on the “Advanced” tab) if you wish to keep a copy of your messages stored online at Yahoo mail. Also, you may wish to configure your client to deliver the messages to a particular inbox.

Click your email clients “Send/Receive” button. The client should download a number of messages (up to the limit you set earlier) into your inbox.

Step 4: Upload Messages to Gmail.

Now, using your local email client, go to the inbox where you’ve downloaded all of your Yahoo mail. Select all of the messages you wish to transfer (I just used ctrl-A). Drag them into the “All mail” folder for your Gmail account. *Note - this folder is usually a second level folder. Before dragging and dropping, open up that folder in your email client to make sure you can see a few of your other Gmail messages. Depending on the individual email client, how the folders are arranged and stacked can be odd and there will oftentimes be more than one folder labeled “Inbox”. The folder labeled “All Mail” is usually unique.

Step 5: Repeat Steps 3 and 4 as Needed

Depending on the message limit you configured (if using YPOPS!), you may need to repeat the process until all the messages have been transferred.

You may encounter a minor glitch or two along the way as your spam filters sort through the mail. This is easily fixed by opening your junk mail folder and dragging any messages you wish to keep to your Gmail IMAP “All Mail” folder.

Hopefully you’ve got an antivirus program that will also scan the emails as they are downloaded.

By this point, you should have all of your old Yahoo mail messages safely archived in your “All Mail” folder on Gmail. This can be accessed online from any computer when you log into Gmail from the web. The entire process can be repeated every few days or weeks if you still get mail trickling into your old Yahoo account.

Hope this helps!
-Jeff

Moving Away From Microsoft Outlook

I first started using Outlook back in 2003 when I picked up my copy of Office 2003. Before then I had primarily relied on webmail for email. Also at that time, my current employer had Outlook set up at work. It served me well as a personal email client and contact manager, although I never really took advantage of things like tasks and (for the most part) the calendar. One thing I did particularly like was the birthday reminder I would get from the integration of the calendar with the info in my contact’s list.

Outlook 2003 is beginning to feel a bit stagnant to me. It won’t readily sync calendars with google calendar. The contacts stored in outlook are not the same as your Windows address book, and don’t easily import into other programs like Thunderbird, and some information always seems to get lost or mishandled when saved as a .CSV file and imported elsewhere (like into Gmail).

I know there is a new version of Outlook available with Office 2007, but the packages of Office that include Outlook now are extremely pricey, and there is no option for a standalone purchase of Outlook. I’m content enough with my 2003 versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access, and don’t feel the need to upgrade at the moment. Also, with the advent of open source office suites available from openoffice.org, I’m seriously debating the need for a casual user like myself to plunge into the high priced Microsoft suite again. As a bit of an experiment, I’d like to try and move away from Microsoft products slowly (possibly in preparation for getting a Mac or running a Linux computer).

Right now I’m giving Thunderbird the old college try. It’s free and has quite a few addons available. I’m using the lightning addon (calendar) as well as an addon to sync lightnight with my Google calendar. Also I found a nifty addon to delete duplicate messages (which is handy when downloading POP3 messages).

The changeover was pretty painless. It was easy to set up 2 Gmail accounts and one Yahoo! account, although the Yahoo! account required an additional addon called webmail. I was able to import my outlook messages and contacts quickly, and soon after had my calendar synced up with my online Google calendar. The contacts didn’t import perfectly. If there was only one address in Outlook it got transported over to the home and work addresses in the Thunderbird address book. The default Tbird address book has no set field to enter birthdays, you just use one of the custom fields.

The mail end of things has been working smoothly, although for some reason it doesn’t strike me as being quite as pretty as Outlook (and that wasn’t exactly a piece of art). The calendar and calendar sync features can be a little wonky. I share a group calendar with some friends; a few days ago I went to delete an event I wasn’t going to attend from my local calendar but accidentally deleted it from everyone’s shared calendar online.

When people send me invitations from the shared Google calendar, after I accept I get three instances of the event. I see one instance in the shared calendar and two in my personal calendar. I’m not sure why it’s integrating these invitations into my personal calendar twice, but it’s a bit annoying.

There is a great addon called Mozbackup which lets you easily save and restore all of your Thunderbird settings, mail and contacts. This is a lifesaver. There is a similar option for Outlook 2003, but you need to download it from the Microsoft Office website.

I’ve also looked at the latest Windows mail client, Windows Live Mail (available as a download for WinXP users, I believe Vista comes with Windows Mail). This has an updated layout that looks a little sharper than it’s predecessor, Outlook Express. It supports newsgroups (which Outlook doesn’t) and has new features to expedite reading RSS feeds, posting to your blog or uploading photos. Windows Live Mail uses an altogether different address book - different from your Outlook contacts, and different from your Windows address book that Express used to use. If you have a Windows Live email account (@live.com or @hotmail.com) it will automatically sync your address book with all of the accounts you have set up. I found this feature to be a big selling point, as I only have to enter or edit info in one place and it will automatically get updated elsewhere.

Despite the fact that Windows Live Mail integrates nicely with your @live.com email account, your Windows Live Spaces blog, and Windows messenger, the program does not support any type of syncing with your Windows Live Calendar. Anyone with a hotmail or live account can access their calendar on the web, but Windows Live Mail has no calendar feature. I can understand why Microsoft wants you to buy Outlook to do this, but it is still frustrating.

I am still considering moving away from local email clients and calendars and going online 100%. Google, Windows Live, and Yahoo all offer free email accounts, contact managers and calendars online (although they don’t all play nice with each other if you use Yahoo and your friends are using Windows Live). My biggest problem with moving completely on line is that every so often I am without internet access. On rare occasions we will lose internet access. Sometimes I take my laptop somewhere that doesn’t have internet connectivity. Every so often I might need to look up an email or attachment, get at my address book, or check my calendar. It just doesn’t seem feasible to primarily rely on webmail, contacts and calendars.

For now, I’m going to stick with Thunderbird and lightning, syncing with my Gmail and Google calendar accounts. In the future I may ditch the local calendar and try using Windows Live Mail as my primary POP3 client or I may give online only a try.

If anyone else has opinions or has found a setup that works well for them, let me know!

Cheers,
Jeff