Oct 30, 2009

Thunderbird Plugins

Finally dark ages are over and we have got rid of notes. Of all the desktop email clients I have had to use (corporate level); I have hated the Lotus Notes most. I will never understand how it managed to survive so long in market.

Thoughtworks is officially on cloud and we have migrated to robust Google solution of apps on cloud. Gmail, Google docs, Google Calendar.. the whole nine yards. And who knows; maybe in foreseeable future, google wave!

Funny part of this transition is that; while I was looking forward to move to gmail due to it's feature rich nature; as soon as I moved to gmail; I craved for a desktop client to manage emails. I know; I don't need one; but I guess it's just become second nature to classify corporate email accounts with thick desktop clients. So I downloaded Thunderbird.

It's an excellent desktop email client. It took a while to set it up with all the plugins; but once I was done; I was really happy with what I accomplished. Here is a comprehensive list of plugins that I used to set my thunderbird up; to enable personalization to a great extent and to peak my productivity:
  • CS Lite: Cooke manager add on for using thunderbrowse successfully.
  • Thunderbrowse: To enable a web browser within the email client. Saves me trouble.
  • Google Contacts: To sync all contacts from my google address book.
  • Lightning: To integrate SunBird Calendar with Thunderbird calendar. Sunbird is in turn synced with google calendar. Works flawlessly.
  • Minimize to Tray: I like to see my email client in tray rather than in task bar, as it's open 24x7.
  • mozpod: To sync my contacts to my i-pod when I connect my i-pod to laptop.
  • Provider for Google Calendar: To integrate google calendar with Thunderbird's Lightning extension.
  • SamePlace: IM add on for Thunderbird. Lets me go online on my personal gtalk account as well as thoughtwork's gtalk account. Increases my productivity; as I am saved from multiple windows.
  • xmmp4moz: Req. for SamePlace to integrate with thunderbird.

I must say, that to setup filters and other stuff I do visit my gmail inbox now and then; but apart from that thunderbird has been amazing and I have really gotten used to it in last few days.

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