Hawk Wings » iPod

Email to Yojimbo script with PDF support

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:30:11 +0000

Drummond Field has written an applescript that exports an email from Mail.app into Yojimbo.

Unlike other “Email to Yojimbo” scripts, this one offers the option of exporting the email into Yojimbo as either a note or a PDF.

Select the message, run the script and a dialog appears:

Drummond doesn’t have a web site to host the script on, so it finds a home on Hawk Wings for the moment.

Download it here

Don’t stop there though. Other useful Yojimbo scripts include:

A script to push Yojimbo notes onto an iPod.
A script to send a Yojimbo item with Mail.app.
A script to email yourself notes that are automatically inserted into Yojimbo.
Scripts for Yojimbo, NetNewsWire and de.licio.us integration.
All the other scripts you can find by searching Hawk Wings for “Yojimbo” and “script”.

mail.app, apple mail, applescript, yojimbo, pdf, notes, ipod, netnewswire, delicious, tips, productivitySimilar Posts:

Using Mail on a portable drive or iPod

Tim Gaden — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:48:21 +0000

Doug Lerner wants to take Mail.app and his messages with him and plug it into any Mac he can find.

He posts in the Apple Discussions:

Apparently Thunderbird supports a “portable mailbox” feature. In other words, you can keep your mail on a USB RAM drive, and just plug it in to whatever computer you are using – Mac or Windows – and Thunderbird just uses that mailbox instead of one on your HD.

My friend’s USB RAM was only 2GB and he was getting worried about reaching capacity, so he started using his 20GB iPod instead, which works just as well.

I wonder if such a thing is possible with Apple’s Mail app.

Naturally, the idea that Thunderbird can do anything better than Mail.app sends me into a frenzy.

Clever people have developed a couple of ways to use Mail.app on memory sticks or iPods.

Portable Mail is a clever hack that opens a local copy of Mail.app on whatever Mac you are using with preferences stored on a USB stick. If the stick is big enough to cal also store your Mail folder and everything else on it as well.

Developer Carlo Gandolfi has recently released SyncPAppsX , a helper app that syncs the local and portable settings for a range of his portable iApps including Portable Mail, making it even easier not to miss a beat. Nice.

Jeffrey Glover has worked out a way to store his Mail and Mail Downloads on an iPod. By creating some symbolic links, he shows you how to force Mail to use the messages on the iPod, regardles of which Mac it is plugged into.

Obviously, by creating different symbolic links, you could move the Mail folder to any remote volume, a network drive perhaps, and so share the same messages between two or more Macs on the one network. It’s an interesting way to share POP messages between multiple Macs, although I wouldn’t want to guess what would happen if more than one Mac was writing to the Mail folder at the same time.mail.app, apple mail, portable apps, usb stick, memory stick, ipod, mobility, productivity, thunderbirdSimilar Posts:

Put Yojimbo on an iPod

Tim Gaden — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:47:22 +0000

Making use of Yojimbo’s newly-expanded “applescriptability”, Steve Kalkwarf has knocked out an applescipt that copies notes and passwords tagged with “ipod” to an iPod.

It creates a sub-folder called “Yojimbo” in the Notes folder of your iPod and copies all the matching items to it. Of course, with a little bit of tweaking in Script Editor, you could easily set the script to transfer notes with a different tag.

A couple of things to note:

If the note is longer than ~4KB, it gets chopped up into chapters.

A poster on the Yojimbo Mailing warns that notes containing a colon in their title may not behave well in the transfer.

I don’t have an iPod to test this. I only buy Apple products that can run Mail.app. Still, by all accounts it works a treat. not apple mail, yojimbo, applescript, ipod, notes, syncing, PDA road warrior, mobility, productivitySimilar Posts:

Actiontastic GTD app gets iPod syncing and more

Tim Gaden — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:12:06 +0000

Jon Crosby has released a new beta of his Actiontastic “Getting Things Done” app (see earlier Hawk Wings reviews here and here).

There are now lots of GTD apps for Mac. This one doesn’t have all the eye-candy of GTD apps like Midnight’s Inbox which you will either love or dislike. Actiontastic also comes with a slick Quicksilver plugin that makes filling your task bucket extra easy.

The updated version features a very useful new addition — it can now sync to a iPod, allowing musical GTDers to take their projects and to-dos with them.

