Speaking of using OS X’s Services menu in Apple Mail to work smarter, two new things deserve a mention.

HotService has been updated. This bundle moves the Services out of the File menu onto the Statusbar for easier access. The new version replaces the “Services” text with a bullet to conserve Statusbar real estate and initialises the Service Menu more quickly on start-up.

InstantLinks is another Services bundle that offers quick and easy shortcuts to various useful “look-ups” on selected text:

Select an address that someone has emailed you, and Google Maps via InstantLinks gives you a handy map. Or highlight a word in a Mail.app message and InstantLinks can take you straight to its Wikipedia entry.

Command-= takes you to the dictionary definition or thesaurus on Answers.com. And so on.

Of course, while these tools help you work better in Apple Mail, by their very nature they are there to help you in any other Cocoa-based app you use.

Both bundles are freeware.

Paul Makepeace has ditched Apple Mail. He claims that “the best minds of Cupertino haven’t yet written a mail client that’ll deal with 5.1GB of email” and has switched to Thunderbird instead, which he finds lightning-fast in comparison.

A German Mac user has posted what he says is a screenshot of Mail.app‘s notification badge after your unread mail count reaches a certain number.

I’ve never seen this myself. I wonder what level of negligence is required before you see it.trivia, mail.app, apple mail, notification, badge, joke, unread emails, email

OneClick is an AppleScript that automates the process of establishing an internet connection, sending and checking for mail in Mail.app.

It eliminates lots of button clicking and waiting, especially for dial-up users. When I am at the beach house and restricted to dial-up, I have often wished for something like this.

The developer outlines what the script does:

If you haven’t got Mail running, it first loads it. Then if you’re not online, it dials (& re-dial as necessary) and connects, third checks for your email, fourth disconnects and finally reports the results. And all with… one click! If you’re already online, OneClick can tell and skips the Internet connection step, everything else is the same.

It integrates with iCal to enable you to schedule when mail should be checked.

A new version released today can toggle Mail’s Activity Viewer on and off during the check and send process.

Oneclick is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site.

The disk images contains two version of the script, one with speech support and one without.

After a few lovely days in the country, here’s this week’s update to the Hawk Wings Plug-in and Add-on List.

Just one addition: I’ve added CopyPaste to the Miscellaneous section, where you can also find other utilities that make working with text in Mail.app (and elsewhere) easier and faster.

On the Apple Discussion Forums, Sturmdrang provides an oddly effective and very seasonal Thanksgiving troubleshooting tip:

“Wait one day and try it again.”

Have a good and thankful day!

Outlook!! (grumble, grumble, grumble).

Christopher Breen at MacWorld has done some investigating into how (if!) in-line images in Mail.app messages appear in different PC email clients.

The short answer: Outlook won’t display in-line images in emails composed in Apple Mail, although Thunderbird for PC will.

Something to bear in mind when sending emails to Outlook-using PC friends.