Au-tonomy

I really like Au, and for the least of reasons. It installs a bunch of stuff that turns any OS X-running Mac into a portable mail server, capable of sending and receiving mail quite quickly and securely. It even broadcasts this capability over Rendezvous, so you can exchange mail with people even when there’s no connection to the outside Internet. But what I love is that it adds, without any tweaking, a really good SMTP (outgoing mail) server to your machine. My university only lets us send mail through their SMTP servers on campus, so I have to change my Mail settings whenever I leave campus. Ditto for the Earthlink connection at home – you can’t use their SMTP servers if you’re not on an Earthlink connection. But with Au, my Mac is its own SMTP server, and I can send outgoing mail from anywhere without editing a damn thing. Also a bonus if your ISP’s SMTP server is frequently down, or has odd limitations. Good stuff.

UPDATE: Turns out that my university’s residential network blocks any outgoing SMTP traffic that isn’t destined for their servers in an effort to fight spam from the dorms. Au still can’t help me here, nor do I expect it to. Damn you, spammers, ruining my interweb…