You can also watch the full quality version here (28MB).

The new version, released to coincide with Macworld earlier this month, includes a number of new features that really up the ante in terms of Mac integration. It’s a significant enough release that I’m giving Postbox another go as my primary email client, since I still have an emotionally draining relationship with Apple Mail and would love to kick that habit once and for all.

Address Book

Maybe most useful among the new features, at least for those coming over from Mail, and most definitely for MobileMe subscribers, is the new Address Book app integration. By default, the new 1.1.1 release of Postbox for Mac will use your Address Book contacts instead of creating its own database. You can opt to turn this feature off if for some reason you’d rather keep things separate. Any new contacts you create from within Postbox will also create new Address Book cards for those individuals, so it works both ways.

Spotlight Search

Also important for people making the jump from Mail is complete Spotlight access to all of your Postbox-stored mail. Message bodies, header info and attachment names will all now show up as hits when searching using Spotlight (as long as it’s enabled in Postbox. You have to turn this feature on, since it’s off by default). Spotlight integration is also a two-way street, since you can now right-click on any highlighted word in any email and select “Search in Spotlight” from the contextual menu to run a search.

iCal

iCal integration is now a two-way street in this latest release, too. Meeting notifications will automatically be sent in the background, and choosing “Mail Event” from the right-click menu in iCal should open a new Postbox message, so long as you’ve set the app as your default email client. Mail.app may still open too, but if this happens, Postbox has a quick fix to ensure things work properly the next time:

• Within the Finder, right-click on the iCal icon and then select Show Package Contents.
• Navigate to the “Contents” folder, then the “Resources” folder. Right-click on the folder called “Scripts” and select “Get Info.”
• Expand the “Sharing & Permissions” box and click the Lock icon in the lower right-hand corner to unlock this setting. Change any permissions that are listed as “Read Only” to “Read & Write.”
• Restart Postbox.

iPhoto

Something I always really liked about Postbox was its easy to use, built-in content filters that would allow you to see all your images, links and attachments at a glance with a single mouse click. The Postbox developerss have taken that functionality a step further with this new version, allowing you to export any image attachments in your mailbox directly to iPhoto. You’ll need to go through the somewhat lengthy process of completely indexing your inbox before you can do this, but it’s a really nice little feature that’s well worth the wait, especially if you have a lot of shutter-happy relatives and friends, as I do.

Many Other Improvements

There’s lots of little additions and under the hood improvements in version 1.1.1 of Postbox, too. One of the better ones is the ability to drag any icon to the Postbox icon in the dock and have it automatically create a new email with that file as an attachment. It’s a small thing, but it’s also indicative of the kinds of refinements put into this version aimed at making it more than a match for its native Apple competitor, and for other popular options like Mozilla Thunderbird, too. Postbox is free to try for 30 days, so give it a shot, especially if you’re a Mac user who’s had enough of Mail.

Are you a Postbox user? What do you think of the new version?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Email: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated

The Windows portable apps suites seem to better known,  but I came across a slew of free Mac portable apps while researching another topic, so I thought I would share them here, as they should be useful if you ever have to “hot seat” on a customer’s Mac or breathe some life into an older Mac that may not have all the software you require. In each case, the install routine follows Mac standards, which makes installation from a Flash drive simple and quick.

Portable GIMP. The popular open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop is available as a portable application, which can come in handy if you work on projects where graphics applications are in short supply. It requires X11 to run.

Portable Firefox. Mozilla Firefox isn’t always available on our clients’ machines, but Portable Firefox is an easy alternative to pack along for testing or other activities. While this version of Firefox is compatible with extensions, you are best keeping it “lean and mean” if running Firefox from a USB drive. Portable Firefox will let you import your local Firefox preferences if they are available on the machine.

Portable Camino. If Firefox isn’t your browser of choice, you can use Portable Camino to meet your portable browsing needs. The good news is that the portable browser’s features are on a par with the full version.

