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I’ve started writing quite a bit more lately. My tools of choice are OmmWriter for short pieces or parts of larger projects, a specific playlist in iTunes, Apimac Timer (to timebox myself), and Scrivener for larger projects. Me being lazy in a productive way, I was looking for a way to just lauch and setup all of the above for writing with a short couple QuickSilver keystrokes. Enter Applescript. In order to make it all work, I had to first LEARN enough Applescript to pull it all together. That is where this site came in handy for learning the basics of Applescript. I’ll grab a quick video later that shows how it all works, but for now, enjoy learning how to automate a lot of the repetitive things you do everyday.

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If you are using Mail.app with with MS Exchange, you know the frustration of sending attachments and opening those dreaded winmail.dat files (the sender sent a MS Exchange email file as an attachment). Grr.

To get around dealing with Microsoft’s refusal to comply with email standards, I recommend two mail.app plug-ins:
Lokiware’s Attachment Tamer and Christopher Atlan’s Letter Opener Pro. Both programs will end the your MS Exchange email attachment problems. Here’s what they do:

Attachment Tamer (from the Lokiware product description):

• Display (and print) images, PDFs, audio and video as icons with an optional file size limit and exceptions;
• Send messages compatible with Microsoft Outlook, Exchange and other software, preventing the superfluous “ATT0001” attachments;
• Send images as regular attachments, making it easier for the recipient to manipulate the image files;
• Send images embedded in HTML layout and safely mix embedded images with other attachments;
• Display full attachment names regardless of length instead of truncated names;
• Automatically display attachments at the top of messages;
• Prevent unwanted image resizing or set a default size for automatic image resizing.

Letter Opener Pro:

• Allows Browser addachment of a winmail.dat file
• Adds the capability to add appointments contained in winmail.dat files directly to iCal
• Adds the capability to create contacts contained in winmail.dat files directly in Address Book
• Adds the capability to display those dreaded nested messages
• Allows you to convert attached winmail.dat Outlook Notes to plain text
• And reads and delivers MS Exchange receipts (for those nutbags that subscribe to Level 3 Leadership)

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