This week Address Book and iCal get the lion’s share of the additions to the Hawk Wings Plugin and Addon List.

The following items were added to the Address Book section:

• AddressBookQuickEntry (an alternate entry interface for contact information)
• AusAB (maps, travel directions and Sydney public transport times for Australian addresses)
• iAddressX (Address Book menubar utility)

The following were added to the iCal section:

• DoBeDo (a Dashboard widget for iCal ToDos)
• iCalViewer (“Streaming” desktop iCal events and ToDos)
• MenuCalendarClock (menubar utility for you iCal calendar, clock and ToDo and event information)

Mail.app itself scored two extra entries:

• anentry (AppleScript to email a NetNewsWire headline) in the Integration with other Apps section
• NetShred X (history and cache shredder for Mail.app and browsers) in the Added Functionality section

These additions bring the number of entries on the list to a round 120, all making Mail.app, Address Book and iCal easier, more efficient, more productive and (possibly) more fun to use.

Pierre Igot at Betalogue has noticed an odd bug in the way iPhoto 6 sends some photos to Mail.app for emailing.

If you change the orientation of a photo in iPhoto and then try to email it by sending the image to Mail.app, the orientation change gets lost.

It only happens the first time you try it though. If you kill the email and try again from iPhoto everything is fine. Odd.

Christopher Breen at MacWorld has posted a tip for dealing with unwanted email from creeps and cranks using Mail.app‘s “Bounce” feature.

Using the “Bounce” feature on spam is a bad idea, but you can use it effectively against “email stalkers” or people who just can’t take a hint.

The tip shows you how to automate the bounce using an AppleScript attached to a rule.

In recent days I have been playing around a lot with various iCal addons and utilities.

I can’t tell you why for fear of being drowned in a vat of maple syrup by a bunch of lacrosse stick-wielding Mounties.

Anyway, I discovered iCalViewer, a very creative and interesting add-on for iCal that displays your iCal information in a window or on your desktop:

Click on the picture for a larger view

The idea is clever. The yellow line on the left is “now” and the events and ToDos listed to the right of that represent what’s coming up. As time passes the displays “streams” the information.

The preference pane allows you to set the time period it should display (168 hours by default), which calendars to include, whether to display it over the top of your screen saver or not and various options for displaying the ToDos and the events.

In “Window” mode, double clicking on a ToDo or event opens iCal and selects the item.

It has some interesting applications.

For example, the app maintains a “special event” box for items that fall outside the normal time range. The developer suggests a use for this:

You have an iCal calendar for a project and you really want to be reminded of the final date as well as milestones along the way, so you specify the lookahead for the end date to be 6 months and the milestones to be 3 weeks.

iCalViewer is shareware (USD 11), although you can use it for free with limited functionality.

A 21 day fully-featured demo is available from the developer’s web site.iCal, events, to do, streaming, desktop

Tonight I received an email from Apple that tickled my funny bone.

I happened to be looking at my screen as MailAppetizer popped up its notification about the latest version of Apple‘s e-newsletter. It picks up the plain text version rather than the HTML version that I see in Mail.app by default.

Command-[ in Mail.app brought me the plain text version which reads:

Of course, Apple Mail doesn’t really have a problem with this and it’s a very laudable alert, but it gave me a chuckle all the same.

It turns out that High Priority is not the only iCal menubar utility on the block.

MenuCalendarClock is another menubar app for iCal that gives you access to your iCal events and ToDos from the menubar.

Clicking its menubar icon drops down a display containing a calendar view of the current month, the events for the day and a list of your ToDos.

The display of events and ToDos can be toggled on and off.

Its preferences allow you to control a configurable menubar clock replacement and to set the colour of the window.

Further options determine how the events and ToDos are displayed.

It will also display the Calendar week numbers and offers an autohide option.

There is also a “Tool tip” option that presents a text-only version of the display when you hover your mouse over the icon.

Unlike High Priority, it offers no interaction with your ToDos, which cannot be marked completed or edited from the app’s window.

All these features can be enjoyed for free.

A registered version (USD 18.95) offers further features like the ability to sync birthdays from AddressBook into iCal and to configure a hotkey.

The fully registered version also displays iCal events.

MenuCalendarClock is available from the developer’s web site .ical, events, to do, menubar, plugin, addon, clock replacement, calendar, menucalendarclock

You will remember that a few years ago Bill Gates promised that the spam problem would be solved in two years’ time.

That’s now. And Microsoft claims that Bill was right.

Ryan Hamlin, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Anti-spam Division argues:

“If you are a consumer that’s taking advantage of the technologies that exist … then the spam problem for you is solved. Bill didn’t say that there would be no spam. But he said the problem would be solved, and I think that is what we actually have accomplished.”

The premiss here is that what you don’t see, doesn’t exist.

Server-side and client spam filters are now so effective that users no longer see spam. What you don’t see doesn’t exist, so the problem’s solved.

Oh, happy day!

Now that the spam battle is over, you can spend your time reading more on this in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or joining in the fun on Slashdot .