Portable Adium. This portable version of the popular multiprotocol and open-source Instant Messaging client supports AIM, GTalk, Yahoo and Jabber IM. Portable Adium lets you import your local Adium preferences if they are available.

Portable Nvu. The portable version of Nvu can come in handy if you need a text editor for editing HTML and other files.

Portable AbiWord. Portable AbiWord is a great portable word processor for most general word processing uses.

Portable OpenOffice.org. There is a portable version of the popular open-source office suite available. However, the only stable version is for the PPC platform, with the Intel version still in testing and not ready for use yet.

Remember, if you plan to take a USB flash drive with portable apps to a client site for use of one of their machines, you should always check their IT security policy, because they may have security restrictions in place.

Do you use Mac portable apps? Which ones?

Citrix Online — best known for Windows-based web conferencing and remote access tools — recently brought out GoToMy PC for the Mac. It’s available with a 30-day free trial, plus a range of pricing, depending on your needs.

Installing GoToMyPC on your Mac

Installing GoToMyPC on my MacBook Pro running OS X Snow Leopard was straightforward. The installation routine even does a good job of having you set an access code (different than your GoToMyPC login) for accessing the Mac remotely. With this install, you are setting up your Mac as the remote host — you’ll be logging into this machine from another one.

One thing I found strange was that after installing the software, it joins your system preferences. However, clicking on the GoToMyPC icon in system preferences only produces a button for uninstalling it from your Mac. This was kind of confusing, because I was expecting some configuration tools, and it seems to break from accepted Mac standards.

To remotely access your host, you’ll need to be at a client computer (any computer other than the host you just set up) and you will need to know your email address, password and access code.

Accessing your Host PC Remotely

I give Citrix Online top marks for the browser-based experience for accessing your Mac through GoToMyPC. To access your host computer, you just go to www.gotomypc.com, enter your email and password and click “Log In.” GoToMyPC can handle more than one account per email address.

You then have to enter your access code for the host. Click OK, and then the desktop of your host Mac appears in the Viewer. This means you are live on your host machine and able to work on it just like you were sitting in front of it. While writing this post, I was able to access my MacBook Pro running OS X Snow Leopard from a PC running Windows XP SP3. The one thing I didn’t have a chance to test wass accessing my Mac from a PC sitting inside a corporate firewall.

Have you tried out GoToMyPC for the Mac? Share your experience below.

In this post, I’m going to explore some project management apps for the Mac that fit that vision because they offer intuitive user interfaces and flexible views over project data.

OmniPlan

OmniPlan from OmniGroup — one of the brightest minds in Mac productivity applications — includes an intuitive user interface with customizable views.

Task management in OmniPlan takes an outline approach, which is good for users who aren’t full-time project managers. From the outline view, you can track the costs associated with your tasks (resource cost, task cost and total); view task constraints and dependencies; and create milestones that represent completion points in your project.

I came to OmniPlan for my own project management needs because I was looking for a reasonably lightweight project management application and was already using OmniFocus, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner Pro. One worry I did have was that I work with clients standardized on Microsoft Project, but OmniPlan can import and export MS Project files, and looking at my projects I saw most schedules were saved as PDF before they were distributed to the project team anyway, which took my worry off the table.

OmniPlan costs $149.95 for a single license (a free trial is available).

SharedPlan Pro

SharedPlan Pro from SharedPlan offers a project sketching tool (with network diagramming) and an online project editor with additional views, including Gantt chart and resource views. It also includes some more complex project management features including reports, analysis tools and management tools, offering flexibility as to how you can slice, dice and otherwise present project data.

You can easily overlook version management of project schedules, but Shared Plan includes version management features enabling you to compare previous project versions and check historical information.

SharedPlan Pro is available for Mac, Windows and Linux and costs $99.95/user (free trial available). A free iPhone application is also available.

Merlin2

Merlin2 is another strong Mac project management offering that includes several views of project data, including Activities, a comprehensive Gantt chart, Netplan, Resources and Utilization.

