MailTags, the prince of Mail.app plugins, is now available in a Leopard-friendly public beta.

Scott outlines in a post on his web site how MailTags retains its productivity edge for Leopard Mail users. Although Leopard Mail includes notes and to-dos, MailTags still does it better. Its notes are smarter, its to-dos more flexible and its project features unmatched.

For example, tagging emails and RSS feeds with the same MailTags project makes it possible to see both sorts of data in one hit in Mail’s search window.

A list of Leopard Mail’s abilities without and with MailTags makes the advantages clear:

The beta has been hassle-free for me since upgrading to Leopard last Friday. Now in its fifth version, most of the kinks have been ironed out by Scott’s squad of beta-test commandos. MailTags to-dos don’t work for the moment, neither does the option to “view the originating message”. But they will.

Download and enjoy.

It’s all good for me, but heed Scott’s warning nonetheless: “We strongly recommend you maintain backups of your mail data or avoid using MailTags in critical situations.” mailtags, mail.app. apple mail, productivity, plugins, projects, notes, to-dos, public beta

MyTicklerFile is a web service that offers an electronic implementation of the “Tickler File” concept, part of the “Getting Things Done” workflow management philosophy.

A Tickler file is a set of 43 folders (geddit? ) into which you can file future events that will require your attention later but which don’t need to sap your energy right now.

There are ways to get a tickler file going inside Mail.app itself using MailTags or AppleScript, but for those who prefer a web-based solution, MyTicklerFile will do the job nicely.

A upgraded version of the service was launched today. It adds Projects, time-tracking, syncing with iCal and Basecamp for paying customers and new daily, monthly and project views.

Also new is the TicklerCal, an “iCal-like” representation of all your ticklers:

Click image for a full-sized view

MyTicklerFile offers a free plan with one project, 15 ticklers and 10 Backpack-style reminders, and two paying plans (USD 9/month and 19/month) which include more projects, ticklers and reminders and other extra features.

Head over to the site, read its blog and look at some sample screenshots.GTD, getting things done, tickler file, productivity, projects, reminders, web 2.0

Ethan Schoonover’s KinklessGTD is probably the most comprehensive, flexible, elegant and powerful implementation of Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done task management philosophy for Mac users. Others swear by the various GTD wikis now available.

EasyTask Manager offers something less ambitious that will appeal to many. It is a task manager based around the GTD schema which offers two-way syncing of to-dos and calendars with iCal.

The interface is nice and clean:

It is easy to create new tasks and projects, and assign contexts and priorities.

Syncing with iCal appears smooth and trouble-free with the 15 tasks to which the demo is limited (UPDATE: although see the comments for some bugs and niggles). Tasks can be marked as completed in either iCal or EasyTask Manager.

A Preferences pane allows you set a number of options for its interaction with iCal:

EasyTask Manager 1.5.5 was released yesterday, fixing a bug in the process of completing or deleting tasks and introducing an internal update facility for registered users.

It doesn’t have the power of some of the other implementations, but what is does offer, it does well. And it is cheaper. At USD 19.99 it costs less to run than kGTD, which requires you to own a full copy of OmniOutliner Pro (USD 69.95).

EasyTask Manager is available from the developer’s web site .GTD, getting things done, productivity, iCal, task management, to-dos, projects

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 hunt for useful apps to post on Hawk Wings often produces strange results.

Sometimes I come across things that are worthy but just “too niche”, even for a site that occupies a niche in a niche market, like a plugin that allows customers of a Swiss cell phone company to send SMSes from Address Book.

Sometimes I come across something distasteful like eMail Ripper , an app that extracts email addresses from files, folders, web sites and text files. There must be a legitimate use for this. I just can’t think of one.

Sometimes I come across something wonderful and weird like FaithConverter (“the premier theological plagiarism solution for Mac OS X”), an app that automatically translates religious texts between thirty different faiths, including Christianity, Buddhism, Communism, Druidism, Islam, Linux, MacEvangelism, Scientology, Thatcherism and Veganism. (It doesn’t do cartoons.)

This is very entertaining but hard to link convincingly with Mail.app, so staying “on topic” rules out giving it a mention.

Sometimes I come across something half-formed and mysterious. It might be a winner. It might be a goose.

Such a thing is Inbox from Midnight Beep Softworks, “pre-released” last week. (Don’t visit if you are on dial-up. Slow as molasses.)

The web site features some alluring screenshots of an app that promises to be:

a fully automated utility for gathering new things you need to be tracking, to help you get them off your mind. Then for processing all that “noise” into useful projects, contexts, and priorities. And finally presenting a fully managed action list of what you could be doing, should be doing, and might want to be doing.

It not only tracks and manages your tasks and to do lists, it actually does the triage and makes the decisions for you!

Hmmm……helpful apps, niche market, address book, SMS, swiss, email harvesting, faith converter, theological plagiarism, religious texts, productivity, projects, to do list, actions, GTD, weird software, mail.app, apple mail