• CCMenu (http://ccmenu.sourceforge.net/)
  Monitors a CruiseControl integration
• Versions (http://versionsapp.com)
  Allows you to monitor a SVN repository, or keep a local copy
• SVN Monitor (http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/svnnotifier.html)
  Displays a Growl notification every time anyone commits to the SVN

Let me know if I’ve missed anything..

I needed an overview of which emails I still needed to deal with, while never missing an important mail. This is my setup. Follow these instructions, and I promise you, you will be a happier person.

Set the ground rules
You need one, and only one, rule in your Mail.app. Every mail that comes in, needs to be flagged. Simple as that. We’ll get back to that later.

Install Widemail
Widemail allows you to show your mail in two columns. Having the list in one, and the chosen mail in the other. Widemail also lets you display stuff like sender and subject in the same field in the list, for maximum readability.

You can download Widemail here: http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/
This is my configuration of Widemail. Use it if you want.

Once Widemail is set up, you need to rearrange your headers in Mail.

The way I have it, it’s Threads, Read/Unread, Widemail and Flags.

Tag your emails
Another tool I use, is Mailtags. Basically, once you go zero-bounce on your email, you’ll find yourself having reacted to an email, but knowing that you’ll need the info in it close by, you’ll leave in your inbox, thereby cluttering your view.

Mailtags allows you to tag emails with tags that you can later find using a Smart Folder. Every time you have a mail you’ll need later, but doesn’t need a reaction,  assign it a tag. I use “ref”, but you can use whatever you want.

You can download Mailtags here: http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html, and use this configuration if you want:

Smart folders
Forget your Inbox. That’s where mails go to die. In your day to day work, you’ll be using Smart Folders. These are the ones you’ll need:

Incoming
Set this to show all mails with a flag. This will be your basis-folder.

Today
Set this to show all mails, regardless of flags, received today. This will give you a good overview, in case you’re too quick to unflag an email.

This Month
Same deal, just for the month

Reference
This is the folder you set up to show all mails tagged with “ref”, or whatever you chose.

Threads
Sometimes you get a ton of mails, all revolving around the same subject. For that, you’ll need to group them into threads.

1. Right click your toolbar, and select Customize Toolbar
2. Drag this set of buttons onto it:

Now you can enable Threads, which will collapse all related messages into conversations, allowing you to focus on them as one group.

Shortcuts
Day to day, you really don’t want to be using your mouse. You need to familiarize yourself with Mail.app’s keyboard shortcuts, and even create some of your own. These are the ones I use religiously:

SHIFT-CMD-L
Flag/unflag a mail.

SHIFT-CMD-M
Show/hide the Mailboxes column.

SHIFT-CMD-Y
Add sender to address book.

CMD-Y
Quick look the messages attachments

CMD-R
Reply

SHIFT-CMD-R
Reply to all

SHIFT-CMD-F
Forward

SHIFT-CMD-D
Send

SHIFT-CMD-E
Refresh your Smart Folder. This is a custom one that you need to set up in Keyboard & Mouse settings. Just create a new shortcut for Mail, to point to the “Rebuild” menu-item.

Summary
When you have all this set up, you’ll be ready to go zero-bounce. Every time you get an email, it will appear in your Incoming folder. From there, you can react to it. If it does no longer need an immediate action from you, unflag it and refresh your Smart Folder. The mail will no longer be cluttering your inbox, our your mind.

In short. You get a new mail, and open it. You CMD-Y to review the attachment. CMD-R to reply. SHIFT-CMD-D to send your answer. SHIFT-CMD-L to unflag the mail. SHIFT-CMD-E to refresh your Smart Folder. And it’s gone.

If you think you’re going to need the mail later on, assign a tag to it, and then unflag it. It will always be available in your Reference Smart Folder. That gives you peace of mind, and the guts to remove mails that you don’t need right now, but are afraid will get lost in the masses of your actual Inbox.

Give it a spin. I promise you’ll be happier.

Put Tikitag‘s into all your old CD’s. Link the tag to the album in Spotify. Place a Tikitag reader under your table, and enjoy the magic as the music from the CD starts playing automatically, when you place it on the table

Next up: DVD’s!

We all know that the first thing you do when you get new hardware, is throw away the manual. Right. On safemanuals.com you can get them back as PDF whenever you’re crying in desperation at 4 in the morning trying to figure out the right configuration of those pesky little dipswitches on your printer, or something like that.

I placed my reader on the underneath of my desk, and so I just have an invisible hot-zone on my desk. If I put my wallet down, my online bank opens. If I put my Moleskine there, my Evernote opens up, and a souvenir from a vacation, opens up that album in Flickr.

The idea is brilliant, but I really need more.. I need it to be completely aware of everything I put on my desk, no matter where I put it. I need it to unlock my computer when I throw my keys on the desk, and lock it again when I pick them up again. I need it to open my online bank when I pick up my authentication-device, and log out again when I put it back in it’s place. I need iTunes to start playing when I pick up my headset, and pause again when I put it back down. And that’s just my desk – I need it everywhere I go!

Think about how many things in your day that are tied to your handling of physical objects… We’ve only seen the start of this…

update
My iTunes now pauses when I put my headset down

update 2
If anyone from Alcatel-Lucent is reading this, Bart H. I’m talking to you here, we really need an event when the tag is removed from the reader as well.. That would allow for much much cooler applications!

Everytime I purchase an album in iTunes, it’s stored in my Dropbox. Dropbox makes sure it’s synced to all of my connected machines. Once the files hits my main-machine, they are picked up by MP3Tunes that uploads the file to my account there. From MP3Tunes, the files can be directly accessed via my Squeezebox all around my apartment, and through MP3Tunes’ webinterface while I’m on the go.

In essence, I do not need to worry about handling of music. I purchase an album anywhere, and it’s accessible everywhere. Within minutes.

• My contacts are synced between my iPhone and my various other phones by ZYB.
• My bookmarks are synced between my Firefoxes with FoxMarks.
• My business calendar, and all of my mail, is pushed to my iPhone and computers by Exchange.
• My private calendar is synced between my mac’s and my iPhone by MobileMe.
• My various files are in MobileMe, and available on my PC’s and Mac’s.
• My notes is synced between my computers and my iPhone by Evernote.
• My music is shared from my server at home to all my computers and my iPhone by SimplifyMedia.
• My photos are stored on Flickr.
• My documents are on Google Docs.

Problem:
Two computers on the same desk – constantly grabbing the wrong mouse or keyboard.

Solution:
Synergy! You install a little app on both machines and suddenly, as if by magic, you can move your mouse from one computer to the other, just by moving it off the edge of one screen, and on to the next.

Simply brilliant.. Check it out on http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/.

I now feel a little stupid for buying the 16 gig iPhone, because I will never need the space. All the music I have at home is now seamlessly streamed to my iPhone, wherever I am. Even when out of Wifi-range, it works perfectly on 3G.

This is a dream I’ve had for many years, finally coming true. Why on earth do I need to shuffle my mp3-files around to different devices and computers, having the hassle of keeping it all up to date, and pay a fortune in extra disk space for it, when it can all just live in the cloud, and be accessible from everywhere.

When you see this popping up in the App Store – get it! And if you don’t have an iPhone yet, this is a very good reason to get one.