TUAW Post > AppleScripting Mail > Announce New Emails By Voice

mail_scriptYou're in the kitchen cooking dinner, or sitting down watching TV, or exercising. Ding! You have a new email. Quickly, run to your Mac to see who it's from. Meh, spam. Ding! Meh, a message from your boss. Ding! Meh. Sure would be nice if Mail could announce who's emailing you. That way, you could just listen for ones you care about. Well, with the help of AppleScript and Mail rules, you can set this up on your own. Think of it as an audible caller ID, but for email.

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TUAW Post > Triggering AppleScripts from Calendar Alerts in Mountain Lion

calendar_scriptAppleScript's are great tools for increasing your daily productivity. They're even better when they can be set to run unattended, at night, on weekends, or during downtime.  In Lion, iCal included a handy option for attaching a script to a calendar event.  Just create an event, add a Run Script alarm, point it to the desired script and you're good to go.  Things changed in Mountain Lion, though.  Presumably for security reasons, the Run Script alarm option was removed from the Calendar app.  Despite its removal, however, there are still some ways you can trigger scripts from Calendar events.

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Macworld Article > 100 More Things Every Mac User Should Know > Five Useful Automator Workflows

The April 2013 issue of Macworld magazine includes a special feature - 100 More Things Every Mac User Should Know: Essential Knowledge for Anyone Who Wants to be Savvy.  I wrote the Automator section.  It includes the following 5 useful workflows:

  • Wrap selected text in quotes
  • Get a word count of selected text
  • Create a subfolder in the Finder
  • Add dates to files in the Finder
  • Toggle hidden Finder files on/off

Hope you find it useful.  This issue is available in print and in the iBookstore.

-Ben

TUAW Post > More Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows

troubleshoot_automatorIn my last post, I shared some useful tips for troubleshooting Automator workflow problems. I didn't cover everything, though. There are lots of other ways you can troubleshoot your workflow. Here are some more tips to help.

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TUAW Post > Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows

troubleshoot_automatorAutomator's great for streamlining time consuming and repetitive tasks on your Mac. It's easy. Just launch it, find a few actions, and string them together to form a workflow. Then, run your workflow anytime you want to perform that series of tasks again.

What happens if your workflow doesn't run as you expect, though? Finding and solving problems in Automator is often easier said than done. Suddenly, the simple tool that's supposed to make your life easier has become a real pain in the neck. This week's post covers some things you can do to troubleshoot a finicky Automator workflow, track down the problem, and hopefully solve it, so you can get back to work.

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TUAW Post > AppleScript Productivity > Create OmniFocus Followups from Contacts

ofocus_scriptAs an OmniFocus for Mac user, it's important that I can quickly create tasks at any time, in any app. OmniFocus makes this pretty easy, by providing integration with OS X Mail, a keyboard shortcut for clipping content in apps such as Safari, a system-wide Quick Entry window, and a Services menu item. One feature OmniFocus lacks, however, is direct integration with the Contacts app. Suppose I am in Contacts, for example, and I need to schedule a followup phone call or email to one of my clients? Sure, I could bring up the Quick Entry window and enter the task, but I want something a bit more streamlined. I can accomplish just what I need by writing some custom AppleScripts. The following two examples demonstrate how to write AppleScript-based plug-ins for the Contacts app, which add OmniFocus followup options right into the email and phone number popup menus of your contacts.

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TUAW Post > AppleScripting OmniFocus > Send Completed Task Report to Evernote

ofocus_scriptI've mentioned before thatOmniFocus is my task manager of choice. Each morning, I pull up a list of scheduled tasks for the day, and focus on getting them done. In OmniFocus, I've set up Perspectives (saved window states) for both Due tasks and Completed tasks. What I really want, however, is something that will pull out recently completed tasks and summarize them in Evernote, my note management app of choice. This way, I can maintain a historical log of my progress, and pull out summaries of completed tasks to send to clients. Since this type of integration isn't built into OmniFocus or Evernote, I wrote an AppleScript to do it.

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TUAW Post > AppleScripting Notification Center > Scheduling Do Not Disturb

nc_scriptMountain Lion's Notification Center is great for keeping you in the loop, but it can be a huge distraction when you need to get stuff done. Sometimes, a little peace and quiet is all you need to stay productive.

As you may know, iOS 6 includes a handy Do Not Disturb feature, which can be turned on to disable notifications. It can even be set to automatically enable/disable itself at scheduled intervals. Mountain Lion also lets you disable Notification Center. Just open Notification Center and drag down to access a Show Alerts and Banners toggle switch. Note that this is a temporary setting, and disabled notifications automatically re-enable at midnight.

Unlike iOS 6, though, Mountain Lion doesn't give you an option for enabling/disabling notifications on a schedule. At least, it doesn't provide a built-in option for this. With a little customized help from AppleScript, Automator, and the Calendar app, it is possible.

In this post, you'll create two Calendar Alarm Automator workflows, which can be configured to run at scheduled times to enable or disable Notification Center alerts and banners.

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TUAW Post > AppleScripting Evernote > Embedded Image Scaler

I'm a big fan of Evernote. I use it for archiving ideas, writing articles and blog posts, and lots more. I often insert screenshots and other large images into my notes. Screenshots can be pretty big, and I usually don't want giant images filling up my notes. I keep wishing Evernote offered a way to resize embedded images, so I could insert thumbnails. At the moment, it doesn't. So, I decided to write my own app to resize embedded images. Here's how you can do the same...

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MacVoices Interview > The Road to Macworld

Screen Shot 2013-01-24 at 4.18.11 PMWant a preview of my Macworld sessions? I spoke with Chuck Joiner on MacVoices about the automation, security, and productivity sessions I'm presenting, and what cool stuff to expect at the conference. Find the audio here or the video here. You can also find it in iTunes.