The Merlin2 Library is a source for project-specific information. You can drag and drop information from the library to any of your active projects. Out of the box, the library contains a range of documents and activities for general projects. You also have the option to customize the library to meet your respective project needs.

Merlin2 costs $210, with a free trial available. There is also an iPhone application available.

Which Mac-based project management application do you use?

The word processors I’m going to look at in this post all have a short learning curve because they stick to Mac interface standards, so you’ll be able to be productive quickly, which is always a good thing.

Take a good look at the documents you produce and the features you need; one of these word processors might be a ready alternative for you, especially if you are working on an older Mac and don’t want to invest in a costly Microsoft Office license.

Bean. This free word processor has a light footprint which can be important if you don’t need all of the features (and bloat) that Microsoft Word brings with it. It requires a Mac with a PPC or Intel processor running OS X 10.4 Tiger, OS X 10.5 Leopard, or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so it can even be an option if you are trying to bring life to an older Mac. This is a great alternative word processor if you don’t need features on the level of Microsoft Word.

Mariner Write. This word processor was part of the last MacHeist offering, and includes a well-designed menu structure, spelling/grammar checker, and support for many document formats, inlcluding Mariner Write (a proprietary format), Stationary, RTF – MS Word, RTF – Mariner Write, Text, SimpleText, TeachText and PDF. While I liked Mariner Writer during my testing, its incomplete support for Microsoft Word — a standard document format for many of my client projects — makes unlikely to adopt it for my professional writing projects. It costs $49.95.

Pages ‘09. Part of iWork ‘09, Pages is a very capable word processor that includes a wide range of templates, advanced features like table of contents, tables, shapes, sharing via iWork .com (covered by Imran), and the option of saving documents in MS Word format. My testing of conversions to Word format were hit or miss so I recommend testing for yourself through the software’s 30-day free trial prior to purchasing it ($79.00).

Nisus Writer Express. This Mac word processor comes with Nisus Thesaurus as part of the same download package. As a word processor, it includes a document manager, paragraph sorting, document styles, tables and macros. It does not include a table of contents feature (unfortunately, a deal breaker for me). It costs $45 (a free trial is available).

What is your Mac word processor of choice? Share it below.

The heart of Waveboard is the menu system, which offers productivity enhancements that the current version of the Google Wave web app is lacking:

• File. While the File menu in the free version includes the typical menu options, the Pro version adds options for “Save Wave As” and “Print Wave.”
• Edit. The Edit menu includes options for Copy Wave ID, Copy URL, Spelling and Grammar (part of my Google Wave wishlist!), Substitutions, and Transformations. These editing tools are going to be very useful for any Google Wave users looking to do any serious document editing of blips (the single messages inside a wave) and waves.
• Wave. The Wave menu includes options for editing and manipulating blips.

Waveboard and Google Wave Productivity

Much like my review of Waveboard 2 for the iPhone, I see productivity enhancements in the Waveboard Mac as features that should or could be part of Google Wave. My hope is that the developers behind Waveboard stay in the Google Wave development community to play a part in the maturing of the platform through extensions, gadgets and applications.

While at first, I wasn’t sure about the necessity of a Waveboard Mac, the menu system and additional features that I would like to see in Google Wave help me use it more productively in collaborating with my clients. If Waveboard on the iPhone is the version that gets more attention, it is Waveboard Mac that provides more productivity and functionality for us users.

Have you used Waveboard Mac? Share your experience in the comments.

That includes OmmWriter, a new writing application for the Mac. It promises a very unique experience, one that aims to reduce distraction and enable you to maintain your focus. Part of that strategy is full-screen text editing, which has been done before, but that’s only the beginning of OmmWriter’s story.

The other part of the story? A snow-covered field, white-out conditions, and a couple of lonely looking trees. And a soundtrack of calming, ambient instrumental music. I was watching “Glee” when I tried the app out for the first time, so I initially thought a musical number was starting up, but then I realized that the sounds were coming from my computer speakers. I can honestly say it’s the first time a word processor has played me music.

