new mail

Apr 27 2009

A Little Menu Extra

Since our last feature on Menu Extras, some great new freeware extras have come out. This week we’ll take a look at some of the better ones.

Mail Ticker

Although this is still in it’s early development stages, Mail Ticker is a great way to monitor your incoming POP email. This menu extra watches your email account for new mail. When a new message is received, its subject appears with its sender in a marque on the menu bar. Preferences allow you to add multiple accounts and adjust settings.

iAddressX

This is a simple and straight-forward addition to your menu bar. This extra installs as a preference pane. When activated, iAddressX lists the names, email addresses and phone numbers for all the addresses in your address book.

Homeland Alert X

This may not be the most practical of menu extras, but is interesting nonetheless. This menu extra displays the color code for the current “Homeland Security” level.

Also worth mentioning are a couple of older menu extras that have been newly updated. Weather Pop and Mac Update’s menu extra.

By admin • Articles, Freeloader Friday Download of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: address book, development, email account, Extra, Extras, feature, mac update, mail ticker, marque, Menu, menu bar, new mail, phone, pop email, security level, sender, Ticker, weather

Apr 27 2009

Filter Mail Like a Pro

Most of us power user types get a fair amount of email. I don’t know about you but when I sit down to do email, I don’t want to be bothered by having to sort it all out. I have my mail forward to several different mailboxes: MacMerc, Friends, and Work. Anything that doesn’t fit those three and isn’t spam gets sent to a "First Timers" folder. The only problem with this is that the cool red icon in Mail.app doesn’t show up right since your new mail is strewn via a few boxes. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next update (Apple, this is a hint).

The problem with sorting mail is that it’s a pain to set up. Here’s where the tip comes in. In Address Book, set up groups. For instance I have one for Friends, one for MacMerc and one for Work. You can have more, and in fact I do, but at least have ones that match up with your main categories. You can create a new group with the + that is below the first column. You can add contacts to it by dragging them to the group icon. Once you have all your contacts sorted nicely in groups, go back to Mail.app.

This is really powerful if you think about it. When you add someone to your address book and make them a member of a group, suddenly they have been added to a rule that sorts your email in real time!

To create a new mailbox in Mail.app, just go to Mailbox>New Mailbox… and name it something you’ll remember. It shows up in the drawer. You can even nest mailboxes which is really handy if you want to archive off mail. I like to keep my mailboxes under a few hundred messages to keep things really speedy, and put the rest in an archive file that is nested underneath the mailbox.

The hard part about keeping this up is adding people to the right groups. It’s one of those 2 second things that seem to never get done. My advice, suck it up and do it. There is nothing like sitting down and seeing 20 emails all nicely sorted for your reading/replying pleasure.

By admin • Articles, Power User Monday Tip of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: address book, amount, Book, EMAIL, filter mail, first timers, group icon, instance, macmerc, Mail, mailbox, mailboxes, main categories, new mail, pain, Power, sorts, tip, Update, work

Apr 27 2009

No More Junk Mail Beeps

By: Jon Gales

I’m a sick freak and spend far too much time in front of my Mac. I, like many
of you, get a lot of email. I set Mail.app to beep when I got a new message,
but to my surprise it beeps for every message–including spam. I really don’t
care if I get a spam, why should I hear a beep? Here’s how to fix it.

Instead of going Preferences>Accounts>New Mail Sound go to rules. Click on
the rule titled "Junk" and then hit the "Add Rule" button. Title it "Not Junk
Sound" and set it to say:

If ANY of the following conditions are met:
EVERY MESSAGE

Perform the following actions:
PLAY SOUND SOUND NAME

What this does is simply make a sound for every message… You are probably
thinking, "You’re an idiot… It will still beep for spam.Why have I wasted
my time reading this?". Well folks, it won’t beep for spam. Trust me. Rules
stop getting executed once
a
match
has
been found, so if the message is spam it will never get this rule put on it
(since this rule will be located right after the Junk rule).

If you have any killer tricks for Mail.app please let
me know. I’ll give
you credit (and a link to your site if you have one).

By admin • Articles, Power User Monday Tip of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: beep, beeps, button title, EMAIL, jon gales, junk mail, killer tricks, mail sound, new mail, sick freak

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