It also has a new tool for processing its inbox.

Hit F3 and a dialog appears which helps you to move quickly through your unfiled tasks, assigning them to projects and contexts with drop-down menus:

Normally, new betas come with a list of bullet-pointed improvements which I try to rewrite into something more interesting. Developer Jon Crosby has taken a different approach:

To get away from the industry-standard bulleted feature list, letâ€™s just walk through a typical flow from idea to action â€” GTD-style.

His write up of the new beta in action is very fine. I won’t repeat it here. You should read it, even if you use another app.

The public beta is available from his web site and expires on 15 January, by which time I imagine there will be another beta or, if all goes well, a final release.GTD, getting things done, productivity, not apple mail, workflow, task management, quicksilver, ipod, syncingSimilar Posts:

myNotes: Lean note-taker with iPod, Address Book integration

Tim Gaden — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 13:55:56 +0000

Not everyone needs a juggernaut like DevonTHINK Professional to take notes and manage their information. Even mid-range PIMs like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes can be over-kill.

The right tool is often something small and lean, something like myNotes (or Sidenote or similar).

myNotes is a simple-to-use, efficient note manager with a few tricks up its sleeve.

Watching how cleverly it auto-titles notes makes me wonder why more apps don’t support this.

Getting stuff in and out is made easy by support for importing and exporting plain text, rich text format and Word documents.

myNotes also syncs notes with an iPod, so that you can take your notes with you.

Integration with other iApps means that emailing a note with Mail.app is just a right-click away:

It also talks to Address Book, so that right-clicking on a first or last name in a note, pops up email addresses, URLs and phone numbers for that person from Address Book:

URLs and email addresses are automatically hyperlinked although I had to add “mailto:” to my email addresses to get them to work).

Five built-in styles for printing notes and settings for the transparency, text colour and background of notes lets you customize the app’s output and work area “to suit your needs or moods.”

myNotes is shareware (USD 17.95). A demo is available from the developer’s web site .not apple mail, productivity, note-taking, note manager, address book, iPodSimilar Posts:

todoPod: To-dos on the go

Tim Gaden — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:30:13 +0000

todoPod is an Automator action that takes a note or to-do you have written, records it and then syncs it to an iPod, where it is available in the “Notes” section and in a VoiceNotes playlist.

Grocery lists, short motivational snippets, thoughts and tasks for the day, as well the more traditional “to-do” can now travel with you wherever you go. (If you have an iPod. I don’t, although recently I nearly cracked, so I couldn’t test this.)

todoPod is freeware and available from Thought Bottle Software’s web site .ipod, to-do, productivity, notes, reminders, voice recording, automatorSimilar Posts:

Hawk Wings Addon and Plugin List Update: 10 new entries

Tim Gaden — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:24:28 +0000

Over the weekend I updated the Hawk Wings Add-on and Plug-in List.

Ten new entries were added, making a total of 130+ add-ons, plugins, scripts and helpful apps to make working with Mail.app, iCal and Address Book quicker, smarter and more productive:

AddressX (Get Exchange contacts in Address Book) was added to the Address Book section.
Next Unread Message (Applescript to move to next unread message) was added to the Added Functionality section.
Export Address Book (easy merges of Address Book data with Word, FileMaker) was added to the Address Book section.
Note to Self (quick notes to yourself in Mail.app Ã la Leopard Mail) was added to the Added Functionality section.
Email Backup (quick, one-step back up for mail.app, thunderbird and more) was added to the Archiving section.
OMiC (plugin wrapper for tnef.sourceforge.net to extract winmail.dat files) was added to the Added Functionality section.
Mail to Yojimbo (script to pipe emails from Mail.app to Yojimbo) was added to the Integration with other apps section.
Mail Unread Menu (discreet menubar notification for Mail.app) was added to the Notification section.
Return Receipts AppleScript (request return receipts from email clients that support them) was added to the Added Functionality section.
MailPod (script to copy emails to any iPod) was added to the Added Functionality section.

mail.app, apple mail, applescript, plugins, addons, productivity, backup, notification, ipod, address book, exchange serverSimilar Posts:

MailPod: Applescript to move emails to an iPod

Tim Gaden — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:25:58 +0000

Ryos has written an AppleScript that will move emails from a dedicated mailbox in Mail.app onto an iPod.

