Scott Morrison of Indev Software (producers of the MailTags and Mail Act-on plugins) has released a souped-up version of the miniMail plugin, which he recently acquired from Olive Toast Software.

miniMail 2.0 retains all the goodness of the original–the ability to minimize Mail.app’s interface like you can in iTunes–but adds more features and flexibility.

The minimised interface is elegant and efficient, as you would expect from the developer of MailTags:

It is also fully integrated with Mail Act-on, allowing you to use the same keystrokes to file messages away quickly.

The plugin’s Preference pane offers options to control which mailboxes it monitors, text size inside the minimized interface itself and how it should expand again when double-clicked (to the mail mail.app window or a single message window):

The Preference pane also controls miniMail 2.0′s new feature–multiple mini viewers.

You can now open a Message Viewer for a number of individual mailboxes and minimize them to keep track of new messages in particular accounts or even RSS feeds.

Here I am monitoring my work email in one miniMail window, my Hawk Wings email in another (one canny doctoral student sends his emails to both!) and the network status RSS feed of my ISP:

Very handy for keeping focus on important things whilst filtering out the rest.

miniMail is shareware (USD 12.95) and is available from Indev’s web site . Registered users of MailTags and Mail Act-on qualify for a USD 4 discount.mail.app, apple mail, mailtags, mail act-on, minimail, plugins, productivity

Dutch software developer Johannes Verelst has written up his system for Getting Things Done (Dave Allen’s task management philosophy) with Mail.app and iCal.

(If you are mystified about endless references to “Getting Things Done” (or GTD), Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders is still the best way to lift the fog. See his recent “Getting Things Done: Recap for ’07″ post for a list of red-hot how-tos and tutorials on boiling GTD down to something workable for you, or jump right into his “Getting started with GTD.” )

Johannes’ way of using Mail.app to get things done is not like my own Mail.app GTD system which makes it all the more interesting and useful to read. There is always something to learn from people who do things differently.

I make an effort to keep everything in Mail, which then acts as my “Bucket”, processing hub and also my to-do list. Less swapping from app to app helps me to focus on getting the tasks done.

Johannes likes to dump stuff out to iCal. He uses calendars to separate out his projects and contexts. A clever combination of Mail Act-on, Quicksilver and applescript helps him to create an all-encompassing system.

I use MailTags to set iCal to-dos, but only so iCal’s alarm will shoot a reminder back into my inbox about something that needs to get done. MailTags’ keywords for @Action, @Waiting and @Defer and its project tags give me enough power and control to manage a confusion of Real Life, blogging, freelancing and family tasks efficiently.

While Mail remains for me what Johannes calls a “Cockpit”, he uses DoBeDo as his cockpit, managing his to-dos through the widget’s interface.

His GTD toolbox list at the end of the post shows that his system is up and running for less than USD 70 (and most of that is for the software to sync his Palm T|X). It pays for itself in a week at the outside.mail.app, apple mail, ical, Getting Things Done, GTD, productivity, task management, mailtags, mail act-on, plugins

Greg Welch, creator of the MailFollowup plugin for smarter email conversations, has added a second title to his plugin stable.

MailRecent provides a quick filing solution for Mail.app.

It adds three new menus — “Copy to Recent”, “Move to Recent”, and “Go to Recent” — to Apple Mail. Each of these contains dynamically-updated lists of recently used mailboxes:

The number of mailboxes listed in the menus is controlled by the “Number of Recent Items” setting for Documents in the Appearance panel of the OS X System Preferences.

By default MailRecent sorts the mailboxes alphabetically, but Greg provides instructions for some Terminal commands to sort them by time or frequency of use.

One small thing. The plugin only lists the name of the mailbox. So, for example, if you have three accounts each with an “Archive” mailbox, you will not be able to tell from the list which one is which.

