Windows Live Call on the New menu? April 20, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, MSN, Microsoft, Windows.1 comment so far
I just found a bit of an oddity within Windows concerning the Windows Live Call feature of Windows Live Messenger (that’s an awful lot of Windows) and wonder if anyone can shed some light on it.
Basically, Windows Live Call seems to have embedded itself within the ‘New’ menu in the OS for no apparent reason – screenshot below.
Why would someone need to create a call in a folder? Even weirder, when clicked, I get a message box telling me that “Some features may not be available in this conversation”, regardless of whether I’m running messenger or not.
Now, I don’t use Windows Live Call – Skype is far superior – but I’m baffled by the failed attempt at tighter Windows integration. C’mon Microsoft, get with it.
HowTo: Read your Google Reader feeds in Thunderbird April 18, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Email, Extensions, Google, HowTo, Mozilla, Websites.7 comments
As an avid user of both Thunderbird and Google Reader on multiple computers, I’ve searched high and low, all over the internet for a solution to synchronise Thunderbird’s RSS feeds with Google Reader; adding my feeds into Thunderbird’s reader would be no good, as I’d have double updates on both of my machines.
Lifehacker had already posted a way to do this in Outlook, but Thunderbird doesn’t have the folder home page functionality that its Microsoft counterpart does, so that route was a dead end.
Fortunately, inspired by Lifehacker, I’ve discovered a way to embed a mobile version of Google Reader into my favourite email client, and it is simple and clean to use, and does not overtake the user interface. Here is how it can be achieved.
- Firstly, download and install the Thunderbrowse extension and CS Lite into Thunderbird; Thunderbrowse is a tool to embed a web browser into Thunderbird, and CS Lite is used to manipulate the cookies from Google Reader.
- Next, open your Thunderbird preferences on the ‘General’ tab. Make sure the box labelled “When Thunderbird launches, show the Start Page in the message area” is checked, and that the location field points to http://www.google.com/reader/i/. If you are unsure, check out this image on how it should look.
This tells Thunderbrowse that the page it should load on startup is the mobile interface for Google Reader, which a streamlined version of its full web counterpart. - After configuring Thunderbird’s start page, it’s time to set up Thunderbrowse to make Google Reader work. Navigate to the Add-ons menu, and open the preferences for Thunderbrowse. On the ‘Content’ tab, make sure that “Enable SmartJavascript?” is checked, and click Ok to save; this allows Thunderbrowse to run JavaScript which is used in Google Reader.
- Similarly, open the preferences for the CS Lite extension, and on the ‘Global’ tab, select “Allow cookies globally” from the drop-down box. If you don’t do this, Google Reader will complain that it can’t set cookies and it won’t work, so don’t skip this step!
- Restart Thunderbird. You may need to log in to Google Reader in the window that’s presented to you, but after doing so, you’ll have a section like this, displaying your new feeds in the message pane.
Hooray! Obviously, the mobile version lacks some of the functions as the full version, but it’s too cluttered to embed it into Thunderbird, and the menus overlay each other, making it almost impossible to use. Essentially, any webapp could be added to Thunderbird, so lovers of Google Calendar or Remember The Milk can take full advantage of their mobile versions in Thunderbird.
[http://lifehacker.com/5187172/use-google-reader-from-within-outlook]
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/5373]
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/5207]
Facebook for LDAP? April 6, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Theoretical, Websites.3 comments
Once you get past all the pokes and the photos, Facebook could actually have a ‘real world’ use in both home and business computing.
Consider this: your personal (or business) network all use Facebook and are friends with you. They can chose to share their contact information with you and you can with them, so it’s easy to log into the site and check any details. However, people like me, that live inside Thunderbird, would find it useful to be able to lookup friends’ details on the fly when composing emails, so an LDAP system around Facebook would be an interesting project to pursue.
Privacy implications? Each user authenticated to the LDAP server with their own Facebook login, so as long as that’s secure, you won’t have access to people that you shouldn’t, and users can control who sees their details & how much, so in theory it should be a good model.
Je ne peux pas écrire April 5, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Life, Uncategorized.1 comment so far
I think I’m having writer’s block, and not just with my blog. I can’t seem to put together a creative piece, a discursive essay, not even a letter to one of my far-away friends. Why? What’s holding back the power to write?
In all fairness, I have been using my Twitter account a lot more recently, but that’s hardly writing, merely posting my thoughts as they come and not turning them into something more developed. But is there some malign thing in my life, preventing me from stringing together words that are actually meaningful? I think I may have lost my artistic ability with the literary canvas temporarily whilst I focus on exams, only I’ll need to be able to write well to gain good marks; and the vicious circle continues.
Reading has also become quite a stint too. It’s taken me several weeks to not even read a third of ‘War of the Worlds’, why? It took me a month to read all four books in the Twilight saga so it’s not a case of my ability. And I’ve got plenty of topics to write about – David and I recently had a very deep conversation which I can’t wait to write an article about. I’ve thought of an interesting tutorial to post. I want to finish writing up my new software concept. But there’s something holding me back from actually opening up my blog and just writing.
I love writing, I love reading. Have I become too much of an apathetic teenager to really care any more? I sincerely hope not. Hoodies and heavy metal may have become a little too prominent in my life at the moment, maybe I need to get things in balance again, including writing to my blog more. Perhaps I need to realise what needs focus at the moment.
In setting out to reason with myself why I’ve not been writing, I think I’ve accomplished getting over my writer’s block.
