Knock yourself out. And there’s more.

(Sorry. But it’s been a while since I posted something so completely unrelated to Apple Mail.)

By default iCal requires you to add an alarm manually to any event you create. That takes precious time. It’s tedious. And sometimes you forget to do it at all. All in all, that’s not a win for productivity.

Robert Blum has created a plug-in for iCal that adds an alarm automatically, set to remind you 24 hours before the event.

It requires SIMBL, (Smart InputManager Bundle Loader), the same Cocoa application hack that powers the Safari plug-in PithHelmet and iAlert, a Mail.app (and more) notification system.

Robert seems to plan more features in the future, but you can get the current version from his blog.

[Via 43Folders]

UPDATE: Newer version (0.2) released 17 January 2006.

UPDATE: Newer version (0.3.1) released in March 2006.

Three months ago Chris Ilias posted an entry on his blog about using two Thunderbird extensions to increase the number of labels (normally fixed at five) and to add keywords to emails through X-label and X-categories headers. He describes this as “Gmail labels for Thunderbird”.

The end result seems complicated to me and hard work, but it is interesting to see Thunderbird users groping after the functionality that Mail.app users can easily enjoy through MailTags and Mail Act-on.

A new version of the email client PowerMail was released on Christmas Eve.

It advertises itself as “a better Mac OS X mail client than Apple’s own”.

Mail.app is pretty damn fine, so that got my attention. I decided to take the updated PowerMail for a spin. Is it better than Apple Mail? Find out after the jump.

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The second beta candidate of Thunderbird 1.5 was released last week.

Thunderbird 1.5 RC2 features several significant improvements. The changelog lists them all, but here are some that caught my eye:

• The automated update process is more prominent and more efficient.
• This release sorts address auto-complete results by how often you send email to each recipient. Clever!
• It can now spell-check as you type.
• Saved Search Folders can now search across multiple accounts.
• Integration with server side spam filtering.
• Filters for creating a Global Inbox.

Compared to Mail.app, its IMAP implementation and support for HTML using the Gecko engine are better without a doubt.

But the usual black marks remain: Butt-ugly (a badge of honour in some circles, I know). No AppleScript support. No integration with other Mac OS X apps.

You can get Thunderbird 1.5 RC2 at the Mozilla web site.

Lots of shiny new Macs will be waiting under the Christmas tree this year. For many, the gift will mean switching away from a Windows PC and entry to a better world.

If you are one of these switchers, the first thing to say is, Congratulations! I hope that you enjoy the switch as much as I have.

Secondly, you can find here a list of helpful pointers on getting the most out of using Apple Mail (or Mail.app as some old-timers call it) for your email. Enjoy!

BuddyPop is a small and unobtrusive app that provides quick access to your Address Book contacts in a pop-up which is activated by a user-defined keyboard shortcut.

Hitting the shortcut brings up a simple search dialog.

Type until you get the matches you are looking for, then BuddyPop extracts the information from your Address Book and displays it in an attractive pop-up like this:

Clicking on the email address starts a new message in Mail.app, clicking on the phone number can dial the number or start a call through Skype or Vonage.

If “Dicko” gives you more than match, you can cycle through the contacts using the left and right arrow keys.

BuddyPop is highly configurable. You can change the default actions for clicking on each field, which fields to display or use as search criteria, the pop-up’s appearance and position on the screen, and the keyboard shortcut that activates it.

All of these settings are available through the app’s preferences pane:

A new version of BuddyPop (2.5.0) was released on Christmas Day, boasting a large number of improvements, including Skype, X-Lite SIP SoftPhone and Vonage support, support for sending and receiving SMS messages via a Bluetooth-enabled phone, partial support for Address Book plug-ins and better iChat and IM support.

Quicksilver handles this well enough for my (unsophisticated) needs. But if I Skyped or iChatted or BlueToothed more, I’d be using this.

BuddyPop is made by Tynsoe, who also make GeekTool and SSH Tunnel Manager. It is shareware (10 Euros) and available from Tynsoe’s web site.