Yojimbo, the new(ish) Information manager from Bare Bones has a mailing list . It’s not very active. I’ve only seen two emails from it in two weeks.

One of those emails was the kind of tip that you never think of yourself, but which seems so obvious when someone else describes it.

At the end of an iChat session, if you select the Print dialog in iChat and choose, “Save PDF in Yojimbo” you will get a nice PDF of the chat in Yojimbo, the texts of which is fully searchable. Nifty!

[Nice tip, Ted.]yojimbo, ichat, transcripts, chats, pdf, productivity, tips

UPDATE: Be careful — April Fool’s joke ahead. Completely sucked me in, being reposted at a later date from an original thread on MacNN . Don’t let it get you…

According to a post on the osx86project forum by someone who claims to be “in the know”, Leopard Mail will be quite a different beast:

Mail, Address Book, iCal, iSight, and iChat will become one integrated application, much like Entourage (but better). Included is a customizable Auto Responder and voice activated dialing via numbers or Address Book names. You will be able to automatically send email & initiate iSight meetings, etc. that are linked/pegged to specific calendar events.

Never have I so fervently hoped a rumour wrong.

The information comes as part of a long list of features that the poster suggests will be part of OS 10.5.

He says “don’t quote me”, so you had better not.

Or is it just a troll? See Scott Morrison’s remarks in the comments.nightmare, mail.app, apple mail, ical, address book, entourage, leopard, 10.5, iChat

Symantec has announced what may be the first virus written to target Mac OS X.

Called OSX.Leap.A, the worm-like virus spreads itself as an iChat file attachment.

But is it a real worm or just a clever script, a genuine threat or a false alarm like others in the past?

Leander Kahney on Cult of Mac considers the options , offering the conclusion that “it may be mostly harmless now, but will likely lead to much nastier versions in the future.”Symantec, ichat, worm, virus, mac osx, OSX.leap.A, false alarm, Leander Kahney

Gmail has announced that it is integrating its IM facility, Talk, into Gmail’s web-based interface.

Users can now see when their Talk buddies are online, save transcripts of their chats as if they were emails and initiate chats with one click, all from the browser interface.

The transition will occur “over the next few weeks” and according to MacWorld will be limited to users of the US English language interface.

Gmail has released an annotated screenshot of the new interface for those who are still waiting:

Click image for a larger copy

Of course, Mail.app users already enjoy integration with iChat and the ability to email themselves transcripts of their chats automatically using Chatalog, but many are welcoming this as “the next logical step in web-based mail” (so the Radioactive Yak ).Gmail, Talk, chat, ichat, web interface, Chatalog, Web 2.0, transcripts, IM, contacts

iNotify.saver is either quite clever or a gimmick, depending on your point of view.

It is a third-party screensaver that polls your Mail.app accounts (.Mac, POP and IMAP all supported) for unread messages and keeps track of the number of your iChat buddies who are online.

After installation, you configure it through the Screensaver Pane of System Preferences:

You can specify which of your accounts it should poll, and how often (every 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5 or minutes).

When you unlock an account, iNotify.saver accesses your username and password directly from the keychain, so no tedious retyping is required to make use of its notifications.

You can run it over a “basic black” background or over one of the preset Mac OS X screensavers. It does look nice. The Mail and iChat graphics circle the screen and twist about :

A new version was released today that fixes a number of problems.

It no longer miscounts emails when more than one POP account is active. It now counts other server-side IMAP folders as well as the inbox (“special folders”—Sent, Junk, Trash and Drafts— are not counted).

iNotify.saver is freeware, although the developer warns that it may cost you karma if you use it a lot without donating.

You can get it from the developer’s web site .screensaver, ichat, mail.app, apple mail, notification, freeware, karma

It is possible — after all — to sign .Mac emails with the new iChat digital certificate that came with the 10.4.3 update.

Although I couldn’t get it to work, some people like David Dunham were able to use their new iChat digital certificates to sign .Mac emails. And it looked like Apple had future plans to use the certificate for email signatures.

But you can use it now to sign your .Mac emails.

To enable Mail.app to use your iChat certificate in this way, you need to open the Keychain Access utility. You can find it in the Utilities sub-folder of your Applications folder.

Make sure that your .Mac digital certificate is listed there. Then open up Keychain Access’ Preferences and select the “Search .Mac for certificates” option:

Now launch or (re-launch) Apple Mail. It will be able to digitally sign emails composed in your .Mac account using that certificate.

Works for me!

UPDATE: Criss Hyde emails to say that this certificate support is not there for trial .Mac accounts or email only .Mac accounts. But full .Mac accounts and family .Mac accounts are supported.

[Via Quarter Life Crisis]

Andreas Amann has compared the new .Mac/iChat certificate with a “normal” one, and posted the results in the comments to another post.

He found two interesting things:

1. The .Mac/iChat key lacks the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìEmail Address?¢‚Ǩ¬ù field in the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìSubject Name?¢‚Ǩ¬ù section of the key and thus cannot be used for email signing in Apple Mail like a certificate from Thawte or some other CA.
2. Towards the bottom of the certificate, in contrast to other certificates, Apple has a section called ‘Extended Key Usage”. Here Apple has nominated the second purpose of the certificate as “email protection”:
   

   From this Andreas suggests that it “looks like Apple still has some plans in the pipeline for later:-)”

You can read more about the .Mac/iChat certificate on the “Apple Root Certificate Authority” section of the Apple web site.

Despite all this, at least one two readers have found that they can sign their emails with their .Mac/iChat certificate.

Does anyone have any further thoughts about, insights into or experience with this?