I really hate it when websites don’t give you any warning of links which will open in a new window. A lot of sites provide a little icon, or a small superscript comment, or even a tooltip. However, some don’t.

The one site that really annoyed me was Google’s GMail. I always like to keep the left-most tab in firefox on my Google Personalised Home. When a message arrives, I click the GMail header and am consequently presented with the GMail Inbox. Perfect.

In the top-left corner of the GMail homepage is a link back to Google Home (whether personalised or not - it ‘knows’) which opens in a new window. Which is very frustrating if you have lots of tabs open in the current window. After looking for an ‘Open in this tab’ extension and failing to find one, I decided to create my own.

Enter thisTab! - a Mozilla Firefox extension to override the behaviour for a link which uses the target=’_blank’ parameter to open a new window. Note that this won’t work with javascript popup links.

As this is my first foray into any kind of ‘plugin’ development, I’d love to know what people think.

The Sitening Blog led me to the Websites as graphics tool, created by Aharef. It’s a great little tool, which produced the following image:

This is a map of the jamesbooker.co.uk homepage with its associated tags mapped out. Here’s a legend (pulled from sitening.com - hope they don’t mind!)

• blue: for links (the A tag)
• red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
• green: for the DIV tag
• violet: for images (the IMG tag)
• yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
• orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
• black: the HTML tag, the root node
• gray: all other tags

I read an article on seochat.com the other day, entitled ‘How to Steal to the Top of Google: Use the News’ and came across this statement:

‘You see, the average person completely glosses over most ads on internet sites without even focusing on them’

I disagree, and I’ll tell you why :-

Over recent months I’ve been helping a family friend replace his company’s website with an ecommerce website selling recliner furniture straight from the page.

The one thing I’ve noticed while doing this site for them is the lack of significance of their Google Pagerank - their page doesn’t show up in the first 20 pages of google results for the term ‘recliner’ - even with a search limited to UK sites only.

The one thing that’s made their website a success is their GoogleAds campaign, and other advertising media.

So it just goes to show - Google Pagerank isn’t everything - I have proof!

Having finally got my Palm m100 handheld successfully synching with Microsoft Outlook 2003, I thought I’d share how I did it to stop others from suffering as I have.

The Problem
The major problem with getting email on the m100/m105 isn’t actually the fact that there’s no email client bundled with these handhelds, the major problem is that there’s no Mail conduit (which is the piece of software used to synchronise stuff from the desktop to the handheld) installed with the Palm Desktop software when you have one of these handhelds.

Requirements
You will need:

• The original software CD that came with your Device. Without
  this, you won’t be able to install the Chapura PocketMirror software
  needed to get Outlook synchronisation working properly
• The update to Chapura PocketMirror Standard version 3.1.7.1, available for free download from here.
• Palm Desktop 4.1 for Windows, available for free from Palm here.
• Both the e*Mail and MailStub applications, available (again, for free) from here.
• The Palm email conduit update from here.
• A large cup of coffee

Assumptions made
I have only tested this from scratch. If you already have your Outlook synchronisation working for everything else with the version of Palm Desktop from the CD, then just skip the first step. If you’ve upgraded the Palm desktop and still have your Outlook synch working, then you may only need the Mail conduit update and e*Mail/MailStub.

I’ve also assumed you already have Microsoft Outlook installed

From the beginning
The first step is to install the Palm Desktop from your CD. Make sure that when it asks where you want to synch from, that you choose Microsoft Outlook rather than the Palm Desktop. Once this process has finished, you’ll have a working system which synchronises your Tasks, Calendar, Address book and Notes from Outlook.

Install Palm Desktop upgrade
Next job is to install the Palm Desktop update. When you do this, the PocketMirror will break. DO NOT perform a HotSync or anything. If Palm Desktop Setup asks you to reboot, let it reboot your system and continue from here.

Install Chapura PocketMirror update.
Install this update - it’s fairly self-explanatory. Make sure you choose the settings to synchronise it all to Outlook (in this version you can specify to only synchronise certain applications)

Install e*Mail and MailStub
Careful - updating the Palm Desktop software removes the trusty ‘Install Tool’ from your Start menu/desktop and replaces it with the ‘PalmOne Quick Installer’ which doesn’t work with the m100 - However, the application is still safe, in your C:\Palm folder, look for InstApp.exe and run that. Click ‘Add…’ and add the eMail.prc file (which you’ve already unzipped, haven’t you?). Click ‘Add…’ again, and install the MailStub.prc file too. DO NOT HOTSYNC yet.

Right-click on the Hotsync-manager in your system tray, and click the Local Serial option. Right-click again, and click the Local USB option to stop the software looking for a USB Palm, which the m100 isn’t.

Right-click a third time, and choose Custom. For every option except the ‘Install’ and ‘System’ items, select each one in turn and choose ‘change…’ and select the ‘Do Nothing’ option. Now perform a HotSync. After the HotSync operation has finished, right-click the HotSync manager again, and choose Custom again, and make sure all the options are set to ‘Synchronise the files’ if they haven’t automatically reverted back.

Run e*mail
Take your palm from its cradle/cable and switch it on. run the e*mail program, then exit straight back to the Home screen.

Install the Mail conduit
Install the Mail conduit update package, which actually installs it if it doesn’t already exist. When the installer asks what you want to synchronise to, choose ‘Microsoft Outlook 97 or later’ and then keep clicking Next until it’s finished.

You’re done!
Now perform a final HotSync operation, which may take some time the first time around, and weep as the paltry little 2MB RAM in your Palm m100 fills up very quickly!

I hope someone finds this useful. I’ve run through these steps as I’ve been writing to check that they work. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message from my ‘About’ page if you encounter problems - I’ll try my best to help.