In a
previous post I talked about how I really like
Omea software. Well, I like it so much I bought the company...no wait!! I didn't do that
(couldn't afford it!). But I did write a couple of plugins for it.
(One of the things I didn't mention last time is how great Omea is for .NET developers - there is a very rich API that's pretty easy to figure out and use). Three plugins are available. Here are the details...
AllRead is a tiny plugin that adds one button 
to the main Omea toolbar that lets you mark all displayed messages as Read. You can use this button instead of the context menu. Yeah, I'm too lazy to right-click....
MediaPreview lets you play video, audio, flash and other media files (and view the contents of zip files) directly inside the Omea preview pane without needing to launch their associated applications. It's particularly useful with Omea Pro, where you can view email attachments without needing to save them to disk first.
SendToOneNote adds the ability to send or copy across messages, feed posts, articles, etc. into Microsoft OneNote 2003. If you've seen or used the SendToOneNote plugins for IE or Outlook, then you'll know what to expect. Otherwise, take a look at the screenshot below to get an idea of what it does. One feature I've really come to depend on is the ability to define rules in Omea to automatically send content of your choosing to OneNote. You can use this to automatically build up a portfolio in OneNote of, for example, everything that is being published about your company. Note that this plugin comes with its own installer or you can download a zip file and install it yourself if you prefer. (It also requires OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 or later, and it wouldn't have been possible without the Microsoft OneNote DataImport Utility Classes)
Installing the Plugins
SendToOneNote has its own installer but to install the others, simply unzip into your Omea folder (usually C:\Program Files\JetBrains\Omea Reader, or use a dedicated a plugins folder if you prefer) and use the Omea Options / Plugins window to add them to Omea. You'll need to restart Omea once you've done this.
More Info
General information about Omea plugins (as well as some posts relating to these plugins) can be found at the JetBrains newsgroup: news://news.jetbrains.com/jetbrains.omea.plugins and a list of plugins is available on their Confluence page: http://www.jetbrains.net/confluence/display/OMEA/Third-party+Plugins
A side note...(pun intended)
Omea's note taking capabilities are currently limited, which is why I've been using Microsoft OneNote 2003. You might think OneNote is only for Tablet PCs (it tends to get attention mainly for its handwriting and drawing support) but it's actually a cool way of organising random notes and jottings on any type of PC. Using Omea and OneNote together you can automatically gather images and text from feeds, websites, emails, etc. An alternative to OneNote that I also recommend is EverNote - very impressive, and free. Unfortunately it doesn't yet support any form of plugin so there's no integration with Omea possible at present.
Technorati : Omea, Omea Pro, Omea Reader, OneNote, Plugin, Plugins, Software