Well, who would have thought? News of Hotmail’s death for mail.app users is exaggerated.

Microsoft has relented and deferred the transition from WebDAV to its own DeltaSync standard. This means that Mail.app users with HTTPMail and MacFreePOPs plugins won’t be cut off on 30 June after all.

After listening to customer feedback from the original accouncement, Microsoft told its users “it became clear that you needed additional time to evaluate alternative solutions”.

Still, this only postpones the executioner’s axe. Don’t fritter away all the extra time Microsoft has given you in making a decision.

With apologies for any distress.

[Via The Fastmail.fm Weblog ] Apple Mail, fastmail, GMAIL, hotmail, httpmail, macfreepops, mail.app, microsoft, webmail, webdav

Like some other people, Matt Simerson decided that the cost of renewing his .Mac subscription wasn’t worth it.

He wanted to retain the good things about the service though, “iDisk, iSync (between computers), iCal sharing, and Backup” and if possible make them even better:

Simply retaining the useful features would be an utter failure. The most value can be found in addressing the shortcomings of each feature. For iDisk, speed and disk space are the impediments to its usefulness. iSync already works quite well. iCal sharing works well but publish and subscribe updates are terribly slow. Backup is hamstrung by the iDisk space issue.

In the rest of a long and detailed post he outlines how he achieved this using WebDAV.

He even goes as far as fooling his Macs into believing that his local WebDav server is Apple’s iDisk server.

It’s a technical post demanding a fair bit of coding skill. I don’t think that I would attempt this myself, but people with the background will find it a useful guide.

I’m not sure how I missed this back in February. Perhaps I was at the beach..Mac, dotmac, idisk, webdav, ical, isync, tips, hacks

Publishing iCal calendars is most easily done via .Mac or on server using WebDAV.

What if you don’t have a .Mac account or access to WebDAV at your service provider or web host?

You can do it manually, using FTP, but it’s a pain. You have to hunt through iCal’s arcane naming system to find the calendar you want and them mess around with it a bit before uploading it.

Derek Jones has written a walk-through for publishing calendars which takes the pain out of the process by using Automator.

He goes through each step in creating an Automator action for this and includes some useful tips along the way. The post also includes links to two extra Automator actions that are handy in themselves.

This tip also appeared on macOSXHints.ical, sharing, publishing, calendar, automator, transmit, tips, webdav

iSynCal is a stand-alone app that syncs iCal events and To Dos between Macs without the need for a .Mac account.

An updated version (5.4) has been released which adds support for WebDav over SSL, so that iSynCal can now automount network volumes.

Also, the help files have been updated and it has also recompiled as a universal binary.

iSynCal is shareware (USD 25) and is available from the developer’s web site.