Ross at Simplehelp has written an excellent tutorial with screenshots on how to get your contact information out of the Gmail and into Address Book for use in Mail.app.

The app used in the process is called Address Book Importer , a clever utility that allows the user complete control over how to map the fields for import. It is also free for a single use (although the developer asks for a small donation if you use it regularly).

He has just released a beta version (2.0.5b3) which is a universal binary and features several fine-tuning tweaks.

The interface is clean and easy to understand:

The tutorial even tells you what to do with the mysterious “name” entry that appears when the import is finished.

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MailUnreadStatusBar, a discreet Menubar notification utility for Mail.app, has been released as a universal binary, which will run just as smoothly on Intel Macs as well as PPC ones.

Like Mail Unread Menu, MailUnreadStatusBar takes a low-key approach to notifications. Rather than popping up an alert screen as Mail.appetizer and GrowlMail do, it just keeps score in the Menubar, so that you can see how many unread emails you have without getting unduly distracted.

Its drop-down menu offers options to open, show or quit Mail and to perform an instant check for new mail.

It also lists the amount of unread mail in each of the mailboxes that you nominate in the app’s Preferences. Clicking on one of the listed mailboxes, opens that mailbox in Mail.app. (This helps me - a little - not to read Hawk Wings email at work).

The Preferences menu provides a variety of icons for the Menubar, the frequency with which to check for new mail and allows you to select which mailboxes the app should monitor (hold down the ⌘-key to select more than one):

A new option lets you choose just to have the number of unread messages displayed without any icon. This will please hardcore interface minimalists.

MaulUnreadStatusBar is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .

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CTM Development has released a new beta of its email client PowerMail.

The new beta (5.5b2) is now a fully native universal application, a development which the company says underscores its “commitment to PowerMail’s future”.

It is now twice as fast thanks to code rewrites for its new universal status and upgrades to the database format.

The developers also say that Intel Mac users will notice much improved stability.

I took a look at PowerMail, which advertises itself as “A better Mac OS X mail client than Apple’s own”, at the end of last year.

I was unimpressed then with its IMAP support, lack of native spam filtering, its lack of extensibility and its cost (USD 82 = 65 euros including a bundled copy of SpamSieve).

Still, people with POP accounts who like more complicated searching than Mail.app can provide, extensive AppleScript support and a mail client with a built-in text snippet manager might like to try it out.

You can download a demo of the new universal beta from the app’s web site .

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A lot of people have been waiting for this.

A new version (1.49) of httpmail, a plugin that allows you collect and your Hotmail in Mail.app, has been released which is a universal binary.

This means that you no longer have to use work-arounds like running Mail under Rosetta if you are own an Intel Mac and want to access a Hotmail account.

httpmail is freeware and is available from the project’s SourceForge page .

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A new version of Thunderbird is out and it’s a universal binary!

It is also more stable and contains a number of security fixes. You can see the full list of changes on The Rumbling Edge.

Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 is available from the Mozilla web site .

[Thanks, Bronson].

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Tapdex is a preference pane that enables you to access your Address Book contacts with a user-defined hot key.

A new version (3.0) is now a universal binary and supports the F13-16 function keys.

It’s very easy and quick to use. Hit your hot key and Tapdex’s search window pops up. Type in the name and the search results narrow in real time until you are presented with the contact you are looking for:

Does this screen remind you of anything? That was my first thought too — BuddyPop.

Tapdex is a kind of “Lite” implementation of BuddyPop. It does not have the rich feature list of BuddyPop (support for Skype, X-Lite and Vonage, Bluetooth SMS, etc) but it is free.

With Tapdex you can launch an email in Mail.app by clicking on the contact’s email address, get a phone number in large type or map an address, which might be all you want to do.

Tapdex is freeware (although there is a USD 7 “Pro” version that removes a small advertisement) and is available from the developer’s web site .

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