When you first boot up OmmWriter, it displays a splash screen that lets you know that it’s best to experience the program using headphones for a more immersive effect. I dutifully followed the instructions using my Apple in-ear headphones, and sure enough, I felt more like I was lost in a world of composition.

If you’re not keen on the default backdrop and music, you can change both. Two other backdrops are available, including a fabric pattern, and a completely white one. Both are preferable to the field image in my opinion, since they have no real focal point to distract the eye. There are also seven different background soundtracks to choose from. OmmWriter remembers your choice, too, so you won’t have to reconfigure your work space with every boot.

I know what you’re thinking. OmmWriter sounds weird. And it is, but it’s also different. Unique, in fact. It’s rare to come across a word processor at this stage that can make the same claim. I really recommend giving it a shot, even if you’re skeptical after reading this. You may just find it’s exactly what you need to stay on track and write something great.

OmmWriter is currently available as a free beta, though you’ll have to sign up at the site with your email address to get the download link.

Has OmmWriter helped improve your focus?

Let’s get to that great news first. While the “new” web browser has now been available for download to Windows users for over a year (the beta was first released last September), Mac users only recently got access to a stable developer’s build of Chromium, and that’s far from a release version of the software. Luckily, the new Mac beta is said to be on track for an early December release.

I’ve been dying to use Chrome’s ultra-clean interface and separately-processed tabs for my work online, which often sees tabs numbering in the double digits, spread across many windows and three screens. If I was really diligent about documenting it, I could probably come up with a pretty solid number about how much productive time I’ve lost dealing with recovering or recreating data after a Firefox tab-related crash. That’s what you owe me, so-late-as-to-be-offensive Chrome Mac beta build!

As for the Wave side of things, Google now allows users to “Follow” or “Unfollow” any public wave. That means that important ones will remain or reappear in your inbox as they are updated, while ones that you’re not particularly interested in will remain out of sight and out of mind. Experienced Wave users will note that “Unfollow” replaces “Mute,” allowing you to remove Waves you’ve started or been added to specifically, so that updates to them will no longer appear in your inbox. Google explains the new feature in detail at the official Wave blog (and if you’re still not sure what Wave could be used for, check out “Google Wave Explained” over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro)

Even though I’m mad at it for keeping Chrome for Mac from me for so long, I have to admit that Google has been on a hot streak lately when it comes to innovation for web workers. Even if I’m not automatically in love with everything it’s putting out there, I am in love with the fact that they’re putting out so much of it.

Are you looking forward to trying out Chrome on your Mac?

Twitt is a new, lightweight Mac Twitter client that has some interesting features I haven’t yet found elsewhere. Can it compete with perennial favorites Tweetie and TweetDeck, though? Using both those programs regularly has set my expectations fairly high, but Twitt definitely counts some surprising twists among its repertoire.

Good Things

Twitt displays your Twitter stream like an iChat conversation. It’s an interface that’s familiar to Mac users, and it fully supports themes, including user-generated ones. It comes with two, the default iChat style and an iPhone theme that is much darker. I still prefer the look of Tweetie overall, but having options is always nice, and some users will value it over other UI considerations.

I also like that there’s a compose window at the bottom, which you can optionally hide. It’s preferable to me to always have a field for posting in view, since I find it actually makes me much more likely to actually tweet on a regular basis, something which I find myself doing less and less of since I started using Tweetie as my main Twitter workhorse.

Filters is another thing Twitt has going for it. The app allows you, via a preference panel, to specify terms that Twitt will then look for in your stream. It’ll then automatically hide tweets containing said keywords, effectively enabling you to filter out annoying trending topics or ongoing conversations you aren’t particularly interested in.

