Filed under: Multimedia, Internet Tools, Leopard
Leopard Spotlight: Control another Mac with iChat and AppleScript
Rob Griffiths over at Macworld points to an interesting new feature in Leopard's iChat: the ability to run AppleScripts in response to events. If you look in the Alerts tab of iChat's preferences there's a checkbox for running an AppleScript when a user selectable event (e.g. a text invitation) occurs. As you can see above, Apple includes three default scripts that allow for automatically accepting or declining an invitation, and better yet, controlling iTunes.
How might this be useful? One obvious way is controlling a music server in a different room just by sending IMs. "You can... send the iTunes-owning Mac these commands as chat messages from another Mac: status, next, previous, mute, unmute, help, play, and pause." A nifty little addition to iChat, I think, and since you can add your own AppleScripts, it opens up the possibility of doing something similar for a variety of other applications as well. (Incidentally, these built-in scripts live at /Library/Scripts/iChat.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alexis said 3:04PM on 11-02-2007
There is currently a bug with the "Auto Accept.applescript" file. When used, it makes the auto accepted iChat window always be on top of any other window, whether or not it is the active window. Not sure why it's doing this, but I did send it in.
Does this happen to anyone else?
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Michael Schmitt said 3:21PM on 11-02-2007
And now to have iChat built into the iPhone so that you can send commands via iChat to where your iTunes library is stored at home via the internet, and voila! You have your entire iTunes library available to you where ever you are in the world with a fast wireless internet connection.
Is this were the iTunes Radio post came from?
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Ryan Whitham said 3:35PM on 11-02-2007
Someone should make an applescript that autoaccepts screensharing if its from a specific user. For example if I make a work AIM account and have a home one the script would auto accept only from that specific user. It's a good security measure to keep your computer from auto accepting all screen sharing requests. Basically remote login without dot mac. I have no idea if its possible but im sure someone will figure it out.
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Mann said 4:04PM on 11-02-2007
Takes me back to the days of Aim scripting in college. I basically made scripts to have varioous auto replies to various friends.
Although I have few useful scripts that control my status in iChat, and you could send an email of your ims recieved and when you reply, they are marked in a way based on the email recieved to send an IM in reply considering the person is still online. I highly doubt I will even consider doing that.
But I use Entourage to catch all my custom script needs via an email formatted accordingly.
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Daniel Green said 11:32PM on 11-02-2007
You can make autoaccept of screen sharing with an apple script. I use it to get to my work computer from home since I don't have .mac, not that Mac 2 my mac works for crap right now anyway.
Screen sharing is linked to audio chat. It was pretty easy to mod the existing "autoaccept" script for screen sharing. It is possible and I do it all the time.
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Christian Kittle said 3:23AM on 11-03-2007
Daniel, care to elaborate how? This is exactly what I would like to setup since Hamachi always locks up in Leopard, making it essentially useless. Also, is there a way to do screen sharing over iChat without audio?
Thanks!
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sherwin said 9:46AM on 11-04-2007
has anyone tried sharing movies via iChat? You can use your google account right?
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slc flash guy said 2:40PM on 11-06-2007
I actually an applescript that auto accepts a screenshare request (and video request) from a specific user so I could log in to my work computer from home.
You can check it out at http://www.getstonered.com
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outtastock said 2:36PM on 12-04-2007
Alexis: Yes, it's always on top and it's very annoying that way. I confirm the problem.
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