Category: software

The results?

Final Rating: Windows XP 8.55 Mac OS X 8.33 BeOS 8.22 KDE 6.72 Gnome 6.61

[OSNews]

AppleLinks writer John Martellaro has posted a Q&A interview with AquaMinds founder and NoteTaker braintrust Scott Love…

[Applelinks via Mac Net Journal]

John: Can you share with us some ideas about where you think NT is going?

Scott: We have announced several product features that will become available this year including more outline processing features (naturally), Palm/PDA synchronization, more XML output support, (we do OPML right now), Keynote integration, more Web notebook features, and a new application approach code-named SilverStar which I think will make NoteTaker even more useful for OS X users.

[Applelinks] 

I would also suggest reading the following reviews on Applelinks and OS X FAQ.

I’ve been using it for most of the day, easily (without first exporting) importing my OmniOutliner files and maintaining my notes for client and daily business. This is clearly the Mac OneNote you have probably heard about that MS is developing and currently in Beta for XP and Office 2003. I would strongly suggest you give it a whirl. The first trial copy I used limited the number of items in an outline, which killed it for me. Now you can get a 30-Day trial which has all the functions.

I’m hooked…

In the past weeks I have experimented with a few ways to do email. What I realize from speaking with others both in person and via email discussions lists, is how differently everyone sees things. Not that surprising actually, but the ways in which people handle the deluge of messages is pretty interesting.

In my case I have blogged about ZOE and POPfile and integration with Mail.app. What I have not mentioned is that I no longer use Mail or ZOE. Mail had become slow for me given the amount of email I get in a day and the speed with which I try to manage it all. Since I am basically a remote worker in my company I need to be very consistent on mail to manage what is going on.

In case you care, I work in NYC in the office of the umbrella company (we used to have a NY office ourselves) but the main office for my company is outside Philadelphia.

While Mail was a wonderful tool it was not cutting it for me anymore. I did a pretty comprehensive review of tools I thought would work for me. I considered GyazMail, Eudora, and even going back to Entourage. I knew I needed to be able to work with POPfile which has become an unbelievable helper in the fight against spam as well as a wonderful pre-filter for my email. POPfile offers two ways of tagging messages either by modifying the subject or by adding an x-text classifier header to messages.

For some reason Entourage is not able to swing that, so I immediately nuked it as an option.

Gyaz was interesting and the closest to Mail, but wanted to use a separate folder of folders for each account. This is not the way I view my mail (unified inbox….) and just could not get used to working like that.

Eudora was the first GUI email I app I ever used. It was handed to me on a 3.5″ diskette in college and I remember it well. I also remember bailing on it when I discovered Claris Emailer after college… While it is nice now and I know many people like it, it was not for me.

Then I discovered PowerMail. This is definitely the dark horse of email applications on Mac. As soon as I started using it, I knew I was hooked… It offers very robust filters/rules, AppleScript support, excellent attachment handling (local folder), OS X address book sync, V-Twin search (ie Sherlock) and of course POPfile compatibility. There are many more features under the hood as well. It is not free, but the $50 is well worth the admission. The demo copy which runs for 30 days can handle 200 messages in the database. As soon as I reached that limit I purchased. I should also note that it did a flawless import from Mail – all 1.7GB of it.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, people use the tools very differently. One thing I discovered about PowerMail, which you might appreciate as well I had never seen in other apps. There is a window called “Recent Mail Window” which can open as new messages come in and can come to the front if you choose. What this does is give you a single pane view of messages regardless of where you have filtered them on receipt. I leave it floating on top of the main window so I can easily drag and file messages as the come in. I can also see messages I have filtered automatically by client (domain based), lists, newsletters etc all in one place. It is essentially a live view of mail so as you move things you can see right away that they are where you would expect. You can leave a floating window of folders and work with two windows also if you like eliminating the main view, though I found this to be a bit beyond where I am comfortable. Since classified as spam comes in and drops to the trash, I just do a quick check before killing it and I am on my way.

While this is not exactly a comprehensive review of PowerMail or any of the tools, I thought it would be interesting to share regardless. As the title of the app suggests it is a powerful way to do mail. The best in my opinion, though I am sure as new apps come out or things update I will try them to make sure.

CompUSA and SoftwareToGo, in conjunction with the Apple Developer Connection (ADC), has launched a new program that gives ADC Premier and Select members the opportunity to have their products carried in CompUSA stores across the US — regardless of whether the retailer currently stocks the shrink-wrapped product on the shelf or not — via electronic software distribution kiosks… [MacMinute.com]

This script, when executed through the script menu provided by Big Cat contextual menu plugin, allows users to search for the highlighted text in many places, including Dictionary.com, Mac OS X Hints, and VersionTracker, among others. Release notes: Uses plist for search list. Added option to add custom searches. [AppleScript Info]

while not surprisingly windows xp only, this looks a tad lame. seems like they are trying VERY hard 2b hip. The idea is interesting though… sharing music with friends, as a party playlist while chatting online. I think it seems a bit too windows-like. especially since it is really just MSN messenger and WMP rolled together through a desktop widget. It seems to be missing some simple elegance. Something (I guess) only mac users can appreciate.

I bet that you (I don’t code…) could crush the functionality and general utility (not to mention the presentation) of threedegrees with some konfabulator glue and iTunes with iChat. perhaps use slimp3 to stream until itunes finally offers shared libraries (v.4?).