Not So Good Things

I’m hesitant to say “bad things,” because none of Twitt’s features are set in stone, and these can still be changed in later editions, but as it stands, there are a few failings the program has mean I won’t be changing horses anytime soon.

First of all, Twitt only supports one account at a time. That’s good news for people who want to keep things simple, I suppose, but if you have more than one Twitter account to monitor or manage, you’re out of luck with Twitt. For my line of work, that’s a dealbreaker. You can log out of your current account and sign in with another easy enough, but why bother when other clients offer much simpler account switching mechanisms.

Second, there isn’t any mechanism for in-line viewing of conversations that I can find. Nor is there a means to view profiles, follow, or do any of the other fun stuff that I’ve come to expect after using Tweetie and TweetDeck for so long. Without these features, I’m afraid Twitt will remain little more than a quaint alternative for Twitter amateurs, instead of a fully-fledged professional tool.

Conclusion

If you’re using Twitter as more of an IM client and less of an RSS replacement and/or brand management outlet, then there’s definitely something to be said for Twitt’s simplistic approach. Things work as you’d expect them to in an IM client. Clicking on someone’s portrait enters their username into the compose field, so that you’re automatically having a conversation with that person. Ongoing conversations between others are highlighted (orange, by default) and stand out from the rest of your stream.

For my purposes, and I suspect for a lot of other web workers, Twitt just isn’t powerful enough to play with the big boys. But it does have the advantage of being free and easy to learn if you’re just starting out. Once you get your sea legs, however, I highly recommend stepping up to Tweetie or TweetDeck.

Which desktop Twitter client are you using, and why?

While many may consider SharePoint to be not exactly “Mac friendly” just yet, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The Mac user must first be set up with access to the SharePoint site or Office Live Workspace by the local admin or site owner. They must also be running the latest updates to Microsoft Office 2008. Now, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel all include the “Open from Document Connection” feature, accessible from the File menu.

Access from Microsoft Office for the First Time

From the File menu, choose “Open from Document Connection.” The “Document Connection” dialog box appears for the first time. The following illustration shows no document connections have been setup.

From here, you can set up your document connections. For this post, I am going to connect to an Office Live Workspace,  but the steps to connect to a SharePoint site are nearly identical. Choose “Add Location,” and then “Sign in to an Office Live Workspace.”  An authentication dialog box appears:

Once you log in, the Office Live Work Space or SharePoint site file library appears:

Once you’ve opened the document connection, you have the following options:

• Add Location. You can access multiple locations from an open connection. Accessible locations for you then appear on the left side of the dialog.
• Add File. With the Add File option, you can upload additional files from your Mac’s local hard drive or other accessible file location.
• Edit. The Edit option opens the selected file in its native application.
• Read. The Read option enables you to read the selected file in its native application.

If you are logged into a SharePoint site, you’ll have options to Upload, Check Out, Check In, and Discard files.

Working On the Mac in a Microsoft Windows World

The addition of the Open Document Connection feature may not satisfy every Mac-using web worker who has to access files from an Office Live Workspace or SharePoint site, but at least now, Mac-using web workers aren’t quite as shut out as they once might have been.

Have you tried accessing SharePoint or Office Live Workspaces using Office 2008 Mac? Share your experiences below.

Citrix’s GoToMeeting, part of the Citrix Online collaborative suite, is one such service. It also meets one of my other prime requirements — the client is easily installable by users of all levels. One thing that will spoil a web conference before it’s even started is when participants have a hard time installing the local client so they can’t join the conference. This issue can happen to even the most experienced web worker, not just the technology neophyte.

