I have just released a new version of Popspeaker, a trivial little Python script to make announcement sounds when it spots new messages from selected people in your POP3 mailbox. The big change is that it now loads a configuration file rather than rely on global variables in the script itself; but some other minor improvements have been made to make this more like a product and less than a scrofulous script knocked up for one person’s use.
The advantage of running this script for me, is that I can be sitting down reading a book and my workstation will announce “You have mail from your parents” if that happens. I can see mails from interesting people quickly, and let all the spam and other cruft wait until I am in the mood to trawl through my mail.