Charles on… anything that comes along

This might be the only time I’m going to appear on a roll of honour with Steve Wozniak. He’s there at No.40 on the list of people who’ve paid for the very natty Postfix Enabler program. (I’m down at number 165.)

It’s a simple program that gives you a GUI to the very powerful Postfix program lurking in OSX 10.3’s innards. It can send mail, act as a POP server, allow people who are authorised to route mail through your machine… but configuring Postfix is for command-line jockeys.

Enter Postfix Enabler, which gives you a soothing interface with things that slide in and out, plus contextual help, that can let you set up your machine’s Postfix in seconds. Then, you don’t have to rely on your ISP’s creaky outbound mail server. Now you can email from hotspots. (OK, some mail will bounce because you’re on a floating IP. It happens.)

PFE isn’t shareware; it’s donationware. So far, 231 people have paid and consented to have their names listed. (Perhaps more have paid but didn’t want to be named.) Even at $10 per throw, that’s $2,310 - not at all bad as a return. Sure, you stick to the day job, but this is a nice illustration of how writing software need not be for the priesthood.

As long, that is, as you understand what the hell it is you’re trying to get Postfix to do. That’s the bit that’s worth a few thousand dollars…

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