I am sticking with the Mac client for this post, but Citrix also provides a similar user experience and features in the Windows version. Neither client is a permanent install. Web Workers and Web Conferencing Today’s web conferencing tools have to be more than just a venue for team meetings — they need to be full collaboration tools to help web workers and their project teams communicate seamlessly. Citrix GoToMeeting Features

Citrix GoToMeeting for the Mac supports up to 15 conference participants, and includes the following features:

• Screen Sharing. Screen sharing is useful for online demonstrations, collaboration on documents and spreadsheets, and online training. As travel budgets remain tight, screen sharing and some creativity can help geographically dispersed project teams stay in sync on projects.
• Meeting Recording and Playback. Taking meeting minutes is an archaic, mundane, and bureaucratic task, and GoToMeeting includes meeting recording and playback which keeps an audio and screen recording of the entire online meeting. This is a better record, because it spares the misunderstandings and gaps that can sometimes creep into note taking. It is also more efficient for an online team to move to meeting recording because participants can better focus on the meeting. UPDATE: the Mac version of GoToMeeting doesn’t support meeting recording — it’s only available on the Windows version.
• VoIP and Telephone Support. Web conference attendees can dial into the conference via a VoIP or landline phone. Currently, GoToMeeting offers free VoIP and phone conferencing. You also have an option to use your computer’s mic and speakers for conducting audio communications.

Launching meetings takes place within a few clicks, making GoToMeeting an ideal choice for teams that need a web conferencing platform that users of varying levels will have no problem using.

GoToMeeting is available for purchase from GoToMeeting.com. (A free trial is available.) The site includes the latest licensing and pricing information.

Which web conferencing tool do you use?

I haven’t used Bento since it was first released, so a lot is new to me. For the purposes of this review, I won’t be detailing what’s changed so much as what strikes me as most useful about the program from a web working angle, since I imagine many of you will be new to the software as well.

The Basics

By default, Bento looks somewhat unassuming. It lists databases that already exist on your computer, whether you were thinking of them as such or not. That includes your Address Book contacts, your iCal events and tasks and your iPhoto library. It also lists a category called “Projects,” which starts out with dummy content for demo purposes. So, out of the box (pardon the pun), Bento is a convenient, all-in-one storage spot for all of your existing work and play-related Mac data that looks great to boot. But it can be more than that, too.

You’ll notice that in addition to the nicely-designed interface, the entry screens associated with items in your databases provide more customizability than their counterparts in the apps themselves. Address book entries, for example, can be browsed in an Excel-like list view, or in a grid-style view that’s reminiscent of one of the ways of browsing your albums in iTunes. Each entry has all the data that your Address Book card includes, but you can customize them further, adding photos, objects, text fields, or many other things.

Bento for CRM

That comes in handy when you want to use Bento as a CRM application. You can include details like known family members, business partners, and associates, all through your own custom fields. Add a preferred meeting place, best time of day to contact, corporate gifting schedule, or whatever else you may need to keep track off. Attach meeting notes or agenda files to keep a record of your interaction with said customer. It truly can be as powerful as you need it to be.

Bento for PM

As project management software, Bento is equally versatile. You can attach the same sort of custom fields to your projects here, and tie them to your address book and other collections for easy, single location access. If you need to open iCal or another app to check or change something directly, Bento can do that for you, too.

Keeping track of complex, multi-staged projects can be difficult, but Bento has a Smart Collections feature which should allow you to navigate even the most treacherous of prolonged endeavors. Set filters to catch all entries under a specific budget, for example, or by end or start date, or by the PM assigned to the task in question. It’s a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks without having to manually comb through every entry.

Bento for Everything

There’s countless uses of Bento for those working from home, so I won’t go into much more detail here, but it does feature handy, pre-made templates for time-tracking, inventory management, expense monitoring and issue tracking. It might take a little more setting up than tools designed specifically for those purposes, since it is made to be a jack-of-all-trades, rather than a master of one, but that also means it could become an end-t0-end solution for all of your business needs if you put in the time and effort to make it so.

Bento 3 is available as a free trial from Filemaker. The full version will run you $49.99 U.S. for a single user license, or $99.99 for a five-user family copy. Those who already own previous versions of Bento (either 1 or 2) are eligible for a $20 rebate. The way I see it, $50 is not a very high asking price for something that could easily do the job of three or four other programs, but try it out first to see if it fits your working style.

