 I've been working with a lot of developers recently and am reminded by my 'inside view' of the work they do just how amazing that work really is.  If you've ever looked at the code that makes your 'stuff' 'just work', then you know what I'm talking about. If not, try a google search or two to look at some code.
I like getting paid for my work, and I like paying for software I use. It gets me support when needed, and helps further the development of the products I use. A lot of the software I use is built by one man shops, filling a void that bigger companies can't or won't.
The biggest hurdle for these developers is the cost of marketing. They can't buy mainstream advertising, hire PR firms to in turn
Late last year I decided I would move my email 'off the cloud' onto my own server in-house. This was a lot easier than I expected it to be, with the help of OSX-Server running on a Mac Mini.
The real penalty would come from having to say goodbye to GMail's excellent search functionality in their product.
Not willing to give this up easily, I went hunting for a solution and found MailSteward. The "Pro" version allows you to automatically store all your email into an mysql database, which was easily set up on my Mac Mini.
The program has a nice and understandable interface (screen shot) that lets me search for any message, attachment, sender etc. in a very logical way. Results are returned as fast, if not faster than a search in GMail and here's the kicker; the results I get are better than GMail. This is because I am interacting directly with the application in a logical fashion, GMail would at times try to be 'too helpful' in my queries, undoubtedly anticipating people I've emailed in the past and other smoky parameters only the GMail team knows about.
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