Giles Turnbull has pulled out all the stops in a fine post on MacDevCenter. He discusses the the ins and outs of POP and IMAP, the rise and rise of Gmail, text messaging and the future of email in a three page whopper post.

Basically a stock-take of where email stands at the moment, along the way he takes in the free re-release of Mulberry, Google Apps for your domain and more.

For example, did you know that POP usage is gradually declining but IMAP is not taking off the way it should? I didn’t:

All email nuts should read what Giles has to say. A fine piece. email in general, IMAP, POP, gmail, text messaging, mulberry, google, apple mail, mail.app

Is the official .Mac blog out of ideas or just trying to engage more with the .Mac community?

Whatever the answer, it is asking for ideas :

Is there a cool trick you’ve discovered in iWeb? Have you found some new use for Photocasting that isn’t mentioned in the instructions? Is there an advanced feature in iCal you’d like to know more about?

Or it doesn’t have to focus on features. We’re always curious to know how .Mac fits into your life.

Here are a few pointers, if you are stuck for something to suggest:

• Apple/Google Mash-up. BusinessWeek Online offers some ideas on how Google and .Mac could work together better.
• Rui Carmo spanks .Mac. Rui takes the hatchet to .Mac.
• Do it yourself .Mac. Matt Simerson decided not to wait for tips from the .Mac blog. He’s making a better .Mac service for himself.
• Four more suggestions. Four interesting manifestos on how to improve .Mac’s value for money.

.mac, dotmac, apple mail, mail.app, google, mash-up, web 2.0

Andreas Amann has updated his very useful Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, a utility that simplifies the process of switching from Eudora or Thunderbird to Mail.app.

In particular, the app is much smarter about importing Eudora nicknames and much better at parsing them. It no longer identifies some nicknames as mailing lists. The whole importing process is much faster.

A number of smaller tweaks make EMC more stable, especially during the initial scan of files to be imported.

There has never been a better time to switch from Eudora.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Andrea’s web site.mail.app, apple mail. eudora, thunderbird, switching, importing, nicknames, plugins, helpful apps

Sooner or later, all Mail.app users who have any kind of email communication with Outlook users will get a message containing the dreaded unopenable winmail.dat file.

TNEF is a utility that extracts the files buried inside. It can really save your bacon.

Now a developer has wrapped the utility into a mail.app bundle which automatically recognises incoming emails with winmail.dat attachments.

When they arrive, it either opens iCal if the embedded file is an Outlook appointment or prompts you to save the embedded files in a folder of your choice:

I don’t get enough email from Outlook users to need it. Firing up TNEF’s Enough app on the odd occasion is all I need.

If you get a lot of this kind of email, the plugin takes out some extra steps and might be worth the shareware price.

OMiC is shareware (5 euros = USD 6.30) and is available from the developer’s web site . He hopes to make some money from the plugin for his compulsory military service, which begins soon.windows, outlook, exchange, winmail.dat, mail.app, apple mail, attachments, ical, files, TNEF enough, plugins

What’s the point of trying to be productive and thinking about smarter ways to get thing done, if you can’t goof off sometimes and waste some time?

I wasted a bit of time this afternoon on a web site that charts the popularity of given names over the last 120 years. It’s interesting stuff.

Personally the news is rather depressing:

On the other hand, “Paris” gives you a chuckle and “Edgar” is a surprise. There are worse ways to entertain yourself for 30 minutes.

The information comes from birth records in the USA as reported by its Social Security Administration.

[Via David Pogue ]not apple mail, given names, popularity, names

Notepad is a widget that takes the Sidenote idea to the Dashboard.

It is a note-taker with built-in searching, printing, resize features, iPod syncing, locking, lists and sketching.

It also comes with three nice skins:

The tickable lists obviously lend themselves to to-do lists. A drop-down list at the bottom of the widget offers quick access to all the notes, which can also be exported as text files.

For today only, you can get it for 38% off through MacUpdate’s new “MacZOT-like” cheap-for-a-day promotion .

Normally Notepad costs USD 7.95. For the next 17 hours or so you can get it for USD 4.95.

Notepad is a creation of the WidgetMachine .widget, dsahboard, note-taking, quick notes, to-dos, productivity, not apple mail

Greg Welch has updated MailFollowup, his “smarter reply” plugin, for Apple Mail.

This plugin adds a “Followup” command to Apple Mail’s Message and Contextual Menus, so that the To:, Cc: and Bcc: addresses appear in the reply exactly as they appeared in the original message. By default, Mail places only the original sender in the To: field of the reply and dumps everyone else into the Cc: field.

The updated version is smarter about when to include the original sender. Duplicate cc’ing has been eliminated by only including the original sender if the Followup sender is not the original sender.

MailFollowup is freeware and is available from Greg’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, plugins, replies,