• Paul Heinlein has updated his collection of tips on building and running pine under Mac OS X.
• Paul Stamatiou has written a guide to installing RoundCube on your server. RoundCube is a webmail client with a Mail.app look.
• Apple has published a technote that advises you to “avoid using spaces and the commercial at symbol (“@”) in passwords of iCal calendars that are published to an iDisk or a WebDAV server.” You need to use only letters and numbers.
• Steve Gio joins the select few who are turning their backs on Gmail. He is returning to Mail.app as his main client. Why? Gmail offers no useable way to access email when offline.
• Chris Marsden says some nice things about Hawk Wings (ta very much), where he discovered Peter Maurer and his software. Raves about Witch, Textpander, et al. follow.
• In the Apple Mail Discussions, Tenacious MC wonders why Mail.app “seems to write to com.apple.Safari.plist for some odd reason”. So do I.

pine, mail.app, apple mail, roundcube, gmail, witch, Textpander, safari, ical, passwords, quickies, productivity

iCal-alarmist is an app that sets additional alarms in iCal.

iCalFix allows you to set a pop-up alarm for every event by default, but iCal-alarmist offers greater flexibility.

The free version sets a pop-up alarm for every event in a chosen calendar fixed at 12 hours before the event. These alarms are created in addition to your existing alarms, not in place of them.

The app’s interface shows the freeware behaviour with the additional options in the shareware version greyed out:

A small payment (€ 3,47 = USD 4.11) unlocks the ability to set alarms for all events in a calendar with one click, to set sounds, email or popup alarms or any combination for a given calendar, and to delete alarms.

It even allows you to set alarms to match a particular keyword.

iCal-alarmist is available from the developer’s web site.ical, alarms, calendar, pop-up, additional alarms, customize ical, plugins, helpful apps

A while ago I blogged a screenshot of Mail.app’s Dock icon being cheeky when it has too many unread emails to count.

Today a friend sent me another picture of Mail getting funny, this time with attachments:

This was caused by a cut ‘n’ pasted iChat transcript packed full of emoticons.

[Thanks, Dan ]mail.app, apple mail, attachments, joke, humour, unread emails, email

Take Control Books has joined forces with Apple to offer some good deals for .Mac users.

.Mac users can download two chapters of Joe Kissell‘s “Take Control of .Mac”, which has been updated to reflect recent changes at .Mac. The free chapters deal with using .Mac’s web interface for email and the new .Mac Groups feature.

You can also snap up any of Take Control’s ebooks at a 30% discount.

It’s a great time to pick up Joe’s “Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger” (Hawk Wings’ review here) if you haven’t already.

You can read more about these special deals on .Mac’s Member Central page.dotmac, .mac, take control books, joe kissell, mail.app, apple mail, groups

JunkMatcher is a free spam filtering app that works either with or in place of Mail.app’s inbuilt Junk filter.

It’s popular and very good (Andreas Amann in his “Talking Mail.app” interview says he “can’t live without it”).

Two reports of problems have surfaced in recent days that are worth recording:

1. Coelomic at Word Works reports a problem with white lists longer than 200 lines. He describes the symptoms and the fix (UPDATE: in a post that used to exist but has now disappeared).
2. On MacInTouch, David Schultz notes a conflict between JunkMatcher and GPG Privacy Guard 1.4.1 . He resolved it by removing the GPGMail bundle.

junkmatcher, white list, GPG privacy guard, mail.app, apple mail, plugin, conflicts, spam

To help mark Apple’s 30th birthday, C|Net is asking for Apple users to submit stories of how Apple’s products have changed their lives. For the better, one imagines.

It also welcomes photos of users with their favourite Apple computers or gadgets.

You can send your submissions to apple-birthday@cnet.com.

(The image here is the cover of Leander Kahney‘s book, The Cult of Mac. Buy it and read it. Not only is it nicely written and diverting, it will reassure you that your own love for Macs is really quite rational and moderate).apple, cult of mac, 30th birthday, apple love stories, macs

Event Maker is a small app that creates all-day iCal events, appointments or To Dos from a Mail.app message.

An updated version released today features substantial improvements over the first release.

The app will now offer to install a “Quick Launch” applescript in Mail’s Script menu.

The initial screen has also been redesigned and now offers the option of creating a new blank event as well as making one from the selected email:

The way that events are created, modified and displayed in iCal has also been improved with a number of minor tweaks. Among them, the app now brings iCal to the foreground when asked to display the created event.

The developer is putting a lot of work into making this app better, and it shows.

Event Maker is freeware and you can download it from MacUpdate .mail.app, apple mail, email, ical, event, applescript, productivity