Last week I discovered a big old box with Asian stamps on it in my mailbox. I pulled it out and thought to myself, “what on earth am I getting from Hong Kong?!?” Then I looked at the return address, “of course… (newly badged) Mentos Ambassador Stoll!” Ambassador Stoll had been working his way around the world since last August. And I, just as I do whenever I hear someone is going out of the country, asked him if he’d keep his eyes open for new/crazy Mentos flavors not available in the US. He certainly didn’t disappoint. Included in his package were some old standards: foreign labeled Mint, Strawberry, Apple, Fruit (or Rasa Bua!), Grape and Pink Grapefruit. There were also a few surprises with some flavors I haven’t seen before. There was Red Orange, which I have, but in a different wrapper. The other two new ones are Lemon Yoghurt and Ice Mint. The Lemon Yoghurt is totally new to me, but I’m guessing it is similar to the Strawberry Yoghurt I got last summer, fruity flavored with a little bit of yoghurt tang. The Ice Mint I’m guessing is similar to the Mentos Strong I had several years ago. It is an Altoid-like strong mint flavor. Thanks for the shipment… your Mentos Ambassador Card is on the way!

The Mozilla Foundation has an early birthday present for me, Thunderbird 2.0! I’ve actually been using the latest Release Candidate for the past week or so and have been pretty happy with it. There is nice collection of new features.

• Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
• Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
• Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
• Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
• Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
• Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
• Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
• Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
• Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
• Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
• Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
• Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
• New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
• Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

Some of my favorites are the new message tags. I can keep things organized a bit more now. No more keeping a message marked as new to indicate I need to act on it. I can now tag things one way or another. I’m also pretty happy with the new search/filtering tools. They’re kind of along the same lines as the tagging, but I can now create a search folder that automatically fills with messages based on whatever search criteria I give it. All in all a big step in the right direction for this release.

Download Thunderbird 2.0 

Tired of getting charged for 411 information service from you cell phone provider? Now you can get the same service from Google for FREE! Just call their automated 800 number (1-800-GOOG-411) and ask for information on… anything! You can also get similar service without wasting your minutes (you have to waste text messages instead) from Google SMS, which has been around for a while now.

This is somewhat along the lines of my previous old school computer games posts. Now it’s not just old computer games, but you can now play old school console games right inside your browser too. Nintendo 8 offers a nice list of your favorite NES games via java from inside your web browser. They all seem to work pretty well, but I did have a few issues getting used to the controls. Using a computer keyboard is a lot different than using a Nintendo controller!

Jack is back! The crazy pop-culture game You Don’t Know Jack is online again. These were originally CD-ROM party games back in the day. I can even remember playing an early Netshow version of these games in the mid 90’s, back before the dot.com boom (it took quite a while for them to load on dial-up). If I remember correctly, it used to be a multi-player game where you could screw your friends while playing. This new one is just the single-player version, but hopefully now that they seem to be releasing new episodes somewhat regularly the good ‘ole multi-player version will be back again soon.

I played a round, and it is a lot tougher than I remember! Maybe I’m not as quick as I used to be.