Back in March I started looking for a new mail user agent, commonly referred to as email client. During the last few days I had a little time at my hands and I tried Claws Mail, eM Client, Postbox and Sylpheed. Regarding Postbox I went for the 30-days trial of the full version after I’ve compared the two editions (Postbox and Postbox Express). I set up a few IMAP and POP3 accounts and then I just used each client for a short time.
Once again, I’ll stay true to Thunderbird. To be honest, I liked Postbox a lot but it’s not that much superior to Thunderbird especially if you consider the add-ons situation. What I liked best about Postbox was the way they organized the accounts. That’s where Postbox really shines. So, instead of wasting more time with other clients I just went ahead and did what I wanted to do for a few years – I finally created a nice User.js to store some helpful preferences. I thought I’d share a few of the most important settings that I found with you:
// Thunderbird 3 adds a disk cache. Activate it to cache any remote content.
// Messages and attachments are now cached for IMAP accounts as well.
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.enable", true);
// Grant 50 megabytes of storage
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.capacity", 51200);
Now, let’s move on to the IMAP settings. Read more…
At GamesCom 2010 Blizzard revealed how crafters will be able to create their own gear. In Diablo II, you had the assistance of the mystical Horadric Cube to create new items. In Diablo III, Blizzard introduced the Artisan, a new character who does the work for you. You just need to enlist an artisan and provide some materials and he sets out to create your new gear.
To add an Artisan to your retinue you have to help him out – usually by doing a quest for him. After you gained his trust he will follow you on your travels. They will set up show in the nearest town and you will be able to interact with him there. There are three types of Artisans that will be available to your hero: blacksmith, mystic, and jeweller.
You can sell and repair items at the blacksmith, as well as have him create weapons and armor for you. He can also add sockets to any weapon or armor.
The mystic creates magical implements like scrolls, potions, runes and charms, and enchants items.
The jeweller is an interesting fellow: He creates gems for you and allows you to combine gems to create one of higher quality. This Artisan can also remove gems from items.
So, this week I bought the Samsung Galaxy S (I9000) so that I too could revel in the Android glory. I did a litte research before buying the phone and in the end I had to make my choice between the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S (I9000). I went for the Galaxy S because of the Super AMOLED, the 8 GB storage, and the bigger screen. Up until an hour ago I liked what I had.
When I tried to connect the phone to the PC to access the SD card though, it didn’t really work. I tried changing a few settings and I even installed Samsung Kies which didn’t help either. Alright, a challenge then. I set my mind to the task and here’s how I finally managed to access the phone’s internal SD card on my PC running Windows XP. On Windows 7 everything just works so there’s no need to install or change anything at all.
Install Samsungs New PC Studio for the drivers (Alternatively, you can try to locate only the drivers somewhere else on the web).
Go to Settings – About phone – USB settings and choose Ask on connection.
Go to Settings – Applications – Development and turn on USB debugging.
Connect the phone via USB, choose Mass storage from the menu, slide the notification drawer down and select “Select to copy files to/from your computer”.
Confirm the popup by pressing “Mount”.
Now comes the important part because this didn’t work the first time.
Disconnect the phone in the notification drawer und disconnect the USB cable.
Go to Settings – Applications – Development and turn offUSB debugging.
Connect the phone again as outlined above and now everything should work normally.
That’s how I got my Galaxy S working. Everything else I tried did nothing at all – and I literally searched through lots of forums. As long as there’s a solution I don’t mind. Sure, it sucks big time but at least I didn’t have to contact support and wait days or weeks for a solution.
A few days ago I had to check out lots of PDFs and I never liked the Adobe Reader that much. I also have a dislike for the Foxit Reader and while the Nitro PDF Reader has its uses it’s not exactly small, it’s still beta, and if you don’t like the ribbon user inferface you won’t be happy with it. I discarded Sumatra PDF because of it’s very, very minimalistic user interface and Cool PDF Reader because I got a few error messages with different PDFs.
Perfect PDF Reader 6 was too big as was the excellent PDF-XChange Viewer. By now I was ready to go with the PDF-XChange Viewer despite its size but then I stumbled over a PDF reader called STDU Viewer. It’s small, it’s blazingly fast, it opened every PDF I threw at it, and it features tabs. Absolutely fantastic! Exactly what I was looking for! I would recommend this viewer to everbody looking for a small but efficient PDF reader.
The Green Hornet trailer is sweeping the blogosphere as it has been made available for public consumption. Slated for release in January 2011 the film stars Seth Rogen as the title character and Jay Chou as his manservant Kato. The Green Hornet will also feature Cameron Diaz and Chrisoph Waltz. While I like Rogen he wouldn’t have been my first choice for this movie so I guess this should make it interesting.
Unfortunately, the trailer doesn’t look very remarkable. I had to laugh a bit though, so let’s hope for the best. I’m confident Rogen will get the part of Britt Reid right but I’m not so sure about the other part. Well, we’ll have to wait until the movie is released, but until then, enjoy the trailer:
During E3 Sony announced that it will launch a new premium subscription service called PlayStation Plus on June 29th. The PlayStation Network as we know it will still be free to join and all the current features will remain free. PlayStation Plus expands on the service already in place and offers loads of content to subscribers. Starting on June 29th Sony will offer a one year or 90-day membership from PlayStation Store.
As an incentive they throw in a full copy of LittleBigPlanet if you sign up for a one year membership between June 29th and August 3rd. The one year subscription will be available for €49.99 while three months will cost you €14.99. What do we get for our money?
Sony says that members will get their hands on at least four games a month at no extra charge. That sounds good but the four games will be comprised of one PSN game, two minis and one PS one classics. Subscribers also get premium avatars and dynamic themes each month as well as discounts on loads of PlayStation Store content. The discounts will change each month as well.
The premium feature also allows for full game trials. Members can download a full copy of a game and play it for a certain amount of time as if they owned it. The timeframe depends on the game but you should have approximately one hour to check out the game. If you decide to buy the game, your progress and trophies will all be unlocked so there’s no need to start again.
The most useful perk, however, seems to be what Sony calls automatic download. Subscribers can set their PS3 to automatically receive game and firmware updates, and download game demos. All you have to do is to set the time when you want to receive them and your PS3 will wake up and download everything. That sounds really useful to me.
Check out PlayStation Plus and see for yourself. You need at least version 3.40 of the PS3 system software to make it work. I think that’s just what I need. Perhaps updates will get a bit faster then.