ThunderBird is a great email client. It works fast, is free and its expandable. I am sure you understand fast and free. But what do I mean by expandable? Well, being an open source project from the people that brought you your friendly Firefox, Thunderbird has extra bits of software called extensions. These extensions adds functionality to Thunderbird. Below I have list the 10 most deservings extensions. I strongly recommended that you try them out. You will like them. A caveat though, 1 or 2 have not been updated to work with the latest version of Thunderbird(2.0)

Top 10 Must Have Add-Ons for ThunderBird
1. Text size toolbar: Adds text size buttons to the toolbar.
I never really quite figured out why the increase/decrease font size button was missing. I placed this number 1 as it seem to be such a basic feature that it should not even be an add-on.

2. Lightning: An integrated calendar for Thunderbird
Outlook has Calenders. Thunderbird sadly does not have one built in by default. Thanks to the Lightning people, we have calenders to boast about too. You can even have multiple calenders. One for home, one for office etc.

3. Contacts Sidebar: Displays the address books in a sidebar in Thunderbirds 3-pane-window
Makes contacts really easily searchable. Given that TBird saves all the names and emails of everyone you have contact with, you should be able to find anyone’s email in a jiffy.

4. MinimizeToTray: Minimizes Mozilla windows into the system tray
Usually when we press the red X at the top right of Tbird, it will close TBird. However heavy users might actually want it to go to the system tray so that it can monitor incoming emails

5. Image Zoom: Adds zoom functionality for images
Self explanatory I guess…

6. Auto Zip Attachments: Auto Zip Attachments allows you to easily compress (zip) attachments.
Multiple files? Need to compress them? This extension does it for you!

7. Signature Switch: Switch the signature on/off or choose a new one from your predefined set
Sending emails to different people mean different signatures. Do you still manually type the signature every time? I hope not as that would be wasting a lot of time. Try saving signatures and selecting them when you need them.

8. Quicktext: Quicktext is an extension for Thunderbird that lets you create templates that can be easily inserted into your own emails.
Like Signature Switch, but for everything else non Signature

9. Advanced Remove Duplicates: Extends Folder-Context-Menu with a Button to delete Duplicate Messages
I usually need this when I import mails from other computers. Sometimes I will end up with multiple emails so using this extension can reduce the storage needed.

10. XNote: Persistent sticky notes for Thunderbird associated to mails

XNote allows you to create a note for each mail. Thus, you can add for example the phone number of that contact or when you have to contact the sender back.

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Welcome to the May 6, 2007 edition of top ten list carnival. This edition is rather interesting. Of personal interest is the post about insurance from Silicon Valley Blogger(10 Tips On Life and Disability Insurance: How And Why We’re Getting More). I am going to Silicon Valley around the end July for my 1 year internship so I am looking at insurance options for the duration.

Also from Zen Master Leo comes Top 10 Ways to Reduce Your Work Week. It’s rather interesting given that shorter work weeks seem to be the trend now. I especially like Tip 9: Shut off the computer. I think far too much time spend online can be better spent working. Like I said in my 10 Things I Learnt From Blogging, TodaysTen traffic peaks on weekdays which means many people are readng blogs instead of working.
The Carnival

Leo presents Top 10 Ways to Reduce Your Work Week posted at zen habits.

It is great that you have a business/product idea that you are sure will sell like wildfire once you build it. However do take a step back and see if it passes the 10 tests below?

All of us are aiming to create a business one day. But what’s the first step? Well, it is coming up with an idea. Here I have listed the Top 10 Surefire Ways To Come Up With A Million Dollar Idea. However as a caution, an idea is only the first step to make a Million Dollars and an idea by itself is worth $0

Do you see a problem somewhere? If you have that problem, it might be a good problem to solve. There are some criteria you should put your idea through first to determine if a solution could earn you money. Some I can think of are
1) the size of the market,
2) the pain of the problem and
3) the current solutions.

3. Combine 2 solutions

New technologies = New solutions. The market might not be ready for these solutions yet. So if there is a new technology, it is up to you to find the correct market. In this case, innovative thinking really needs to happen as you have to define a market out of the zillion ones out there.
Most university and research labs have technology licensing arms where you can browse their Patents Available for Licensing (PAL).
http://web.mit.edu/tlo/www/industry/PAL.html
http://otl.stanford.edu/flash.html
http://www.exploit-tech.com/industries/science.asp

8. EQ modeling

Somehow showers seem to induce the best ideas in me. I guess for the most of the day I am always occupied and doing something. My brain seems to have no time for itself. The shower cubicle is a great place to link multiple thoughts together. I think it has to do with the interaction of warm water and your brain. Try it for yourself.

