Two plugins were added to the Hawk Wings’ Plug-in and Add-on List this week.

JPEGCleaner (strips metadata from images, sends them to Mail.app) was added to the Helpful Apps / Miscellaneous Section.

iCal-alarmist (adds customised alarms to iCal events) was added to the iCal Section.

That’s now 123 plugins, addons, scripts, helpful apps and widgets to make working with Mail.app (and its sister iApps, iCal and Address Book) more efficient and interesting.ical, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, plug-ins, images, alarms

Late last year, John Kheit wrote about the possible dangers of metadata for Mac users.

JPEGCleaner takes care of any potential worry about that for images and also produces leaner, more efficient files for emailing, as the developer explains:

JPEGCleaner will reduce the size of jpeg (and jfif) files by removing resources forks and meta-data. This results in a smaller file(s), which loads faster, and uses less bandwidth when sending by e-mail. JFIF files are converted to JPEG.

Just drop your image or folder full of images onto the app’s main window (or its Dock icon):

You can adjust the quality and size options here, and also choose to create a new message with the optimised file in Mail.app. Neat!

JPEGCleaner is shareware (USD 14.95) and is available from the developer’s web site .images, email, metadata, resource fork, optimizing, mail.app, apple mail

ChibiNinja is a utility that creates a cross-platform encrypted multi-language email message with an inserted image. You can send and receive them using from Apple Mail (or Outlook Express on Windows) without complicated encryption mail settings.

An updated version, released today, adds support for encrypted files and the option to request a read receipt. The developer has created a detailed explanation of the app’s new features.

Once donation-ware, ChibiNinja Mail is now shareware (USD 18), although the developer has now released a freeware version that will decrypt and encrypt a message and an image but not files.

You can get them both from the developer’s web site. encryption, email, images, files, read receipt, chibininja, cross-platform, simple, mail.app, apple mail, decrypt

Downsize is a neat little utility that will resize and manipulate images to send off in Apple Mail without the need to fire up Photoshop.

It allows you to resize, watermark, and frame individual images or an entire folder full, either directly from one of your iPhoto albums or another folder. that you’ve created. A screenshot demonstrates most of its functions:

The app offers more compression and size options than iPhoto and creates files of much smaller size, so the developer claims.

It works well. I’ve been using the trial version for a few days, and it threatens to replace old favourites like Scale to Mail and ImageWell.

DownSize is shareware (USD 19.95) and available from the developer’s web site.