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Posts tagged with "automation"

How I Resize and Rename Images with Automator, Name Mangler, and TextExpander

Name Mangler

Name Mangler

A few weeks ago, while I was preparing my coverage of Apple’s Q2 2013 earnings call, I grew tired of my system to resize and rename images on OS X, so I rebuilt it from scratch using Automator, Name Mangler 3, and TextExpander.

When I create images for MacStories, I either keep them at a single size between 600 and 650 pixels, or use two separate versions: the original larger size, and a smaller one that links to the full version. In either case, images are uploaded to our CDN with Cyberduck, which I have been using for years and that has never failed me. Until last month, the process of duplicating the larger image and saving it to a smaller size was entirely manual – something that, I later realized, was surprising considering I try to automate as many aspects of my daily workflow as possible. I decided to fix this before the Apple earnings call because I knew Excel was going to export our charts as large PNGs – but, mostly, because it really didn’t make sense to keep on manually clicking menus and selecting sizes after all these years of writing for MacStories. Read more

Drafts 3 Review: Better iOS Automation and Workflows

Drafts3

Drafts3

In just a little more than a year, Agile Tortoise’s Drafts has gone from being a quick notepad for small bits of text to a full-featured solution for launching apps, using web services, and chaining multiple apps together – always with a focus on text. With version 2.5, released in January, developer Greg Pierce expanded upon Drafts’ existing support for URL schemes to let users build their own actions and share them with others; in the process, he also updated Drafts to handle advanced operations such as customizable Dropbox write access, strftime timestamps, and deeper x-callback-url support.

Drafts 3.0, released today, is a major update that refines several aspects of version 2.5 and brings powerful new features such as Evernote and Message actions, better action and draft management, tighter Reminders integration, and a way to backup and restore entire sets of actions.

I have been testing Drafts 3.0 for the past month, and, even more than Drafts 2.5, it has become an essential part of my daily workflow.

Read more

Philips Releases Hue API and iOS SDK

hue

hue

As reported by TechCrunch, Philips has released an API and iOS SDK for the hue, the company’s wireless lighting system that gives users control through an iOS app.

We’re now at a point where there are already about 10 applications that have been shared and built from the unofficial developer community for new applications around Hue,” explained George Yianni, Hue System Architect in an interview. “Now what we want to do as Philips is we actually want to help and grow and encourage this community, and give them tools and proper documentation. Also, we want to give them commitment that this is the API and we’re going to support it and it won’t change overnight.

Prior to the official release of an API and SDK, third-party developers had already reverse-engineered Philips’ apps to create their own solutions to control hue’s system (based on a “bridge” that communicates with the actual lightbulbs). An iOS app called Ambify lets users pair their music with hue lights; here at MacStories, I linked to a video back in November showing an unofficial hue Python library that could work with Pythonista to automate the process of switching lights on and off.

The API opens a lot of interesting possibilities for third-party software and hardware makers. The hue already shipped with its own options for remote control and “presets” (called “recipes”) for different lighting settings aimed at providing users with ways to easily replicate specific color combinations based on photos (available in the app’s photo library) or targeted towards lifestyle improvements (such as waking users up in the morning with a gradual light increase).

With an SDK and API, developers can now take advantage of these concepts: aside from the “simple” remote control features, imagine apps that could activate specific hue settings when you’re reading or watching a movie, parse voice-based commands with dictation, or integrate with an iOS device’s Reminders, Calendars, or Location Services. On the hardware side, it should be possible – at least in theory – to develop gadgets capable of combining personal data with hue to leverage Philips’ “smart” lighting system in completely new ways. An obvious implementation would be for health and fitness-monitoring accessories such as Nike’s FuelBand; as far as rumors go, an Apple iWatch could integrate with hue to exchange an user’s data and personal stats (Apple isn’t new to third-party collaborations of this kind).

Right now, Philips’ hue API is promising and shows great potential for more forward-thinking software and hardware implementations. You can read more on Philips’ website.

