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iVideoMail and iVoiceMail plugins for Mail
Here's a novel idea: being able to easily send something besides text and pretty pictures in email. iVideoMail and iVoiceMail are Mail plugins that take the legwork out of recording video and audio clips for easy emailing. They install as preference panes within Mail, and once you customize a message's toolbar to add a button for either plugin (there doesn't seem to be any other way to use them when composing a message), you're ready to start emailing your beautiful mug and American Idol-worthy voice to anyone who can handle it. Just don't blame us if your friends and colleagues begin removing you from their address books.I only briefly tried out the iVideoMail demo and it works pretty well, although the resulting 6-second 320 x 240 video in MPEG4 was 376 KB, which might be considered a little large by some. By why not judge for yourself? Demos are available via a rather annoying submit-your-email-for-a-customized-download-link process, and a license for either plugin is a mere $10 USD.[via Hawk Wings' plugin list]
Quicksilver Cube interface - "beautiful" doesn't do justice
Now that you have a Quicksilver cheatsheet and manual, check out one of the most beautiful UI plugins I've seen for this app: the Cube Interface. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings has put together a short video of the interface in action, catching the drool-inducing eye candy in all its glory. I'm not sure if this interface is only available to the Quicksilver developer build versions or not, as I am running the same version he is. If this is the case and you're still eager to take the plunge though, you can enable and access this version from Quicksilver's Application preference tab. However, if you're just getting used to this app or prefer stability over new features and eye candy like this, I'd recommend waiting until the Quicksilver crew brings this more mainstream.
iPhoto Batch Enhancer
iPhoto Batch Enhancer is a handy tool that allows you to apply iPhoto's built-in effects to a group of photos, instead of just one at a time. One feature specific for users of iPhoto 5 + 6 is 'Snapshot', the ability to quickly record the slider positions of iPhoto's built-in adjustments panel and save them as a batch adjustment setting for later use. iPhoto Batch Enhancer also works with RAW images so it looks like it can work on just about any format compatible with iPhoto.Compatible with versions 2-6 (the latest) of iPhoto, this handy tool is also a Universal Binary for all the Mactel owners out there. iPhoto Batch Enhancer is donationware and available from feroXsoft.
Google Maps Plugin 2.5 for Address Book goes Universal Binary, gets Google Earth integration
The Google Maps Plugin for Address Book has updated to version 2.5, adding Universal Binary super-powers and a slick new feature: Google Earth support (which is handy, since Google Earth just went Universal, too). Also in this new version is a true-blue Apple installer package (no more digging around in Library folders), support for Europe and new localized Google Maps domains, and user can now choose their preferred default country in the Google Maps Preferences.This plugin is available from Brian Toth's site, and surprisingly is still donationware. Toss the guy at least a few bucks if you find his hard work useful, couldya?
FlickrExport 2 is done, shipping soon
Fraser Speirs announced on his personal blog today that FlickrExport 2, his fantastic iPhoto plugin for uploading to Flickr, is done and will be shipping soon. Yes, we know that since it isn't available right now, this post becomes a little less useful, but we thought y'all might appreciate hearing when a beta product has actually been announced as 'finished' (*ahem*, Google). As Fraser's original beta 2 post states, pricing for this vastly updated and improved version will be announced when the FlickrExport product page goes live with the new version. Stay tuned.[thanks Nik Fletcher!]
AOL opens doors to AIM developer program, includes Mac OS X and Linux tools
Macworld is reporting that AOL (our parent company, by the way) has announced AIM developer tool support for Mac OS X and Linux, opening the doors for more interoperability to come from an even larger playing field. AOL launched this 'web 2.0-esque' Open AIM program last March, allowing 3rd party developers to create add-ons and tie-ins to the AIM network, with a healthy dose of around 45,000 developers already hopping on board.It'll be interesting to see how much comes out of this for the Mac OS X platform, as I'm willing to bet most Mac users who chat on AIM use iChat, and I'm not sure how open that app is from Apple's standpoint. This is pure speculation, but I'm wondering if we could see some kind of a plugin push from Apple with iChat in Leopard. Especially since, as Macworld points out, the whole VoIP thing has everyone with an audio chat app firing on all cylinders, vying for market share.
