Docktopus is an app that allows you to place “Mail.app-style” badges on a number of Dock icons.

The available icons range from disk and memory usage badges for each app to app-specific badges like an iCal events badge.

Badges can be dragged onto Dock icons from the app’s badge interface:

Two of the badges — the Mail badge and iCal events badge — double as notification screens.

The Mail one offers a smoked glass listing of unread emails by sender, topic and account:

The updated version released today includes a number of bugfixes and adds support for Entourage 2004′s Dock icon.

MacWorld gave Docktopus a “Best of Show 2006″ award. It is shareware (USD ) and is available from the developer’s web site .badges, mail.app, apple mail, dock, icons, notification, ical, entourage, docktopus

Technology designed to help people work faster and be more productive is actually slowing them down, according to an article on C|News.

New technological advances often claim to help us get more done in less time. Who could forget the promise of “the paperless office”?

But research shows the reverse is true:

Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven’t been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University. “It just increases the expectations that people have for your production,” Downey said.

In 1994, four-fifths of workers claimed to finish at least half their tasks for the day. Last year only fifty percent said they had achieved half their daily work.

On average workers received 46 emails per day.

The survey of 1,000 workers also found that last year employees spent an average of 16 hours a week in front of a computer, compared to 9.5 a decade ago.productivity, technology, work, email, not getting things done

Plugins

No new items were added to the Hawk Wings Plug-in and Add-on List this week.

Backend

Nothing interesting happened.

The recent security flaws in Mac OS X have produced a range of responses. But in a lengthy article, IT columnist and Unix administrator John Welch sets a new high point.

It’s not enough to be (extra) careful about opening attachments in emails that you are unsure about. More drastic action is required:

If you are using Apple’s Mail, I’d consider switching to another mail program, at least temporarily. The problem with Mail is that it allows you to open a file with a single click, and there’s no warning from the application to give you a second chance to cancel that action. Neither Thunderbird nor Microsoft Entourage allow for this, so you might want to think about switching until Apple fixes that.

Oddly, later in the article he suggests: “Just take the common-sense steps that we all should be taking anyway, and you’ll be fine.”Mac osx, security, vulnerability, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, entourage, attachments, scripts

I often want to send a quick Mail.app message while I am working in another app. I can switch to Mail, start a new message and type in the recipient’s name, or I can find a faster way.

Hawk Wings reader Joshua Keay emailed me his method of doing this quickly. He created a file that is a text clippiing with the “mailto:” tag at the beginning of it.

He keeps it inside his applications folder, even though it isn’t an app per se. Then he dragged it to his dock. Now, when he clicks on it, it opens a new message, something that he says “potentially saves me a zillion clicks per year”:

You can get the file here (he uses an icon from Icon Factory).

If you use Quicksilver, you will already know that it is possible to achieve nearly the same thing with a more keystrokes. a few strokes for the contact’s name, a few more to bring up “Compose email”, Return and you’re away:

For really, really quick messages, you can follow Merlin Mann’s Quicksilver tip .

There may be even faster ways to do this. If you know one, I’d be glad to know.quick message, email, Dock, mailloc, quicksilver, mail.app, apple mail, tips

Google has released three new widgets , one for Blogger, one for searching with Google and one for Gmail.

The Gmail widget polls your account and displays the sender, title and (optionally) a short snippet of the message:

Further options allow you to display only messages matching a particular label.

[Via TUAW ]

Clicking on the Inbox or Compose buttons takes you to the relevant screen in Gmail’s web interface.Google, gmail, blogger, widgets, notification, dashboard

Some people worry about Gmail, data ownership and privacy. But not Nitin Jagga.

He provides nine reasons why concerns about Gmail are “bogus”.

Three of the reasons are actually Gmail features that have “entranced” him, but it is still a useful collection of the kinds of arguments that people will put in Gmail’s defence.

Is the argument convincing? Hmmm…..

UPDATE: As Christian points out in the comments, Nitin’s post is a word-for-word rip-off of an article by Tim O’Reilly published in 2004.gmail, Google, privacy, data ownership, Don’t worry be happy, email