Nova Media has released version 2.0 of its Phone plugins software, which restores to Leopard users the lost ability to dial phone numbers and send text messages in Address Book. And not only that, but more widely across a range of apps.

Phone Plugins installs itself as a System Preference pane.

After installation, you need to hook up a mobile phone to your Mac via Bluetooth by following the simple instructions onscreen. It recognised my old Nokia E60 without a problem:

Then, when the connection is established, right-clicking on a contact’s phone number in Address Book produces two new entries in the contextual menu:

The text/SMS interface is nice and simple and gets the job done. It offers a running total of remaining characters and a spell-check option:

Clicking “Dial number with E60″ initiates a call on your mobile/cell (unsurprisingly!).

Both options are available outside Address Book, system-wide in the Services menu. Just highlight the number and select the option you want from Services (or, if you do this a lot, bind it to a keyboard shortcut with an app like Service Scrubber ).

Phone Plugins works with a list of supported phones which Nova Media provides so check that yours is on the list before you try to install it.

Phone Plugins is shareware and features a very robust nag screen.

It costs €9,95 (c. USD 15.50) and a demo version is available from Nova Media’s web site .

For a donation-ware option, take a look at the emitSMS Widget in an earlier Hawk Wings post.address book, dialing, phone numbers, text, sms, contacts, mobile phones, cell phones, leopard, apple

For reasons best known to itself, Apple removed the SMS functionality from Leopard’s Address Book.

A new widget emitSMS brings back the ability to send text messages from Dashboard, using the Bluetooth connection on many Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and other mobile/cell phones.

The back of the widget includes options for searching the mobile phone field of contacts in your Address Book, enabling long messages, including a read receipt and storing the text messages:

For reasons best known to itself, Apple has restricted the Bluetooth functionality of its iPhone to pairing with headsets, so I can’t test this. And I very happily returned my Treo 680 to the IT Department, so I am out of options. But I have a hunch that if I could test this, it would work well.

emitSMS is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site

[Via macOSXHints ]Address Book, Leopard, SMS, text messages, mobile phones, cell phones, widget, dashboard

David Cleland has written an excellent tutorial on Address Book’s little known ability to send SMS (or text) messages through a mobile (or cell) phone using Bluetooth.

He covers the process of pairing a mobile phone with Address Book over Bluetooth and how to use Address Book’s SMS interface.

Once it is all set up, sending an SMS through Address Book is as easy as right-clicking on the mobile number of an Address Book contact and selecting “Send SMS”.

Address Book offers a simple dialog for entering the message:

It’s a little tricky to set up, but easier to use than trying to type on the cramped keypad of a mobile phone. So frequent texters will reap the greatest benefit.not mail.app, not apple mail, address book, text message, SMS, bluetooth, tips

For the next twenty hours MacUpdate is offering a 21% discount on BuddyPOP, an excellent “quick look-up” utility for Address Book.

Once installed, pressing a user-definable hotkey pops up a dialog window to search and match your Address Book contacts.

It then displays that contact’s information:

Of course you can do the same thing with Quicksilver, but BuddyPOP has an extra trick up its sleeve. It offers a very quick way to get info out of your Address Book into a Mail.app message (or any other kind of document).

BuddyPOP also handles Skype, X-Lite SIP SoftPhone and Vonage, has support for sending and receiving SMS messages via a Bluetooth-enabled phone.

A steal at USD 9.99. Snap it up from MacUpdate.address book, contacts, productivity, dialler, skype, SMS, apple mail, mail.app, quicksilver

British ISP ntl:Telewest has published the results of a recent survey on etiquette in email, IM and SMS communication.

The survey of over 1,468 (53% male / 47% female) office workers contains few surprises, although it is interesting to compare the results with similar US studies on email use and gender and email productivity.

Email is the electronic medium of choice. The report found that “more people said they were addicted to email in the workplace than any other medium, with 78% of respondents claiming they couldn’t live without it.”

However, it seems email is not always being used for work-related purposes. UK offices are full of what the report describes as “bad behaviour”:

Professionals aren’t only using email to make corporate deals. 40% use the tool for gossip, 54% for socialising, and 60% for dealing with issues regarding their relationships with coworkers. Men are more likely than women to use email for socialising, whereas women are more likely to use it for gossiping.

The study asked respondents how long they needed to wait for a reply to an email before considering the recipient of the original email rude:

The survey also found that younger respondents were more adventurous in their communication channels than older ones, and males more than females.

In British offices, traditional communication methods remain important: “Leaving aside email for the moment, a high number of respondents rely more heavily on traditional methods of communications…. 29% use both fax and letter each day – although this figure rises the older the respondent.”

Finally the report identified three stereotypes in British workplaces. It’s always fun to think about which category your fellow workers fall in, so here they are:

The OAT (Old Age Technologist)
OATs are not necessarily old in age, but have more dated attitudes towards new communication technologies. OATs realise new technologies are becoming more prevalent in the workplace, but they’re dealing with this change by maintaining their tried and tested ways of communication. OATs are not sure how or why people have taken so readily to ‘new age’ communications tools.

The ESBO (Easily Sociable Behaviour Online)
Very comfortable when using modern communications, ESBOs are as happy text messaging their boss as IM’ing a client or taking part in a video conference. The ESBO zooms through the workday checking emails upwards of 300 times. Some ESBOs love the phone, some hate it, but the critical matter is that IM, text messaging and email have become more important than even their desks.

The StoIC (Slow to Implement Change)
The SToIC follows etiquette rules and doesn’t stray from accepted comfort zones. If there isn’t a generally accepted way of using a new technology the SToIC will avoid it altogether. The SToIC is still using the fax on a regular basis and would rarely consider writing a text message for work purposes.

If you are not sure which one you are, you can take an online survey to find out.

The findings of the report are available online in PDF form as an executive summary .email, productivity, etiquette, IM, SMS, communication

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

US mobile phone operator Cingular Wireless has lodged a application to patent emoticons on cell phones.

According to Cellular News :

The USA based mobile operator, Cingular Wireless has managed to get a patent on the concept of using emoticon on mobile phones. While the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of MSN style graphics on handsets, they also managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon – so presumably sending :) via an SMS – if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.

There is a division of opinion on news sites about whether the application is pending or has been granted.

I presume sending emoticons in emails remains patent-free. For the moment.

See further:
Engadget
Consumeraffairs.com