Yojimbo plugin for Quicksilver (or: My heart just skipped a beat)
I need to make more of a habit of rooting around in Quicksilver's plugin pane, as I almost always find stellar new tools each and every time I open it. This time around I stumbled on a Yojimbo plugin for Quicksilver that seems to do a better job of adding items to the Yojimbo database than the bookmarklets that BareBones added themselves in the latest 1.2 update. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings agrees, and he even beat me to the punch with a post that elaborates how this plugin works, complete with screenshot goodness. Be sure to check it out for a needed tip on turning this operating into a Quicksilver Trigger.After tinkering with this plugin, I am even happier that I uninstalled StickyBrain. The beauty of these actions is that, when adding or archiving a webpage to Yojimbo, this plugin doesn't force Yojimbo to the front, taking the focus away from whatever else you were doing. I don't know how these Quicksilver ninja developers managed to pull this off, as this is one of the main advantages over those new bookmarklets I mentioned.I hope I speak for many users of Quicksilver and Yojimbo when I say: thank you, Quicksilver ninjas.
Three-pane Mail.app turns into a plug-in
Well that was quick. First Mail.app received a widescreen, three-pane face-lift, and now it's been morphed into a plug-in. The author provides two different sets of instructions for installing: drag and dropping into your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory or using a couple of commands in Terminal. Go nuts ladies and gentlmen.
Concierge Safari plug-in v1.4.7 goes Universal
Concierge is a bookmark assistant plug-in for Safari that offers a multi-function scratchpad, bookmark managing tool and history sorting in a drawer on the side of the browser window. The scatchpad sounds like the most interesting feature, as it allows users to organize URLs, email links, Address Book contacts and even links to files and folders; great for heavy surfers and researchers alike. This latest version addresses a few bug fixes and brings Universal Binary super-powers to this shareware utility. Check out Concierge's product page for a demo and quite a few more details on all you can do with this handy plug-in, and a license will run you $10.
FlickrExport 2.0 beta 1
FlickrExport has entered a 2.0 beta phase, ushering in some really, really cool new features including: FlickrExport now supports uploading to existing sets. Uploaded photos can be added to a group pool after upload. FlickrExport now displays a list of your tags used on Flickr which can be added to photos before uploading. This list can be filtered using regular expressions. FlickrExport can copy the title and description back to iPhoto if it has been changed inside FlickrExport. This feature is turned off by default. If a photo's date has been modified in iPhoto, FlickrExport now communicates this to Flickr. It is now possible to specify description text for a new Photoset as well as its title. The one catch in this new version, however, is that Fraser Speirs, its developer, has decided to turn FlickrExport into shareware. While I can't find a price anywhere on the FlickrExport 2.0 beta site, I personally am not surprised, as this is a powerful plug-in that Mr. Speirs has obviously spent quite a bit of time on. I know I'll be happy to buy a license once he announces a price - but what about you, loyal FlickrExport users? Do you mind offering up some of your hard-earned cash for some of Mr. Speir's hard work?
Inquisitor goes web-based
Inquisitor, the Safari and Camino plug-in that brings Spotlight to searching the web, has been ported to a web-based search engine. Upon entering a search into its pleasantly minimal interface, you will be presented with a list of search recommendations and a variety of search engines to focus on, including digg, Amazon and their A9 search, Flickr, Google, Technorati and Yahoo!. Neat.[via Daring Fireball Linked List]
Google Maps Plug-in 2.4b for Address Book
The Google Maps Plug-in for Address Book is now in a 2.4 beta edition, bringing with it a package installer (PPC only, Intel installer on its way), support for Europe and new localized Google Maps domains, as well as choosing a default country in Google Maps for the plug-in to use.There is a beta edition for Intel Macs, though the author states it hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. The Google Maps Plug-in is donationware and available from Brian Toth's site.
Quicksilver plug-ins for Google Calendar and Gmail
While tinkering in Quicksilver's plug-ins panel this morning I came across two new plug-ins that should fit right in with my new Borg Google-infused daily activities: a Gmail Module and a Google Calendar Module. Both are actions that allow you to type in a string of text, then select either of these modules as an action, and off you go.The Google Calendar module seems to use their Quick Add syntax for adding events. For a quick tutorial on this: invoke Quicksilver and then hit period so you can begin entering plain text. Enter something like "Apple Store Opening Saturday 10 am," then hit tab to move to Quicksilver's second pane to chose an action. If you have the Google Calendar module installed, the action is titled "Google Calendar Event" (using 'gcal' works just fine for me). Hitting enter will send the event, and for bonus points, if you have Growl installed and Quicksilver using it to give notifications, you'll receive a Growl alert upon successful completion.The Gmail module (pictured) allows you to compose a message (or at least part of one) using the same method as both the Google Calendar and Mail.app compose actions. Once you type some text, tab over to chose the Gmail action, you'll receive a 3rd pane that allows you to specify an Address Book contact to send to. Hitting enter will create a Gmail compose window with all the information you chose from Quicksilver already inserted. Awesome.
