YAI converts invitations from MS Exchange, Google Calendar and Zimbra users into something that iCal can better understand.

It fixes annoying problems with shifting time zones, messages saying “you are not invited” and other blips that making working in a mixed-platform so annoying.

The utility comes packaged as an installer which unpacks its files into a folder in the Scripts folder in your user directory. When it’s installed, invitations are transferred straight into iCal as if they were created in iCal itself.

Further options in the installer allow you to set the background colour of a processed email invitation, mark it as flagged or not or to move it to another folder:

The updated version is not only available to Leopard users, it also improves the modification and deletion of duplicates, fixes a quirk in the way invites from some time zones without daylight saving are handled and improves the app’s option for subsequently moving the invitation to another folder.

YAI is similar to another plugin, OMiC , although the feature sets of the two plugins do not overlap completely. OMiC does more, and costs more (USD 29.95). For the extra money you get the ability to browse the inscrutable winmail.dat file in which attachments from Outlook users are sometimes packaged and more.

YAI is shareware (£3 per computer — c. USD 5.85) and has a fourteen day free trial period. You can get it from John’s web site .applescript, ical, mail.app, apple mail, invites, meetings, invitations, productivity, outlook, windows, zimbra, ms exchangeSimilar Posts:

• You’re invited: Outlook meeting plugin for Mail
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• While I was busy…
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In fact, to cut to the chase, Leopard wins the features shoot-out with 46 points to Vista’s 41.

Thinking about this exercise put me in mind of Umberto Eco’s well-known comparison between Macs and PCs, which he published in the Italian news magazine Espresso in 1994.

It is worth quoting at length:

…Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It’s an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ‘ratio studiorum’ of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach–if not the Kingdom of Heaven–the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revellers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions; when it comes down to it, you can decide to allow women and gays to be ministers if you want to…..

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic…

Which is more whimsical: the attempt to compare the feature sets of Vista and Leopard on the assumption that they rest on some notional level playing field or structuralism gone wild in correlating computers with Christian denominations?

What spirit of prophecy lead Eco to pair Anglicanism’s current troubles so precisely with the ever-increasing torment of Windows users? apple, not apple mail, not mail.app, windows, vista, leopard, catholicism, protestantism, Anglicanism, whimsy, switching, conversionSimilar Posts:

• Will Windows Vista be Apple’s Trojan Horse?
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According to a report on UK web site PCPro , Microsoft’s envy was revealed in a series of emails, submitted as evidence in the Iowa antitrust lawsuit.

Mail.app and Spotlight particularly impressed Lenn Pryor, former Director of Platform Evangelism:

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and … my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

Top Microsoft executive Jim Allchin was also impressed: “I don’t believe we will have search this fast,” he wrote.

The most recent batch of emails are available as a PDF file online:

In a nice tribute to Apple, the emails also reveal that Microsoft’s top executives were so taken with Tiger that they refused to share their installation discs for fear they might never get them back.

Previous emails from Allchin in the same case told how he would buy a Mac if he didn’t work for Microsoft and that Microsoft’s attempts in 2003 to come up with an iPod rival were very, very depressing.

All of this and more is available on the Comes vs Microsoft lawsuit web site. apple, microsoft, allchin, windows, searching ,spotlight, mail.appm apple mail, green eyed monsterSimilar Posts:

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He reminds his readers that “viewing your e-mail in anything other than plain text mode is asking for trouble on a Windows computer.”

He then proceeds to list some of the reasons why HTML should be avoided, including better protection against phishing attacks, avoiding “spam touting graphic images from adult Web sites” and not seeing your own HTML emails end up in someone else’s spam folder. (See a much more comprehensive list of reasons on the Free Anti Spam web site.)

Instructions are provided on using plain text in Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Opera. These might be useful for Hawk Wings readers in a distressing work environment.

Mail.app users have at least three ways to deal with incoming HTML emails—see an earlier Hawk Wings post, “Viewing HTML messages in Apple Mail“).

I am a fan of the first, most brutal option myself, but I am also a realist. See further King Canute (Wikipedia ).

UPDATE: Nicholas takes a different view . “Arguing that email users should not have access to different fonts or colours is much like arguing that they should still be using the word processors of 1987 as well,” he suggests.

[Thanks, Michael]mail.app, apple mail, windows, outlook, html, plain text, thunderbird, opera, outlook expressSimilar Posts:

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TNEF is a utility that extracts the files buried inside. It can really save your bacon.

Now a developer has wrapped the utility into a mail.app bundle which automatically recognises incoming emails with winmail.dat attachments.

When they arrive, it either opens iCal if the embedded file is an Outlook appointment or prompts you to save the embedded files in a folder of your choice:

I don’t get enough email from Outlook users to need it. Firing up TNEF’s Enough app on the odd occasion is all I need.