I hope that this post has been able to help you get started on thinking of ideas. However before embarking on your next idea, do some due diligence to ensure that you are not wasting your time. My next post will be on how to evaluate ideas.

Copyright : TodaysTen.com

A market plan usually has the following components below
1. Value Proposition
2. Market Size
3. Environmental Analysis
4. Differentiation matrix
5. Growth Path
6. Product Positioning
7. SWOT Analysis
8. Expansion Plan
9. Revenue Model
10. Phased Development

Marketing presentations are meant to impress. Here I am going to show you how to translate boring text describing the above into colorful eye catching graphics using new inbuilt features of PowerPoint 2007 has. They are called smart art and they are every easy to use. You can also find the smart art feature in Word 2007 which means you can use the skill you learn today over there too. To insert a smart art, Click on insert, then smart art (It looks like a green arrow)

1. Value Proposition- The Benefits of your product

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Cycle->Radial Cycle

The Product at the center and the benefits of your product are the surrounding circles. The audience gets an instant feel of what benefits your product brings. You can also replace the words with pictures if you have professional created art. Do note that transparent gifs are better if you intend to insert pictures. Pictures with white background ruins the smart art color.

2. Market Size & Segment

Where to find this: This is NOT a smart art. Instead it is a 3D pie chart. Click on Insert->Chart->Pie Chart.

You can choose either the 2^nd or 5^th pie chart for this effect. Clicking on chart will open MS Excel. You have to edit the data of the chart from Excel. Also remember to change the headings so that word also gets your new headings.

Pie charts are simple to understand and usually used to show market segments in part of a larger market.

3. Environmental Analysis- The Trends

Environmental Analysis shows the background of why the time and place is right for your product.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Hierarchy->Table Hierarchy

The tops shows the heading “Environment”. The second level shows the areas that make up the environment. The third layer shows what trends are happening in that environment. If you like animations during your presentation, you can use the show 1 level at 1 time option. This slowly shows 1 box at a time giving your audience time to read and digest your information.

4. Differentiation matrix

Differentiation matrix is used to set your product away from competing products based on feature set.

Where to find this Table(After clicking on Insert, click Table)

This is just a simple Table. But PPT 2007 has made it easy to make the rows and columns banded. To do this,

a. your table

b. Click on Design under Table tools

There will be a list of checkboxes (Header Row, First Column Etc). Check those that apply to your current table. Meaning if your first row is different from the rest(i.e. it is a row where Titles are in) check that box. Every time you check a box, PPT will make that row/column look different.

Also change the color of the column that your product is in. This will visually enhance and set apart your product from that of your competitors. I like to increase the font of my column too.

5. Growth Path

There are 2 components in this slide.

The first is the heading “12.7% market share…”

a. To do this, click on Insert, WordArt.

b. Choose a nice looking font you like

c. Type the words you want.

The second is the Growth Curve

a. Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Upward Arrow

b. For each phase, type in the text title.

The upward arrow should inspire confidence in the growth of your market while the eye catching word art will highlight the size of your market.

6. Product Positioning

Product Positioning usually is used to show that your product is occupying a position that is superior to your competitors.

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Grid Matrix

Enter the Text you want. Usually your product should be on the top right hand corner. Right-Click on the rectangle that is there and select “Change Shape”. Choose a star as it is eye catching and delivers an impression.

7. SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis should show the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats of your organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Basic Matrix

Enter the text you want. This Slide should be pretty texty as it is basically a descriptive slide. I haven’t really thought of a way to make it easy to understand without reading.

You might want to manually change the colour layout(i.e: Threats = Red, Strength= Green)

8. Expansion Plan

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Gear

Basically, you can enter text or you can paste a picture of the country flag you are entering into.

I chose gears as it is symbolic of a movement to greater things and having more effects. The upward arrow chosen in Growth Path will do too, but I will try to avoid using the same Smart Art in one Document.