Chax 1.4.1 released
One thing I love about Chax, the vital iChat plug-in, is that its developer has been reliably rolling out a good handful of new features and fixes, even with a .0.x update like this one. New features in 1.4.1 include: Growl notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available Options to have the tab window come to the front when receiving a new message Option to disable the close buttons on tabs Option to have the contact lists automatically resize to fit the number of visible contacts Contact list row height will now adjust itself according to the size of a custom font as long as user icons are hidden (the two line view will not resize) Default iChat floating window notifications now work with tabs Clicking on a Growl message notification will bring iChat to the front and select the originating message window You can check out the full list of new features and bug fixes in Chax's release notes, and grab your own copy from Kent Sutherland's site.
Google Importer - search Google with Spotlight
Google Importer is a Spotlight plug-in that can add a Google search to the list of results Spotlight returns. It is installed as a System Preferences pane with options to adjust how many results are gathered from Google, whether to show a link to an actual Google results page, and how many seconds to wait after the last key is typed to begin searching Google. Note: that last option only adjusts how long Spotlight waits to search Google, not the rest of your computer like many users have been asking for.I haven't tinkered around with this, but it sounds like a nice idea as long as it doesn't hang the Spotlight search too much. Google Importer is donationware and available from Caffeinated Cocoa Software.
Fill in your Address Book with GoogleFill
In an eerie example of just how much information Google can access and what users can do with it, GoogleFill is a handy plug-in that can fill an Address Book contact's address by using a Google reverse search on their phone number. The latest 1.1 version update brings UniBin goodness along with a smarter lookup process.GoogleFill is donationware and available from Longhound.com.
Saft 8.3.0
PimpMySafari noticed that Saft, a vital Safari plug-in, has been updated to version 8.3.0. New and updated features include: New feature: AutoComplete always on New feature: Tab thumbnails (like Shiira’s Tab Expose, not Omniweb style) Improvement: Also restore tab history when undoing closing tab Improvement: Undo support for closing other tabs Saft is available from haoli and sells for $12 for either Panther or Tiger, though the Tiger version is the only one being updated. A demo is available, but if you're already an owner, you can snag the 8.3.0 upgrade from haoli's Saft for Tiger download page.
Make a Delivery Automator app
I haven't tested this yet, but Make a Delivery sounds like a handy little Automator action that will create a .dmg file from the Finder items you have selected, then attach that .dmg to an email. One quirky thing, however, is that you have to move a resource folder into your Applications directory; it isn't just an action that you can use or turn into a right-click Finder plugin.In any case, if you prefer an easy way to create .dmg's for emailing (instead of zip archives), Make a Delivery might be just what you need.
MailTags 1.2.1 available, 1.3 to feature IMAP syncing
Dave Caolo posted about MailTags last August, but in case you're unfamiliar: MailTags is a fantastic plugin for Mail.app that allows you to both tag your messages and create iCal todos right from within Mail. MailTags' abilities go far beyond simply adding a few keywords though; you can also set projects, categories and priorities for messages and use all this new metadata to create a far more robust organizational system than simply filing messages in a 'todo' folder. Once MailTags is installed, a whole new set of search and rule criteria (such as due date, project, keyword and more) are baked into Mail.app for running searches or creating Smart Mailboxes and rules. It's a pretty amazing plugin, and I urge you to check out Scott Morrison's Indev site for the full details on everything MailTags is capable of.While MailTags 1.2.1 issues a host of bugfixes but no serious new features, I found out about it from this Hawk Wings post in which Tin Gaden states that MailTags 1.3 will have a new feature many users have been wishing for: IMAP tag syncing. So if you use Mail.app and MailTags on more than one Mac, you can soon keep your tags, as well as (I'm hoping) projects and priorities all in sync.With all that said, go take MailTags for a spin. It's donationware, so show Scott some PayPal love for the hard work he's putting into this most excellent of plugins.
Creammonkey is great - but where are the scripts?
I found a Safari plugin by the name of Creammonkey, which is more or less an attempt at bringing Greasemonkey's abilities to Safari's side of the fence. For those unfamiliar with Greasemonkey: it's a Firefox extension that allows savvy javascript ninjas to add functionality to websites and services, such as enabling colored labels in Gmail or displaying in-bound links for a site you're visiting.It's hard to argue that the idea of adding functionality to websites isn't cool. Even in its infancy, the promises of Creammonkey sound really slick, but my one problem so far is: where are the scripts? Creammonkey is more or less a platform, and I'm having a really hard time tracking down any scripts to plug into it - including those pictured in this screenshot I borrowed.So, to the devs of Creammonkey (or the fantastic folks at PimpMySafari): could you put together some links to scripts that'll help make Creammonkey shine? Also, to you TUAW readers: does anyone care to link scripts they've found or created? Let's get this javascript party started.
