It’s only been a couple weeks since the newest version of Mozilla Thunderbird–Thunderbird 3–was officially released.

This new version of Thunderbird includes several new features.

Let’s look at 4 features in Thunderbird 3 that can help you stay more organized and work more efficiently:

1. Sync all your email accounts
2. Better Gmail integration
3. Better Email Search
4. Manage tasks, calendars, Google Wave, webmail and more within Thunderbird 3 with content tabs

1. Sync All Your Email Accounts

The ability to keep all your mail in all your accounts synced is not a new feature in Thunderbird 3. However, it is awful handy and makes keeping up on all your correspondence a breeze.

The easiest way to do this is to make sure all your email accounts use IMAP instead of POP.

Incoming email, sent emails, drafts, spam, and folders within your account all get synced (assuming your mail server supports this) when you use IMAP.

If you haven’t moved your email accounts from POP to IMAP, do yourself a favor and take a day and just do it. You’ll be glad you did.

Thunderbird 3 also has a new migration feature that will make moving your emails easier.

2. Better Gmail Integration

While you could setup your Gmail accounts in previous versions of Thunderbird, Gmail setup was more complicated than it should’ve been.

Now, Thunderbird 3 detects and sets up Gmail accounts with a super-fast wizard.

Just choose the Gmail option, enter your name, email address and password. Thunderbird 3 finds all the right settings and creates your account. The whole process took me about 15 seconds.

If you’re a Google Apps user, you’ll still need to use Google’s IMAP instructions and settings to set up your email.

3. Better Email Search

Thunderbird 3 has a new mail search which includes filtering and timeline tools. This makes it easy to search emails from all your accounts–including webmail accounts.

Search results open in a new tab so you can work back and forth between your results and regular emails.

Thunderbird 3’s search also seems to have been sped up as well–delivering results much faster than TB2.

Search also searches Gmail emails just fine.

4. Embed Webpages In Their Own Tabs Within Thunderbird

Content Tabs (or Content Browsing) is by far the simplest and yet most exciting feature in Thunderbird 3.

Content Tabs enable Thunderbird to display remote content in a tab, which users can browse in (mostly) the same way as with a browser.

Content Tabs – Mozilla Developer Center

This makes it easy to access Twitter, tasks apps, online calendars, or whatever web-based services you want right through Thunderbird.

How Do Content Tabs Work?

Using the Error Console found in the Tools menu, you can add just about any site to Thunderbird and have it in its own tab.

Want Google Wave within a tab in Thunderbird? How about Google Voice, or your favorite online calendar or tasks web app? You can add them to their own tabs in Thunderbird.

For example:

Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane").document.getElementById("tabmail").openTab("contentTab", {contentPage: "http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/nightly/whatsnew/"});

Pasting this line of code into the Error Console and clicking Evaluate would create a new tab in Thunderbird containing the webpage:

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/nightly/whatsnew/

Lifehacker has a great article showing how to add Google Wave to its own tab in Thunderbird 3.

You can also add Google Voice in its own tab like this:

Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane").document.getElementById("tabmail").openTab("contentTab", {contentPage: "https://voice.google.com/voice/?"});

You can add any page to Thunderbird easily this way.

More Control Over Content Tabs

Some have reported that when you close Thunderbird, any content tabs that are open will close and you have to paste the code back into the Error Console.

Personally, I haven’t run into this with TB3 on Ubuntu 9.10.

But if this is an issue, you might try installing the Custom Buttons² extension. The extension also lets you add custom buttons to Thunderbird’s toolbar that will let you open tabs for individual sites as needed.

Staying More Organized

There are several new features added to Thunderbird 3 that will speed up the way you work with your email and access information.

Look for more ‘Stay More Organized’ articles coming soon.

You should also follow us on Twitter.

Due to the popularity of last week’s list of programs and services for freelancers, we’re bringing you 24 must-have online tools specifically for web designers.

Testing

Xenocode Browser Sandbox

Run and test your sites in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2 and 3, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera without having to actually install the browsers on your system.

This unfortunately seems to only work on Windows.

BrowserShots

View screenshots of your render webpages in multiple browsers and operating systems. You can even test different screen resolutions.

Favelets

Validate and test your sites using this collection of favelets. Validate microformats, HTML and CSS. Test your pages at different screen sizes (iPhone, Blackberry, etc) and lots more.