What programs do you currently use to manage your work-related databases on Mac or PC? Do you think pleasing aesthetics affect your database-related work one way or another?

The upgrade costs $20, while a brand-new license will set you back $30. YoJimbo 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later and is a universal application that works on both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs (a free trial is available). You can synchronize data between two Macs if you have a MobileMe account.

This application excels at organizing bits of information you might like to use later, including notes, bookmarks, images, serial numbers and web archives. I started using Yojimbo when I was looking for a repository for my passwords, software serial numbers, and some important documents I keep in PDF format, because I’m better organized electronically than I am with paper files in a filing cabinet.

Improvements in Yojimbo 2.0 This latest release makes a number of usability refinements and new feature additions that should help to keep Yojimbo ahead of the pack:

Tag Explorer. As I try to improve my own personal and professional information management, tagging is playing an increasingly important role. If you want to use tagging to manage your information, then it’s useful to know the relationships between your tags and your stored information. The Tag Explorer is a new feature that helps you to discover these relationships. I can already see the Tag Explorer getting a workout as I try to make better use of the new tagging features in this release.

Quick Input Panel. The Quick Input Panel now lets you flag and add comments before creating an item, an interesting little productivity tweak. When capturing a URL, you now also get the name of the page, which will save you having to re-enter it. During my tests of the new Quick Input Panel, I did find the process faster than with the previous version. PDF Workflow. PDF support was one of the drivers that brought me to Yojimbo, because I needed a tool that let me better manage the PDF documents I have than just by using folders on my hard drive. This latest version enables you to set the name, tags and flag when saving a PDF to Yojimbo. The option to save any document as a PDF in Yojimbo can be very useful for capturing e-commerce receipts and other important information that you might want to store offline in our increasingly online world.

Drop Dock. The Drop Dock now includes tag collections. When you drop a new item onto a tag collection, Yojimbo applies its tags to the new item.

Combined Tag and Label Editor. This new feature enables you better control over existing tags and labels. With the added focus on tags and labels in Yojimbo 2.0, I can see myself making more use of this editor after the positive experience I had during testing it.

Yojimbo 2.0 as Your Information Organizer If you’re seeking a central repository for passwords, PDF documents and the like, then I encourage you to check out Yojimbo 2.0. Current Yojimbo users should definitely check out this latest version for its usability tweaks and new features, which take care of the application’s previous rough edges.

Have you tried out Yojimbo 2.0?

When Aliza originally reviewed the software, it was free beta release software. Now that it’s reached version 1.0, it comes with a $39.95 price tag for registration. Users can still download a free trial, so you can take Postbox through its paces before deciding to make a purchase.

I tried Postbox back when it was still in beta, right around the time Aliza originally reviewed it, and there are some definite improvements in the 1.0 release.

Better Search

One of Postbox’s main selling points is its advanced search capabilities. In Aliza’s original review, she talked about how you can search for all emails within a certain time period, or search for attachments and links within emails. Postbox also now boasts a number of search operators usable without opening the advanced settings panel, including “from:name” and “subject:keyword” if you prefer doing things all from one window.

Search and email indexing is also much faster than it used to be. Even with a large archive of messages, many of which are heavy on images and links, it took almost no time at all to download and make available my entire MobileMe archive; much less time than Mail takes to perform the same task.

More Add-ons

Add-ons like Lightning for Postbox, which brings your calendar into your Postbox window via a new tab, are a big part of the program’s appeal. There are utilities for Google Calendar access, message import/export, to-do lists, backup services, Growl notifications, and managing multiple identities on a single account. More are being developed every day, so expect the list to continue to grow.

One of my favorite Postbox-compatible plugins is ThunderBrowse, which allows you to view web pages directly in the application, without having to switch over to your browser of choice: great for digging in and really trying to conquer your inbox during a marathon session.

