MacFixIt is reporting a possible bug in the way Apple Mail handles signatures.

If you begin a message, and then “turn off” the signature by selecting “None” in the signature drop-down box, some text in the message may disappear, usually the first line.

I can’t reproduce this myself, but if this happens to you, MacFixit are asking you to contact them.

Reports of Apple Mail crapping out with IMAP accounts – freezing, not downloading messages, slooooooow performance – abound in the blogosphere, in the help forums and on the Apple discussion boards.

So it’s encouraging to read two stories with a more positive ending. Bruno Rodrigues at Litux and at whoever blogs at Acetylene.net tell stories of setting up and using IMAP accounts in Apple Mail.

Discover from them how to use the “Use This Mailbox for…” option in the Mailboxes menu. (And/or see how to do it – with pictures – in a post on the Slowchildren.com blog. Panther Mail screenshots. Very nostalgic.)

A new version of Thunderbird has been released. The new version, 1.0.7, is only a minor update, but fixes a number of security vulnerabilities. Not that anyone reading this blog will be interested.

Although, I confess, I tried the current beta of Thunderbird out today. It was blisteringly fast on my IMAP accounts, I thought. Ugly as sin, unable to use the many fine plug-ins that exist for Apple Mail and not integrated with OS X’s other apps, but fast.

MailVoiceClip is a stand-alone app that enables you to record your voice and then email the recording. The developer claims that using this facility will save time, make your communication more personal and save you finger and eye strain. You can also use it as a dictaphone, recording and keep the files for later use.

Using an iSight camera or your built-in microphone, MailVoiceClip passes your words to iTunes, which produces the audio clip and then packages it nicely in an email like this:

iSay is its main competitor. At ?¢‚Äö¬¨ 9.95 (c. USD 12), MailVoiceClip is cheaper than iSay, but it doesn’t have the range of features that iSay boasts, including integration with iCal, BlueTooth and iSync support.

MailVoiceClip is available from the developer’s website.

Brian Toth has produced a plug-in for the OS X Address Book that enables you to see addresses in Google Maps and to request directions to a particular address.

After installation the options are available in the Contextual Menu when you click on any Address Book address tab.

At the moment it only supports addresses in the UK, the USA, Japan and Canada. Australians like me can just stick their heads out the window and see where everyone else’s house is, but it’s still fun to check out where your overseas friends live.

It’s donation-ware and available from his website.

Serial Mail, Chatalog and Gmail+Growl have all been updated.

Serial Mail 3.5 is now fully Tiger-compatible and handles attachments in an new and better way.

Chatalog 1.2 now comes with a widget and an archiver to help with the importing of old iChat logs.

Gmail+Growl 1.2 adds the Address Book picture (if there is one) to Growl’s email notifications.

Reports (and Slashdot commentary on them) that we are in danger of entering a Digitial Dark Age due to a lack of legacy support for formats and media may be overwrought.

All the same, Emailchemy is a life-saver for people who have been using email for a long time and have moved through many clients and platforms.

Emailchemy will convert emails from popular and obsolete email clients into formats that Apple Mail and other clients can read. It converts email from an astonishing range of formats (listed after the jump):

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