Are My Sites Up? (Website Monitoring)

Get alerts when you or your clients’ sites go down or experience hiccups. Alerts can even be sent to your mobile phone.

Page Code Generation

gridr buildrrr

Create CSS grid-based layouts easily with gridr buildrrr.

Project Deploy

Project Deploy makes it faster to get a site up and running by letting you select the type of information you want. Deploy then generates common folders, standard HTML and CSS files and even jQuery–all in a zip file for easy download.

Web Form Generators

Icebrrg

Icebrrg lets you easily create all kinds of forms and embed them on your site. There are paid plans, but the free version still allows 3 forms and up to 100 per month.

WuFoo

WuFoo makes creating forms a piece of cake. Adding forms to your site is simple as well with a great web-based user interface.

Web Form Factory

Another great web form tool. You can create forms linked to a database or to generate emails.

Typography

Typechart (CSS Typography)

Browse, compare and grab the CSS code.

PXtoEm.com

Convert pixels to ems quickly. The generator even creates the CSS all for you.

sIFR Generator

Even if you don’t have Adobe Flash installed on your system, you can convert font files (TTF) and create your own Flash files (SWF) for use with sIFR.

Web Code

XHTML Character Entity Reference

Find UTF-8 character entities for XHTML.

View other XHTML character entities resources.

ecoder (Web-Based Code Editor)

Ecoder makes it easier to write and edit code. All your coding can be done right in your browser.

Ecoder sports a beautiful UI, plus real-time code syntax highlighting and line numbering. You can also edit multiple documents at once.

As far as I’m concerned, this one beats out Mozilla Bespin (especially as far as ease of use goes).

BuiltWith

Check websites and see what technologies are being used. See what your favorite websites are running on–databases, CMS, hosting, etc.

Other Online Tools

Unix Permissions Calculator

No more trying to remember Unix permissions codes when updating file permissions.

SlimTimmer

Keep track of the time you spend on projects.

The interface is extremely simple and easy to use. You can also manually add time and filter by date, client and other options.

Media Convert

Convert just about any type of file into just about any format that exists. Just upload and Media Convert takes care of the rest.

Privacy Policy Generator

Easily create privacy policies for sites by just filling out and simple, quick form.

Hohli (Online Charts Builder)

We wrote about Hohli earlier. This is a great tool for generating embeddable charts and graphs. Choose the type of chart, size, data and colors–Hohli does the rest.

Validifier (Flash Embed Code Generator)

A lot of the code generated by sites for embedding Flash content is not valid markup. Validifier turns Flash embed code into valid XHTML (using the object tag).

Genfavicon

Generate favicons from GIF, JPG or PNG files in just 3 easy steps.

Favicon Generator

Create favicons (ICO) for Internet Explorer from images (GIF, JPG, PNG).

CSS Sprite Generator

Improve your site’s performance. Upload images and the CSS Sprite Generator will create the code for your CSS sprites.

What Online Tools Do You Use?

Be sure to check out our 15 Must-Have Programs and Services For Freelancers for other great tools.

There are tons of online tools for web designers out there. Which ones do you use? Tell us in the comments.

Here’s a list of 15 free or inexpensive programs / online services for freelancers.

The list is broken down into 5 main categories:

1. Backup and Syncing
2. Finances and Invoicing
3. Communication and Project Management
4. Programs and Working With Filetypes
5. Graphics Programs

Backup and Syncing

Freelancers many times need to be able to work in different locations and have access to their files wherever they are. Having a good backup and syncing plan can help.

1. Mozy (Online and Off-Site Backups)

Mozy is a great service that, through an application for Windows and Mac OSX, automatically backs up your files and uploads them to their secure site.

In the case of an emergency, you can simply log into your account and download the files. You can also request a DVD(s) be mailed to you with all your files.

The MozyHome version lets you backup 2GB for free. Use our special link to get an extra 256MB of storage free. You can also get unlimited storage for about $5/month.

You can read more about Mozy in our previous post.

2. Dropbox (Online Backup and File Syncing)

Drop your files into a folder in your My Documents folder (or equivalent for your OS) and all the files will be updated and synced to any computers linked to your free account.

The great thing about Dropbox is that it works on all major operating systems–Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Sync your files between your home, work, laptop and other computers and as soon as they are saved, the files are uploaded for all your computers–whether they’re turned on currently or not.

Dropbox gives you 2GB of free storage. Get an extra 256MB free.

3. Xmarks (Bookmark backup and syncing service/plugin for Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer)

This plugin and free service synchronizes your bookmarks (and site passwords if you want) between your browsers and computers. Xmarks (formerly FoxMarks) has plugins for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

You can even set it to only sync certain bookmarks to certain computers.

Finances and Invoicing

One of the least exciting and most dreaded parts of being a freelancer is managing finances. These next 2 services help you spend the least amount of time dealing with billing, invoicing and general finances.

4. CurdBee (Online billing and invoicing)

We already have written about CurdBee before, but it’s such a great service, it deserves another mention.

CurdBee is an online service that lets you create and manage invoices and accept payments via PayPal, GoogleCheckout and 2CO (paid version).

When invoices are created, your clients get to choose which payment gateway to go through to pay your invoice.

Simply click Send and a link to the invoice is emailed to you and your client.

CurdBee is free (no limits on clients or how many invoices you can send).

With the CurdBee Pro version ($5/month), you get extra features like recurring billing, PDF invoices, accept 2CO payments and some other niceties.

5. Mint.com (Manage your finances and spending)

Mint is a free service that lets you track checking, savings and other financial accounts and assets for your business. It provides an easy way to keep track of your spending, and reports can be emailed to you weekly.

Communication and Project Management

Freelancers often need to communicate and manage projects easily and while on the go.

6. Drop.io (Project management / file and document sharing)

Drop.io is a free service that lets you upload and share files via your browser.

With Drop.io, you can add images, documents, audio and video files for others to view (up to 100MB per drop).

Comments for each file can be added, so this works well as an easy means of working remotely with clients and getting their feedback.

Drop.io even provides special phone numbers for conference calls, voicemail and faxes. There is also a live chat option for simple chatting through the browser, and a web presentation option.

Drop.io can send alerts via RSS, email, Twitter, etc when new files and comments are added, making it great for organizing projects.

There are also several apps as well as a Firefox plugin that use the Drop.io’s API to connect and interact with your drop.

7. Zenbe (Check multiple email accounts from anywhere)

Zenbe basically lets you check and manage emails from all your email accounts through your browser without going to several different sites.

Emails can be easily and automatically tagged so it’s simple to keep track of which messages came from which account.

Zenbe also has a collaboration tools (ZenPages/ShareFlow). You can also import existing address books, and integrates with Google Talk, Twitter and Facebook.

Though the free account option doesn’t seem to exist anymore (I got mine early on), paid accounts start at $5.99/month.

To learn more, you can read our earlier post about Zenbe.

8. Collabtive (Project management)

Collabtive is an open source, self-hosted project management system (cloud-based groupware).

Manage projects, tasks and milestones easily with a simple web-based interface.

Collabtive provides messaging and instant messaging, file management, time-tracking, iCal syncing, can import Basecamp files and is available in over 25 languages.

Programs and Working With Filetypes

9. OpenItOnline (Open and edit files online without having the program installed)

With OpenItOnline, you don’t have to have a bunch of proprietary programs and applications installed on the computer you’re using in order to view and edit files. No more having to have Microsoft Office installed just because a client sends you a .doc file.

Open and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations and images within your browser with OpenItOnline.

There are even extensions for Firefox, Flock and Internet Explorer.

10. PortableApps (Carry all your programs with you on your thumbdrive)

PortableApps lets you install and run portable versions of programs from a thumbdrive—giving you access to your programs no matter what computer you’re using.

11. LOOP Apps (Online PDF creator)

LOOP Apps is a free online tool lets you upload and convert files into PDF format, or convert a webpage into PDF. Your files can be sent to others and electronically signed.

Also worth checking is Zamzar.

Online Graphics

Whether you’re a web designer or a graphic designer or some other type of freelancer, there’s a good chance you will need to do some, at least basic, adjustments to photos and images.

12. Picnik (Basic online graphics program)

Picnik is a simple to use web-based graphic editor. Picnik is perfect for resizing images, adjusting colors, tone, contrast and applying other effects to your images and photos.

Picnik works with Flickr, PhotoBucket, Picasa and many other image sites; letting you share your images with others, are well as save them to your computer.

Picnik is free and you don’t even have to sign up for an account to use it.

Our previous post has more details about Picnik.

13. Smush.it (Online image optimizer)

Smush.it is a free online tools for optimizing (shrinking file sizes) your images. Simply upload or provide the URLs of the images you want shrunk and Smush.it will take care of the rest.

