Integrating Mail.app and Things

Things, by Cultured Code, is a great task management application that runs on the Mac and iPhone and is really helping me keep a track of all the things I need to get done, at home and at work.

What would be handy is if I could easily turn an email into a new to-do inside Things.

Of course, Google to the rescue and I discovered a couple of scripts that utilise Mail.app's bundle (plugin) functionality and SIMBL that do just that.

1. Quit both Mail.app and Things
2. Download and unzip this file to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles (you may need to create this directory if it doesn't exist)
3. Download and unzip this file to ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins (you may also need to create this directory if it doesn't already exist)
4. Open Terminal and execute the following command:
   

   $ defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool YES

5. Start mail.app and Things.  (Things needs to be running to accept the incoming messages)

Whilst in mail.app, pressing CTRL-CMD-S (^⌘S) will add an new item into the Things inbox with the subject of the highlighted message as the title and a link in the notes area to the email itself.

Thanks go to "fedex" for his scripts and, of course, Cultured Code for their awesome software.

Synchronising multiple 1password keychains without MobileMe

Agile Web Solutions, the authors of 1password, don't recommend that you use MobileMe (the-service-formally-known-as .Mac) for synchronising the keychain.

The instructions I followed uses iDisk to synchronise the keychain but I used my recently added SSH filesystem.

This is the same system I use for keeping Things synchronised across multiple Macs.

Automatic synchronisation of OS X Addressbook without enabling Yahoo!

Update: Snow Leopard (10.6) has this built-in so there's no need for these instructions unless you're running Leopard (10.5) or lower. The following command will ensure this runs periodically:

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Versions/A/Resources/gconsync --sync com.google.ContactSync --periodic

I am using Google Sync Services exclusively to synchronise between two MacBook Pros and an iPhone.

The one caveat is that to enable Addressbook synchronisation you have to enable, say, Yahoo! synchronising before the iSync client will allow synchronisations to occur.

Oh, and it's a manual process to launch iSync client.

This is an ugly hack to an otherwise elegant solution. I don't like it.

So I went trawling the Internet to see if I could solve it.

I found an extremely informative post that outlines a lot of the work required. Then, a sprinkle of launchd to make it all work.

Here's how it's done:

1. Add a new "google" device in your devices list:
   

   $ defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add google '{ "Device Class" = iPod; "Family ID" = 10001; }'
   

2. Launch Address Book and open the Preference pane. The Google contact sync option should appear.
3. Register the sync client. Open a terminal and type the following:
   

   $ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/gconsync --register 1
   

4. Create the file, ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.GoogleContactSync.plist:
   

   {user = "username@gmail.com";}
   

5. Add a password item to your keychain with the following values:
   
   Keychain Item Name:GoogleContactSyncService
   Account Name: username@gmail.com
   Password: password
6. Create a Launch Agent. I have set the interval time to 300 seconds (5 mins). Obviously, it can be changed to something different. eg: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.gsync.plist:
   

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
   <plist version="1.0">
     <dict>
       <key>Label</key>
       <string>com.example.gsync</string>
       <key>ProgramArguments</key>
       <array>
         <string>/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Versions/A/Resources/gconsync</string>
         <string>--sync</string>
         <string>com.google.ContactSync</string>
         <string>--report</string>
         <string>1</string>
         <string>--entitynames</string>
         <string>"com.apple.contacts.Contact,com.apple.contacts.Email Address,com.apple.contacts.IM,com.apple.contacts.Phone Number,com.apple.contacts.Street Address"</string>
       </array>
       <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
       <string>/tmp/gsync.error</string>
       <key>StandardOutPath</key>
       <string>/tmp/gsync.log</string>
       <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
       <true/>
       <key>Nice</key>
       <integer>1</integer>
       <key>StartInterval</key>
       <integer>300</integer>
     </dict>
   </plist>
   

7. Add the agent:
   

   $ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.gsync.plist
   

8. Reboot. (Yes, it's required. The program, when launched from launchd, won't find the password until you've rebooted. I'm sure there's a way to do it without, but I don't know what that is.)
9. You can kick off a sync run manually by running:
   

   $ launchctl start com.example.gsync
   

   ... or you can wait the interval period for the next run.