Andreas Amann has updated Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, an app which can import emails into Mail.app from Eudora and Thunderbird.

The new version resolves aliases and symbolic links within the Eudora folder and the target folder hierarchy and improves the reading of binary data from Eudora mailboxes.

A new AppleScript is included in the disk image which will rebuild all the imported messages within Mail.app 2.x’s “Import” hierarchy.

It also improves the importing of nicknames from Eudora.

It is not yet a universal binary, but the app runs fine in Rosetta.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is free (donations not refused) and is available from Andreas’ web site.

NetShred is a stand-alone app that protects your privacy on the Internet by shredding the browsing histories and caches of your browsers and email clients.

It supports all the main browsers and the following email clients – Mail.app 1 and 2, Eudora 5, Eudora 6, Mailsmith 2.x, Mozilla 1.x and Netscape 7.x.

After launching the app (a process that can be automated so that occurs at start-up) , its main screen presents you will an overview of its abilities:

Installed browsers are highlighted in green, active ones in red.

Caches and histories can only be securely shredded when the app is closed. You can either do this manually, or set NetShred X to perform the shredding automatically when you exit the app.

The Preference Pane provides further options:

Here you can set the degree of automation that you want, what you would like the app to shred, what degree of shredding you require and how many write-overs you would like.

A further tab allows you to specify which browsers and email clients NetShred should monitor and shred.

In this day and age people have more reason than ever to think about their online privacy. NetShred X takes care of that for you and is a good complement to ShredIt, a general purpose shredder from the same developer.

NetShred is shareware (USD 19.95). A fully featured demo is available from the developer’s web site.

The last time I blogged about Mail Archiver X, it was not compatible with Mail 2.0‘s new file system.

A new version was released today which offers full support for Mail.app emails in 10.4, a new interface, support for Filemaker 8 and other improvements.

Mail Archiver X works with Mail.app, PowerMail, Eudora, Mozilla, Netscape, Thunderbird, the standard mbox format and Entourage.

Its functions are controlled by a main toolbar:

It archives your emails using a database called Valentina by Paradigma Software. The speed of this database and a reduced reliance on AppleScript make Mail Archiver X run faster than comparable apps, the developers claim.

Backup options include the ability to select with mailboxes are archived. The database can be exported in Filemaker, Text, Valentina or xml format.

It also also allows you to browse and search the email in the database.

Mail Archiver X’s main competitors are MailSteward and FastMailBase.

In contrast to these, Mail Archiver X promotes itself as “the only mail archival application, which also offers cleaning of mails”. This means the ability to strip HTML, control tags and various other characters out of your emails, so that only clean copies of the useful material are retained:

Mail Archiver X is shareware (USD 34.95), five dollars more expensive than Mail Steward but much cheaper than FastMailBase (USD 97).

Which one is the best? MailSteward offers more sophisticated searching. Mail Archiver X offers cleaning. It depends on your needs.

Mail Archiver X is available from the developer’s web site.

Six months ago Mike Silverman switched from Eudora (‘antiquated and abandoned’) to Apple Mail.

He writes a thoughtful piece on the transition and what’s good and bad about Mail.app in comparison.

His major frustration is the old “Mail-craps-out-on-mail-check-and-doesn’t-tell-me” bug. If this happens to you too, check out this applescript that forces accounts to go back online.

Mike has also posted an email from a fellow ex-Eudora user, listing eleven things to miss about Eudora.

The only thing that Jeff Hobbs at Ldopa.net misses about Eudora is its report function, which provides you with statistics about your email — how much you got, how much you sent, who sent it and so on.

So he’s decided to develop an AppleScript application that will do the same thing for Mail.app. It’s still in development and a bit rough around the edges, as he admits.

Currently it offers only one report, an HTML document that it drops onto your Desktop and opens in TextEdit:

The report is a hyperlinked chart containing the people in your Address Book, the last message they sent you, and the last message you sent them. The chart is colour-coded, with different colours showing the length of time since you last corresponded with each person. Clicking the subject of the emails opens them, clicking the contacts starts a new email to that person.

He’s looking for feedback on how the app might be developed further.

So head over to his blog, download the app, give it a whirl and let him know what you think.

Alex Valentine asks, “Please tell me, is there a way to add color labels to your messages, like one can in Eudora?”

Yes, there is. In fact there are at least three ways to do this in Apple Mail:

1. Use the Label Scripts collection of AppleScripts.
2. Set up rules in Mail Act-on that will colourise the background of emails in Mail.app on the fly with a keystroke conbination. This is what I do, also setting a MailTags keyword which tells my smart mailboxes what to display.
3. Use the tutorial and AppleScript provided in this hack on O’Reilly.com.

MailSteward, an archiving and searching app for your emails, has been updated.

The new version fixes an attachments bug under Tiger that caused some attachments not to be stored, and another bug that prevented the display of a mailbox’s full path. Some other little bugs have also been fixed.

In addition, MailSteward now works with Eudora as well as Mail.app.

MailSteward is shareware (USD 29.95) and is available from the developer’s web site.