This can even shrink images that have already been optimized in Photoshop and Fireworks–all without noticeable hits to image quality.

14. Sumo Paint (Online graphics manipulation / Photoshop alternative)

If you need more than just simple image resizing and color correction, Sumo Paint steps up to handle the job.

Sumo Paint 1.1 is almost like using Photoshop. The only differences: it’s free, and it runs in your web browser.

Sumo lets you import images from your computer or a URL, or you can create a whole new image from scratch.

You have all the basic tools found in Photoshop: you can create layers (with blending modes and layer effects), typography control (leading, tracking), and much, much more. In fact, if you’re familiar with Photoshop, you’ll be using Sumo like a pro in no time.

Your resulting work can be saved to your computer, emailed or saved to your Sumo account if you’ve signed up for one.

15. Pixlr (Graphics manipulation / Photoshop alternative)

In a similar vein as Sumo, Pixlr is a good alternative to Photoshop.

There are many things you can do with and to images, just like you can with Sumo, so we won’t go into much detail here. For more details about Pixlr, take a look at our previous post about Photoshop alternatives.

Now WordPress has announced the ability to post to your WordPress.com blog easily through email–either from your desktop, webmail or your mobile/cell phone.

This is a huge improvement on the very limited WordPress ‘Post via email’ option previously available.

Now you can add images, video and MP3 audio to your email and have it added to your post.

Introducing Post by Email for WordPress.com

This doesn’t replace all the functionality of Posterous, but if you only need to update your WordPress.com blog, this is a nice option.

I’m sure more than a few people are chomping at the bit for this to be included in the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Has anyone tested this out yet? What are your thoughts?

Article Update: The steps outlined below are for use with Thunderbird 2. A newer post for Thunderbird 3 users has been written more recently. Thunderbird 3 makes syncing with Gmail 100×’s easier than the method below.

I originally used the Gmail option in Thunderbird 2’s Account Wizard to set up my Gmail account (almost 2 years ago). Looking at my settings in Thunderbird, I noticed that my Gmail account was set up for POP3 and not syncing at all (due to some changes Google made in late November, 2008).

POP3 vs IMAP

With POP3, you only get 1-way syncing. IMAP, not POP3, is what you will need if you want 2-way syncing with your computer and your online Gmail account. We want our Gmail account to be up-to-date on both our web account and the Thunderbird account on our computer.

Why Thunderbird 2’s Gmail setting still uses POP3, I don’t know. Maybe there will be an update for this soon.

I use Gmail as 1 part of my backup plan for work files. Copies of my site’s DB backups are emailed (via a handy WordPress plugin) to my Gmail account. But I also wanted a local copy available on my hard drive.

Fortunately, a little searching did me good and I found the solution.

Syncing Gmail and Thunderbird (The Solution)

I’ve recorded some notes and a few extra steps to help you (especially if you’re making the switch in Thunderbird from POP3 to IMAP).

Note: Before doing the following steps, make a backup of your Thunderbird profile in case something glitchy happens in the process.

If you already have a Gmail account set up in Thunderbird, I would also make a separate, new Gmail account/folder in Thunderbird for the IMAP version. Make the following changes to that new account. You can delete the original (POP3) account in Thunderbird once you’re sure everything’s been copied over.

Setting Up IMAP in Gmail and Linking to Thunderbird

Now, setup your IMAP/Gmail:

1. First, make sure you have IMAP set up in Gmail: Enabling IMAP in Gmail
2. Then, set up IMAP access to Gmail in Thunderbird 2.0
3. Also change your account settings based on the recommended Thunderbird settings (see note below)
   

Important: In the Recommended Thunderbird settings (step 3 above), your Gmail subfolders may not show up immediately. This will make it impossible to set the destination folders properly.

If your Gmail account in Thunderbird does have subfolders already (see illustration), you can skip down to Moving Missed Emails.

However, if your Gmail subfolders don’t appear in Thunderbird and you can’t properly set your destination folders, try this:

1. I recommend not enabling the Check for new messages at startup (Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird).
2. Close Thunderbird without checking your email and then restart Thunderbird.
3. If there are still no subfolders ([Gmail], Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, etc… see screenshot) under your newly created Gmail account, you may need to write a new message from your new account in Thunderbird and save as a draft.
4. You should then see a [Gmail] subfolder with the following subfolders under it: Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, Spam, and so forth. If still nothing shows, then just restart Thunderbird again.

