Mailplane

ByMike Moffit

Just recently I’d was chosen to participate in the beta of a new email client called Mailplane. It’s a standalone application that lets your view your Gmail email. Essentially it’s a web browser that brings up the Gmail page but it’s much better then just opening Gmail in your web browser.

This application was created for the sole purpose of Gmail. Some people might wonder why anyone would do this since it’s pretty easy to just open up Safari or FireFox and go to Gmail. It’d also be one less application causing desktop clutter, but I actually like it! I like having a separate program for my email, I’ve never really been fond of webmail, I like to have an email client whether it be Apple Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.

Mailplane is a very simple program just like GMail. It contains no more then what you need to use Gmail. It would be nice if they developed a client like this but that could use any POP or IMAP account. Obviously Mailplane would need a lot of work if it were to do that. Mailplane is heavily customized to work just perfectly with Gmail.

One really neat feature I like about Mailplane is that it takes advantage of Apple’s Grab utility to take screenshots. Once you take a screenshot it will automatically attach it to the email you’re writing. It’s so simple and easy!

Being that Mailplane is still in beta it’s actually coming along very nicely. I have yet to find any bugs myself and it’s been working great. Unfortunately I don’t really use Gmail since I host my own email server. I have a feeling a lot of people will enjoy this application though!

Mailplane is currently in a private beta, but it will soon enough be available to the public. You can register to get into the beta by visiting the website:

http://mailplaneapp.com/

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