When creating an event in Thunderbird (using the Lightning plugin,) I couldn't get access to LDAP for doing a lookup in order to invite attendees.

Found a tip on how to do it (if you don't have an LDAP server configured already, you'll need to find info on how to do that elsewhere):

See the full thread here.

Recently, I switched to a Mac and started using Entourage because the two things about Outlook that were hardest to give up were #1) the ability to setup meetings via Exchange and #2) management of my contacts.

A co-worker turned me onto Thunderbird (with Lightning) in a bid to help me break my Outlook addiction. I've used Outlook for so long it's hard to quit. I...

• ...love the ability to drag an email onto the calendar and create an event
• ...know the keyboard shortcuts for creating my most-used items (tasks, notes, emails, etc.)
• ...found this great plugin for automatically scheduling tasks as a part project management
• ...used the journal for all kinds of things including my job search two years ago, and ...
• ...had the views of my different items (most notably tasks) tweaked to work for me

Outlook makes it so easy, but I can do away with MS PIMs apps on all OSes now that I can do calendar management with Yahoo Calendar (beta) and contact management with Plaxo.

Here's how to do it in five easy steps:

1. Before you begin, choose a color

You're about to create three calendars which will remain in sync: one in Thunderbird, one in Calgoo, and one in Yahoo.

I recommend choosing a single color to identify your calendar across all three tools. I set forth on this exercise to make my "Work" calendar available and I chose red.

You're likely to repeat these steps for calendars serving different purposes in the future so this is more a recommendation than a must-do but using color will help remind you which calendar you're looking at.

2. Get yourself a Calgoo Hub account

Go to Calgoo Hub and sign up. It's easy.

3. Publish your calendar to Calgoo

Follow these instructions provided by Calgoo to (create and) publish your calendar from "Sunbird" (the basis of the Lighning calendar which is Mozilla-based.)

At this point, you can also change the color of the calendar in both Thunderbird and Calgoo.

I recommend change settings in Calgoo on the calendar to make it private. Use that URL for the next step.

4. Subscribe to the Calgoo in Yahoo Calendar

You have to be able to use the Yahoo Calendar beta at http://beta.calendar.yahoo.com.

Subscribe to the Calgoo calendar using the URL from the previous step and choose your color for the calendar.

5. Check your Yahoo Calendar

There it is! Your Thunderbird calendar! In Yahoo!

As easy as that, I no longer need Outlook to manage my contacts and calendars.

Thanks to Arun for suggesting that I check out Lightning.

(I see a Taskline-like plugin for Lightning in the future. Taskline, get on that. Hmmm... I see a plugin for Bugzilla tasks in the future...)

2009-01-14 UPDATE: Or, instead of the multistep process, you can make it easy on yourself by just trying this, though I did have some difficulties getting it to work (Error Console was saying the calendar was either not DAV or not available.) After a couple of times of adding and deleting calendars, and of shutting down Thunderbird and restarting it, my Yahoo calendar finally appeared in Thunderbird. Cookie issue?

I totally baited you into my blog. Were you searching for where you could download it? Yeah, sorry, not here.

If it comes out and I'm not paying attention, do let me know if you see it. Thanks.

Can you believe it? I'm playing with electronic PIMs again. I keep thinking I'll find the perfect Outlook-like app for the web that offers the same speedy functionality whether on a mobile device or in a browser on my desktop.

This morning I was playing around with AirSet on my mobile phone. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in ubiquity. Now, if only I could email tasks to a certain list...

One of the reasons cool things about Gmail is number ten on the list of little-known Gmail features; the ability to modify "from" in the email header. One of the other cool things is the filters capability (which did not make the list so everyone knows about it, right?)

The things I find so clever about filters is that you can create tasks via email (provided you set up the filter for a "todo" filter.)

This afternoon, I saw that 30Boxes is making an API available to - among other things - programmatically add tasks to your todo list. A cron job and some PHP would make it really easy to consume todo's as emails, regardless of whether I'm sitting in front of Outlook or whether I'm making use of an opposable digit on my cellphone. Now, if they only had great mobile service like AirSet...

OK Outlook Tasks
HR[8000FFFF] Catastrophic failure
OK FranklinCovey PlanPlus for Outlook TaskList Conduit
Conduit 'FC Task List' Error: Unknown error. (65535)

1. Export all of your tasks from Outlook into an Excel file
2. Now (right now!) make a copy of that Excel file and put it somewhere safe
3. Delete all of your tasks from the tasks folder in Outlook
4. In the export, check the tasks one-by-one (pay special attention to the "Notes" field1) to see if you see anything suspicious which you delete and then...
5. Import the tasks from the Excel file back into Outlook