Launch Center Pro 1.1

LCP

LCP

Released in December 2011, App Cubby’s Launch Center re-ignited interest in iOS URL schemes – shortcuts to automate communication between apps and get specific things done faster with less manual tapping and interactions. Its direct sequel, Launch Center Pro, was released in the summer of 2012 and doubled down on the entire idea of automating iOS tasks by providing a “Home screen for your actions” to allow users to better and more visually organize their shortcuts.

Launch Center Pro 1.1, released today, focuses on improving three key aspects of Launch Center Pro: native in-app actions, the Action Composer, and TextExpander support in URLs. Read more

Create and Share Evernote Notes With Pythonista On iOS

I use Evernote on a daily basis, but there’s no easy and quick way to create new notes and receive their shared URLs on iOS. While I tend to prefer plain text files, Evernote notes are quite useful when I need to share rich text (containing formatting and inline images) with someone else. Sharing via the official Evernote app takes too long[1], and I don’t like the UI of other Evernote clients.

Yesterday, Pythonista developer Ole Zorn posted an installer script for the Python Evernote SDK. By putting together all the necessary dependencies, he created an installer script that will create an “evernote-sdk” sub-folder in Pythonista 1.3; with that, you’ll be able to access the entire Evernote API to create and manage notes – all while taking advantage of the uniqe iOS-related features of Pythonista.

Inspired by Ole’s demoes and the snippets posted by Brett Kelly in the past weeks, I created a script that does exactly what I need: it lets me enter text to save it in an Evernote note that will be shared publicly. If triggered by an app like Drafts or Launch Center Pro, the script will take the text sent by those apps. If formatted in Markdown, the text will be converted to HTML before saving it to Evernote. Read more

Alex Guyot Chains 5 Apps with Drafts→

Alex Guyot Chains 5 Apps with Drafts

As I expected, people have started experimenting with chaining apps and services using Drafts, and Alex Guyot quickly beat me in chaining 5 apps. From his explanation of the workflow:

Follow the bookmark in Chrome and it will take the URL of the webpage you are on, send it to Drafts as a draft, upload it to Dropbox, send it to Due (where you choose a reminder time for it to remind you), take you back to Drafts, send you to Instapaper (Where you choose to save the link to Instapaper), then send you back to Chrome.

He also posted a quick video showing the workflow in action on his iPad. I like how, unlike me, he chained each action as an x-success parameter of the previous one.

As I’ve argued on multiple occasions here on the site, URL schemes are certainly a stopgap solution to a problem – better inter-app communication on iOS – that I wish Apple will tackle in the near future. However, that doesn’t mean people can’t get real work done with URL schemes and apps today. Looking ahead, I can only imagine new possibilities of iOS automation based on URL schemes that, however, abstract the need of manually building URLs from the end user’s workflow – using a more Automator-like interface to visually represent actions. And, who knows, perhaps in a future version of iOS “switching” between apps won’t even be required anymore, as “parts” of other apps will be linked to each other using something like XPC.

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Chris White’s iOS Workflows→

Chris White’s iOS Workflows

Chris White is putting together an impressive collection of JavaScript bookmarklets, URL schemes, and iOS services and actions in a GitHub repo:

It seems like we’ve recently been seeing a ton of new ideas, clever tricks and tools for making users who are willing to dive into the deep-end more productive on our iOS devices through automation, seamless app communication and some really great shortcuts. This is a collection of bookmarklets, scripts and custom URL scheme actions that help bridge apps and manipulate the data you can send between them.

Chris included some of my bookmarklets and URL schemes in his collection, which I recommend checking out if you’re looking for a single place containing several moderately advanced tips for doing more than just launching apps via URLs.

iOS automation is, of course, a subject that I’ve been covering on a daily basis on MacStories for the past months. While I haven’t had the time to put together a GitHub repo like Chris did, allow me to list the various articles and tag pages where you can get started:

URL scheme tag page

Bookmarklet tag page

Automation with Drafts and Chaining Apps with Drafts

Pythonista review and scripts

Pythonista tag

I’m very glad Chris decided to collect these resources in a repo. I especially like the Drafts bookmarklets he made, which contain a check to see whether the browser has an active text selection (something I haven’t been doing as I’ve always created separate bookmarklets for Chrome and Safari).

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