9. Revenue Model-Revenue Model shows how money is coming into and going out of our organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Relationship->Converging Radial

Simple, Just add in text. You can adjust the size of the arrow to match the proportion of the money flow. I had some trouble with this smart art though. The arrows do not behave well. You need to flip the arrow around manually as it is meant to all point in ward.

10. Phased Development

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Chervon List

This slide shows what steps you are taking in each phase. In my case, it is the promotion methods we are using in each phase. It is like a very pretty Gantt chart.

This one is pretty complicated, but here goes.

a. Once you have inserted the Smart Art, enter a space in all Level 2 Text

b.Level 1 Text corresponds to the first column text.

c.Level 1’s 2^nd level text is the top row text.

d. Fill in the top row (Phase1, Phase2, etc) and the first column(magazine, TV etc) with the appropriate titles.

e. Create as many rows as you want. For every row that you create, also create an equal number of columns.

f. Now click on the column you would like to be on. Click on Smart Art Tools->Format. (Smart Art Tools is at Top Row of PPT)

g. Change the look of the chevron by choosing a colored template.

h. You can select multiple chevrons by holding down shift and clicking on all the chevrons you want. After selecting all the chevrons you want, you can then choose a color and all of the selected chevrons will share the same new color.

Ending note

After you finish your PowerPoint slide, choose a theme that you like. Use Themes to make everything consistent. Most of the smart art will change color. If you do not like these colors, you can click on the color tab under design. The colors are color coded for you so you do not end up with conflicting colors that are horrible to look at.

You will also notice that your smart art do not look as nice as they are not 3D and have no gloss over them. It is actually every simple to enhance them. Select your Smart art (your diagram), click on Design(it should be on the right hand side of the highest bar of PowerPoint). Now you should see an array of 3D perspectives and gloss you can choose from. Click on one and your diagram will instantly get a facelift.

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Copyright : TodaysTen.com

A person’s identify of self is not in-built but it is developed through experience and time. Similarly, a blogger’s identity on the web does not only contain his offline personality but also his online counterpart both which changes over time.

The first step is to know that there is a self. When you stand in front of a mirror, you know that it is a reflection and not another being. However young children below the age of one do not know this. An experiment was done to show this. Children were shown a mirror twice, once with a red dot on their forehead and once without. Only older children would respond by rubbing to see if the dot was there.

So the first step for a blogger will be to get this own blog. This allows himself get his own unique identity online and also allow others to differentiate him.

The second step in traditional self identity involves interaction with other humans. A self emerges as a result of social interaction and role-taking. Similarly, a blogger’s identify is developed and maintained by interaction with other bloggers.

The looking glass self model means that the self that we develop derives from the way others treat us. Their treatment is like a mirror reflecting our personal qualities.

A being’s identify of self is not in built and is developed through experience and time. Similarly, a blogger’s identity on the web does not only contain his offline personality but also his online counterpart.

The first step is to know that there is a self. When you stand in front of a mirror, you know that it is a reflection and not another being. However young children below the age of one do not know this. An experiment was done to show this. Children were shown a mirror twice, once with a red dot on their forehead and once without. Only older children would respond by rubbing to see if the dot was there.

So the first step for a blogger will be to get this own blog. This allows himself get his own unique identity online and also allow others to differentiate him.

The second step in traditional self identity involves interaction with other humans. A self emerges as a result of social interaction and role-taking. Similarly, a blogger’s identify is developed and maintained by interaction with other bloggers.

The looking glass self model means that the self that we develop derives from the way others treat us. Their treatment is like a mirror reflecting our personal qualities.

1) We imagine how we appear to those around us.
(We do this before we write an article. We might think of how our article might affect our readers, how many people will be interested in reading it and how Google will rank it.)

2) We interpret others’ reactions.
(From the comments that people leave or the number of Diggs,links it gets, we get a rough idea of whether people like your post. Being liked is important as it allows you to continually develop your social self and social web)

3) We develop a self concept.
(As we stick to our niche of writing based on what was popular, we start to create our blog such that the content is pointed in a certain direction and to certain segments of people. These people get to know you better as you post more. In time you go deeper into the culture and write even more articles suited in the culture.)
That in essence is how self identity developments.

There are 8 components of self that people list when asked who you are. Here I have adapted them into blog culture for an interesting read.