UPDATE: Greg emails to say that this kind of ambiguity shouldn’t arise. The Usage section on the plugin’s page says that, “If you transfer to one or more mailboxes that happen to have the same name, the menu item titles will be extended with a minimal distinguishing path to the mailbox. This is true whether the “duplicate” mailboxes (same names) are in the same or different mail accounts.” The extension doesn’t appear for me, but it might be there for you. It works for Greg.

Personally, I use Mail Act-on for my filing, but this provides another neat solution to getting mail out of your inbox and where it belongs quickly.

MailRecent is freeware and available from Greg’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, plugin, filing, productivity, mailboxes, sorting, mail act-on

The writer of academhack has republished a series of five tutorials on how to get the best out of Mail.app.

He is an academic, and writes chiefly with professors and their students in mind. Still, the tips, ideas and workflows that he demonstrates will be useful to everyone.

He covers the absolute basics in the first tutorial. A second one covers things like weening yourself off webmail and why IMAP is better.

How to get students to use email properly makes up the third and the fourth deals with important things like sorting email and keeping the inbox clean.

The last one covers keyboard shortcuts and contains a nice screencast on using Mail Act-on to sort emails quickly:

Hardcore Mail.app productivity nuts will not find much here that they didn’t know before. But looking over how someone else deals with their email always prompts me to think again about how I do it and often leads me to develop a better way.

And not everyone is hardcore. I get regular emails from remote acquaintences, friends of my wife’s hairdresser, people who stumble across Hawk Wings on the net and others who want to know all about how to use Mail better. Now I have somewhere to send them. That’s a big productivity boost for me, and maybe for you too.

In any case, academics who write about using Mail.app are pretty thin on the ground. That sort of thing ought to be encouraged.mail.app, apple mail, rules, productivity, mail act-on, tutorial, tips, sorting, folders, imap

Remember O’Reilly big hitter Allison Randal and her overflowing inbox?

She’s decided to try stemming the flow with Mail.app and MailTags and Mail Act-on , two of the very best plugins for Apple Mail.

It is interesting to see what she discovers and whether she is hopeful that it will be enough to meet the challenge of her 20,000 email inboxes. Interesting too to ponder whether better tools can beat a cultural problem.

Two things at least are better than she holds out. Emails can be tagged with rules in mail.app, so manual tagging is not the only way to bring some order into your data. And the public beta of MailTags does bring reliable syncing of IMAP tags between more than one Mac.

I think, though, that even the most partisan MailTagger would have to concede her other point. You do need to use a Mac to enjoy the plugin’s benefits.

I wonder if Scott is secretly working away on an Outlook or Thunderbird version? mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, mail act-on, plugins, inbox of doom, mutt, linux

Brian Fling has written up a terrific post on using MailTags and Mail Act-on to stay on top of your email.

He frames it all within the Getting Things Done method of task management, but even if you are not a devotee, you will benefit from the extensive screenshots and the clear way in which the tutorial is designed.

Although he tried using the principles of Feng Shui to manage his email with some success in the past,

by using a couple of simple techniques and some cool software, you can use a less new-agey means to simplify your message stream and get back to work…. The goal is to make the act of archiving a one step process. A big part of getting control of your inbox is to be able to triage and filter information quickly. If if takes you more than a second to store a message, then you are taking too long.

Ten steps or less.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, GTD, MailTags, Mail Act-on, plugins, tips, inbox, filing, triaging

Scott Morrison has released an updated version of Mail Act-On, a plugin that quickly files and flags Mail.app messages.

It is incredibly useful. It holds the number two spot in the “Top ten things every mail.app user should have” and is mentioned more than any other plugin in the “Talking Mail.app” interview series.

The new version (1.3.2) is a universal plugin, now offering Act-On goodness for the new Intel-based Macs as well.

It also contains a small bugfix. Rules that are disabled in Preferences will no longer show up in the Act-On Menu.

Mail Act-On is donation-ware and is available from Scott’s web site . Scott also maintains a page of tips for getting the most out of Mail Act-On.mail.app, apple, apple mail, mail act-on, rules, scott morrison, plugins, universal, Intel Macs