Plugins

Four entries were added to the Hawk Wings Plugin and Addon List this week.

ZooDo (mouse-less iCal To Do creation) and iCalScripts (AppleScripts to create iCal To Dos and Events) were added to the iCal section.

GmailStatus (smarter-than-average Gmail notifier) and iNotify.saver (screensaver polls for new Mail.app messages) were added to the list of Notification utilities and apps.

I resisted the urge to put Yojimbo in the helpful apps section.

Backend

I’m an inveterate fiddler. I can’t help it. This week I installed the new version of bstats, called bsuite . It handles related posts and tags in a different way, so the posts look a little different as well. There some oddities in the automatic tag parsing too.

I’m not the Michaelangelo of web design, so I welcome feedback, advice and opinions. Perhaps it’s better. Perhaps it’s worse. Perhaps it doesn’t make any difference. I’m hard to offend.

I also added a begging bowl and placed the site under a Creative Commons License .plugin, addon, Mail.app, Apple Mail, AppleScript, notification, iCal, bsuite, Creative Commons, screensaver

This week Address Book and iCal get the lion’s share of the additions to the Hawk Wings Plugin and Addon List.

The following items were added to the Address Book section:

• AddressBookQuickEntry (an alternate entry interface for contact information)
• AusAB (maps, travel directions and Sydney public transport times for Australian addresses)
• iAddressX (Address Book menubar utility)

The following were added to the iCal section:

• DoBeDo (a Dashboard widget for iCal ToDos)
• iCalViewer (“Streaming” desktop iCal events and ToDos)
• MenuCalendarClock (menubar utility for you iCal calendar, clock and ToDo and event information)

Mail.app itself scored two extra entries:

• anentry (AppleScript to email a NetNewsWire headline) in the Integration with other Apps section
• NetShred X (history and cache shredder for Mail.app and browsers) in the Added Functionality section

These additions bring the number of entries on the list to a round 120, all making Mail.app, Address Book and iCal easier, more efficient, more productive and (possibly) more fun to use.

It turns out that High Priority is not the only iCal menubar utility on the block.

MenuCalendarClock is another menubar app for iCal that gives you access to your iCal events and ToDos from the menubar.

Clicking its menubar icon drops down a display containing a calendar view of the current month, the events for the day and a list of your ToDos.

The display of events and ToDos can be toggled on and off.

Its preferences allow you to control a configurable menubar clock replacement and to set the colour of the window.

Further options determine how the events and ToDos are displayed.

It will also display the Calendar week numbers and offers an autohide option.

There is also a “Tool tip” option that presents a text-only version of the display when you hover your mouse over the icon.

Unlike High Priority, it offers no interaction with your ToDos, which cannot be marked completed or edited from the app’s window.

All these features can be enjoyed for free.

A registered version (USD 18.95) offers further features like the ability to sync birthdays from AddressBook into iCal and to configure a hotkey.

The fully registered version also displays iCal events.

MenuCalendarClock is available from the developer’s web site .ical, events, to do, menubar, plugin, addon, clock replacement, calendar, menucalendarclock

I’d love to work in Apple Mail all day, but sometimes I need to take a break for word-processing, web browsing or blogging. Mail Appetizer is for those moments. Other notification add-ons (like MailUnreadStatusBar) will tell you discreetly in the menubar how many emails are waiting for you. Mail Appetizer takes a bolder approach. Whenever Apple Mail is not the active app, it brings your email to you in a splash screen as it arrives. Here is an example:

This plug-in installs itself in the the Preferences pane of Apple Mail. You can configure the mailboxes that it watches, the fonts it uses, the level of transparency in the notification window, and so on. The splash window itself can be re-sized, and contains four little icons at the bottom enabling you to view the message in Mail, mark it as read, delete it or dismiss the window.

Some people say that productivity is enhanced by limiting the number of times that you check your email. Once every hour, or every thirty minutes, they say. This plug-in won’t help you achieve that!

It is free (donations welcome!) and you can download it from the Bronson Beta web site.plugin, addon, mail.app, apple mail, notification, mailappetizer, alerts, smoked glass, productivity