Last year, when TidBITS Managing Editor Jeff Carlson started in on his Christmas cards, he ran into problems, because Apple's Address Book, while it may do fine at storing data and displaying it on the Mac and iPhone, is seriously wanting when it comes to printing mailing labels. The problem is simple - while Address Book really wants you to create one entry per person, mailings like Christmas cards often need to be sent to couples or to entire families, and Address Book has no facility for merging spouses into a single label, or creating a family label.

The solution Jeff found was BeLight Software's Labels & Addresses, previously known as Mail Factory (see "Labels & Addresses Restores Holiday Card Sanity," 12 December 2008). It provides significantly more-capable label creation tools than Address Book and can also create labels that bundle spouse names together or use just the family name. More generally, Labels & Addresses makes it easy to bring in address data from a wide variety of sources; create custom labels, postcards, envelopes with formatting and bar codes; and print to all sorts of standard and label printers. Labels & Addresses can even do things like create and print unique serial numbers and raffle tickets.

This week we're giving away three copies of the Snow Leopard-compatible Labels & Addresses 1.3.3, worth $49.95, so be sure to enter at the DealBITS page. All information gathered is covered by our comprehensive privacy policy. Remember too, that if someone you refer to this drawing wins, you'll receive the same prize as a reward for spreading the word.