If you get a lot of this kind of email, the plugin takes out some extra steps and might be worth the shareware price.

OMiC is shareware (5 euros = USD 6.30) and is available from the developer’s web site . He hopes to make some money from the plugin for his compulsory military service, which begins soon.windows, outlook, exchange, winmail.dat, mail.app, apple mail, attachments, ical, files, TNEF enough, pluginsSimilar Posts:

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As Microsoft revs itself up to deliver Windows Vista sometime next year, it is working on the next generation of email clients for the new OS, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail Desktop.

Bryan Starbuck , the development lead for Windows email clients, has posted a feature list of the two apps:

Windows Mail, which Hawk Wings has already covered , is the new name for Outlook Express. It is the default client in Windows Vista, Apple Mail’s most direct “competitor”.

You can read more about it on Microsoft’s Vista preview site or watch a 46 min video demo.

Windows Live Mail Desktop is a more ambiguous project. It aims to broaden the scope of “the email experience” by integrating RSS feeds and web searches into its interface.

The RSS feed feature sounds clever. It will allow you to forward or email your thoughts about a particular blog post to the author as you read it. Search-as-you-type promises to locate information quickly.

Active Search will be great, Bryan says :

Active Search bridges the gap between your inbox and the broader web using the power of search. Using Active Search is essentially the same as conducting a ton of related searches the old fashioned way – by cutting and pasting terms from your email into a separate web browser – only without all the effort.

Screenshots of the next Outlook beta speak for themselves .outlook, windows, vista, email, windows mail, windows live mail desktop, RSS feeds, searching Similar Posts:

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Now that his iMac boots into Windows as well as Mac OS X, and he needs to spend some time in both OSes, how can he get easy access to his email, calendar and other data in either OS?

His solution is to push everything to the Web, in particular to Gmail and Google Calendar. He no longer uses Gmail’s POP access to read his emails in Mail.app.

Finding a decent online platform-independent RSS reader is more of a challenge.

He seems aware of the problems that a Web 2.0-focussed life raises, access to your information without an Internet connection and data security/backups. Still he is going forward in faith, confident that they can be overcome.web 2.0, gmail, gcal, mail.app, apple mail, windows, bootcamp, mac os x Similar Posts:

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Aki at Aki’s Blog has given up on the Mac dream after four years as a PowerBook user, and is moving back to Windows. And not just back to Windows, back to Windows on Dell.

He mentions price, Java-support and battery life among his reasons, not least “Reasonable tools exist in Windows… such that many of the productivity gains I got on my Mac are now possible in Windows.”

What does he miss? His old 12″ PowerBook has Unix and was sexy, two words that you don’t often see close together. switching, mac, windows, dell, productivity, not apple mailSimilar Posts:

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APC Magazine, one of Australia’s premier IT titles, has launched a swish, revamped web site featuring a number of individually themed blogs. And one of them is mine!

On X Factor , the site’s Apple blog, I’ll be able to get all the non-Mail.app stuff out of my system. There is an X Factor-specific RSS feed .

I have a much wider brief, allowing me to cover “hot new software and hardware, quality freeware and Mac OS X tips and tricks”. I am even allowed to have some opinions. Everything gets done over by a ferocious subeditor, so the quality will be better too.

The site soft-launched today, and you can already find posts there on Gmail tricks with Firefox , a great Take Control book that demystifies running Windows on your Mac with Bootcamp, Q or Parallel Workstation, finding Australian maps to use with Address Book and more.

Of course, it’s exciting for me. But it is also an innovative move in the Australian market.

X Factor is the first substantial and regular commitment to Apple by a mainstream IT publication, which like all the rest is otherwise dominated by Windows and Linux.

I like to think that it is a recognition of Apple’s growing market share and continuing importance as a trend-setter (Check out Mac OS X for a foretaste of Windows Vista, etc, etc). I hope too that it will make a few new friends for Apple as storm troopers from the Dark Side wander into X Factor by mistake.

Best of all, unlike some other offers I’ve had, Hawk Wings is able to continue as usual. This development brings you no relief from the usual torrent of posts about Mail.app, iCal and Address Book and email in general :)personal, hawkwings, apc magazine, apple, windows, X Factor, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts:

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Brandon LeBlanc at Longhorn Blogs is excited. Windows Vista will feature “an exciting new application” called Windows Calendar. Users will be able to set up multiple calendars designated by different colors with different events for each calendar. (Cf. Microsoft’s innovative new Windows Mail app.)

The new application will support the .ics file standard, which will allow Mac users to send event invitations to the rest of the world. Outlook 12 will also have full .ics support, apparently. No more hacking away at iCal‘s mail.scpt.Similar Posts:

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