What's next for .Mac, Apple's much-maligned online service offering for OS X users? TUAW has learned that .Mac will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC, as new users will migrate to the new MobileMe service (not too shocking, given the swirling rumors as of late). Existing users will have their @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to their @me.com address in perpetuity, which should provide some relief for nervous .Mac users who depend on that email.
MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe -- calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we've heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that's a technical term). Apple should also be updating the .Mac dependent applications (iChat, iWeb, iPhoto etc.) to work with the new service. The new service will be backwards compatible with .Mac protocols for the time being -- so developers will not have to rush out updates as soon as they hear the official word.
MobileMe is scheduled to be available sometime in late June/early July. We have also heard reports that the latest build of the iPhone beta firmware (2.0) has already undergone revisions to handle the new MobileMe service. Some of the features of the service on iPhone will include: over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendars, and photos. Interestingly, there is also a Windows version of MobileMe planned.
Though we're confident in the source of this information, this is still a rumor until Apple reveals all. We should hear more information about MobileMe at the World Wide Developer's Conference starting on Monday (June 9th).
Objective Decision released a free update to their oddly-named flagship product Contactizer. A powerful, Sync Services-savvy personal information manager (PIM) application, Contactizer 3.6 comes in Pro and Express flavors depending on your needs.
I used an earlier version of Contactizer last year and was impressed with its power, although I did run into issues with how it synced with iCal and Address Book. One of the best features from my viewpoint was the ability to track tasks throughout an entire project using the Project Manager mode (see screenshot above). Contactizer also did a great job of handling mail merges, and I found the way that it integrated email information into my contact list to be very helpful.
The update includes a Leopard-only Cover Flow mode that displays contacts as business cards, an improved sync system that works with multiple calendars, a quick entry panel for tasks, and a number of other user interface improvements.
The process requires you to edit some .plist files within Address Book.app. LifeHacker notes that the .plist entry only occurs when you sync some type of iPod first. So, you will need to do at least one sync for the entry to show up. Some of the comments seem to suggest that the .plist entry will change back to the original value once you sync an iPod a couple times. Even still, this is a cool hack.
Just last week we noted that BusySync 2, which adds Google calendar syncing to the iCal sync app, is now shipping. Another 2.0 would seem to be around the corner, as a post on the SpanningSync blog shows a video demo of Address Book -> Google contact synchronization coming in the next version of the utility.
While Plaxo and other tools are lining up to take on the contact sync challenge -- most sync only in one direction right now, although with the Google contacts API in play that's going to change -- it's nice to see SpanningSync picking up the torch on contacts as the competition on calendaring heats up.
iTunes has an update for the new iPod Classic and the new Nanos, and while the update doesn't have a description at all, MacRumors sez:
Improved CoverFlow
Quicker menus
And the much awaited video out fix, among a few other interface tweaks
Apparently there's a new option that will "Ask" users to output video when a compatible cable is connected. And some people say that the calendar and contacts will synch better as well, although I have the same reservations I have whenever I hear about unlisted feature updates -- if Apple did make it better, why didn't they want to tell us? Wouldn't they want us to know the iPod works better than ever?
At any rate, if you think it works better, then more power to you-- enjoy your updated iPod. As always, the update can be grabbed by connecting up your Classic or Nano to iTunes and hitting "Check for Updates."
Web 2.0 is great and all, but I bought a Mac to utilize the power of Mac OS X and its software. While working in a browser certainly has its advantages, I believe that the sweet spot of getting work done shouldn't force the user into choosing between two appealing environments. The sweet spot of which I am speaking, of course, is integration and sync - the much sought-after, hard-to-find features that some companies offer with their products, while others at least leave the door open for enterprising 3rd parties to pick up the slack. Fortunately, one of the 'others' I speak of is 37signals with Highrise, their popular web-baesd contact and correspondence app, and the enterprising 3rd party in this case is Simon Menke, developer of Greatascent. This is one of the hands-down coolest plug-ins I've seen in a while that unites web 2.0 with what I like to call desktop 2.0 - the place where desktop apps can interact and sync with online services.
Greatascent, currently in a private beta, is a plug-in for Address Book (and soon other parts of Mac OS X) that serves as a middle man between the contacts on your Mac and those in Highrise. In its early beta state, Greatascent can pull down the contacts you're already working with in Highrise, but its real appeal is allowing you to drag and drop contacts from Address Book onto a new group that is added (pictured) to instantly sync them up to Highrise. Once synchronized, however, another gem of working in Highrise is brought to the desktop: from Address Book's File menu, you can select a Highrise contact and create a new Highrise note or task that is then synched up to the service. Read on after the jump for some screenshots and details of just how cool this plug-in can get.