1) Interpersonal Attributes
How people think of you.
“This blogger has link exchanged with me. He is my friend” “ He writes good articles” “I have hosted a carnival with his post before”

2) Existential Aspects
Things that can be seen
“How does your blog look? Do you use Wordpress or Blogger? Is there a photo of yourself on your blog.”

3) Internalized Beliefs
Things that you believe in
“I like Tech Gadgets. I want to help people. I must get as much traffic as possible”

4) Ascribed Characteristics
Your Profile
“Name, Age, Race etc”

5) Self Awareness
Who you think you are. This is different from internalized beliefs as Self awareness as your awareness of yourself might be different from what other people think.
“I am a good Blogger. My posts are interesting. ”

6) Interests and Activities
“What you do. What do you like.”

7) Social Discrimination
How your blog differs in the aspect of social level
“I belong to this blog network, I run this affiliate program”

Social Differentiation
How you differ from other bloggers.
“I make less on Adsense. My blog get less traffic.”

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Copyright : TodaysTen.com

If you are surfing to TodaysTen.com from another productivity site, you are in danger of getting stuck in your routine. Its time to try something new! New experiences will bring new problems and also their solutions. Creative people use free exchange of ideas to cross link solutions to create new mash ups of solutions that can solve old problems. That is only one benefit of increasing your areas of knowledge. So try something new today! When was the last time you learnt something new?

1. Learn A New Language
This is a pretty hard thing to do, but the benefits will pay off. Learning a new language opens an entire foreign culture to your perspective. Every culture has a different way of solving problems and interacting. For now, the best languages to learn will be Spanish and Chinese because of the sheer amount of people you will be able to communicate with. Lucky for me, I have only Spanish left to tackle.

2. Talk To Someone You Are Unfamiliar With
Another usually hard thing to do. Most of our social circles are limited to people within our same age range or have similar interests. Interacting with these people will not bring you new experiences and opportunities. There are reasons why networking sessions are so strongly recommended. They bring diverse people together who are interested in meeting more people. Each participant gets multiple opportunities to learn something new, either from the speaker or their peers. If you are less inclined in meeting people, try surfing to some internet forums you have never been to before.

3. Surf to an unknown Website
Alexa provides a list of the top 500 sites in terms of traffic numbers. Choose one that you have never heard of before and dive in. Multiple top sites are in Chinese which is another great reason to get familiarized with the Chinese language

4. Read a best selling book you have no interest in
The fact that it is a bestseller means that at least the quality is assured. Looking at Amazon’s top seller list , I realized that many of the books are in the self improvement category. Try to not select these although you will be interested in them.

5. Take a walk
In the absence of the danger of physical harm, try to take a walk around your neighbor hood. You might just discover something interesting that you have missed because you were driving too fast down the road. You might also rediscover neighbors whom who you forgotten exist!

6. Go to a class
Sign up for a class. Dance classes, hobby related classes seem very popular to people who have a bit more time. They might have something of interest to you too. There are numerous places online to learn something new. One class I am attending now is the Adobe Photoshop CS2: introduction by HP. It is completely online and free too!

7. Get a hobby
Another great way to try something new. Some people also manage to successfully turn their hobby into part time businesses.

8. Listen to a random radio station
Visit podcast alley to see what the popular podcast are. Download one and starting listening to it on your compute now!

9. Read every article in your newspaper
Have you been guilty of scanning article titles and only reading the ones you have interest in? You paid the full price for the newspaper so make full use of it. Read every article. It might take you an entire hour by the price is well spent. Newspaper articles are usually well researched and have quality writing in them. That’s something you won’t find online consistently.

10. Come back to TodaysTen.com everyday
Yes, it’s a shameless plug. But I believe that your areas of experience will increase with our Daily Top Ten articles. To see the reason why Top Ten articles are so powerful, read my post on Why you need TodaysTen.com

1. Copernic Desktop Search

This is really one software that I use once or twice a day. The basic premise of this software is to let your computer organize your documents for you. It works like Google desktop except that no browser is required. The interface is spizzy and searches are quite fast. The most common use is when I need to find a certain document or name. Just typing in the term will allow me to find the documents. An example will be when I receive a call from a client regarding his invoice. I just have to type in his name and the matching documents will show up. This software really saves almost everyone precious time.

