Scenario
My email client is Thunderbird. It has been for several years. So that’s several years’ worth of emails, attachments, filters, junk training and plug-ins. The set up is exactly how I would like it to be, well…almost. A feature I really would like to be a touch less painful is being able to share my emails between machines. Up until now I have gotten around this problem by sharing my profile folder, this works ok as long as you remember to close the client on all machines, otherwise you get the dreaded lock file error message. This is where IMAP comes in.

What is IMAP?
Why bother when Google explain it so well.

The Issue
Like I said earlier, I have many emails, attachments, filters which I don’t want to lose. In addition to this, GMAIL has the ability to cope with all that Thunderbird offers. The plan then was to transfer all my emails to GMAIL and set up filters and labels to ultimately end up with that I have in Thunderbird replicated in GMAIL. The major task being copying thousands of emails from a Thunderbird POP account to a GMAIL IMAP account.

Below is an explanation of what I had to do to move from POP to IMAP.

1. Firstly, Enable IMAP!
For some reason, IMAP still hasn’t been enabled in my account. To enable IMAP you need to switch your default language to “English (US)”. This will display the “Enable/Disable” IMAP option AND automatically enable it for you.

2. Setting up IMAP in Thunderbird alongside your existing POP account.
Again, just follow this tutorial. (Other clients)

I now have IMAP enabled in my Gmail account and have set up the account in Thunderbird.

You will notice some new folders under a folder called [GMAIL]. These are standard folders that exist in your Gmail account.

3. Copying emails from POP to IMAP
By simply dragging and dropping the folders from the POP account to the newly created IMAP account creates a label in Gmail AND uploads all emails for you. It is really that simple. It can take a while as it also uploads all attachments.

4. Set up filters
This, I decided, to do on a case by case basis. As a new email arrives, set up the new filter in GMAIL. Tedious, if not annoying, but I want to transfer control over to GMAIL.

… and there you have it. Easy innit!

My POP account remains active as I use it to download all my emails which I now use as a backup.

Here are some hacks and tools that improve how IMAP and Gmail behaves.

Trash can
As it stands, when you delete an email, it will end up in your LOCAL trash can and not in Gmail. To make all deleted emails end up in Gmail’s trash can you will need to modify user.js. There is a way of doing this by adding a new string within config but I could not get this to work whereas this tutorial worked fine.

Folder Labels
If you upload a folder which has subfolders, Gmail creates a label separated with slashes.
e.g. if you upload a folder called “Friends” which contains a sub-folder called “Bob” then all emails in “Bob” are labeled as “Friends/Bob”. So as you can imagine, folders with long names make the labels pretty much unreadable. Fortunately, there are two ways around this:

Folders4Gmail is a Greasemonkey scripts that takes the nested label structures and turns it into a clickable tree.
Better Gmail is a Firefox add-on that does the same, as well as many other mods. Well worth a look.

Other useful resources:
lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/ turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client

http://userstyles.org/styles/search/gmail

http://blog.persistent.info/2005/12/greasemonkey-christmas.html

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1320 (Gmail Manager)

http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/top-10-unofficial-gmail-apps/

In my quest to get fit, I needed a device that would distract me from the pain and anger I generally feel when exercising.

For a while I have been dancing between an iPod nano, Philips and iRiver (not literally dancing, merely sat on my arse browsing impartial, independent review sites :/ ). And I can finally say that the iRiver won.

My reason? Simply because it amounts to external storage with a music folder which allows me to simple copy paste music to and from WITHOUT the need for a proprietary music manager. Not to mention the bloody good sound quality you get with their shipped headphones. Has its own graphic equalizer, play options (random all, random one, random one then all, random some then maybe a few more, random none then one and then maybe a few more then none then some) and the sound recorder.

I attend many meetings, as you can imagine, I pay full attention and make copious amounts of notes BUT in case I miss details (which is highly unlikely since I pay full attention and make copious amounts of notes) then I can record meetings for playback later. Sweeeeeet.

Other reasons were the widely respected iRiver brand and the USB socket which is a standard one meaning I can reuse my digital camera’s dangling USB cable.

Generally, well worth the money.

Full review here: http://www.pocketables.net/2007/05/review_iriver_t.html

In the previous post i talked about how i liked ActiveCollab and decided to cough up the reddies for a copy. Well i have since requested a refund under their 30 day money back offer. Reason? Because having used it more and more i feel that the product was released 6 months too early. There is still a load of issues with functionality that need addressing before it can become a product that’s worth the money.

So the hunt continues… (or i may revert back to plan A and build my own!)

Since I began freelancing, project management amounted to IM, email and phone calls. In an attempt to create a place for clients to manage projects thus allowing me more time to complete projects had forced me to invest in an web based management system.

I have been looking around for a while, and having trialled MANY there was always something which stopped me from continuing using them. It was either its complicated interface, confusing process or running costs.

About a year ago I discovered ActiveCollab. AC was an open source project which started off life as an alternative “host on your own server” Basecamp.

Since then its popularity had steadily grown, forcing the developers to take the product more seriously, to the point where they recently released the first commercially available version, 1.0.

I knew of its impending release so decided to wait to see if it would fill the gap. First impressions were that it was more than a mere upgrade. It had been completed redesigned and developed from the ground up. The interface has a nice, easy on the eye feel to it with well laid out sections.

The demo left a lot to be desired, access wasn’t at an administrative level so a lot of the features weren’t available to test. The only way you could test everything would be to purchase a license.

Whilst waiting for the release of AC, I stumbled across another application created by a company called StuffedGuys. Nova Factory has a similar feature list with one additional feature which, for me, made it stand out from the crowd. NF had the ability to carry out discussions via email. As a user, I would initiate a discussion about, for example, an area of an active project. The system would email a group of recipients (either the client or team members). Once the recipients replied, the reply would automatically append itself to the discussion within NF. This meant that team members and clients would not need to login to the system to leave comments and could instead reply to the emails.

The cost of NF was considerably less and had been around a lot longer. Yet I decided to go for AC. Why? Because of the development team, improvements are being made all the time, with bug fixes and general usage. They also seem keen to listen to their user base and take on board suggestions, many of which are about adding email based discussions, a feature which NF has.

AC was released on the 5th October so it is fair to say there are a fair few bugs and issues that need ironing out. But their near instant support response goes a long way in reassuring you that the money spent was worth it.

How has it been so far?
Installation was a breeze, create the database, go through the wizard and you are up and running. The downsides so far are the bugs and issues that have come to light. There is a slowly expanding help section, but the forums are a hive of activity so you can expect a response to most queries. There is an API if you feel like adding new functionality, unfortunately there is next to no documentation on this… yet.

Summary:

Design 3/5
Looks really slick, but from a usability perspective it could do with better use of colours to highlight changes on the dashboard.

Features 3.5/5
Has plenty to begin with but could do with more e.g. email based discussions, and let’s face it. Will anyone ever give it a 5?

Ease-of-Use 3/5
Has bugs and issues which need resolving.

Documentation 3.5/5
Would have been nice to have had a comprehensive help section from the start.

Value for Money 3.5/5
Until issues have been resolved, will remain at three and a half.

AC has a long way to go before it’s the polished product we would like it to be, fortunately with the team behind it, you can’t go wrong.

Twatting made safe.