The Syncing Apple An Exploration of Technology and Devices

G5 Rebooting Saga

Unfortunately today my G5 again rebooted. It was up for over a day. So it has nothing to do with the hard-drive, or any corruption of any file. My next step is to move its mains plug around to another house circuit. There is talk that the PMU will act funny if there are line voltage drops or other issues, and the G5 is particular sensitive to this. I am doubtful however, as I have the G5 plugged into a nice APC SmartUPS 1000, which should be stopping any funny business with this circuit.

Tame your Email with Mail.appetizer

Stefan Schüßler has written one of the most incredibly cool add-ons for Mail.app that I've seen. If you know anyone with a PC, then you've probably seen Outlook 2003. Have you noticed the cool translucent new mail notification it offers? When new mail arrives (it may only work with Exchange mailboxes) it momentarily floats up a little window on the screen with the email info... then it fades away. It's cool. Well, now you can do it (even better) with Mail.app. Mail.appetizer over at Bronsonbeta.com does it. This software add-on has tons of features... you can resize the popup to whatever size you want, move it to any location on your screen (or screens). Change the font... It now even shows the photo from AddressBook if you have one... it can show multiple messages, pausing a specified time in between each one. Mail.appetizer is managed via the Mail.app prefs.

It's simply the coolest thing I've seen, and has already changed how I read mail. Now I can keep Mail.app tucked away in the dock and recover my 2nd screen. I have two screens, but Mail is always up in one and I've tended to leave it alone so as to see my Mail... now I can put it away and let Mail.appetizer screen my email! Amazing.

Cool App: Colloquy

A really cool open source IRC client for OSX is called Colloquy. It's very scriptable, has nice features and looks cool. Similar to Adium, this is quite extensible and has a flexible plugin architecture that has spawned some cool stylings for the gui already. Features are: buddy list, DCC support, AppleScriptable, totally open source (they are even using subversion) and a irssi core. Irssi core? The more I look at this, the more it really does resemble Adium in the way they are taking these low-level rock-solid open source core apps and drenching them with killer gui's that really fit Aqua and the Mac. Adium is built on libgaim, and like irssi, is the acknowledged leader in multi-protocol IM.

This is an interesting and great trend for OpenSource Macintosh software. By taking these tried and true pieces of free code, and building the UI elements that make them an exciting part of Aqua, these developers are really pushing OSX into some interesting places. I never imagined that there would be such a wealth of cool apps coming out of the OS movement... Just don't forget to throw them a few bucks to keep the updates coming.