A conversation view for Thunderbird:

Thunderbird Conversations - GitHub.

From the screenshots, it looks pretty good. I downloaded it but lost energy after realizing that it's only compatible with beta versions of Thunderbird 3.3. I have 3.0 or something, and the latest released version is 3.1, I guess. Or whatever.

Some great samples and historical tidbits from Fresh Air: Before Ipanema: Stan Getz's exquisite quintets

Before he was famous for popularizing bossa nova with "The Girl from Ipanema" in the early 1960s, saxophonist Stan Getz recorded with small jazz groups all through the '50s. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says a new reissue shows Getz was one of the best at playing pretty.

I really love Fresh Air. I used to listen to it every day after school while playing Crystal Quest in my room. Every time I hear Terry Gross' voice, I get a bit of a rush like I'm goofing off instead of doing my homework.

Link: Adam Engst on GMail at Tidbits

The start of a 3-part series on GMail from Adam Engst. He was a long-time Eudora user, so it's interesting to see how his workflow changed when he moved to such a different program.

Also, as a journalist I'm sure he gets tons more email than average people, and he can't afford to just ignore it.

From The Axis of Eval: "Truth IS stranger than fiction": Chuck McManis explains the cancellation and subsequent fame of Java.

It's fascinating to me how often you hear about these overnight successes that took years to develop and were canceled, given up for dead, etc. many times.

I remember hearing similar stories about Self and Erlang at HOPL-3, the History of Programming Languages conference. Maybe you shouldn't bet on the success of a new language unless it's been cancelled or abandoned at least once?

From Ted Dziuba: MacOS X is an Unsuitable Platform for Web Development.

Textmate sucks

Sooner or later, you have to face facts. Man up and learn Emacs.

Ted's probably the funniest person blogging about tech that I'm aware of.

Take note of the filename of the image he used for this post…

He just seems angry toward the end, but I'd say his technical points are awfully valid.

On the other hand, nothing's stopping anyone from using a Mac and developing on Linux - just use emacs over X11, and keep your great Mac apps for mail, chat, web browsing, etc… Honestly I never understood the need to have things work on your laptop if you're actually going to run it on some other server. Isn't that what networks are for?

From the always-interesting Canonical Design blog: Introducing Overlay Scrollbars in Unity. (Who wouldn't love to see an Apple Design blog? It's fun to follow along as some serious, talented people rethink stuff we use everyday…)

Take a look at the video - and stick with it all the way through. At first I didn't like it but now I'm a fan. I like that they've expanded usable screen real estate by getting rid of the everpresent thumb, but kept a subtle visual indicator that there's more content - there's a small ~2px bar that scales like current thumbs do.

My only concern would be that the little mini-thumb is too small and it will sometimes not be obvious that you can scroll. I think this happens on iOS, too - maybe it's not such a big deal.

Link: MailPerspectives

MailPerspectives is a new plugin from indev software for Apple Mail. It adds new window styles that are more compact than the standard Mail window, with improved keyboard navigation to process your messages more quickly.

Take a look at the interactive HTML virtual tour - probably the best app-marketing scheme I've seen, because it's more informative than a screenshot but less intrusive than a screencast…

It's beginning to feel like a golden age for mac email clients.

Link: Quick note: MailMate

Missed this until Michael Tsai mentioned it in the latest Release Notes for SpamSieve - if MailMate works for me on 10.5, I'll give a review here.

Apparently, it's been in beta for over a year. Not sure how I missed it.