Opening Mailto in Gmail in XP

One of the first things I did when I bought my netbook was to download chrome. Now I haven't actually clicked a mailto link until today, and guess what happened? Internet explorer in all it's glory opened up. I didn't like that. One of the solutions I found was to look for URI.mailto or something to that effect in the file types menu of an explorer window and make some changes there, but well I didn't like that method much and I couldn't find what they were talking about in the first place.

I started searching for the term mailto in the registry, and I came upon this line right below.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command

Unfortunately I deleted the original line so if anyone has it I would really like to know what it originally said, but none the less I have the line to insert if you want Chrome to open up gmail and insert the mail address!

This brings me to my next point ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY in case you muck something up.

I changed the key

to the below (change out onaclov for your username) and you should be set to go! Of course if you want to use another type of email client and/or browser you're going to have to change a few things. Basically all I'm doing is calling the chrome application, and passing the gmail address with mailto and URL %1 passed to it. The ideal way would be to call the default browser

"C:\Documents and Settings\onaclov\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app=https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

Additional Notes:

Oddly enough I found that if I go to IE and click options and then programs it only shows Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail which I initially thought was the culprit and in some ways it might have been, so I did a search for Windows Live Mail.

I found this:

As you can see it looks like mine has an entry for GMAIL, which of course is completely incorrect

as I was testing some things out trying to get it to work, if you add a Key there and name it whatever you name it, when you go to IE and Tool Options and Programs and Email you'll see those entries the problem is I have/had no idea what to put in there which lead me to the initial piece of the post finding mailto.

If I had the original mailto contents I "might" be able to remember what that was doing and possibly setup the entry on the left (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail) to actually open whatever browser you want as well as whatever email client you want based on that location (rather then having to keep entering in the registry if you decide to change).

Well if you have any other items of note please let me know.

Good luck

File Organization

With the recent announcement of Google Chrome OS, I thought it fitting talk about one particular topic that I have had problems with.

Computer organization is a tough topic, everyone has their own way and alot of times they work for them, but there is a good majority of people that just can't seem to keep their computers organized, files everywhere, just a plain old mess.

Last night I was thinking about Google and their quest to change email, I avoided the Gmail labels for the longest time because I didn't understand them, finally after reading the reason behind them I understood, it just plain makes sense. Now that I understand them I question why we don't use them for more things. Heck why not use them to organize your computer.

(Their theory is that emails can have more then one purpose so sticking them in ONE folder limits them, by allowing multiple labels on files then it's kinda like having that email in 4 folders but only one copy, easier to deal with and handle)

Here's my theory,
1. ALL files go into a single folder.
2. Keyword Label ALL files, when you create a file, simply add "keyword" options, in the dialog box.
3. Now setup that or another folder to look at all files, but give the option to sort on keywords or even search on keywords, you can have more then one file named the same and behind the scenes the system will handle which file correlates to what kind of data, based on the keywords.

This way as you get files you keyword them and can find them later.

Even better ALL your files are in one place (much like the *nix way of doing things and keeping everything in the home folder).

So lets say you search on the keyword "Cars"

Now you may have photos that have been tagged cars, you may have documents tagged cars and videos...etc, and now you see things as a group, so finding what you need as well as related material would be a breeze.


Now I have tried organizing my files in a couple manners, one was saying ALL files were either Text, Music, Movies, Pictures.

That can sort of work but I had problems having numerous files in the text folder and without creating sub folders it was hard to keep track.

Plus finding documents that correlate to the pictures/videos/etc. makes it tough.

What are some better ways to organize files/folders?

Should folders exists anymore?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.