Hawk Wings » email

Eudora lives! First OSE release candidate is out

Tim Gaden — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 08:02:19 +0000

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.Similar Posts:

Apple Mail’s market share increases by 21%

Tim Gaden — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:38:12 +0000

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 notesSimilar Posts:

UK Survey proves “death of email” premature

Tim Gaden — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:48:47 +0000

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 networkingSimilar Posts:

Mailplane lifts licence ceiling

Tim Gaden — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:00:59 +0000

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, emailSimilar Posts:

Why Email isn’t going away any time soon

Tim Gaden — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:21:04 +0000

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, internetSimilar Posts:

Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all

Tim Gaden — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:20:19 +0000

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 daysSimilar Posts:

Macworld’s Massive Mail.app Mélange

Tim Gaden — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:57:39 +0000

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 balanceSimilar Posts:

MacWorld’s review of Entourage 2008: A missed opportunity

Tim Gaden — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:01:10 +0000

Tom Negrino at MacWorldhas written a review of Entourage 2008, part of the newly released Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

Although it has its fans, the shortcomings of Entourage 2004 were well-known and many were hoping for greater things from Entourage 2008.

MacWorld’s verdict?

There are several other new or improved features relating to e-mail or calendaring, but they apply only to users in corporate environments that connect to a Microsoft Exchange server. Given that it’s been four long years in the making, it’s a missed opportunity that Entourage 2008 hasn’t also added some of the best new features found in Mail, such as automatic detection of physical addresses and dates, or e-mail stationery templates.

Entourage gets points for more complete AppleScript-ability, for compatibility with Mac OS X’s Services and for looking nicer, but when you get down to business — backing up your email and working with other apps — things look less rosy.

Negrino notes Microsoft’s advice that Entourage’s monolithic database be excluded from Time Machine backups and that users employ “alternative backup methods” instead. This is not only a pain in the butt, but cuts across the comprehensive design of Time Machine as a “set and forget”, everything-that-matters-to-you backup system.

Working with iCal is also fraught in Negrino’s view:

When you first synchronize Entourage with Sync Services, it creates an Entourage calendar in iCal, replicating your Entourage events in iCal. If you add or change events in that Entourage calendar in iCal or on a mobile device, those events will be synchronized back to Entourage’s internal calendar. But there’s no way to bring events from other iCal calendars (such as the default Home, Work, or Birthdays calendars) into Entourage’s internal calendar. Put another way, Entourage can publish data to iCal, but can’t subscribe to any of iCal’s other calendars. In effect, Entourage uses iCal as a convenient conduit to synchronize its data to other devices, but doesn’t treat iCal as a full calendaring partner.

After getting to the end of the review, I was surprised by the final sentence:

“Finally, if you’re outside of the corporate realm, and need a mail, calendar, and contact manager with lots of headroom and solid integration with the rest of the Office suite, Entourage provides a wealth of features that are deeper than Apple’s trio.”

Are you? entourage, microsoft, office for mac 2008, mail.app, ical, address book, sync services, time machine, emailSimilar Posts:

HTTPMail returns for Leopard: Hotmail in Mail

Tim Gaden — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:06:03 +0000

Daniel Parnell has released an initial Leopard-friendly version of HTTPMail (1.50), a plugin for Mail.app that fools Hotmail and MSN web-based email accounts into downloading POP emails into Mail.

It basically does the same thing as MacFreePOPs, now also released for Leopard.

The plugin comes in a disk image with an installer and a detailed PDF on how to use it.

Daniel provides a handy list of how far the Leopard development has come:

He also outlines how to set up a Hotmail account in Mail.app using the plugin. He reminds users that older free Hotmail and MSN accounts will probably work but that newer one may need to be upgraded to Hotmail Plus .

HHTPMail is freeware and available from Daniel’s web site (but not yet from its sourceforge page ). microsoft, httpmail, hotmail, msn, plugins, mail.app, apple mail, email, leopardSimilar Posts:

Sneak preview of the new Entourage 2008

Tim Gaden — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:48:37 +0000

The Mac Business Unit has published its fifth sneak-peak of the new Office for Mac 2008, focussing on Entourage 2008.

The video demonstrates the creation of an event in Entourage’s calendar, giving a sense of appointment features familiar (colour-coding for each calendar) and unfamiliar (allowance for travelling time to and from the appointment).

The new, previously-seen “My Day” Desktop interface for Entourage also gets a good work out. You get to see the creation of a to-do, the reordering of to-dos and other bits and pieces.

Since I am feeling grumpy with Leopard iCal at the moment (although not as grumpy as Pierre Igot at Betalogue who today rightly unloads on iCal’s lack of keyboard support ), it all looks pretty attractive.

It pains me a bit to say it, but here is something that looks like it works. And gives users some control over how to manage their to-dos and events and edit them easily. Of course, it may be a different story when we actually have the app in our hands.

See the sneak-peak for yourself below or on the Office:Mac 2008 web site :

microsoft, office for mac 2008, entourage, ical, mail.app, apple mail, switching, productivity, email, MBUSimilar Posts: