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Friday, October 30, 2009

Google mail (Gmail) + PGP + Google calendar in Mozilla Thunderbird

Hello. The aim of this message is to make Mozilla Thunderbird as your central piece of software to organize your activities.
I assume you have a Google account and I assume as well you have used Google Calendar before, if so this post might be of interest to you.

Mozilla

Let's start by installing Mozilla Thunderbird:

As of this writing the current version is 2.0.0.23, you can download it from here.

Well the next step is to configure Mozilla Thunderbird, should I explain it?, maybe you can just do it using the next page as reference:

Configuring Gmail Mozilla

But here comes the interesting part. How to configure Thunderbird correctly, that all the default folders from Gmail map correctly, that all the actions are seen in the web interface, for doing that check the next guide and follow it thoroughly:

Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client



PGP

You may ask yourself, why PGP?, what is PGP?, how do you define PGP?, is PGP real?
If you have a community where there is a need to know that the sender to the message is really the sender of the message or if you need to send some sensitive data, then PGP is for you.
PGP is available for many OSs, I have used it in Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, and works fine in all of these.
Again, should I explain how to install it?, well in short: put the bin folder in the PATH environment variable.
And generate the private key:

$gpg --gen-key

You will need an add-on to integrate PGP with Mozilla Thunderbird, and that is called "Enigmal", you can get it here
And the configuration is explained here.




So, what can we do now?, Send-receive messages and sign-encrypt messages plus all the nice features from Gmail into Mozilla Thunderbird.

Google Calendar

Two add-ons are essential to accomplish this:
Just install them, no big deal.
After installing and restarting Mozilla Thunderbird, switch to the view of Calendar and follow the next instructions:
  • Right click and select "New Calendar"

  • Follow the dialog, in my case worked when selected CalDAV and not Google Calendar, if you wish your main calendar to be displayed, the url looks like this: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[user]@gmail.com/events

  • To add other calendars the url format it like this:
    https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[id]@group.calendar.google.com/events
Subsitute [user] and [id] with the values for your calendars
We are done. it should work.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Machinarium

I have just played the demo of this amazing game.

Machinarium

Please check it out!!