In my daily use, I’ve tried many extensions and uninstalled most. However, here are 8 that I love:

• Lightning - Having a calendar right in your email client makes it easy to see your schedule and what you’ve got to get done. Plus it brings along the ability to accept Outlook meeting requests which is needed in a corporate environment.
• Provider - What’s better than a calendar? Well a calendar that synchronizes back and fourth with Google Calendar. And for free!
• QuickText - This little buddy saves chunks of text like bookmarks. You then choose the bookmark and it inserts the text to go along with it in your email. Works great for any repetitive items that you find yourself typing over and over again.
• Growl Notifications (Mac) - Get notified of new mail messages without bring Thunderbird to the front. Windows has its own notifications, but Mac users were left out until now.
• GMailUI - This handy extension takes searching your inbox to the next level by allowing expressions to work with searches. Take the 5 minutes to learn it and you’ll love it.
• Nostalgy - Another brilliant extension that makes filing emails, or navigating to other folders, a snap via a shortcut and a quick search. Huge time saver.
• Mail Redirect - Just because the email came to you, doesn’t mean you are the best recipient. Forward emails as though they were specifically sent to someone else. This is handy for me as I build a lot of forms, and sometimes forget to update the ‘to’ email when they go live.
• AttachmentReminder - This handy extension reads the email you’re composing and reminds you if you said you were going to send an attachment, but didn’t attach anything. Very handy!

Yes, there are lots of other extensions out there, but not many that I’ve come across that really bring additional functionally and usefulness to Thunderbird.

Do you have others that you find quite helpful? Post them below in the comments as I’d love to check them out!

GotMail is the Growl notification style that I came up with. It’s simple in nature, but does have a bit of added flair at the bottom as a plain black box didn’t suit my needs.

The background of GotMail comes from BittBox.com and the email icon comes from Jonas Rask Design. Thanks to those that make graphics and give them away for free.

Download GotMail today and let me know what you think.

To Install, just download, unzip and click on GotMail.growlStyle.

Requirements:
- A Mac
- Growl

• Adium - The all in one, completely customizable instant messaging program. It absolutely rocks!
• AOL Radio - I love this because I can get nearly commercial free streaming music from all genres.
• AppFresh* - Only free while in development, AppFresh keeps me up-to-date on what installed programs are not up-to-date.
• Butler - Applications & Folders in the menu bar are so handy. Plus it can do so much more.
• ByteController - I just found this sweet menubar iTunes controller.
• Chicken of the VNC - Connecting to a PC across the room has never been so easy.
• CleanArchiver - Because Windows users get confused with .ds_store files.
• CocoaMySQL - It’s nice to be able to connect & manage MySQL databases from the desktop.
• Correo - Up and coming email application. I can’t wait to see where it goes.
• Cyberduck - Excellent FTP program. Not sure why I purchased FTP programs in the past.
• Fish - Virtual fish tank!
• Firefox - My browser of choice. I can’t live without all the extensions.
• Flip4Mac - Yes, .wma and .wmv can work on a Mac.
• Gizmo Project - When Skype’s success when to their head, Gizmo reminded me how great VoIP can be.
• Growl - Customizable system notifications without system interference.
• Journler - Great scrapbook/junk drawer/whatever application.
• iTunes - My digital jukebox. It’s probably one of my most used apps.
• Licensed - Great app for keeping serial numbers of those programs I do buy.
• Mailplane* - Free for now.  This is a great desktop Gmail application.
• OnyX - System maintenance made easy.
• Quicksilver - Well designed and presented system search.
• TextWrangler - The best do it all text application around. From HTML to pretty much any text format.
• Thunderbird - Not used as much at home, but the only email application I use at work.
• VirtueDesktops or Desktop Manager - Sometimes one desktop just isn’t enough.
• WeatherDock - I love the weather so having it in the menubar is a must.

All applications can be found on MacUpdate or are just a Google (or Yahoo or Ask) search away.

If you have any you’d like to add, post them in the comments below or on your site and link back here as a reference point.

Hosted on Zooomr

Install is extremely simple, just install the extension. That’s it. You can configure how it displays though the main Growl system preference just like any other application. It’s simple and sweet. I’ve been using them both all day and they are a great addition to the Mac platform.

Get Growl for Thunderbird or Firefox!

I had always wanted to create a Growl notification and found out that they are quite simple. I took my first stab at at creating one and it’s called Present.

Now, Present didn’t work well if you got a lot of text in your notification. So, I have coded it to hide any text bigger than the present box to avoid any overflow ugliness. I think quite a few notifications already do this so it shouldn’t be to big of an issue.

This is my first Growl status and it’s been tested a bit with Adium. Give it a go and let me know what you think of Present.