Outlook quick-launch idea

Look, it's an idea. If someone else has it, this is notification that I haven't seen this implemented in this way before.

The implementation of the icon for Outlook 2007 is .. well, it's meh, ok?

Here's what I'd like to happen:

1. Outlook that's minimized disappears from the taskbar, but can be re-opened from the status icon (by the clock)
   
2. The Outlook status icon is a launching pad for what Outlook does, navigation/popup withOUT clicking:
   
   
   
   1. Inbox (New#)
      
   2. Calendar
      
   3. Tasks/Todo List
      
   4. Contacts
      
   
   

The idea is that you'd hover your mouse over the clock icon, and left-to-right above the icon, you'd have the above list a-d in a single horizontal row. Hovering over each of those would have a context-sensitive pop-up above that bar.
For Inbox, that would be a brief list of the 10 most recent emails: From, Subject, Date, first line of email.
For Calendar, that would be a month calendar over a scrollable list of itinerary (like Google Calendar's applet for iGoogle). Perhaps this may or may not be in combination with Tasks/Todo lists
For Contacts, that would be some painless way to get that phone number or write that email.

In addition, there should be some underlying "search everything for what I'm looking for".

Two Firefox ideas

Here are two ideas for Firefox. They might be mutually exclusive.

1. Large tab. I don't exactly know the whys and wherefores about this, but it'd be, essentially, two levels of tabs. The idea is one of the following:
   
   
   
   1. The current tab above or below the other tabs, with some sort of gap at the place where the tab would be in the other tab arrangement
      
   2. The current tab is blank or small
      
   3. The current tab shows next to Help in the menu (for widescreen, this wouldn't be so bad
      
   4. The current tab is in the status bar.
      
   
   
2. Additional buttons in the current tab. Especially, StumbleUpon Stumble, Thumbs up, and Thumbs down in the tab, not in the toolbar.
   

Well, if anyone reads this and could point me toward the right place, that'd be oh so cool. Thanks!

An Alternative Thumbs up/down

When I ws an avid Woot patron, it was important to me to find out whether or not it was worth buying the One Item a day ..whatever was on sale

But that was lame because of the people who clog the message boards up with inane posts.

I want to propose a Signal/Noise choice. Is this relevant to the conversation? Signal. Is this not? Noise. Further, as people vote on such matters, the sorting now becomes based upon Signal/relevance and not time or date of post. Threads are not needed. That is to say, if you want to read threads, you can do so by branch tags. The idea of branch tags is something to the effect of:

Original Poster Tag (ex: Money) Post#x, Money
Response to Original Post Tag Post#y, (Money-level1), Money
Response2 to OP Tag Post#z, (Money-level1), Money

I obviously haven't fleshed this out fully, yet. The concept is not to click to see the thread, it is to click to see the posts tagged with the original post. The generation of the tags to be used is the fun part. I might get there some day

Seeking... POP3 to MySQL for an email client

It appears to me, in some strange way, that I'd benefit from a MySQL backend for an email client.

I'm not exactly sure how I think this is good, but it's something I was just thinking about.

I'll revisit this later.