A new improved version of MailTags is out!

For me, the stand-out new feature in MailTags 1.2.2 is mouseless tagging.

A new shortcut “Tag this message” (Command-Control-T) switches focus to the MailTags pane and allows you to tab through its fields, making tagging more efficient and speedy than ever before.

But there’s more. A new Toolbar icon “Show Tags” (available from the Customize Toolbar option) opens and closes the MailTags pane and a new MailTags column displays a small flag next to each message with MailTags information. The tag in the message area looks more handsome, having received a Web 2.0 makeover.

An option to show or hide the message area’s MailTag icon has been added to the Preferences pane.

Also very welcome is a new feature which allows you to set the contents of a MailTags Note as the subject line of an email. Simply check the box under the Note and the email gets a new clearer, more useful, more whatever-you-like subject line in italics:

Easy editing of subject lines in Mail.app has arrived. (These “subject lines” won’t work as subjects in Mail.app searches, but you will still find them as Notes).

The plugin is now wrapped in a new Firestorm installer and will place the Spotlight plugin in your user directory instead of the System Library folder.

A few small niggles have been fixed—clearing all tags now always clears all tags and several links in the localisations have been ironed out. Speaking of which, MailTags now also talks Swedish.

MailTags 1.2.2 will continue to be available although Scott’s attention is now turning to the development of MailTags 2.0, which offers full IMAP support by encoding MailTags info in an X-Header and a flood of other advanced project management goodies.

You can read more about the MailTags 2.0 beta and sign up to test it on Scott’s new web site.

MailTags already puts more productivity muscle into Mail.app than anything else. It’s the must-have plugin for Mail.app users who are serious about email. It’s the duck’s guts, the cat’s whiskers, the undisputed king of Mail.app plugins. And it’s going to get even better.

MailTags 2.0 will not be donation-ware. It will be shareware. But users who make the suggested donation of USD 20 for MailTags 1.2.2 will automatically be upgraded to MailTags 2.0 when it appears.

You can get MailTags 1.2.2 from Scott’s revamped web site , where you will also find a new MailTags support forum . mailtags, plugins, mail.app, apple mail, productivity, tagging, metadata, ical integration

Ethan Kaplan, the Director of Technology for Warner Brothers Records, has been experiencing tagging meltdown.

He has a good tagging system in place using the MailTags plugin , but under an avalanche of email, it breaks down.

He has an idea though:

So what would make me use MailTags again (because it is indeed useful)? Mailtags needs to add the ability to tag as a “tab” sequence. Basically: command-N (new), subject – tab – message – tab – tags – shift-command-D to send. That would rock.

Scott Morrison, the developer of MailTags, agrees .mailtags, tagging, metadata, workflow, productivity, apple mail, mail.app, plugins

Now that MailTags 1.2.1 is out , Scott Morrison has begun work on improvements and features for the next version.

These things are too interesting to keep to one’s self, so here is a teaser of what is still to come…

Listview enhancements

The next version of MailTags will allow you the option of displaying your metadata in the Message Listview window. Here it is – live and real – in Scott’s own inbox:

Click on the image for a full-sized view

IMAP support

Up until now, MailTags has stored its metadata in the local IMAP cache at the end of each message’s individual emlx file like this:

(Here you can see a message which among other things belongs to my “Hawk Wings” MailTags project).

Unfortunately, this data was only readable on one Mac.

Scott is working on a method for storing the metadata (encoded in base64) in an X-Header on the server itself, so that the information will be readable by any Mac (with MailTags installed) which connects to your IMAP account.

This is how it looks when you display an email’s headers (View > Message > Long headers):

The method that Scott is using may also allow you to enclose tags (at your discretion) when sending email to others and be able to accept the tags that are enclosed in email you receive.

In addition, Scott is working on something inspired by Boris Anthony’s ideas for an iCal-Mail.app mash-up and which will be well worth waiting for.

This continued development of MailTags outmatches any mail management system/enhancement at any price. The USD 20 suggested donation is outstanding when you think of what you get.

If you have been holding off your support of MailTags, now is the time to encourage its future development.IMAP support, mailtags, listview, projects, keywords, ical, plugins, metadata, tagging

The latest version of the email archiving and searching app, MailSteward, offers support for MailTags .

That means it will recognize and import your metadata along with your messages and allow you to search with it by category, keywords, notes and/or priority. You can also add new tags to the archived messages. Nifty!

The new version also offers searching of HTML emails with no plain text, editing of MailSteward-generated SQL statements and other minor bug fixes and enhancements.

The interface has also been reworked and looks cleaner.

All of this archiving goodness comes with a price hike though. MailSteward now costs 49.95. A demo is available from the developer’s web site .mailtags, email, archiving, backup, searching, plugins, html, metadata

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

In his “Devil’s Advocate” column at MacObserver, John Kheit reveals just how much information about the files on your computer is stored as metadata in Spotlight’s database and elsewhere.

Did you know, for example, that a metadata record is kept of the location from which you downloaded every file in Safari? This information is not embedded in the file and not sent on when you forward the file, but other kinds of metadata are.

The column details the different types of metadata on your Mac and how to find them, outlines some privacy concerns and provides advice about stripping it before sending files to others.

One solution, he suggests, is to get Mail.app to strip metadata from attachments before sending them.

Potential breaches of privacy and confidentiality are concerns for everyone, not just Windows Vista users.mail.app, apple mail, privacy, metadata, spotlight