rooSwitch Lite offers multiple profiles for most of Mac OS X’s iApps including Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, Mail.app, Safari and Stickies.

As the developer Brian Cooke explains:

rooSwitch makes it easy to keep your favorite apps data safe and also makes it easy to manage profiles for different situations. A good example of this is are “at home” and “at work” profiles.

rooSwitch Lite is the freeware, restricted version of rooSwitch (shareware, USD 14.95). It doesn’t have the range of apps that the shareware version offers or the Automator and AppleScript support, but it does offer unlimited profiles and fast switching between them.

In addition to keeping home and work settings separate, rooSwtich’s profiles are great for beta-testers and developers who need to work with multiple preference and application support files.

Brian has made a movie which demonstrates the app in action and another movie of the shareware version gives additional tips on how to use the app to maximum advantage.

rooSwitch Lite is freeware and available from Brian’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, ical, address book, productivity, profiles, preferences, Safari

DoBeDo is a nifty Dashboard widget that displays iCal to-dos, and allows them to be added, marked as done or edited (see an earlier Hawk Wings post for more details and screenshots).

The developer has just released an updated version with a large number of new and improved features.

It now supports iCal groups and provides basic URL support. Keyboard shortcuts are more consistent and the to-do sorting options are better behaved.

Tasks can now be moved across calendars and takes with future due dates can be hidden.

It adds another skin (or theme) to the existing options, a wide format that matches the Calendar widget (pictured, slightly reduced).

Printing improvements include a print button on the front of the widget and print-outs titled with the list’s name. Users can choose a default printer or send the list to a PDF in Preview.

The developer has also included various speed and memory optimisations.

It’s a nice piece of work and it’s freeware as well. You can get it from the developer’s web site .ical, widget, dashboard, productivity, todos, not apple mail

Over the past few months, a number of people have noticed a sharp increase in spam in their .Mac accounts and have wondered why a premium service like .Mac doesn’t include server-side spam filtering.

Scott Murray has decided to do something about it. He has written an AppleScript that automates the reporting of spam to spam@mac.com and spam@uce.gov, the US Federal Trade Commission’s official spam-report mailbox.

Using this script, he hopes, will “let the .Mac team know about all this spam, so they can crank up the juice on their filters.”

Instructions for installing and using the script can be found on Scott’s web page .dotmac, .mac, spam, email, mail.app, apple mail, applescript, plugins, junk

Michael Rothwell has written a plugin for Mail.app that adds support for IMAP’s IDLE command .

This feature allows the server to tell Mail.app when new mail arrives rather than Mail needing to poll the server.

As Michael explains,

It opens a connection for each IMAP account, selects the INBOX, enters IDLE mode, and waits for messages. When it gets a message from the server indicating that new mail has arrived, it causes Mail.app to check for new mail in that account.

The plugin will work with any IMAP4 mail server that supports IDLE, is freeware and is available from Michael’s web site .

UPDATE: Michael has knocked out an updated version of the plugin (1.01).

It fixes a small kink: “Certain IMAP servers (like Cyrus) were sending a reponse to the IDLE request that I wasn’t handling correctly.” Good news for Fastmail users (and others).

He also provides a link to a page with some info on which mail servers support the IDLE feature (dotMac doesn’t).

UPDATED UPDATE: Michael has produced another update (1.0.2) which (a) respects the “enabled” setting for individual accounts, (b) handles accounts being taken “offline” and (c) checks the mail server’s capability to support the IDLE extension and reports yea or nay back in the console log (see /Applications/Utilities/Console.app). Excellent!

MOST RECENT UPDATE (2 JULY 2010) The most recent version (.1.0.7) can be found on Michael’s blog. mail.app, apple mail, imap, idle command, plugins, RFC 2177

John Cleary has noticed a fairly rare but annoying bug in the way that Mail.app handles From: email addresses.

As he points out:

In Mail.app (the standard mail client on OS X), if the person sending an email to you hasn’t specified a ‘from name’ in their email client (or webmail), the email will show up as being from their raw email address even if their name and email address is in your Address Book. Additionally, if the person has specified a ‘from name’ different from their real name (i.e. a nickname or screen name) then that will show up in the from column.

So you get odd things like this:

Obviously this is visually annoying and sometimes less than informative.

It also throws a spanner in the works when sorting emails by name.

John suggests that the solution is easy:

The Mail User Interface needs the ability to choose either to use Address Book names when there is no supplied ‘from name’ or to always use Address Book names regardless of supplied from name, matching instead on the email address.

It makes you wonder why is hasn’t been fixed.mail.app, apple mail, bugs, From addresses, sorting, annoyances

Mac users carrying laptops backwards and forwards from home to work or cafes or travelling overseas know only too well the frustration of finding an outgoing mailserver that works. Or just the hassle of fiddling around in their settings to get the right one for each place.

Three solutions to this problem can save time and headaches.

A. Using Gmail’s alias and SMTP server

Melvin Rivera has written a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots which solves this problem by using Gmail’s SMTP server and Gmail’s alias option.

He also shows you how to add the Gmail SMTP server to Mail.app’s settings.

This is a great solution if you only want to send email from one account (i.e. one alias) and the place you are in doesn’t block traffic on port 587.

B. Be your own mail server

Another way around this is to be your own SMTP server. You can easily do this on a Mac laptop by using the built-in postfix SMTP server. Dan Kogai offers instructions for doing this manually through the command line.

If the command line is not your thing, two utlities can take some of the pain out of the process.

RapidoSMTP (freeware) has just been updated. The new version (available here ) is more reliable and allows you to define the port number you want to use:

Postfix Enabler is shareware but offers many more options.

C. Quick switching between home and work servers

Unfortunately my life doesn’t involve sending emails while drinking lattés in endless cafes. I just shuttle between work and home. My work is too ferocious for Melvin’s work-around above, so I need two mail servers and I need to switch them for all my email accounts twice a day.

To do this, I use Andreas Amann’s “Change SMTP servers” script, part of his excellent Mail Scripts collection.

A Quicksilver trigger launches it and the switch is done almost before I notice it. It’s the quickest way I know to do this otherwise time-consuming task.email, roadwarrior, smtp servers, mail.app, apple mail, tips, applescript, gmail, postfix, productivity

Adium Book is a utility that can synchronise Adium’s contact list and your Address Book.

The new version (1.3) released today is a universal binary, features some performance tweaks to improve the app’s speed and fixes some issues with Jabber accounts. It also offers support for multiple IM accounts in its Address Book view.

The interface has been reworked:

With Adium Book you can add Adium contacts to Address Book or update the information on an Address Book card using data from Adium.

It allows full text search of Adium contacts and Address Book and provides a range of reports, among them a listing of contacts without pictures, contacts in Adium but not in Address Book or a listing of contacts by IM service.

Adium book is donation-ware and is available from the Adium Extra’s web site or the developer’s webs site .not apple mail, adium, address book, contacts, IM, chat, universal, reports, instant messaging