We got special characters available via the Mac OS X system fonts, why not use them on mailbox folder? Using the Character Viewer menu item, we can quickly browse all these icons and insert them into any working document. This includes mailbox names in Mail. This should work in other mail clients as well.

Here’s a quick visual guide to pimping folders in Mail.

Step 1: Enable the Character Viewer menu item.

Select Language and Text in your System Preferences. This is found under the apple menu.

Under the Input Sources, select Keyboard & Character Viewer. This will enable the pull down menu item in your main menu.

Step 2: Look up and insert character.

In your Mail application, select the mailbox in place with one click to go into edit mode.

From your to main menu, Select Show Character Viewer from Character & Keyboard menu item.

Browse the available Symbols and find the one you want. Double clicking it will place the character in the Mail app.

Conclusion

These icons give a quick visual clue about to what they do. And help maintain my zero inbox goal. I’m following Merlin Mann’s oldie but goodie tip called Inbox Makeover. Make sure you check out his new upcoming book about it Inbox Zero.

I use Twitter for micro-blogging. I also like getting updates from random sources like my wife, witty friends, cnn, the white house, web developers and even Darth Vader. Ideally I would like to also receive certain RSS feeds in my Twitterrific/EventBox window but this functionality is not offered by Twitter yet. Luckily, twitterfeed.com is up to the task. Here’s a short guide on how to do RSS via Twitter.

Step 1: Set up an secondary Twitter account

Go to twitter.com and create a new account where you will be posting your RSS entries. In my case, I created an account with username melvitaxfeeds, named it My Feeds and set the posts as protected. There is no point in making this account public since this account is more like an RSS aggregator. Go to Settings > Picture and set the avatar to the RSS icon, this will help you recognize it as an RSS post when u see it in the timeline.

Step 2: Follow The New Twitter Account

Now you need to log in to your regular Twitter account and follow your feeds account. In my case, my main account melvitax is subscribed to the twits from my newly created melvitaxfeeds account.

Step 3: Set Up TwitterFeed

Log on twitterfeed.com and create a new feed. They support OpenID so I was able to log on with my Yahoo account. In the Add Feed form, enter your login info for your secondary feeds Twitter account. In my case, the melvitaxfeeds account. Then enter the URL of the RSS feed you would like to subscribe to. I am on the market for a used Mac Mini so I am subscribing to a Craigslist feed for any posts regarding the Mac Mini. Finish the form according to your liking and give it some time for it to do it’s thing. In my set up, TwitterFeed checks the RSS feed every half hour and will post up to 5 posts on the melvitaxfeeds Twitter account. If I decide to follow more feeds I can set the option for the Prefix so that I can tell what it is. For now I only have one feed so it’s no big deal.

Once set up these RSS feed entries will show up as twits wherever you do Twitter. Perhaps one day this will be a built in feature, but in the meantime… thank you TwitterFeed.

Be more Japanese I always say.
Here’s a guide to enjoy those emoji icons shipped in the iPhone which are only activated in Japan. This is not a hack, we are simply running an application that activates that built in feature of the iPhone.

Step 1: Check Your iPhone Software Version
If your version is less than 2.2.1 skip to Step 2. If you performed the iPhone 2.2.1 software update that was released a couple of days ago you can you need to temporarily downgrade to the previews version, activate emoti icons and then upgrade again to 2.2.1. Nothing is lost in this process, except for precious time.

To downgrade, press the option key while hitting the Restore button on iTunes. This should bring up a window with available software updates. In my case, I chose the last update, version 2.2_5g77. Run the restore action and perform the initial sync.

Step 2: Download and Install FrostyPlace

From the iTunes Store, download and install the FrostyPlace, a free chinese RSS reader. This can be performed from your computer or the iPhone.

[update] FrostyPlace is now charging but according to Eric Hust, the iPhone application Spell Number will accomplish the same and it is free. 

 Step 3: Read some chinese stories

Launch the application on the iPhone and just read some news. No kidding. Read for a minute or so and press them buttons. At some point for whatever reason, the app will activate emoji icons globally on the phone.

Step 4: Activate Emoji Icons

Go back to the iPhone spring board and select Settings. Then go to General > International > Keyboards > Japanese and activate Emoji. You might need to repeat Step 3 several times before Emoji shows up in this panel. I had to do it twice.

Once Emoji icons are activated they can become available in any application by clicking on the International Globe icon to the left of the keyboard. You can use it in SMS, Mail, Notes and anything you can type into. And best of all Emoji does not need to be activated on someone else’s iPhone for them to receive your cool new icons. But you can’t expect for non iPhones to get your cool new icons of course.

I’m beta testing On The Job 3 which should be coming out any day now. This minimalist invoicing app is about to get a solid upgrade and I am so happy its elegant simplicity is still there regardless of the many improvements added. Lots of functionality features have been added like customizable invoice templates, tracking of payments, fixed priced items, multiple currencies and a re-designed polished interface. Dan Messing has posted a teaser on his blog and the software will be available within a few days on the Stunt Software website.

This little app has become my preferred way to manage freelance work because of its elegant simplicity. And if u have the need for invoicing, this one falls under “must have” category. So go get it now. It’s a free update if u buy the current version, which still rocks.

Step 1: Install Perian
Perian is a free QuickTime Component that adds native support to lots of video formats like divx, avi and flv. Download Perian and install it.

Download Perian

Download Perian. To install just double click the file Perian.prefPane located on the top left of the newly mounted disk image.

Once installed you will see the Perian Preference Panel. Nothing to do here, just close it, unmount the disk image and delete the file from the Downloads folder to keep things neatly.

Step 2: Install FLV Quick Look Genertor

Download FLV Quick Look

Download the FLV Quick Look Generator and place the file flv.qlgenerator in your home or main ~/Library/QuickLook/ folder. Create the folder if necessary.

There are other plugins available form the same author at: http://homepage.mac.com/xdd/.

Now just select an FLV file and hit that space bar to get a Quick Look! You might need to either restart the Finder or log out and back in to your Mac for it to become available.