It’s that time of year again in Australia. Everyone (including me) is either at the beach or wishing they were at the beach.

I’m off to the beach house for three weeks. Marital diplomacy requires no blogging during this period.

So I will see you all again on the other side.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and an excellent New Year. mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, beach, shiraz, kids, holiday, some more shiraz

John Maisey has updated his AppleScript for deleting duplicates in iCal, so that it works with Leopard.

Syncing and sharing calendars often produces duplicates. Removing them manually is a pain. John’s script makes it easy.

When you run it, it will prompt you to select which of your calendars you want to clean up:

Then is does its business quietly in the background, popping the result when it is done:

One note of warning. It doesn’t offer you a second chance or an option to review the deletions. Once you select the calendar and tell it to clean up, that’s exactly what it does.

So, back up your calendar data first, using the File > Backup iCal menu option.

Delete iCal Duplicates is freeware (donations not refused) is available, along with some other interesting scripts for iCal and Address Book, from John’s web site ical, duplicates, events, productivity, calendars, applescript, leopard.

Just in time for all those festive season emails comes a Christmas Stationery template for Leopard Mail.

Mail Stationery is new feature of Leopard Mail, which allows you send emails wrapped in pre-made HTML templates (if you are into that sort of thing).

Christmas Stationery is suitably Christmas-like as you can see:

It comes placeholders for three images and lots of snow flakes scattered around the bottom of the text area.

It was developed by the German blogger at tice.de, and is available from his web site in English and German versions. mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, HTML, stationery, mail stationery, outrageous waste of bandwidth but it is Christmas

Loki Software has released an updated version of its Mail Attachments Iconizer plugin for Mail.app, an add-on that offers much greater control over the way that attachments are displayed and packaged.

I could type out all the benefits which the plugin offers, but thankfully the developers have knocked up their own chart of improvements:

The new version adds some welcome features — a new option to always display full attachment names, the ability to images in HTML layouts of incoming messages in LEopard Mail, the printing of attachments according to how they are currently displayed on the screen and better recognition of images without filename extension.

It also offers a more reliable fix of interaction with the stationery feature in Leopard Mail.

Mail Attachments Iconizer is shareware (USD 14.99) is available from the developer’s web site .plugins, leopard mail, apple mail, mail.app, attachments, productivity

Relationship Completer is a plugin for Address Book that takes the pain out of creating relationships between your contacts.

Normally, in order to create a relationship between two contacts, say Richard Treloar and Leanne Habeeb, you need to go to Leanne’s card, enter “Richard Treloar” as the spouse of Leanne, and then, go to Richard’s card and repeat the procedure, entering Leanne’s name into his spouse field.

It shouldn’t be that hard, and with this plugin it isn’t.

All you need to do is enter the information once, ⌘-click on the field and the plugin creates the reciprocal relationship (assistant/manager, mother/daughter, friend/friend, etc, etc) in the other card:

Relationship Completer is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .

[Thanks, David!]address book, mail.app, apple mail, contacts, doing it smarter, plugins

Eagle-eyed Hawk Wings reader Dave Foshee emails to say that he has spotted a Leopard-friendly beta version of GrowlMail.

He found the link in a post on the Google Groups Discussion list for Growl.

The poster is offering it as a beta and asking for feedback on how well it works.

It works very well for me, so I encourage you to give it a go yourself, especially if you are looking for a slick, visual notification summary of your email.

Of course, you will need to install Growl first.

[Thanks, Dave!]apple mail, leopard mail, mail.app, growl, growlmail, leopard, notification, plugins

Anxiety is a new and well-crafted “no frills” task mananger for Leopard that manages a list of your to-dos and syncs them with iCal and Mail.app.

Personally, I like the big, fully-featured approach to task management (OmniFocus, iGTD , etc), but not everyone needs all the bells and whistles.

If these big hitters are not for you, then Anxiety is well worth a look. As the developer says, “With a tiny desktop footprint and clean minimalist aesthetics, the application is simultaneously small, beautiful and effective”.

It presents a simple list of outstanding tasks, which can be displayed and hidden again by clicking on the app’s Menubar or Dock icon:

When it has focus, hitting Return brings up a pane to create a new task. Tabbing through you can quickly enter the task and assign it to the calendar of your choice. Once it is created in iCal, it is soon synced into Leopard Mail as well.

Double-clicking on a task in the list opens the to-do in Mail or opens the task’s Edit pane in iCal (you can set this in the app’s Preferences).

Checking the box on the left, completes the task, which turns a violent green and then disappears.

Anxiety’s Preferences allow you to determine whether it displays tasks by individual calendar or in a unified list, whether the icon is displayed in the Dock, Menubar or both, and various display options:

Anxiety is freeware (donations not refused) and is available – along with a comprehensive list of its many virtues – from the developer’s web site .

[Via digg ]task management, to-dos, ical, mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, productivity, getting things done, GTD