Thunderbird that is. According to this post by Mitchell Baker, the Thunderbird product is not getting enough love, and I totally agree. Having thought about the topic a little, I think one of the better solutions is to break Thunderbird off and create the Thunderbird Foundation. Although I don’t have a buisness background, or even a deep connection to the Thunderbird movement, here is my reasoning.

• Thunderbird is a powerful product but the shadow that Firefox and the infamous Outlook cast is dark and long. While many know of Thunderbird’s existence, it is not a mainstream product the way Firefox is. Creating a separate foundation will, in theory, promote much needed hype and help Thunderbird establish itself more as it’s own product and not the bastard child of Firefox.
• In terms of Outlook, Thunderbird has heavy competition. Outlook is one of those applications that works well enough, but it is so widely used, especially in the business world that many users aren’t realizing it’s potential. I believe that if Thunderbird gets moved to it’s own foundation, it could have the opportunity to have more money and people thrown at it, not too many mind you, and become a more professional app.

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I have a disturbingly large amount of broccoli on my plate this weekend. First off, Friday night, Harry Potter. I don’t know how much needs to be said about Harry and his wacky adventures, but I’ve been reading this since the first book came out in Britain, and I am hooked. It amazes me how much this book sucks me in. I normally get sucked into books, but I swear I’m addicted to HP and all of it’s goodness. What’s even funnier, I don’t like Harry too much as a character. Sure he’s interesting and angsty and all, but the two things that suck me in are Harry’s past (you know the whole, good morning Harry, your life sucks, time to go be a wizard thing) and the supporting characters. Ginny, Hermione, Ron, the twins, Neville, all of the professors, etc. It’s just how well developed the world is that J.K. Rowling writes about. I feel as though I can reach out and touch it, yet not too much is described so my mind can wander.

On Saturday, I will be attending WordCamp. In all honesty, I would much rather attend Sunday, but more about that later. I am really excited about the general idea, and I’m hoping the event will get me excited enough to get me writing more often. As I said, I had hoped to also go on Sunday, because I love the developer side of Wordpress, I’m even thinking I might finally release the few plug-ins I “wrote” (as in I wrote them, but they suck), so the extra help would have been nice, but oh well.
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Hey there readers. For the 4 or so of you still visiting my page, welcome. As a few of you know, through twitter, Facebook, or just general contact, I have recently returned from a trip with my immediate family to eastern China. I visited five wonderful cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi An, Guilin, and Shou Zhou, each incredibly different, and all relatively large.

I’ve been staying away from the details of exactly what we did, mainly because it’s pretty detailed. But I’ll give you guys a little run down of the trip. We landed in Beijing, and i got food poisoning from the buffet dinner we had at the Hotel. While my parents and brother spent the next day touring the Forbidden Palace, Temple of Heaven, and Tienanmen Square, I got used to pucking ever half hour. The next day we hit up the Great Wall of China and some tombs. And the next day we visited the Summer Palace and took a plane to Xi An. (more…)

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