Adium Book is a utility that can synchronise Adium’s contact list and your Address Book.

The new version (1.3) released today is a universal binary, features some performance tweaks to improve the app’s speed and fixes some issues with Jabber accounts. It also offers support for multiple IM accounts in its Address Book view.

The interface has been reworked:

With Adium Book you can add Adium contacts to Address Book or update the information on an Address Book card using data from Adium.

It allows full text search of Adium contacts and Address Book and provides a range of reports, among them a listing of contacts without pictures, contacts in Adium but not in Address Book or a listing of contacts by IM service.

Adium book is donation-ware and is available from the Adium Extra’s web site or the developer’s webs site .not apple mail, adium, address book, contacts, IM, chat, universal, reports, instant messaging

dotMac Menu provides a convenient Menubar interface for .Mac account holders.

It lists handy shortcuts to .Mac’s webmail interface, Address Book, Groups and web pages, keeps track of iDisk usage and offers quick launch links for iSync and Backup. Holding down the Option key switches to a second set of links.

A new version (2.7) released today is a universal binary, adds a “Share with Groups” menu option and the ability quickly to open the web interface to your iDisk.

Another submenu allows you to configure which options to display in the menu.

dotMac Menu is donation-ware (suggested amount USD 5) and is available from the developer’s web site .dotmac, .mac, menubar, idisk, groups, plugins, web pages, universal, productivity

A year ago today Bronson Beta released an updated fourth beta of its Mail.appetizer notification plugin.

When I first wrote this post a few days ago, I misread the 2005 for 2006 (Whoops!). But my laziness is your gain, as it gives this excellent plugin a much deserved run, even if nothing has changed. That’s my line, and I’m sticking to it :)

This version hides itself better when Mail.app is the active app.

Since I first blogged about Mail.appetizer , it’s got better in other ways. It is now a universal binary and 10.4.x compatible.

Its notifications are still as beautiful as ever:

I read in my earlier post that in September last year, I was mad for this app. Since then, I have learnt to wean myself off “instant email notification gratification”.

But if you like to know about your new mail right away, you can’t go past this. GrowlMail doesn’t have half the flexibility and smoothness of Mail.Appetizer.

Mail.Appetizer is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site .

UPDATE: Italics mark a revision on 11 July 2006.mail.app, apple mail, notification, plugins, in your face, universal

GoogleFill is a plugin for Address Book that allows you to search Google for addresses that match any phone number in your Address Book.

For example, your mobile / cell phone offers the option to add the phone numbers of callers to your phone’s address book. The next time you sync your phone and Mac OS X Address Book, the number shows up in without any other information.

If you have this plugin installed, you can then right click on the number and select “Autofill from Google for”:

It then heads off to search Google. Wen it finds a match, if offers a confirmation dialog:

An updated version (1.1) released today is smarter about matching the phone numbers and is also a universal binary.

GoogleFill is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .address book, contacts, phone numbers, addresses, Google, autofill, universal

Hotmail users with Intel Macs face problems using Mail.app to read their emails.

Cris Pierry points out that HTTPMail, a Mail plugin that enables the downloading of emails from Hotmail’s web interface has not yet been compiled as a universal binary.

As a result it won’t run as a plugin in Mail.app on Intel Macs. He provides instructions on forcing Mail to run under Rosetta, which produces quite a performance hit but allows you to use HTTPMail.

As far as I know, other options for “translating” emails from web-based email services, Mail Forward and MacFreePOPs, are not yet universal binaries either.

For Cris, running Mail under Rosetta is unbearable. He is going to use the web interface to get his email while he moves over to Gmail.

UPDATE: As Gavin suggests in the comments on another post, there is an easy work-around for Hotmail users:

1. Set up a Fastmail account (it’s free and it’s excellent. I have a (paid) account there, so I know how good it is). Of course, any good email service that offers polling of web-based mail will do the trick.
2. Set the Fastmail account to poll your Hotmail account and to download the messages into your IMAP account at Fastmail.
3. Collect your Fastmail messages in Mail.app.

hotmail, web-based email, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, universal, Gmail, fastmail

Zimbra is “a rich, full-featured, AJAX-based Web client that brings e-mail and calendar items to life through Web mash-ups on the front end”.

Today the developers announced the release of support for Intel Macs. According to the company’s press release,

ZCS for Mac OS X is an open-source, enterprise-grade email and collaboration server and application that includes support for iCal, Apple Mail clients and Apple Xsan storage. In testing ZCS for Mac OS X, Zimbra has achieved speeds up to five times faster on the Intel-based Mac clients.

The latest version also introduces support for calendar resources (conferences rooms, etc) and reminders.

[Via PRNewsWire ]zimbra, ajax, web 2.0, email, universal, calendar, ical, mail.app

There’s only one story in town for Mail.app users today.

MailTags 1.2 has been released.

It brings integration with iCal To Dos, compatibility with Intel Macs and greater stability. It also addresses a number of small bugs like occasional crashes when applying rules and the “dreaded flickering project popup”.

The integration with iCal is what users will notice most. It’s great. You will find screenshots and the full review after the jump.

(more…)