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!

HTML-Kit Perfect Editor for Novices

Have you ever needed to design a document using HTML and didn’t feel like using the bloated Microsoft Word tools or needed something with a little more oomph than a basic text editor? If so, then HTML-Kit is probably for you.

It is available as a free download at http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

Windows Live Writer WordPress Tags

WordPress.com blog users know that WP supports both categories and tags. Windows Live Writer (a fantastic, free blogging client) also supports both of these but the interface isn’t obvious on first glance.

Categories are handled through the scroll box and entry field at the bottom of the screen (labeled “Set categories”).

Tags are hidden initially. To add tags, click on the upward pointing double arrow in the lower right corner (shown in the picture above)

This brings up a new set of options. The section marked “Keywords” is for WordPress tags. Simply type in the desired tags, separated by commas and that’s it!

It’s a straightforward setup, but isn’t always intuitive at first glance.

Good luck!

Windows Live Writer Just Got Better

WLW is my go to program for composing and publishing blog posts. I’ve written about it a few times and have been using it exclusively for posting to my blogs.

I recently switched from Blogger.com to WordPress.com and Live Writer handled the transition marvelously.

Today, thanks to a blog post over at makeuseof.com, I came across a very important link: a series of extensions for Windows Live Writer. Just visit gallery.live.com and you’ll find a whole host of awesome plugins to make WLW even better.

There are a number of extensions to integrate other web services like Flickr or Picasa into WLW, which I am taking advantage of with this post. The Picasa plugin lets you upload images to Picasa from WLW and link them in your blog post. Very cool.

There is also a “blog this” extension for Firefox that helps you blog a particular web page or article. It’s a pretty simple plugin that helps automate appropriate links when referring to a particular source.

There are currently 80 plugins available, so you’ll have to look for yourself to see them all, but if you’re a WLW user, you’re sure to find something useful.

-Jeff

Windows Live Writer - Image Fixes

First of all, special thanks to Joe Cheng for his quick reply to my last blog post. I’m impressed that one of the developers on the Windows Live Team found my tiny blog post and offered help with my problem in less than 24 hours since it was published. Talk about great service!

Below is an image taken with the same program and settings as before, with the tweaked Windows Live Writer settings.

This screencapture was taken with the same program (Gadwin PrintScreen) using the same settings. The image is being saved as a GIF file. Taking a closer look at the options in the image properties sidebar of Windows Live Writer, it was originally set to use a dropshadow as the border by default. Changing this setting to “None” or “Inherit from weblog” immediately changed the quality of the picture. It was evident right away in the Windows Live Writer screen and should be evident when published to the blog.

For the sake of curiosity, I’m posting the same picture below with the default settings (using the dropshadow).

Definitely not as sharp. If you are using Windows Live Writer, and are inserting GIF image files, be sure to check the properties and don’t use the drop shadow border. Also, make sure to check the bottom of the image properties sidebar and save the new settings you select as default, to prevent the problem from recurring.

Thanks again Joe, and hopefully this will help out a few others as well!

Cheers,

-Jeff

Blog Image Woes

I’ve been a bit disappointed with the quality of the images that have been posting to my blog. I’ve been taking the pics with Gadwin Printscreen lately. When I view the images on my computer, they look fine. When they appear on the blog, they look terrible. Lately I’ve been using Microsoft Windows Live Writer to post to the blog. It has quite a few neat features that are handy, but I think this program may have been contributing to the problem. When it publishes an image to your blog (with a Blogger account, not sure about WordPress or others) it puts two copies of the image in an album. One copy is normal, good quality while the other is the poor quality image that gets displayed on the blog.

When posting to your blog from the web, uploaded images are also placed in a Picassa album, but this time only a single, good quality image is saved, and there is no second, reduced quality image. Here is a screenshot I just took and posted using the web interface.

I have no idea why Windows Live Writer is creating two images and selecting the lower quality image to be included in the blog post, but it is very annoying. I’ve tinkered around with the program looking for a option or setting to adjust but could not find one.

The end result is that I now know how to get better quality images on my blog, and will be uninstalling Windows Live Writer as soon as I’m finished with this post. Edit 1-24-08: Thanks to some quick help from Joe (see comments) this issue has been resolved! Check out the comments below and my next post for more details on what the problem was and how to fix it!

Gadwin PrintScreen

I’m trying out another screencapture utility, Gadwin PrintScreen. It runs on Windows and is freeware.

You can download the program from download.com here.

The main thing that I like when compared to my other favorite program in this category, ScreenHunter, is that Gadwin Printscreen has more options and is a bit more configurable.

Specifically, the program allows you to save in several different file formats such as jpeg, gif, png, tiff and bmp. There are plenty of other customizations as well. You also have the option of previewing all of your screencaps in a popup window before saving, letting you judge whether you got the job done right or wish to tweak it a bit.

Images can be taken from the current window, client window, full scree or a selected rectangular area. The program lurks in the system tray when running, and tiny instruction bubbles pop up to remind you of what to press and click to get your image.

One interesting quirk is that the program can’t take a picture of itself. The key to start capturing won’t work when the option screen is up.

If you’re looking for an alternative to the Print Scrn button on your computer, Gadwin’s PrintScreen utility is a nice freeware alternative.

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