Now you should be able to go back into your account settings for your new account in Thunderbird and set the destination folders (according to the recommended Thunderbird settings).

After I finished all the above steps, I went back in and enabled Check for new messages at startup.

1. Go to Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird and choose your newly setup Gmail account.
2. Re-enable Check for new messages at startup.
3. Save your settings.

Depending on your settings, Thunderbird should have already downloaded and synced your former emails that were on your online Gmail account to your newly created Gmail account folder (it will show the progress in the status bar).

Moving Missed Emails to New Gmail Folder

If you’re missing some recent emails that are in Thunderbird but not on your online account (like I was because of my former POP3 settings), here’s what you do:

1. Go to your old Gmail account folder in Thunderbird and select all the affected email.
2. Then right-click and choose Move To > [and select the Inbox of your new Gmail account].

Depending on how many files you’re moving, it may take some time to sync everything up. After it’s completed, your online Gmail account and your Gmail account in Thunderbird should all be syncing.

Cleaning Up

Once you’re sure that all the emails you need are copied to your new Thunderbird Gmail account, you can safely remove the old Gmail account; leaving your brand new, sparkling IMAP-enabled account.

Syncing With Other Email Clients

The same basic formula for syncing Gmail to Thunderbird should also work whether you’re using Outlook, Apple Mail, etc. Your settings may be different depending on your email client though, so use the IMAP help in Google Gmail Troubleshooting and choose the desktop client you use.

Troubleshooting > IMAP (For a list of all the topics under IMAP troubleshooting)

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line or leave a comment below.

A month or so ago, I stumbled across a post that led me to Posterous—a free online service that lets you post to your blogs and other sites by email.

Posterous also lets you autopost—posting to multiple sites/blogs with a single email.

Last month, I wrote a step-by-step tutorial about using Posterous and its autopost feature to post to WordPress (hosted and self-hosted), Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc.

This is extremely useful because WordPress’ built-in email posting system is very limited. Posterous makes it easy for people with a web-enabled cellphone or BlackBerry to post on the go. The autopost is great for anyone who wants to make posting the same information/photos to several sites a 1 step process.

More Tutorials and Features

Posterous also has a few more features and capabilities that’s been released since I wrote my original tutorial in January. These features make it even easier to control which sites you autopost to and control the information you can post to your blogs.

Official Posterous Tutorials and Features

The Official Posterous blog shows a simple way to select which blogs and sites to autopost to on the fly using the #url@posterous.com syntax.

It also explains how to assign WordPress categories to your posts with Posterous. For example, add your categories to the end of your Subject like so: ((tag: apple, gadgets))

Thanks to Posterous

I want to thank Posterous for making it simple for non-technical people and those with mobile devices to still post to their sites with as little effort as possible.

I also want to thank the guys at Posterous for linking to my earlier tutorial on their blog and newletters.

I look forward to seeing where Posterous will go in the near future. They seem to be adding new features about every other day lately:

• New Posterous Bookmarklet
• Password Protect Your Posterous Site
• Official Posterous Blog

Jeff Chandler wrote a post on Web Blog Tools Collection yesterday called Do You Post By Email? In the post, he asked if anyone was actually using the post by email ability that WordPress has had since at least version 1.5.

From the comments on Jeff’s article, most people have not used it because it’s incredibly limited in what can be posted—no images, HTML, video or formatting. So basically, you can only post text.

Also, it’s of limited use since most people who have access to email also have access to a regular computer. Since the blog posts that can posted by email are only text, typing on your cellphone’s keyboard takes forever.

Post by Email With Posterous

However, a free online service called Posterous was also mentioned. This lets you post not only text, but also images, videos, etc by email.

Posterous also allows you to link to your Flickr account, WordPress blogs, Blogger, Movable Type, Typepad, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and more. This means not only can you post via email to those sites, you can post via email to ALL those sites simultaneously. No more making individual posts one by one to every site you have.

Benefits are pretty obvious for those with camera phones and a connection to the internet. Imagine being able to post directly from your phone or BlackBerry.

Posterous also gives you 1GB of space and a free blog on their site.

Posterous Tutorials

I couldn’t find any tutorials for Posterous, so let’s walk through:

• Posting via email with Posterous
• signing up for a Posterous account (optional)
• Linking your Flickr, WordPress, Facebook, etc accounts
• Posting to all account at once

Posting Via Email

This is seriously easy. It could not be simpler. Really.

