Gmail+Growl is a plugin for the notification utility Gmail Notifier.

It shows notifications via Growl for new emails delivered to your Gmail account.

Running the app sets the preferences for the alerts:

You can choose to see the Address Book pictures of the senders and to open the email by clicking on the notification with the browser of your choice.

A second pane allows you to customise the content and layout of the alert:

The resulting notifications are pretty and informative:

You need, obviously, to have Gmail Notifier running for this to work.

Gmail+Growl is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .gmail, growl, notification, alerts, plugins, gmail notifier, email

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