The first release candidate for Eudora OSE (“Open Source Edition”) has been released , after a gap of several months since the last beta.

Described as “an email client that combines Mozilla’s Thunderbird with code, features, and GUI elements from Qualcomm’s Eudora”, Eudora OSE is the end result of Qualcomm’s decision in October 2006 (Remember that?) to get out of the email market and to open source the code for its email client, once the most popular email app on the Mac platform.

Firing it up for a quick look-see is very nostalgic. First the freestanding mailbox pane appears, and then that unforgettable “bob-bob-a-bob-a-bob” sound of new mail arriving.

Old hands might still cherish a secret flame for Eudora, and find this release an interesting thing to play around with.

It’s not the old Eudora, that’s for sure; feels more like a skinned version of Thunderbird to me.

Apple Mail’s popularity is on the rise. Its market share increased by 21% in 2009, from 7.64% to 9.69%, according to the latest survey by email marketing company CampaignMonitor.

Over the same period, the iPhone and iPod touch captured 8.69% of the market.

One caveat: the results of the survey are based on email image displays. As the company notes, this can skew results in favour of clients that display images by default (like Outlook 2000 and the iPhone) and penalise clients that block images by default (like Outlook 2007 and Gmail).

Nonetheless, the survey’s findings are striking.

The Outlook juggernaut continues to lead the pack, although its share fell by 2.78% in 2009.

Gmail, so central to the email experience of techno-pundits, only accounts for 5.74% of the market overall.

1.31% of users still crank up Lotus Notes to read their emails. Who knew?

CampaignMonitor helpfully summarises the main winners and losers:

But how many people open how much of their email how often on their smart phones rather than on a laptop or desktop? Apart from the iPhone’s glowing performance, the survey doesn’t say.

The survey presents a snapshot of the market in January 2010, and is based on a sample size of more than half-a-billion image displays. mail.app, apple mail, email, gmail, iphone, apple, microsoft outlook, lotus notes

A recent report by British company UK Online Management reveals that occasional reports about the imminent death of email are much exaggerated.

As one might expect, the data in the report (collected and processed by Nielson) shows a 65 percent increase since 2007 in the average amount of time each participant spent online.

Social networking and blogs were the fastest-growing sector. Almost a quarter of all online time was spent on these as the pie chart below, which represents the average online hour, makes clear:

On average participants spent 13.5 minutes out of every hour on blogs and social networks.

Instant messaging, regarded by some (like Business Week) as the “email of the future”, was the biggest casualty. Three years ago it accounted for 14 percent of internet time, now it is only 5 percent.

Email, on the other hand, is rising. As the UKOM press release puts it:

In contrast, personal Email, which many predicted to be another casualty of the social networking phenomenon, has actually increased its share of online time from 6.5 percent to 7.2 percent – a relative rise of 11 percent. In absolute terms, Britons now spend 88 percent more time on Email sites than they did three years ago but 42 percent less time Instant Messaging

The full press release can be downloaded from the UKOM web site.

A video clip on the BBC web site explains the significance of the findings in more depth.

[The survey is based on data collected from at least 35,000 people -- 31,000 of them at home and 4,000 at work.] email, not apple mail, not mail.app, web 2.0, social networking

Ruben Bakker, the developer of Mailplane (a very clever app that “brings Gmail to your Desktop”) has responded to customer requests by raising the number of Macs on which you can use the app with a single licence.

In a post on the Mailplane Google Group he explains:

Until recently, a Mailplane single user license was limited to two Macs. Because many users needed Mailplane on more Macs, I’ve decided to lift this limitation:

• Single-user license: *Install on all Macs you personally use.* Use it at home, school, work: just anywhere. *Limitation:* Make sure you’re the only user. Please do not share your license with anyone else.
• Family license: Allow up to five (5) family members *living in the same household* to use Mailplane on their Macs. As with the single user license, there is no machine limitation for any of the five users.
• Site license: For a number of users working at the same organization. Again, each user may use it anywhere.

As a result individuals will pay only USD 24.95 to use it on as many Macs as they own. The family licence costs USD 39.95. For a site licence covering 20 users or more, the price per licence drops to USD 17.95.

Mailplane is not just a slick way into Gmail’s web interface. It adds additional features like “drag and drop” attachments, the ability to integrate multiple Gmail accounts, enabling new mail notifications, sending screenshots and integration with the productivity app OmniFocus through a bespoke plugin.

If you are tempted to be unfaithful to mail.app and start an affair in the Cloud with Gmail (as I am from time to time), Mailplane is a very good investment.