1. Go to www.posterous.com
2. You don’t have to sign up for an account at this point, so click on Step 2: Email anything to post@posterous.com
   
   
   
3. Your email client will open with post@posterous.com as the recipient. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, etc, just log into your webmail account and create a new email addressed simply to post@posterous.com
   
4. Type your post as you want it. You can use HTML formatting in your posts and drag and drop photos, files or videos into your email. If you add more than 1 image, Posterous will create a simple gallery for you.

2 things to note at this point:

1. If the email address you are sending from attaches a signature, you will want to highlight and remove it or this will be included in your posts.
   
   Edit: If you don’t want to remove your signature by hand each time or are posting from an online service that adds a signature/ad at the end of your emails, type #end where you want your post to end and Posterous will ignore the rest. (Thanks, Alan)
2. Posterous will use the first name in your email address as your name on their site. Make sure the email address you’re sending from contains your name. If you sign up for an account with Posterous, you can change your profile later though, so it’s not really a big deal

After you’ve written your post and attached/added your files, send your email and you’re done!

Editing and Removing Posts

After you send in your post, Posterous will send you a link to your new blog on Posterous.

You also have the option to edit your post or delete it altogether.

You can set a password for your blog as well. This requires signing up for an account though, but it’s free. This also lets you to choose your own username and address for your Posterous account and allows you to link to your blog(s), Flickr, Facebook, etc.

While you don’t have to create a Posterous account to post by email to your Posterous blog, if you want to follow the rest of the tutorial, you will need to sign up for an account.

Signing Up For a Posterous Account

Now, let’s password-protect your new blog and sign up for a Posterous account.

1. In the email that Posterous sent you after your first post, click the link Click here to set a password for this site. This takes you to the Set a Password page.
   
2. Choose a name for your site (ex: yourblog.posterous.com) and a password and click Sign Up
   
3. You’re now at the Manage page where you can change your profile, set up more email addresses or mobile phones to post from, and set up your Autopost accounts.
   

Posting to Other Sites and Blogs With Autopost

Now, we can link other sites to your Posterous account and when you post to Posterous, all those other sites and services will be posted to as well.

Linking WordPress to Posterous

Let’s begin by linking our WordPress blog to Posterous

1. Choose Autopost to Everywhere in the sidebar on the right
   
2. You can now add an account to your Posterous account and link it
3. On the Autopost to Everywhere page, click Add a service
   
4. Let’s choose WordPress by clicking the More Blogs link
   
5. Go to your WordPress blog and make sure XML-RPC is enabled in your WordPress settings
6. Back in Posterous, type in your blog’s address and username/password
   
7. Click the Advanced options link. By default, Posterous adds in a blurb at the bottom of every post. If you want to remove it, just highlight and delete.
   
8. Click Save to complete

You will now see your WordPress blog listed in your linked services.

Link to Your Flickr Account

Now, let’s link a Flickr account to Posterous.

1. Click Add a service and choose Flickr from the next screen
2. Click Click here to authorize Posterous to access your Flickr account
   
3. This takes you to Flickr’s site to sign in and confirm giving access to Posterous
   
4. Click OK, I’ll Allow It and you’ll be returned to Posterous where you’ll see that it’s added to the Autopost to Everywhere page
   

Now you can follow the same basic steps to add more services and sites to Posterous if you want. All the sites that are linked to Posterous will be updated when you post to Posterous.

The neat thing is that when you write a post and send it to Posterous, the complete contents of your post get posted to WordPress, but only the photos will be added to your Flickr account. Neat, huh?

Our post is published to both Flickr and our WordPress site with a single email

WordPress note: The thumbnails and galleries Posterous generates are 500 pixels wide, so make sure that your theme has at least 500px in width in the post area. Otherwise, it may throw off your layout.

Hopefully WordPress will improve their posting by email system soon. It would be nice if something like this was included right in WordPress. I guess we’ll just have to wait. Until then, Posterous seems like a great solution for posting by email.

What would you do without email? Email is one of those things that’s a necessity when working on most projects. So it’s not surprising that most of us (designers and non-designers alike) have at least 2 email accounts.

How do you keep track of all your email accounts when you’re out of the office?

With work-related responsibilities, I have 6 email accounts that need to be checked throughout any given day. I manage those email accounts with Thunderbird and an array of folders and rules that I’ve set up when I’m at my computer. However, when I’m not at my work computer, I have to sign into 4 or 5 different webmail accounts to check my email.

