Mark Scrimshire has written two plugins for Address Book that automatically add information about a particular contact into a Google Calendar event.

As Mark explains :

The biggest drawback with Google Calendar has been the one-way limitation. I wanted to be able to easily add information to my calendar without having to re-type.

Installation is easy. Download Mark’s two scripts and install them in your ~/Library/Address Book Plug-ins folder.

Quit and relaunch Address Book, then Control-click on the phone or address tab or the contact you want to schedule a meeting with or call.

Select the “Create Call on Google for…” or “Create Google Meeting for… at…” option:

The script then pre-populates a Google Calendar event with phone numbers and addresses for the contact:

I can see how this would save a lot of time.

Google Calendar Add utility is donation-ware (USD 10 suggested) and is available from Mark’s web site .address book, google, calendar, gcal, plugins, quick events, productivity, applescript

When Leopard Mail was previewed last month, it provoked a lot of reaction. One of the things people broadly welcomed was the introduction of more “productivity features” like to-dos, notes and the integration of RSS feeds.

It looks like the Apple Mail Development Team is giving Mail some more grunt for getting things done, and might even muscle in on the territory currently occupied by MailTags .

A poster in the MailTags forum asked today,

With the promised tighter integration of Leopard’s new Mail and iCal, including managing ToDo’s directly from Mail, why should I invest in MailTags 2.x now? What more will MailTags be offering?

Good question. And MailTags developer Scott Morrison has produced a good answer. He has listed all the things that MailTags will continue to offer than Leopard Mail doesn’t (as far as anyone knows):

If this is too hard to read, you can see a full-sized version of the list on the MailTags forum .

From what I’ve seen, there’s no reason to think that MailTags will be redundant when Leopard Mail arrives.

It will continue to provide a comprehensive structure and process for my workflow through its projects, keywords and priorities, something that Leopard Mail cannot offer.

What do you think?mail.app, apple mail, mailtags, leopard mail, to-dos, notes, productivity

Evan Williams (“originally from the cornfields of Nebraska” which sounds nice) has produced a handy Gmail shortcut cheatsheet .

It lists all those keyboard shortcuts for Gmail that you can never remember in once convenient printable (or archivable into Yojimbo/SOHO Notes/whatnot) sheet:

You can add it to the Complete Google Apps Cheatsheet, the Thunderbird one, the Entourage cheatsheet and the complete list of Apple Mail shortcuts for a large amount of things to wrap your head around. email, gmail, thunderbird, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, Apple Mail, mail.app

For the next twenty hours MacUpdate is offering a 21% discount on BuddyPOP, an excellent “quick look-up” utility for Address Book.

Once installed, pressing a user-definable hotkey pops up a dialog window to search and match your Address Book contacts.

It then displays that contact’s information:

Of course you can do the same thing with Quicksilver, but BuddyPOP has an extra trick up its sleeve. It offers a very quick way to get info out of your Address Book into a Mail.app message (or any other kind of document).

BuddyPOP also handles Skype, X-Lite SIP SoftPhone and Vonage, has support for sending and receiving SMS messages via a Bluetooth-enabled phone.

A steal at USD 9.99. Snap it up from MacUpdate.address book, contacts, productivity, dialler, skype, SMS, apple mail, mail.app, quicksilver

Over the weekend I updated the Hawk Wings Add-on and Plug-in List.

Ten new entries were added, making a total of 130+ add-ons, plugins, scripts and helpful apps to make working with Mail.app, iCal and Address Book quicker, smarter and more productive:

1. AddressX (Get Exchange contacts in Address Book) was added to the Address Book section.
2. Next Unread Message (Applescript to move to next unread message) was added to the Added Functionality section.
3. Export Address Book (easy merges of Address Book data with Word, FileMaker) was added to the Address Book section.
4. Note to Self (quick notes to yourself in Mail.app à la Leopard Mail) was added to the Added Functionality section.
5. Email Backup (quick, one-step back up for mail.app, thunderbird and more) was added to the Archiving section.
6. OMiC (plugin wrapper for tnef.sourceforge.net to extract winmail.dat files) was added to the Added Functionality section.
7. Mail to Yojimbo (script to pipe emails from Mail.app to Yojimbo) was added to the Integration with other apps section.
8. Mail Unread Menu (discreet menubar notification for Mail.app) was added to the Notification section.
9. Return Receipts AppleScript (request return receipts from email clients that support them) was added to the Added Functionality section.
10. MailPod (script to copy emails to any iPod) was added to the Added Functionality section.

mail.app, apple mail, applescript, plugins, addons, productivity, backup, notification, ipod, address book, exchange server

Logan Rockmore’s notification utility Mail Unread Menu has been updated (again).

Now at version 2.0, it been repackaged as an application with an assisting mail bundle, which adds greater stability.

The font size and colour of the message count can now be set in the preferences and an option to Compose a new message has been added to the app’s drop-down menu.

Best of all, the drop-down menu now lists the new messages by individual mailboxes. Clicking on the one you want jumps you directly to that mailbox, saving time and mouse-clicks. Nice.

It’s safe to say that this is now the best of the menubar notification utilities.

Mail Unread Menu is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Logan’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, notification, plugins, bundles, unread messages, mailboxes

CTM Development has released a new beta of its email client PowerMail.

The new beta (5.5b2) is now a fully native universal application, a development which the company says underscores its “commitment to PowerMail’s future”.

It is now twice as fast thanks to code rewrites for its new universal status and upgrades to the database format.

The developers also say that Intel Mac users will notice much improved stability.

I took a look at PowerMail, which advertises itself as “A better Mac OS X mail client than Apple’s own”, at the end of last year.

I was unimpressed then with its IMAP support, lack of native spam filtering, its lack of extensibility and its cost (USD 82 = 65 euros including a bundled copy of SpamSieve).

Still, people with POP accounts who like more complicated searching than Mail.app can provide, extensive AppleScript support and a mail client with a built-in text snippet manager might like to try it out.

You can download a demo of the new universal beta from the app’s web site . email in general, powermail, email, mail.app, apple mail, POP, IMAP, searching, universal binary