Leland Scott has taken the best bits of several scripts that automate the vacuuming of Mail’s Envelope index and rolled them together into a solution that will automate the cleaning process using Mac Os X’s Launchd service.

The result, VacummMail, is a clever little utility that can be run anytime with two clicks of the mouse for a manual clean up.

It features a series of dialogs that tell you what is about to happen and what has happened, which is always satisfying:

Even better, the process can be automated by placing the app into your /Applications/Utilities folder and the included plist file into your ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder.

By default, this will run the app at 1 pm every Tuesday. If that time doesn’t suit, it can easily be changed using Lingon , an open source launchd configuration file editor:

You can get VacuumMail from Leland’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, envelope, SQLite, launchd, productivity, spring clean, speeding up

Actiontastic, one of the nicest Desktop GTD apps for Mac users, has gone open source, soon after gaining support for MailTags.

Jon Crosby announced the shift to a free, open source future for Actiontastic in a post on his blog a few days ago:

Opening up this project for community participation is the best possible thing that I can think of doing for its future. Great things are on the horizon for that sweet intersection of the web and the desktop. I would rather discuss them openly and collaborate with other like-minded people than hide any of the details just to make another $29 shareware sale.

Three weeks earlier, he explained how to integrate MailTags with Actiontastic via iCal with Actiontastic’s @inbox calendar. Nifty.

Is the move to open source a good thing? It’s the usual trade-off between free software offering the user community a chance to contribute on the one hand and, on the other, a possible loss of focus and forward movement.

The announcement of Eudora’s move to open source last year made some people nervous about its future for similar reasons.

Hopefully, both apps will continue to thrive.GTD, getting things done, mailtags, mail.app, apple mail, ical, open source, eudora, productivity

Juan Ignacio Leon’s excellent iPhoto2Gmail plugin has been updated and now offers even smarter ways for Gmail users to email photos from iPhoto.

Basically, it adds a pane to iPhoto’s “Export…” dialog:

The updated version offers a Contacts button that pulls down your Gmail contacts so that you pick the recipient(s) from that list.

Other new features include:

- A bugfix for RAW and other non-jpeg files that were not properly renamed when scaled.
- A fix for some situations in which the plugin would try to send message without recipients.
- Re-written code to be Object Oriented and Modular for maintainability.

You can get the revised version from Juan’s web site .iphoto, gmail, photos, webmail, plugin, web 2.0, integration, email

Melvin Rivera has written a nice tutorial for Mail users explaining how to get a digital certificate from Thawte and how to use Mail.app’s digital signature and encryption features.

He outlines the process for creating an account at Thawte and requesting a certificate and then installing it.

Further sections follow on the difference between a digitally signed and an encrypted message, and how to use them.

It’s interesting to compare Melvin’s take on secure email in Mail.app with Matt Haughey’s experience , which wasn’t so positive.

Melvin thinks it works well and is a good tool to have in your email armoury:

Other than the process of going though an external website for obtaining a certificate, Mail’s integration of signed and encrypted messages is seamless. It’s a great feature that is just hidden until needed. Making the user experience simple and clean. And there’s nothing like discovering a great new feature on an App you’ve been using for a long time now.

Joar Winfor has also produced a more detailed walkthrough for secure email in Mail.app, but more detail is not always good for everyone.thawte, certificate, X.509, digital signatures, encryption, secure email, security, mail.app, apple mail

Having seen the recent post on UK and USA Mail Stamp icons, Jesse Schooff emails to share a Mail stamp icon for Canada.

He writes:

Antony Ellam’s USA and UK stamps made me envious, so I made a shiny new mail icon for myself using one of our nice Canadian stamps. As per Antony’s convention, the postmark has been changed to Markham, Ontario, where Apple Canada is located. It looks very nice in my dock so I figured I’d share it.

You can download the icon from Hawk Wings.

There is also a Canadian stamp in the “Flags of the World” Mail stamp collection.

As I posted long ago, every Mail user needs to feel grateful towards Canada.

Due to some bizarre operation of Chaos Theory (Wikipedia ), people steeped in maple syrup, lacrosse, mounted policemen, French, the Barenaked Ladies and beaver tails are particularly good at producing top quality Mail.app plugins.

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy.

I’ve added it to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which now contains 332 different icons. With glowing hearts we see thee rise.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, UK, Royal Mail, USA, stars and stripes

The makers of TextExpander, a very clever time- and finger-saving snippet utility, have posted a nice tip on the company’s blog.

It explains how to make a “smart snippet” using TextExpander’s %clipboard variable, which is replaced by whatever is currently on the clipboard when the snippet is typed.

The original author of the tip uses it to create Amazon affiliate links for his blog on the fly, but obviously it has wider uses too.

For example, imagine you run a blog that attracts a lot of emails asking how to do this, that or the other thing.

You can quickly run up a snippet like this:

Then, when the emails start to arrive, all you need to do is navigate to the link, copy it to the clipboard and then type the snippet into the reply:

Suddenly more of your life is your own. Clever.

If I sat around here long enough I’m sure I could think of a dozen other applications for this tip, but you might have more fun thinking them up for yourself.

TextExpander costs USD 29.95 and is available from the developer’s web site .textexpander, textpander, productivity, snippets, shortcuts, tips, helpful apps, clipboard, mail.app, apple mail

Dutch software developer Johannes Verelst has written up his system for Getting Things Done (Dave Allen’s task management philosophy) with Mail.app and iCal.

(If you are mystified about endless references to “Getting Things Done” (or GTD), Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders is still the best way to lift the fog. See his recent “Getting Things Done: Recap for ’07″ post for a list of red-hot how-tos and tutorials on boiling GTD down to something workable for you, or jump right into his “Getting started with GTD.” )

Johannes’ way of using Mail.app to get things done is not like my own Mail.app GTD system which makes it all the more interesting and useful to read. There is always something to learn from people who do things differently.

I make an effort to keep everything in Mail, which then acts as my “Bucket”, processing hub and also my to-do list. Less swapping from app to app helps me to focus on getting the tasks done.

Johannes likes to dump stuff out to iCal. He uses calendars to separate out his projects and contexts. A clever combination of Mail Act-on, Quicksilver and applescript helps him to create an all-encompassing system.

I use MailTags to set iCal to-dos, but only so iCal’s alarm will shoot a reminder back into my inbox about something that needs to get done. MailTags’ keywords for @Action, @Waiting and @Defer and its project tags give me enough power and control to manage a confusion of Real Life, blogging, freelancing and family tasks efficiently.

While Mail remains for me what Johannes calls a “Cockpit”, he uses DoBeDo as his cockpit, managing his to-dos through the widget’s interface.

His GTD toolbox list at the end of the post shows that his system is up and running for less than USD 70 (and most of that is for the software to sync his Palm T|X). It pays for itself in a week at the outside.mail.app, apple mail, ical, Getting Things Done, GTD, productivity, task management, mailtags, mail act-on, plugins