• Organizing. I’m a folders/labels kinda guy. Doing that in Mail is less than intuitive and takes too many steps. Bonus is there aren’t any keyboard shortcuts for making new mailboxes, and it’s a chore to get to filters. This should be easier.
• Restoring focus. When Mail is running but closed, there isn’t an elegant way to restore using the keyboard. Most apps work well with a cmd-n, but in Mail that starts a new message _and_ restores the app. Great if I wanted to send a message, bad if I only want to see what’s new.

Using it to collect Gmail via POP has actually been a great experience. Gmail filters out the crap and I get a nice clean stream of email delivered to my desktop. Bonus, all my rules are still running on Gmail, so when I need access via my phone or another computer, I can and all my organization is still in effect. I do still check the spam box about once a week for false positives, but I never find any.

So, overall, I give it a C. Not the greatest (c’mon Mozilla…update Thunderbird already!) or the worst (:cough:Outlook Express:cough:) but it does the job just fine.

I’ve searched the goog, but not to extensively. If any of you have any great Mail.app tips or tricks you would like to share, by all means please do! They would be appreciated.

Mail.app

Been using this for a solid week now with Gmail POP3. It’s been pretty good I must say but there are a few things I think could be a little better.

1. Setting up rules and mailboxes could be more streamlined or at least have a keyboard shortcut
2. Flagging a message needs an easier keyboard short cut, or someone at Apple needs to stop with those rediculous symbols that I don’t understand.
3. Restoring the window from the dock needs to be more elegant/easier to figure out, but this is a problem I have with most Mac apps. cmd-n works, but then I have to close the new message window.
4. Better keyboard navigation in general would be keen. Arrow and tab keys are my friend

Next will be getting my address book and iCal current. I’m really excited to see how well they integrate.

Projects

Quite a few of these on the go. My latest Wordpress project will be online for testing soon. I’ll let you know when that happens.

I’m in the process of starting a new Podcast, this time with Fireball Tim. I got the domain name, have an intro done and we will be doing testing this week. Yes it will be car related. And yes, you will hear about it here first. At least until we get 5 or so of them done, then we’ll tell everyone! Ask nice and I might post the intro.

Another site I just did a bunch of work on is KCL Productions. I cleaned up the navigation and completely rebuilt the portfolio section using lightbox. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Full re-do of the site will be coming later in the year more than likely.

MTTS

Most of you know that I won’t be going to Chicago. I am, however VERY excited about LA. Besides it being the last stop, it will also be the third anniversary of the show. If you are in or around LA the first weekend of August, I expect to see you!

My Music

I know you are all jealous that I actually have the time to do this, but boy am I glad I did. My music library is now about 17gb lighter than it was before, I removed all of the crap that I didn’t know I had or didn’t want and cleared out a bunch of old podcasts that I already listened too. Only need to do a final rebuild of the library and it will be done.

Video and photos

I really need to get back on this. Part of the problem for video is I lost a piece for my suction cup mount I use in the MINI. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make a new one without spending the $15 to replace it. I have an idea and hope to have it figured out soon.

As for photos, I’ve just been lazy. I did, however, get a replacement clip for my gorilla pod (another piece I lost months ago) and I’m dying to start using that again. Watch the flickr for something soon.

Ok, that’s it for now. Back to the job boards.

I’ve been using gmail exclusively since ‘05 to collect all of my email, and it’s been doing a bang up job! I love me the gMail. But, there are times when I’d rather open an app, or compose an email offline (like when travelling) or I would just like to have that information under my control 100%.

At first I thought I would try iMap with gMail. In theory, a great idea. All of the email lives on gmail, and your labels and mail is replicated in your email client. In practice however it doesn’t work that hot, at least not with Gmail. Maybe I have too many rules or labels. Maybe I get too much email. Whatever the reason, it works poorly at best. I was missing emails, or they wouldn’t show up at all in my client. Oh, and the client would almost always crash.

Back to the drawing board I went. Started using Fluid for Gmail and it kinda made it feel like I was using a desktop app. It’s a great app and I highly recommend it especially for Gmail. Watch for a write up that soon.

Let’s hide some of this, since I’ve got a fair amount more to say.

Being a fan of pretty much all things Mozilla, I decided to give Thunderbird another shot. This time not with Gmail IMAP, but with POP3.

It’s an entirely different animal.

Imagine, if you will, your email server. Sitting out there on the internet collecting emails from mom and spammers and sending them all down to your desktop to sort out after they arrive. Yea, ick. This is the #1 reason why I switched to Gmail in the first place. I have yet to find an email program that filters spam as good as Gmail does off the shelf.

Now, imagine if you will that you have a filter between your email server and your desktop. One that strips out the spam, hides it from view and only sends you the good stuff. Boy wouldn’t that be great.

That’s what it is like using Gmail for POP3.

I was a Thunderbird user on Windows for a very long time. In fact, the 2nd app I installed on the mac when I first got it was Tbird, which I was using to read news. This past week I thought it was time to fire it up and give it a shot.

Works just like it always had. Smart search, easy to set up filters and folders, the whole bit. Not terribly fast, but v2, like FireFox v2, has the feel of a Windows program that was ported to the mac.

So, I have decided to give mail.app another try. But, to be honest, I don’t think I have used a crashier piece of software except maybe AOL4.0, Netscape 4 (OMG, do you remember how bad that was?) and, more recently, Cyberduck. That was also mostly with Gmail IMAP, but it’s was pretty crashy with POP3 too. Perhaps it was me? I’m going that route for the next week and see if I can’t figure it out.

Another reason for wanting to use mail is the integration. The address book integrates with mail and iCal. iCal and mail and best buds I read someplace too. Sure would be nice to be an adult with a current calendar and address book.

Any good Mail.app tips or tricks you might have would be greatly appreciated. Don’t bother sending me to any sites with plugins or hacks tho, it’s gotta work out of the box.

Mine will be getting Mom to use Flickr. She just bought my camera (her first Amazon.com purchase) and she really digs seeing my shots on the webernets. And she is a bit of a tech junkie. So Flickr is a perfect fit. Keeping in mind that I couldn’t get her to switch, I think I’ll be able to pull this one off no sweat.

The other night I’m sitting around with teh Lad watching Transformers again and my phone rings. It’s Mom. She’s trying to figure out how to setup an account at Yahoo! so she can use Flickr! Of course I helped her and about 1/2 hour later I had an email from her Flickr account saying she had pictures for me to view. Of course, I couldn’t see them since she had them marked Friends and Family and didn’t add me as a contact. I called her back and got that part sorted out and voila!

Mom is using Flickr. Sweet!

Time to come up with another challenge. Maybe a switch from AOL to Gmail?