Now that you have a usable snippet of the music from the iPhone commercials with which to start making your spoofs, how about a default set of contacts so you don't post anyone's private information for the whole world to see? Thanks to a clever reader by the name of Stephen Kenny, TUAW is now hosting this copy of the 60 phony contacts set up in the demo iPhones in Apple Stores. In case you're wondering, yes: this means you too can have John Appleseed in your iPhone!
The primary idea here is that you can simply sync these contacts perhaps as a group (or the only group) to your iPhone and only use those when demoing making fun of any of its features. Adding them all to a specific group in Address Book will help you keep things organized (both on and off screen), and you can easily delete them once you get all those spoofs uploaded to YouTube. Plus, your friends and coworkers will thank you for not putting their phone number or home address in too public of a place.
Without further adieu, here is the 5.2MB zip file containing 60 contacts that won't mind being spotlighted in your iPhone spoof ads. This zip file contains a vCard file, ripe for importing into Address Book (and possibly Entourage/Outlook as well) and synching with your iPhone.
Address Book is one of Apple's apps that might seem too basic at first glance to many a user. While this under-appreciation could largely be due to its unassuming name, Address Book offers a surprising amount of useful features, especially in the contact management department. Of course, there are the typical Apple-esque Smart Groups which you can use to automatically and dynamically round up contacts based on any criteria you want (family last names, employers or even notes you add yourself), but check out the Card menu in Address Book and note two options: Merge Selected Cards and (my personal favorite since I play with way too much synching software in the name of TUAW and Download Squad) Look for Duplicate Entries. Those are two great tools for ensuring your contacts only take up one entry each in Address Book (if you only want one entry for each, that is), and I highly recommend using Look for Duplicate Entries if things get out of hand, as it's saved me countless hours after botched synching sessions and wayward synching software had their way with my contacts.
Importing new contacts cards (usually .VCF files) is nothing very special, but Address Book is pretty smart when you import a card for someone already in you contacts list. Typically, Address Book will catch the potential duplication and offer you four options for managing both the old and new cards. A window will be presented with four buttons along the bottom: Keep Old, Keep New, Keep Both and Update, allowing you to ensure that you don't blow away old data you want to keep for the contact while importing anything new you might need.
Combine some of these tricks and tools with the Mail + Address Book tips Merlin Mann wrote about back in April, and you have some pretty powerful tools for managing your contacts and organizing the correspondence you have with them.
The busy bees at Chronos have indeed been... busy. Not to be content with the recent release of SOHO Notes 6, the company has gone ahead and dropped SOHO Organizer 6, their "powerful contact, calendar and note manager" that could be compared to an Entourage on steroids (that doesn't suck), sans the email component, but including SOHO Notes. Adding to a list of roughly a zillion already existing features, SOHO Organizer 6 brings calendar publishing to the web, connecting to CalDAV servers for collaborative editing, calendar import/exporting and - naturally - subscribing to published calendars. As SOHO Organizer 6 brings some features that are really focused on the business user, its $99 price will likely also appeal to the more power and business users in the crowd.
For those who are upgrading or need more than one license, a $49.99 price is offered to users of SOHO Organizer 5.x, and family packs are available.
No matter how you identify with the computing aspect of your life being able to take your contacts and calendar on the go can be pretty invaluable, especially if you have more than three friends and your iCal has more colored blocks than a Rubix Cube. But how can you figure out which device(s) on your wishlist will actually work with Mac OS X's built-in syncing app, iSync? Should you dig through the annals of individual manufacturer's support pages? Or perhaps post across multiple forums for someone - anyone - to answer the call of your syncing questions? No I say! Do not go gently into that convoluted mess of neglected support docs and clunky forum systems!
Bad literature jokes and drama aside, Apple maintains a pretty up-to-date list of iSync-friendly devices on their own. If you're definitely looking for a phone that syncs, this list should help make the decision pretty black and white. However, I say this with a word of caution: while this list is thorough and updated fairly often (typically listing new phone models before they hit the street), it isn't 100% complete in that Apple doesn't always list related model numbers. For example: Cingular had a Sony Ericsson w600 available for quite some time, and it was listed at Apple's iSync devices page. I picked up an unlocked w800i a while back (killer non-Smartphone with a great camera, by the way) - a similar phone with a near-identical version of the OS that synced perfectly fine with my Mac, but Apple didn't list the w800 line until that phone officially came to US Cingular stores. Why is anybody's guess, but the point is: if you have your eyes on a phone that is related by model number to a phone on Apple's list, chances are that it should work with iSync just fine. That said, if you aren't too familiar with a phone that isn't on this list, you should probably still hit up a couple forums to make sure before you thrown down hundreds of dollars on a device that might not actually shake hands with iSync (in other words: that's a disclaimer so you don't sue me).
Lastly, for most Smartphone devices which aren't on this list (outside of Symbian, of course), there are always products like PocketMac and the Missing Sync which can handle syncing BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.
Mailboxer is a simple little program (it doesn't even have a proper icon) that automatically generates a Smart Mailbox within Mail.app for each contact in your Address Book (or you can set it only to generate Smart Mailboxes for the contacts which appear in a Group you've named "Mailboxer"). The idea is to give "you convenient access to all conversations you had with each of your contacts." As you can see here it has made a folder "AB" within which is a separate Mailbox for each of the contacts I put in the "Mailboxer" Group in my Address Book. This looks like it could be a very convenient way of keeping on top of email conversations with specific people without always having to go to the search field. And of course this should be combined with our Mail new window tip from yesterday, thus taking you to ever higher flights of email productivity!
Do It is quite possibly the most feature-packed mini-todo widget app ever written. For a birds-eye view, it features integration with Quicksilver, Address Book and iCal, as well as .Mac syncing and AppleScript-ability. As Tim Gaden puts it: the only thing missing is a kitchen sink.
Fundamentally, Do It is (surprise) a todo manager. But thanks to shaking hands with all these other apps, you can import/export todos from iCal, install an Address Book contextual menu item for easy contact reminder creation, add items from the most excellent Quicksilver or simply make it do nearly anything you want with the power of AppleScript.
Despite all this impressive functionality, Do It remains freeware and available from Jim McGowan's site.
[Update: my bad - Do It is an app, not a widget. I tried this app out a little while ago, and in finally getting around to writing it up, I mixed this up with another todo widget I just found. Sorry guys.]
A deal-breaker for many potential Thunderbird users is its lack of integration with Mac OS X's Address Book. While we found a web-based exporting tool back in January that worked for some users, plenty of others have their reasons for sticking with Apple's digital rolodex.
We've heard about unofficial Thunderbird builds and plugins that can allow it to use contacts from Address Book, but it seems their developmental progress has been stop and go over the past year. Enter Robert Coleman, a quintessential knight in coding armor who has released an updated build of Thunderbird that traverses the void between Mozilla's and Apple's address books - though it isn't without a little bit of fiddling and a catch. Robert had to post some vital instructions with the build which you must follow before you can get your hands on the goods, so read carefully. The catch? Address Book integration is read-only; you can't add new contacts from Thunderbird, but hey - it's a start.
Pod2Go, the versatile information manager for your iPod, has updated to v1.6.4 with various improvements and a name change to Life2Go (Did Kevin get a call from Apple about his choice in application names?). A v1.0 is also available for Windows (traitor!), though I don't know if that is a recent development with this name change.
Updates to the application itself including switching to WeatherBug for all weather information, significant changes to the Notes output and Mail storage, more specific syncing progress and more.
A demo of Life2Go is available, while a full license runs for $12.99.
What's next for .Mac, Apple's much-maligned online service offering for OS X users? TUAW has learned that .Mac will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC, as new users will migrate to the new MobileMe service (not too shocking, given the swirling rumors as of late). Existing users will have their @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to their @me.com address in perpetuity, which should provide some relief for nervous .Mac users who depend on that email.
Did last night's news of 
iTunes has an update for the new iPod Classic and the new Nanos, and while the update doesn't have a description at all, 
Web 2.0 is great and all, but I bought a Mac to utilize the power of Mac OS X and its software. While working in a browser certainly has its advantages, I believe that the sweet spot of getting work done shouldn't force the user into choosing between two appealing environments. The sweet spot of which I am speaking, of course, is integration and sync - the much sought-after, hard-to-find features that some companies offer with their products, while others at least leave the door open for enterprising 3rd parties to pick up the slack. Fortunately, one of the 'others' I speak of is 37signals with 
Now that you have a usable snippet of 
Address Book is one of Apple's apps that might seem too basic at first glance to many a user. While this under-appreciation could largely be due to its unassuming name, Address Book offers a surprising amount of useful features, especially in the contact management department. Of course, there are the typical Apple-esque Smart Groups which you can use to automatically and dynamically round up contacts based on any criteria you want (family last names, employers or even notes you add yourself), but check out the Card menu in Address Book and note two options: Merge Selected Cards and (my personal favorite since I play with way too much synching software in the name of TUAW and Download Squad) Look for Duplicate Entries. Those are two great tools for ensuring your contacts only take up one entry each in Address Book (if you only want one entry for each, that is), and I highly recommend using Look for Duplicate Entries if things get out of hand, as it's saved me countless hours after botched synching sessions and wayward synching software had their way with my contacts.
The busy bees at Chronos have indeed been... busy. Not to be content with 
No matter how you identify with the computing aspect of your life being able to take your contacts and calendar on the go can be pretty invaluable, especially if you have more than three friends and your iCal has more colored blocks than a 
Do It is quite possibly the most feature-packed mini-todo 
A deal-breaker for many potential Thunderbird users is its lack of integration with Mac OS X's Address Book. While we found a 
