The problem is that you lose some of the sender/date data with these methods. There is now a simple solution using Gmail's IMAP support. Using Mail under 10.5, I set up a new account to mirror Gmail using these intructions. With IMAP configured, old mail can be simply dragged to the Gmail Inbox or Sent Mail in order to import. I not only synced my recent mail, but imported old archived mailboxes back into mail for syncing.
Now I can use one account to keep all my email accessible both locally and remotely.
One of the great new features of Safari in Leopard is the ability to create Dashboard widgets from any website. I've used it quite a bit to create widgets for sites that I check regularly. And with a little help from AppleScript and iCal, you can create a snapshot of your web-clip-loaded Dashboard for a website, or to send via email. Note that this hint does not require 10.5, as it's simply taking a screenshot of the Dashboard.
First, I created a very quick and simple AppleScript to open Dashboard, take the picture, and close the Dashboard:
Obviously, you can save it to any folder that you have for your website, or you can run a script to email it. Next, I simply created an event in iCal and set the alarm to run the script. I have it run every two hours throughout the day, so I always have a new snapshot available on the site. Lastly, I set up my router/firewall to allow remote requests, so now I can view the picture I created. I now have an updated Dashboard view (within two hours) on any computer I go to.
[robg adds: This hint could be used for any purpose, really -- the general version of the hint is to trigger a screenshot via some method (iCal in this case) and save it to a web-viewable folder (or email it). With 10.5's web clips, I can see the added value here for Dashboard if you travel around a lot from machine to machine (perhaps you do onsite tech support, for instance), and you'd like to quickly see the data from the web clips you've got set up on your home machine.]
I've often found it odd that Apple doesn't allow you to embed your .Mac Web Gallery into your website. You can, of course, use the widget to display a thumbnail of your gallery, but it takes users away from your site, and that is a bad thing.
If you use iWeb's HTML snippet found under Web widgets, you can implement an iFrame that will display your web gallery within your page. It is very simple to do and will allow your users to stay on your page while leaving all functions of the site intact. Using the following code, you can inject the Web Gallery onto any page:
You will need to change YOURNAME to the name you have chosen for .Mac, as well as ALBUMNUMBER to correspond to the album you would like to display. You can, of course, just copy the URL from your browser window and paste it after src=" -- remember to close the quotes. Your page width should be set to a minimum of 800 pixels in order to fit the frame.
I know this may be obvious to some, but it may help others out that are looking to condense and unify their online galleries.
If your network is using an authenticating proxy for web access (you need to enter a "proxy password" to access the web), then you'll have trouble if you turn on Parental Controls, as the controls will prevent you from authenticating to the proxy.
The Parental Controls feature works by directing all web access for controlled users to an internal Apache web proxy (this proxy is dynamically started when a Parental Controls user logs in). Unfortunately, this proxy eats the HTTP 407 response authentication credentials, so you end up in a never-ending loop of the proxy demanding to know who you are, and the Parental Controls proxy refusing to let you tell.
The only workaround is to disable Parental Controls for the account, in which case you'll need to log out and log back in again for the change to take effect.
For those of you who frequently download files from newsgroups, you know that you download a ton of *.rar and *.par files, but you only really care about the final resulting file. If Time Machine happens to run while you are downloading all the individual pieces, they will be retained by Time Machine, even after you think you have deleted them. This will eat up precious space on your backup drive on files you know you won't ever really want to recover.
To get around this, I created a Newsgroup Downloads folder within my regular Downloads folder. I then pointed my newsgroup clients: iGrabNews (not working with Leopard yet) and Unison to put all downloaded *.rar and *.par files into this folder. Finally, I went into the Time Machine Options in System Preferences and added the Newsgroup Downloads folder to the list of folders not to back up.
I primarily work with web servers, and I use lookupd -flushcache all of the time to clear my DNS cache.
This morning was moving some websites around using my newly-upgraded Mac, and I went to flush my DNS cache with lookupd and I got a command not found error. It seems that lookupd has been removed in 10.5 and replaced with dscacheutil.
So now I can flush my DNS cache with dscacheutil -flushcache.
Tired of embarrassing pages of spam subject lines whenever I use my webmail account, I put together these scripts which delete messages from the server that are in a certain folder on my Mac. These scripts require installing mpop, a command line POP client. The following scripts do the work; no doubt they could be refined, a lot, but they work for me.
To use the scripts, use a Mail rule or have cron run the runfilter script. This will generate a list of your current spam message-ids and run mpop. mpop will then use the filter script to see if messages on the server match your spam message listing (using message-id), and delete them if they do.
The scripts assume mpop is installed in /usr/local/bin/, that the 'filter' script is in ~/Documents » Scripts » filter, and that spam email will be found in ~/Library » Mail » Mailboxes » Spam.mbox » Messages. However, you can change these paths in the first script if you wish.
When using Gmail with an email client via POP, spam messages are never downloaded, and remain on the server until they are removed, atask that is done automatically. Sometimes, usefull emails are labeled as spam, and of course, trashed with the rest of spam. If you don't want to enter the web periodically to check your email, then the solution is to download the spam and check it in your client application.
Enter the Gmail filters, and define a new one:
In the contains words box, type is:spam, then click Continue. Click OK on the next dialog.
Select the option "Omit received (Archive)" -- sorry, I don't know the exact label in English, but it is the first one in Spanish.
Save the new filter.
From now on, your spam will be downloaded and processed by your email client. This has been tested with Mail.app sucessfully.
Privoxy v3.0.6, as installed through the Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia bundle (version 0.1.2.17), does not launch automatically on start-up. A workaround is to create a file named org.privoxy.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons that contains the following code:
The big problem with Google's Gmail (IMO) is that it is POP instead of IMAP. I can understand why, as IMAP creates a much larger server and client overhead. POP is simple: you either get a copy of the email, or not. My solution gets me the benefits of:
any email address you already own that allows forwarding (in this example, jshmoe@pobox.com) -- pobox.com was one of the first services offering a permanent email address.
Gmail spam filtering and archiving
all the benefits of an IMAP account on my iPhone
The steps:
Get an IMAP account (like dotMac or maybe your ISP has IMAP accounts) [example: jshmoe@mac.com]
Get a Gmail account [example: jshmoe@gmail.com]
In the Gmail account, under Settings » Accounts, use the Add another Email Address link to add the jshmoe@pobox.com account to the 'Send mail as' option.
Also in Gmail, under Settings » Forwarding, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to' option, and point it to jshmoe@mac.com (and archive).
Forward all mail to jshmoe@pobox.com to jshmoe@gmail.com
On the iPhone (or any IMAP client software, like Mail.app or Thunderbird.app), create a new IMAP account
On the iPhone, set the address to be the address you want email to be sent to/from. In this example, that would be the permanent address from letter "a" above: jshmoe@pobox.com (See also Variation 1 and 2 below)
On the iPhone, set the Incoming Mail server to the IMAP account in step one above [hostname: mail.mac.com; user name: jshmoe; password: whatever it is]
On the iPhone, set the Outgoing server to the Gmail account in step two [hostname: smtp.gmail.com:587; user name: jshmoe@gmail.com; password: whatever it is]
Please note, the iPhone by default will use secure SSL encrypted ports if they are available, which is always a good idea.
If your network is using an authenticating proxy for web access (you need to enter a "proxy password" to access the web), then you'll have trouble if you turn on Parental Controls, as the controls will prevent you from authenticating to the proxy.
Privoxy v3.0.6, as installed through the 