Heinz's Email Blog June 2007 Archive

During his 35 years in and around Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven lived at 60 different addresses (some say 80). Leaving "Beethoven was here" everywhere made sense: it satisfied a restless ... Read More

IncrediMail has been updated again, this time with a very handy Format Painter that lets you copy formatting between text passages and an option that mutes background music in emails ... Read More

You know, once in a while, I hear Click Finnish!; and, grammar aside (I don't even trust my own), I wonder: what makes a Finnish click so exquisite? I'd love ... Read More

PoliteMail, polite conversation to spite all odds, now turns Outlook into an even better email marketing tool. PoliteMail 2.0 makes it easy to categorize contacts (into, say, prospects, customers and leads), ... Read More

Some tenses earned the attribute "perfect" because we use them to describe actions that have been completed: something started in the past and ended in the (sometimes immediate) past; now ... Read More

The worst RSI offender is the mouse. As you freeze the fingers in the air just above the buttons, clicking every so often with minimal motion, tiny cracks develop in ... Read More

For years, it had been nothing. Then, somebody said it contained 29 gear wheels. Today, the Antikythera mechanism is seen as a fascinating little automaton, a machine that calculated for its ... Read More

Mercury/32, the free-­for-­noncommercial-­use buzzword-­compliant mail server, has been updated with Bayesian spam filtering and graylisting. It's not all buzzwords, though. Mercury/32 4.51 also brings rules-based disclaimers, integration with the ClamAV virus ... Read More

Here I stand. Here I stand, clumsy feet adorned with attractive, freshly shined shoes, next to an attractive… but, alas, dusty, gray and sad houseplant. Maybe, just maybe, what worked ... Read More

Just like tomatoes, bananas and watermelons do not belong in the refrigerator, so files sent with an email do not belong in a large and cryptic winmail.dat attachment (unless both ... Read More

Meetings that start on time, stay on track and end early? Meetings left by people only a tiny tad more tired than the people who went in? Meetings that give ... Read More

"I'm gonna fix that last joke," the late Mitch Hedberg has been overheard saying, "by taking out all the words and adding new ones." Now, I don't know whether Outlook-QuoteFix is ... Read More

"Do not underestimate," warns my thick and trusty tourism textbook, "the customer. They observe you, even when you are not aware of it. Single guests in particular" — read closely ... Read More

NetNewsWire, the multifarious Mac RSS news feed reader, now talks to a couple of Mac favorites (like iCal for adding events from web pages or Growl for announcing new news) ... Read More

"Everybody knows" — and the wonderful Gertrude Stein insists on it, too — "that if you are too careful, you are so occupied on being careful that you are sure ... Read More

Your senses are sharper, you remember more and you savor deeper if you compare. Do not eat salmon, for example. Eat three kinds of salmon! The differences help you appreciate each ... Read More

When my apartment was new, shiny and empty, it was also new, shiny, empty and loud. the bare walls reflected and, it seemed, multiplied every sound. The kitchen, fortunately, was not ... Read More

Some things are meant to last. Until somebody figures out how to change them. Disk partitions: once carved into the mysterious "partition table" seemingly forever, tools like PartitionMagic or Beeblebrox made ... Read More

In the early 1920s, aviation was new and pilots were fearless. John C. Savage invented skywriting. Others tried attaching cloths (bearing written messages) to their planes' wings. These textiles wreaked ... Read More

In Taiwan, Father's Day is celebrated on August 8 or 8-8 or, in Mandarin Chinese, bā bā. "Father", in turn, is bàba, close enough for a happy coincidence. Most of the ... Read More

Allow me to introduce to you one of my favorite phrases. Quidquid peregrinus? means "what does a stranger know?", and you can use it whenever something escapes you. — Something, ... Read More

A shaving brush for Father's Day? A shaving brush? Don't rule it out so fast. If you want a gift for a man that over-delivers, consider a shave brush made from ... Read More

A piece of paper, maybe folded, and a pair of scissors or a sharp knife: simple ingredients yield incredible results in the hands of a skilled paper cutter (or psaligrapher). ... Read More

Nathan Zeldes has a favorite email tip. If you're unsure about a message (you want to delete it, but who knows?) Intel's "computing productivity manager" suggests you move it to ... Read More

The early catch warms the bird. Or what does the early burp do for the worm? In any event, getting up early, even habitually, is great. As a child, I strategically ... Read More

MailTags, the amazing add-on that makes Mac OS X Mail manage more than mail, now works perfectly with IMAP accounts, even synchronizing multiple installations. MailTags 2.0 also brings as many to-do ... Read More

Who fathered golf? Pick your favorite for this prestigious title from the Scots, the Chinese, and the Dutch. The latter can at least claim the name as theirs: golf is ... Read More

Capital letters are so called because they can be found at the figurative head (caput in Latin) of a sentence. Of course, capital letters also occur properly elsewhere, but IncrediMail, ... Read More

PocoMail, the great little email program, has been updated and looks a tad, well, gloomier — to match Vista, we are told. Even more noticeable (in particular if you've always ... Read More

It began really, really hot. It stayed hot. Then it grew colder and colder. My new apartment is equipped with a new water heater. New for me, but not brand new: ... Read More