When you run the script for the first time, it creates a “MailPod” mailbox in Apple Mail. Move any emails that you want to take with you into that folder, run the script again and it will move them into a “MailPod” folder under the iPod’s Extras menu.

Works great.

Ryos’ script is a freeware alternative to shareware apps like iPDA and MailToPod (not for 10.4) which offer greater automation and features, but cost money.

You can get the script from Ryo’s web site .ipod, mail.app, apple mail, email to go, productivity, mobilitySimilar Posts:

Four things I didn’t know about Apple

Tim Gaden — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 13:30:32 +0000

Yesterday Apple Australia kindly flew me up to Sydney for a look around its corporate headquarters and for a very interesting two-hour press presentation from Mr iPod and Mr Hardware. (Mr Software is at WWDC, so I didn’t hear from him.)

In the course of the day, I discovered four new things about Apple that I didn’t know before.

1. The black MacBook is intended to be a 12″ PowerBook replacement

I had the chance to ask Mr Hardware as he was presenting the now complete range of Intel Macs whether anything was coming to replace the 12″ PowerBook.

He told me that Apple has received a lot of feedback from users about the need for a small notebook with a “more professional look”. Apple made a conscious decision to meet that demand with the black MacBook, giving those users the look they wanted at the cost of a slight hit in performance and features. Is that why they cost more?

2. Only 26% of Mac users do backups, 4% use automated solutions.

Of course, you know at one level that the numbers are low, but it is still a shock to see just how low they are.

Those who have watched the keynote will know that Leopard’s Time Machine is designed to increase these numbers dramatically.

Will it work? I don’t think so. The current ability to automate backups with Backup 3.0 and the plethora of third-party automated backup options haven’t brought large numbers of users to the party. This won’t either. It’s not the technical ability that’s missing; it’s the personal habit.

Dear reader, for the love of God get yourself into that 4%. Don’t read the other two things I didn’t know about Apple. Go now and check out DejÃ Vu or BackityMac or SuperDuper! or, if you have a .Mac account, Apple’s own Backup.

3. iTunes prints really nice CD covers.

I use iTunes a lot, but it never occurred to me to visit its Print menu. Mr iPod demonstrated how easy it is to make jewel case covers in iTunes and how nice the final result looks:

4. Steve Jobs doesn’t trust people who use words as a tool of their trade

At the airport I picked up a copy of Jeffrey Young and William Simon’s iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2005) (Amazon ) to read on the plane.

On the homeward flight I discovered an answer to the mystery about the lack of communication between engineers and development teams at Apple and journalists, bloggers and third-party developers (after all, code is words).

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and became Interim CEO in 1997, he

…quickly saw things that he didn’t like. His predecessors in the CEO’s office has never figured out how to take the reins in a commanding manner…. He set about changing the culture of Apple. Some of the changes were small (no dogs at work, no smoking), and some where whoppers, such as the absolute ban on talking to anyone outside the company who uses words as a tool of his trade. (The one exception: it was okay as long as you has a public relations dog-watcher sitting at your side and yanking your leash whenever she wanted you to stop talking.)

apple, steve jobs, itunes, not apple mail, macbook, words, culture change, backup, thanks Fiona, iPodSimilar Posts:

Take Control of Syncing in Tiger ebook

Tim Gaden — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:32:00 +0000

Take Control’s latest offering is an ebook that covers all aspects of syncing in 10.4.

It covers every conceivable combination of devices from syncing between Macs to mobile/cell phones, Palm OS handhelds and iPods.

Of course, Apple’s built-in iSync app gets the full treatment, but syncing software from third party developers also gets a look in.

Even those who are old hands at syncing will learn from the chapter which explains how syncing works and from the troubleshooting section, especially useful the press release says for “anyone who has experienced a syncing feeling upon realizing that the wrong data was overwritten”.

The ebook costs USD 10 and comes with a 50% discount voucher for PocketMac’s syncing software.

You can read more about the book and sample a free 24 page preview on the Take Conrol web site .

In another new development (at least, new to me), Take Control Books now offers a “print on demand” service for this title and for “Running Windows on a Mac”. The price for this service is USD 10-15 and the end result looks good:

syncing, isync, take control, mobile, cell phone, palm device, ipod, tips, productivitySimilar Posts: