The menubar notification utility, Mail Unread Menu has been updated.

Notification utilities comes in two basic flavours.

One style, the full-on “splash screen” approach, is best done by Mail.appetizer and GrowlMail .

Both of these interrupt your work to let you know about new mail:

The second style is more discreet. Mail Unread Menu and MailUnreadStatusBar sit in the menubar, counting away as new mail arrives but not disrupting your work.

Myself, I prefer the latter.

The latest update to Mail Unread Menu has a changed application icon and will now correctly set Mail.app to work with bundles if these settings are not already enabled.

It is also smarter about displaying the count in the Inbox, although as you can see in the screenshot it doesn’t tell you which inbox is which if you have it set to display the unread count in “All Mailboxes” in the preferences.

Take the new version and MailUnreadStatusBar for a test run and make up your own mind which one works best for you.mail.app, apple mail, plugins, notification, menubar, pop-up, splash

iCal-alarmist is an app that sets additional alarms in iCal.

iCalFix allows you to set a pop-up alarm for every event by default, but iCal-alarmist offers greater flexibility.

The free version sets a pop-up alarm for every event in a chosen calendar fixed at 12 hours before the event. These alarms are created in addition to your existing alarms, not in place of them.

The app’s interface shows the freeware behaviour with the additional options in the shareware version greyed out:

A small payment (€ 3,47 = USD 4.11) unlocks the ability to set alarms for all events in a calendar with one click, to set sounds, email or popup alarms or any combination for a given calendar, and to delete alarms.

It even allows you to set alarms to match a particular keyword.

iCal-alarmist is available from the developer’s web site.ical, alarms, calendar, pop-up, additional alarms, customize ical, plugins, helpful apps

BuddyPop, a hotkey-activated pop-up search utility for Address Book has been updated.

The new version resolves potential conflicts with Address Book plugins by disabling them when BuddyPop is launched.

It also features some interface improvements and will work with the new iMac’s Intel-based USB modem.

BuddyPop is shareware (10 ?¢‚Äö¬¨, USD 12) and is available from the the developer’s web site .hotkey, search, pop-up, iMac, modem, BuddyPop