Archive for June, 2007

Captain Jack in Cloudbase shocker!

Published by Chris on June 24, 2007 under Television

Cloudbase

Borrowing heavily from Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet, the recent episode of Doctor Who was a corker.

Last week we were told about Captain Jack’s inability to die. So he looks a bit like Captain Scarlet, he’s indestructible like him, and now he’s got his cloudbase too.

Captain Jack

Captain Scarlet

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Adding GMail as a mail client in Windows XP

Published by Chris on June 18, 2007 under Computers

Having had a GMail account for long time now, but only recently starting to use it properly I was looking for a way to integrate it with the desktop. Some searching found the following registry changes to add GMail to the list of mail clients. Using this will allow GMail to be selected as the default mail client and associated with the “Email” option pinned to the Windows XP start menu, and any “Mail” buttons you may have on your keyboard, etc.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Google GMail]
@="Google GMail"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Google GMail\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Google GMail\shell\open]
@="Google GMail"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Google GMail\shell\open\command]
@="rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://www.gmail.com"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Google GMail\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\WINDOWS\gmail.ico"

Save the above as a .reg file.

You’ll need to save this icon somewhere on your computer, and make sure the correct path is referenced in the registry.

GMail icon

By using the GMail Notifier you can also associate mailto: links, etc GMail and have the compose page open in your browser.

GMail notifier options

However, if you’re using a non-admin account for your day-to-day activities setting this option won’t work as it rather cheekily tries to write to HKLM\Software\Classes\mailto. If you add the following to HKCU yourself you can get the same functionality.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto]
"EditFlags"=hex:02,00,00,00
"URL Protocol"=""
@="URL:MailTo Protocol"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\DefaultIcon]
@="c:\\windows\\gmail.ico"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="\"c:\\program files\\google\\gmail notifier\\gnotify.exe\" -mailto %1"

Being able to use Send to > Mail recipient with files would be nice next, but I can’t see it happening…

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