Nice OSX Leopard feature

Was going to do a “nice little things about Leopard” post, but that’s not coming together. So, I thought I’d post one of my favorite features. Mail context-sensitive text. I found the first bit by accident, ran my mouse over a name in an email message, and a popup frame faded in around the name. Clicking on it I had the option to “Show in Address book”. So, Mail.app had scanned the mail, found names it knew in the address book, and they were clickable. Cool.

But then, I went to copy the location of a meeting so I could create a calendar appointment. As I moved over the date/time, it became active, with the option of “create new event in iCal” and “show in iCal”. This happens with dates, times, dates and times, and date ranges as well. So, to create an appointment from a description in a mail message, I just choose the text I want for the subject, click on the time/date, create an appointment, then paste the text.

Yeah, it’s not going to save me hours a day, but I’m now using this one Mail feature every day or three. Pretty amazing. I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere in the “what’s new”, but I like this one feature better than those popup folders in the dock that I’m not really using a lot yet.

Oh, and today’s cool utility? Hazel. Found it during a Lifehacker perusal last week, and I’ve now got it managing the only two folders left on my desktop, Inbox and Outbox, and managing my trash too.

OK, so I got one blog entry in in November. One a month, that’s all I ask!

Nov 27 2007