Technology

Thunderbird 3.0.3 Email Client Out

It seems that the Opera developers are not the only developers who have increased their output in the past weeks. The desktop email client Thunderbird 3.0.3 has been released only a week after Thunderbird 3.0.2. Short time between two releases is usually an indication that the first release contained a bug or security issue that needed to be fixed quickly.

In the case of Thunderbird 3.0.3 it is a single bug fix that fixes missing folders and an empty folder pane for some users who have updated to Thunderbird 3.0.2.

Mozilla Messaging recommends the new release to all Thunderbird 3 users even if they have not been affected by the bug.

The new release is already available at the official Mozilla Messaging website. It is provided for all supported operating systems and languages.

The automatic update check of the email client usually picks up new releases quickly as well, expect a notification today in the email client.

Mafia Wars Autoplay

Mafia Wars is a very popular game on Facebook with thousands of players playing it at any given time of the day. It is a so called browser game in which the player takes on the role of a Mafia member with all sorts of options at hand from fighting opponents to running jobs, buying equipment, recruiting new Mafia members, buying properties and more. The Mafia Wars player levels up once enough experience points have been earned. Experience points are won by either running jobs, e.g. muggings or bank heists, or fighting other Mafia Wars members.

The two most important attributes in this regard are Energy and Stamina. Energy is being used to run jobs while Stamina to fight other Mafias. Each attempt at a job or fight reduces the available attribute and the player has to wait for the Energy and Stamina to replenish before continuing to do jobs or fights. More »

Chrome Extension Gallery Needs Better Filters

If you visit the official Google Chrome extension gallery you notice that there are quite a few ways to sort the extensions. It is for example possible to display extensions sorted by popularity, date or rating. If you compare those filters to the ones offered at the Mozilla Firefox add-ons portal you notice that some filters are missing. This includes extension categories and the ability to only list languages that have are available in a specific language.

If you go to the Chrome extension gallery you notice for instance right now that six of the ten extensions on the first page of the recent filter are not in English.

There is no option to display only English extensions or extensions in another specific language. The second missing filter is a category filter. A user looking for security extensions or social networking add-ons has currently only the option to either look through all the extensions to find one that is related to that category or to perform a search hoping that the keyword
will list all the relevant extensions that are available.

Both options are not that reliable or at least very time consuming. The Chrome gallery needs categories and language filters, something that the developer’s should borrow from the way Mozilla offers those on their pages.

Several third party Chrome extension websites, such as Chrome Extensions, use categories to list the extensions.

Watch Live Football In Google Chrome

In time for the beginning of this year’s Champions League and Euro League season is an extension for the Google Chrome web browser that makes it easier than ever to watch live football in the web browser.

The extension Eplsite: Watch Live Football Streaming is basically providing quick access to the service offered at Eplsite which lists live football streamings that can be viewed in the web browser with the only requirement being that Flash is installed.

The site concentrates on the UK football scene which is definitely one of the finest in the world but does offer matches without English teams as well. The extension will place an icon in the Google Chrome address toolbar that display the available matches upon selection.

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Display Email Attachment Sizes In Thunderbird

Many email providers only accept email attachments to a specific maximum. The maximum size limitation is different for most providers and can range for a Megabyte to 20 or 25 Megabytes that are supported by Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

It is therefor important to have the means to display the size of attachments in an email client prior to sending the email to make sure that the email will not be rejected by the mail server due to size limitations.

Displaying email attachment sizes can also be helpful for users who want to reduce the size of their mailbox. More »

Mannheim city to sue Mikogo co-founder over Twitter name

Yesterday, the founder of popular screen-sharing app Mikogo shared with the world that he was threatened to be sued by the city of Mannheim if he does not stop using his twitter name, which is http://twitter.com/mannheim.  His name is Mark Zondler, but he and the company is based in Mannheim. Does any of you think this is pretty unfair from the city?

First of all, what if your name was Daniel Mannheim? Could they sue you for using your own name? Also, the Twitter account is not abused, or used in any way to undermine the city, and even if it were, we have freedom of speech, so still! More »

Simple yet powerful task management with Todoist

Over the past years I’ve been using task managers on and off, but one I always come back to is Todoist. While there are certainly more powerful options out there (Remember The Milk), Todoist, to me, is the perfect balance between power and simplicity.

If you take a look, you can’t argue that it has a superb no-frills interface, and you can shoot out and manage tasks very easily. It supports inline tagging (use @tag to quick tag a task) and priorities (use !p1 or !p2 or !p3 to quickly add a priority), notifications, task indentation for hierarchy, and a handy search box, which you can use to search based on any word, or task data.
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Fix Uninitiated Google Redirects With GooredFix [Firefox]

Goored is an abbreviation for (malicious) Google Redirects although redirects have been noticed in other search engines like Yahoo as well. Firefox users who have been hit with a Goored infection will notice that some of their searches are redirected to other websites. This usually happens when they click on a search result in Google but might also happen without them doing anything (which means pages are opened automatically). The Google redirect seems to use the user’s searches to redirect to other websites and it especially seems to happen often when searching for items that can be bought online like computer equipment, household items and basically anything that is sold online.

The cause of this search redirect in Google seems to be a Firefox add-on / plugin that gets installed without the user’s consent and that does no appear in the list of installed add-ons / plugins. It is not clear how the add-on is installed other than that it is done automatically without the user’s consent.

The Google redirects make use of Javascript and a first temporary fix is to disable JavaScript in the Firefox web browser to stop the redirects. This can be done in Tools > Options > Content tab by unchecking Enable JavaScript. This is also a good indicator if the computer has been infected with Goored. If the redirects stop it is Goored. If they continue it is something else. More »

First Online Service To Download Vevo Videos Goes Live

If you are a Youtube regular you must have noticed the transition of many music videos that are now shown with a Vevo header that contains a more or less direct request to visit the Vevo website. Vevo is a cooperation between Youtube and several major record labels. The terms of the deal are not known at this point in time but it is obvious that the record labels wanted to move music videos to another website. Vevo is basically offering the same as Youtube plus some additions like lyrics and artist biographies. It comes at a price as there is more advertisement on the site.

Some users think that a long term goal of the deal is to move the music videos completely off Youtube so that they can only be viewed at Vevo. More »

Upload Files To Dropbox By Email

One of the reasons for Dropbox’s popularity are the manifold uses that go well beyond the standard file synchronization features that the standard Dropbox client offers. We just recently reviewed the client server application Akira which Dropbox users can install to issue remote commands to another computer system.

Maildrop is another application that extends the original functionality of Dropbox. The service basically allows a Dropbox user to send files to a Dropbox account by email which can come in handy in several situations like accessing the Internet from a public computer system or from mobile devices that are not suited for downloading files. More »