Mailplane for OS X
Posted by admin | Filed under Apps
I use Gmail for all my personal email, mainly for the spam filters and quick searching. I do sometimes miss the feeling of a desktop application for working with my email though. I also do a lot of website development in firefox, which gets bogged down with extenstions.
Enter Mailplane. At its core, it is a stripped down safari displaying Gmail, which makes it really fast to open. Toolbar buttons and hotkeys turn Gmail into a real application. Receive a new message and you are notified through Growl and with a count of new messages on the dock icon.
As well as the application “feel”, Mailplane has some features that can only be done with a desktop app:
- The screenshot feature opens grab with the selection tool active. Drag around what you want to email and it is captured and attached to the email as a JPG. No messing around with menus in grab.
- Multiple accounts are displayed in an account drawer on the side of the window, allowing for many, many accounts to be managed.
- iPhoto integration lets you browse through iPhoto and choose photos to send to Mailplane
- Even Google Talk is supported, and in a new window
The only drawback I’ve found so far is not being able to use greasymonkey hacks to customize the gmail interface. You can however create your own stylesheet for Gmail.
The program is currently in private beta and available only for Mac OS X, but I highly reccomend it.
Tags: Apple, gmail, leopard, mac, OS X
Email, everywhere
Posted by admin | Filed under Web
I know a lot of people out there who are stuck with the “email is safer on my computer” mentality. So tell me, when your computer explodes will you have all your email and contacts? Do both of your dual-booting operating systems give you access to the same emails? Yeah, I thought not.
Here are my top reasons for moving to web-based Gmail:
- Searching
One of the best features of Gmail is searching. There’s no waiting 20 minutes for outlook to go through the one folder you have open. You just type it and it’s all there. Labels are far more effective than folders as you can tag one email with multiple tags. - Mobility
At home, at work, on the laptop, on the cell phone – all of your email is accessible. If you’re on a different computer for whatever reason, there’s no configuring/installing an email client just to download new mail and missing everything from before. - Spam Filters
The spam filters on Gmail are the best I’ve seen yet. I’ve had maybe 4 messages in my inbox in the last month that weren’t caught. - Free, supported by non-intrusive ads
It’s completely free, and without the ugly and distracting flashing advertisements that plague yahoo and msn. There are some text ads, but they are at least relevant to the content of the email. - Anti-virus
Automatic virus checking of every email.
Maybe I have your interest now, but you don’t want to change your email address? All you have to do is turn on forwarding on your current email address, then setup Gmail to send email from your email address. Emails appear to come from the same person, but incoming messages will be delivered to Gmail. Take a look at Gmail’s Switching page.
Something else that might be holding you back from switching can be feeling disconnected from your mail, like you don’t have access to it all the time. While there was one time when some accounts were emptied by hackers stealing passwords, you can download all your email to your computer using POP access. I download my emails as a backup every week or two into outlook.
There have been rumors of Gmail offering the same service as yahoo mail where it will download email from external pop3 accounts. This would be useful when forwarding is unavailable, as is sometimes the case.
If you need an invitation to Gmail, just leave a comment.
Tags: gmail, Web, Web Apps 2.0
