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Hawk Wings

Tips and add-ons to make Apple Mail / Mail.app even better

More Mail Stationery, for sale and for freeJuly 15 2008

Jumsoft has released a pack of additional mail stationery templates for Leopard Mail.

The pack contains 50 “high-quality and exclusive design options for every occasion”, covering Family, Congratulations, Invitations, Emotions, Vacations and Seasons themes.

An additional group are described as “Neutral”, or multi-purpose.

You can view small thumbnails of all the templates on the Jumsoft web site, but some examples of the “Neutral” category are displayed below:

    

The pack costs USD 39 and is available from Jumsoft’s web site

Battery Life: The dilemma of a 3G iPhone ownerJuly 14 2008

A short and glorious life, or a long and dull one?

Owners of the new 3G iPhone face the same dilemma put to the Greek hero Achilles by the gods of Olympus. In the end, he chose glory. But iPhone users might take a different view.

The new phone has a more power-hungry chipset. Walt Mossberg is not the only one who has found “the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20% by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day”.

I take and make much fewer calls than he does, and I notice it too.

Apple has published a page of tips to help users manage this Achilles’ heel.

Much of the advice is common sense: reduce the brightness of the screen, minimise or turn off the phone’s “push” features, turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you don’t ne

Apple’s fistful of new MobileMe technotesJuly 14 2008

Given the recent rather rocky launch of MobileMe, it is no surprise that this week’s list of new and updated technotes from Apple contains a large number of support documents relating to MobileMe.

It is one thing to read the range of complaints in the MobileMe Apple Discussion Group . It’s another thing to get a sense of big problems from the horse’s mouth itself.

Apple’s new Support offerings for MobileMe are listed at the end of this post.

All MobileMe services get a look in, but there is a concentration on Sync issues and how to deal with them.

Some of the items are more useful than others. For example, I didn’t know what the maximum size of a MobileMe email message was until I read that “you can send and receive email messages up to 20 MB in size with your MobileMe Mail account.”

On the other hand, the techn

TextExpander: 20% Discount for Hawk Wings readersJuly 10 2008

The good people at Smile on my mac, who make TextExpander, have made a kind offer.

The company are providing a special discount of 20% for Hawk Wings readers, which brings the price of the app down from its usual price tag of USD 29.95 to USD 23.96.

Further, they are willing to extend the discount to the TextExpander Family Pack, for up to five users in one household, bringing the price of that bundle down to USD 35.96 (usually USD 44.95)

To get the special, just click on this link: http://www.smileonmymac.com/hawkwings/

The offer expires at the end of the month, 31 July 2008.

What do you get for your money?

Above all, you get your life back, as the snippet manager and typing expander saves me (and my fingers) ten or fifteen minutes a day. Getting that back for a one-off charge of USD 23.96 is a bargain indeed.

See these Hawk Wings posts for more TextExpander goodness:

1.

MobileMe is live – more or less.July 10 2008

UPDATE: Apologies. I jumped the gun here. The article should have been headlined “MobileMe shows random signs of life”. It sputtered into life from time to time last night, but only long enough for me to grab some of the screenshots below.

MobileMe is live. Check it out for yourself at me.com

UPDATED UPDATE: Nope, gone again. This is too much for my nerves!

UPDATE: All good again! Go for it.

Well, it was live for a moment, long enough for me to grab the screenshot from my MobileMe Account page above. Now it’s gone, and the URL redirects to Apple’s MobileMe Promo page again.

In order to use it you will need to fire up Software Update first and download the MobileMe update that’s waiting there.

The update changes the icon in System Preferences to the new MobileMe one. And probably does more important