Mass Appeal: 4.5/5

2. Office 2007

Well well, if you are still using older versions of MS office, this newest edition is really going to be a sure upgrade. The basic functionality of MS office is all still there except that now, you can ACTUALLY find and use them. There is a funny story at Microsoft when they were developing this edition of Office. They did customer surveys and focus groups to see what new features they wanted in the next edition. 90% of the features that customers then requested were actually already in Office 2003. Of course Microsoft realized that their software was powerful enough. Now they just had to give us a way to get into the features.

And Office 2007 does that really well. The User Interface has been revamped. It’s kind of hard to explain it. There is a trial version online. Do give it a spin when you have time.

One more thing I really really really like is the ability to easily make your documents/PowerPoint look much more professional. The text effects/PowerPoint themes have been spruced up. A few clicks and the boring layout, color scheme is replaced with something more professional looking. Get office 2007 early and impress your colleagues with a wonderful looking PowerPoint.

Mass Appeal: 4.5/5

3. Antivirus

Oh my god! If you do not have anti virus, please get one now! Personally I try not to use antivirus software from large branded companies. Now this is really quite against intuition. But just think about it. Being a large antivirus vendor means that you have a lot of customers. Which means that if you are a hacker/cracker/adware, you will be more likely to test your malicious program against the largest antivirus software so that you will be able to reach as many innocent unsuspecting users as possible. This is the reason why large antivirus software frequently fails in virus detection test. Its not that they are incompetent, it is because the hackers are making sure their software can get around them.

I have Avira Antivir on my desktop (http://www.free-av.com/). It’s free and its virus detection skills are above par. My friend recommended this software to me when he was trying to clean away a virus that spread via USB memory sticks. He was the first person to introduce the virus into our computer lab and soon, everyone in my engineering module had the virus not only in their lab computers (which had a big name antivirus on it) but also on their laptops. Well at least AntiVir managed to get rid of the virus. Phew!

Mass Appeal: 3.5/5

4. Timesnapper

I found this software through www.lifehack.org (a Personal Development Site). This software runs in the background, automatically taking screenshots and saving them. It’s a great recovery software if you are writing a word document and your computer reboots. You can just open up timesnapper and see what you had been writing when disaster struck. It is also useful for reviewing the day before you go to sleep. You can run through the screenshots like a movie and basically see what you did all day.

Mass Appeal: 3.5/5

5. CutePDF

I get really irritated when I see PDFs with watermarks on them. I was reading quite a few executive summaries for a business plan competition. Horrifying, some of the summaries had watermarks on them (e.g. Created by PDF factory. www.pdffactory.com). This is a national business plan competition and you can actually submitting a plan that has a watermark on it? Do not allow the same mistake to happen on you.

CutePDF acts like a printer. You can convert any documents to a PDF as long as it has the print function. It’s free and there is no watermark. What more can you ask for?

Mass Appeal: 4/5

6. Opera

Nope, this is not some multimedia software. It is probably the 3rd largest internet browser in the world. (And probably the largest mobile phone browser). I know a lot of people using Internet Explorer (at least upgrade yours to IE7 ya?) and Firefox. But I prefer opera as it’s really fast. And there is a zoom function which resizes the page that you are viewing. Sometimes I just want to lean back and read a long article leisurely. Other times, I want to watch YouTube videos when I am on my bed. The zoom function tries to fill up the screen as much as possible.

Mass Appeal: 5/5

7. http://www2.blogger.com/www.mediafire.com

The only internet software in this list. This is a site like many others where you can upload a file that is too large to send via email. Really useful for those large PowerPoint that everyone in my group has to vet before we go for presentation.

Mass Appeal: 4/5

8. RealVNC

This is software that allows you to remote control to another computer. The software has to be installed on both computers and there is a password authentication when you connect. It is really useful when you want to control the computer in the other room or when you are at work and need a file from your home computer. Bundle this with hamachi and you will have your personal file server.

Mass Appeal: 3/5

9. FoxIt reader

Simply put, this reader opens PDF file in 1/10 the time required by Abode’s Reader. How many PDFs do you open a day? Think of the time you can be saving by not watching the adobe reader splash screen.

Mass Appeal: 4/5

10. Super

This is a super video encoder/decoder. Mainly I use it to encode videos so that I can watch them on my PDA. To my knowledge, there isn’t any other encoder/decoder that supports such a large variety of codecs and is free.

Mass Appeal: 3/5