Easier

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what usability changes occurred between earlier betas and this final release, but in general things seem redesigned with greater ease in mind. One great example is the ability to drag and drop email messages across accounts in the sidebar. It’s great for keeping your inboxes organized according to how you want to respond to messages, instead of according to how misinformed senders might try to reach you.

Postbox’s already impressive Conversations view for threaded viewing of replies also got easier, with on-the-fly notification of updates sent while you’re reviewing. That way, if someone sends an email continuing a conversation you’re currently reading, you need only click a button to view the latest response.

A Lot More Social

Maybe the biggest change since Aliza’s early experience with Postbox is the addition of multiple social network support. Postbox users can now sign in to their Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter accounts via the application’s web services menu.

Doing so will not only allow you to post new status updates to those services via Postbox, it will also enable profile photo matching in the links/additional info sidebar to the right of the message reading window. If, for example, you get a DM from someone, Postbox will automatically retrieve that person’s current Twitter profile pic and display it. Messages you receive directly from contacts you also have on Facebook or Twitter will likewise display their profile pic from those services, though I’m not sure which takes precedence in the case of double matches.

For Aliza, the problem with switching to Postbox was that she had become so used to Gmail that learning a different system seemed like re-inventing the wheel. For me, it was that the early betas were actually fairly buggy, and just didn’t feel like something that could be a full-time solution for what is a core tool in my web working arsenal. This final version seems much, much more capable, and will definitely see full-time service on my Windows 7 machine. Will it replace Mail.app? As Aliza pointed out, old habits die hard, so we’ll have to see if I can avoid a relapse.

Let us know your thoughts on Postbox in the comments.

What Concentrate provides is different than most apps, though, in that it takes as its core philosophy reduction, rather than addition or enhancement. It’s basically like a task scheduler that works similarly to Automator actions in order to provide you with efficiency-boosting shortcuts to setup programs, block web sites, and run and kill apps, all of which lets you focus on the task at hand. 

What Do You Want to Do?

That’s the question that drives Concentrate.The idea is that you set up “Activities,” each of which is comprised of a number of individual processes or sub-actions. An Activity could be something like, say, “Work on Novel,” in which case your the sub-actions could be to kill your Twitter client, block Facebook, set your iChat status to Do Not Disturb, and open WriteRoom. You can do that for an indefinite period of time, or if you like to set aside two hours a day for novel writing, you can add a timer to the Concentrate activity that will automatically remove the restrictions on what sites you can use when your chosen amount of time expires.

In practice, Concentrate works as I expected it to, and also performs some unexpected handy tricks, like hiding all open apps not directly mentioned in any of the sub-actions associated with the activity that’s running. It also has some preset categories of web sites to block, including a social networking group that probably eliminates 75 percent of the causes of my procrastination. Unfortunately, when it kills applications, you can always just reopen them. It’d be nice if you could actually block an app from opening at all, but I’m not even sure if OS X would allow that.

It’s The Little Things

Concentrate not only provides OS X users with an extra jolt of willpower, it does so with style. Little features, like being able to play a sound to signal the start or end of an activity, or continually throughout (a ticking sound in the example activity), or the option to customize the icon for each activity, really make me feel like Concentrate is something worth paying for. You might be able to duplicate most of the app’s functionality by creating your own Automator actions, but you couldn’t do it nearly as elegantly or with as much efficiency.

You can also integrate your own Automator actions directly in Concentrate, in case there are things the program can’t do on its own. A convenient menu bar icon allows you quick access to all of your activities, without having to access the main window, and Application Groups allow you to kill multiple apps at once, the same way you can with web sites.

Concentrate is free to try for 60 hours, which should give you plenty of time to determine whether or not you enjoy taking your marching orders from a piece of software. After that initial period, it’ll cost you a $29 one-time fee for a license, which comes complete with a money back guarantee according to their site. It might be a small price to pay if you’re having a hard time blocking out distractions on your own.

Do you use software to achieve singletasking nirvana, or do you rely on willpower alone?