Today I found a great extension for Thunderbird that shows just one message in HTML format (not sanatized so use it with care). This will return you to plain text (or sanitized HTML if that was your default setting) for the next message. This is very handy.

The extension is avialable from Mozilla.

Only someone really slow would regularly view their email in HTML format because of security risks involved in HTML email and because most SPAM contains a unique counter “image” to tell the sender that you are reading your email. They see this as a green light to send more spam.

In Mozilla Thunderbird (get your copy at Mozilla.com) you can click on view, message body as, and select either sanitized html or html when you encounter a message that you do want to view in HTML format. The problem is that once selected, you need to then reverse the process to get back to plain text mode. No longer a problem with this extension installed.

There is a significant push to digitize many writings, books and documents, including entire libraries. This combined with a comic I saw the other day really got me to thinking. The comic (I am sorry I don’t know the artist’s name, but it is a daily joke calendar I got as a gag gift last year) had a machine that purported to highlight the text of books as you waited. Now it seems to me an “easy” thing for someone to place hooks into their digitized works so that it would automatically highlight in several different ways depending on the audience. Indeed, it is easy enough to do in html, you just embed style tags in the document and then switch on/off the relevant styles it seems to me. Google already does highlighting when you search for terms, but this could be much more meaningful. Great thought, but what do I do with it next?

I was reading Mike Industries Blog today about his frustration with his DVR. I occaisionally miss recording something because I forget to change the channel between shows (we tape two shows back-to-back). We use the old fashioned method of starting the VCR manually and it works well with that one exception. But when will the time be right for TV on demand. When I miss a show can I get it sent to me? I have several times considered calling a friend on the West Coast to say … could you tape that in two hours when it comes on?

I read a few articles on TV on Demand that outline some of the problems and pitfalls — like revenue. I guess until those things get sorted out, I’ll have to just remember to change the channel when I hit record.

I see with the release of Firefox 1.5, the address has changed. Firefox and Thunderbird have moved from Mozilla.org to Mozilla.com. Mozilla continues to be my favorite web browser. It has only gotten better with each successive release. With the installation of Firefox version 1.5, I found that the installation/updating of extensions was really slick.

According to C-Net, New Orleans Louisiana is planning to build a Wi-Fi network to provide internet access to the citizens. I have seen some articles that suggest that a municipality is in an extreamly good position to build such as system as they already have the necessary locations for towers (light poles and so forth) and easements (roads) that they need for much of the installation. I have also read studies suggesting that a city may save enough in connectivity costs alone to fund the Wi-Fi. Private carriers argue against such systems, mainly because it will hurt their opportunities to sell in that market.

It will be interesting to see if in the short run the internet access becomes increasingly like broadcast television, freely available. If so, it may over time become more restrictive. If you provide free access to your citizens can you then control what they are able to access, blocking sites that may be deemed inappropriate?

I enjoyed this post from the Google Blog showing the doodles of some school children from England. The winner by an eleven year old girl enjoyed a day on the front page of Google in the UK. It really is very creative and very “professionally” done. I really like her use of color. Neat stuff.

A new site of mine Storm Trumpets is receiving some attention for the expanding / collapsing site menu. Visit the site and click on the menu items “Trumpets” and “Trombones” to see the menu in action. It creates the illusion of movement as if driven by DHTML or JavaScript, however to the contrary it works in CSS and is really quite simple. I have been asked to explain how it works, so thought I would provide a brief tutorial for it here.
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