A Better Way to Manage Your Emails

A while back, I heard about Zenbe, a free online service that allows you to manage multiple email accounts from one single Zenbe account. I’m going on vacation in a few days, so I finally got around to setting up an account and playing around with it.

With Zenbe, you can:

• Manage and keep track of emails from multiple email accounts (with tagging)
• Collaborate and share files, emails, calendars, agendas and chat through private ZenPages
• Update Facebook and Twitter accounts
• Chat through Google Talk
• Easily view and sort attachment files

Not Just Webmail

More than simply checking multiple email accounts; you’re able to actually manage all of your email from multiple accounts. Big difference.

If you’re pulling emails from multiple email accounts into a single inbox, you’d better have a good way to organize them. Zenbe does an amazing job of this with very minimal input from you.

Zenbe’s main window and interface is easy to use and intuitive.

When you set Zenbe to link to an email account , you can enter tags for that account. When Zenbe pulls emails from that email account, it then automatically tags them so you can see what account they belong to in a glance—even without opening the email.

These tags are also automatically applied to the emails you send from Zenbe—letting you keep track of which emails you sent from which account.

If you want even more control over your emails, you can setup rules and apply tags based on criteria such as who the email’s from, the recipients, subject, etc. This lets me tag emails from specific clients and is a nice alternative to the folders I currently use in Thunderbird.

You can also tag individual emails manually if you want.

Also note that Zenbe doesn’t reroute your emails—they still get delivered to your regular email accounts and thus to your desktop email program of choice.

Collaboration With ZenPages

Zenbe has something called ZenPages that lets you communicate with others easily. You can add:

• Sets of emails (by email address or tags)
• Files
• Calendars
• Agendas and more

After you create a ZenPage, you invite people by email address to share the ZenPage with you (Note: the people you invite don’t need a Zenbe account to use the ZenPage). New emails, files and such are added to the ZenPage automatically as they come in.

You’re able to collaborate and share files back and forth on a secure page. Only those who you choose to invite get a link to your ZenPage. You can even chat live right from the ZenPage.

ZenPages Video Overview

Subscribe to the RSS feed for the ZenPage and you’ll be able to see when people add content to the page.

ZenPages are great solutions for those who are collaborating on a project and want to have related information easily accessible to everyone involved.

Contacts and Your Address Book

Another great feature is that you can easily import your address book into Zenbe. I just opened my Thunderbird address book, exported to CSV and imported the file in Zenbe. Zenbe makes it easy to organize those contacts as well.

I have a huge list of email contacts in my address book. After importing them into Zenbe, I can check the star next to each one that I want to make a favorite. Then, I can choose the option to show the full list of contacts, or only my favorites. I use this to show only the people I contact the most.

Zenbe lets you add unlimited email accounts and phone numbers to a single contact. You can enter and add more details such as more than one address (if for instance there’s an office address and a residental one).

If you don’t have any email rules setup, you can also search for emails from specific contacts right from the address book.

Zenbe also pulls in Gravatar icons for the contacts in your address book when available.

The handling of contacts is nicer and feels more like an actual desktop app than any other web-based app (including Gmail) that I’ve used.

More Than Just Email

Even though managing multiple email accounts from one account is simple with Zenbe, and sharing information almost fun with ZenPages, there’s lots more that you can do.

Calendar

Zenbe has its own calendar. You can also import calendars (.ICS and .ICAL formats) or subscribe to web calendars.

It’s important to note that the events that are imported from other calendars are editable, but do not sync back to the original. This may not be a deal-breaker for some, but if you just want to keep track of your agendas and upcoming events, this works just fine.

Zenbe also sports agenda and todo sections in the sidebar. These, like most of the features in Zenbe, are simple to learn and pretty intuitive.

Social Networking

You can link to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Talk accounts right from the Zenbe sidebar.

For example, the Facebook tab lets you:

• Change your Facebook status message
• See updates from your friends
• Get notified of new messages and friend requests

A Powerful Tool For Email and Communication

Zenbe is a full-featured tool for communicating with your clients across multiple email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Google Talk and more. If you have more than one email account and you’re looking for a better way to manage and organize your email, give Zenbe a try.

Remember: it’s free and it doesn’t take over your existing email accounts (meaning all your emails will still be sent to your desktop app).