It was good value for money before. Now, for people with more than two macs (like me), it is even better.gmail, not apple mail, not mail.app, mailplane, the cloud, email

Adam Engst, the editor of TidBITS, has written a thoughtful piece, summarising the many reasons why email still rules the roost.

Along the way, he considers what to make of the current “email is dead” meme, how to assess objectively the impact of the facebook phenomenon, why Gen Z (or whatever we are up to) still needs its email addresses, the innovative nature of Gmail’s design and also hazards a guess at what Google Wave might mean.

It’s worth reading. Check it out at TidBITS: “Why Email Remains the King of Internet Communications” email, social networking, facebook, google wave, gmail, internet

Matt Hovey, the developer of an amazing email format conversion application called Emailchemy has written a nice piece explaining why was driven to create the app.

Hawk Wings has covered Emailchemy before.

It can convert emails and mailboxes from an astonishing number of email clients (AOL for Windows, Claris Emailer, CompuServe Classic for Macintosh, CompuServe 2000 for Windows, Entourage (Database, .rge Archives and cache files), Eudora, Mail.app, Mozilla, Mulberry, Musashi, Neoplanet, Netscape, Opera, Outlook for Windows, Outlook Express for Macintosh, Windows and UNIX/Solaris, PowerTalk/AOCE for Macintosh, QuickMail Pro for Macintosh and Windows, Thunderbird, Yahoo! Mail and any other UNIX-style or mbox-format mailbox—whew!) into “mbox” format, mail spool, or “UNIX-style” mailboxes, folders of individual email files (.txt or .eml files), comma-separated value files (.csv files), IMAPdir (Binc IMAP maildir) or Maildir++ (Courier IMAP maildir) format, or IMAP formats usable by Outlook, Outlook Express, Entourage, Mail.app, and Thunderbird.

Matt recounts how he moved from his beginnings in mail on UNIX (in 1990, when I was still fooling around on a PC with Waffle, Fidonet and UUCP email) through a dizzying sequence of email clients mandated by “corporate policy” at work and the march of software progress at home:

I went from using Eudora at work to using Apple’s PowerTalk, and from that to using WordPerfect Office (aka Groupwise), Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and finally Microsoft Outlook. Then, to further complicate matters, I went from using Eudora at home to using Apple’s PowerTalk, Claris Emailer, and Netscape Mail, back to Eudora again, and then finally Apple’s Mail.app that came with Mac OS X.

It’s all very nostalgic! No wonder he ended up with “years of archived email saved in files created by several different applications that no other application could read.”

That’s enough to convert anyone into an ardent disciple of open formats.

If you are in the same bind, Emailchemy (shareware — USD 29.50) may well be the tool for you. email, mbox, old emails, emailchemy, mail.app, apple mail. thinderbird, eudora, claris emailer, entourage, convertor, unix, the good old days

MacWorld seems to be heaving with articles of interest to Mail.app users today.

Kelly Turner kicks things off with a confession about her bulging inbox, its 35,000 emails and the level of self-deception involved in telling herself that her system was working:

…I often lost track of messages that still needed to be dealt with. As new messages arrived and older ones disappeared from my screen, I seldom thought to scroll down to see what was still unread. And although I’d developed elaborate coping mechanisms (using colors and flags and searches to identify messages) simply having an ocean of e-mail in front of me made the process of answering and checking e-mail seem like a Herculean task.

This forms a nice segue to the first part of Joe Kissel’s three-part “email renovation” series. He begins with a series of tips on reducing the amount of traffic that comes into your inbox in the first place—dealing with spam, all those hilarious joke-a-minute emails that your friends and family insist on circulating, learning what belongs in Mail.app and what belongs in iChat and more.

Part Two is on “Meet your new filing system”. I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t mention Mail Act-on and MailTags , the two premier organisational plugins for Mail.app.

If you can’t wait for Joe’s next installment you can browse through past posts of mine (one, two, three) on getting things done with Mail Act-on and MailTags. Or read them now and see how much better Joe’s tips are when he posts them!

Joe also takes the chance to put up some links to articles he wrote in February 2007 on “clearing away the clutter” in your inbox. Anything by Joe is worth the time spent reading it. These are no exception.

Finally, Joe has written a piece on coming to grips with notes and to-dos in Leopard Mail. He offers some smart tips on moving your calenders and to-dos to an IMAP account. However, be sure to read the comments as well and see what problems people are having with getting iCal to behave.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, ical, getting things done, gtd, inbox zero, email, life balance