Vincent Gable's Blog » IMLocation

Control Screen Saver Security With Automator

Vincent Gable — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:40:42 +0000

Set Screen Saver Security sets the time until the screen saver activates, and whether a password is required to unlock the screen saver.

Every company I’ve worked for that had an office also had a rule that any computer in the office had to be password-protected with a screensaver that kicked in pretty quickly. But at home it’s annoying to have to unlock your own laptop when you get up to make a sandwich.

If you use the same computer at home and in the office, IMLocation can use this action to lock down your computer at work, but leave it easy-to-use at home.

I recommend trying IMLocation (which includes the Set Screen Saver Security action) for best results.

Setting iChat Status With Automator

Vincent Gable — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:39:15 +0000

Set iChat Status is an Automator action that sets your status message, and availability in iChat. Amazingly, this action did not ship with Mac OS X.

I wrote it, because I wanted a user-friendly way for people to control iChat in IMLocation workflows.

I Need Your Help, Tiger

This action should run on Mac OS X 10.4. But since I don’t have a second computer running Tiger, I’m not sure. If someone would let me know if this works on Tiger I would really appreciate it! It should work just fine, but you know what they say about “should”…

Download.

Automatically Closing NSFW Content (Beta)

Vincent Gable — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:55:12 +0000

I’ve finally implemented a neat feature for IMLocation that I’ve wanted to do for a while now, when you arrive at work, it can automagically close NSFW webpages. NSFW content is detected using the same technology behind Mac OS X’s Parental Controls.

I recommend downloading IMLocation to get the full effect, but you can also get just the automator action. Leopard is required, and it only works with Safari right now.

As you guessed, there is a trade-off between accidentally closing important webpages and letting questionable content slip through. I’m not yet sure what the best way to expose tweaking this tradeoff is. In the mean time I’ve chosen the more-confusing-but-powerful road, because I think it’s best to start with something that can do the job, and then refine and simplify it.

Firefox?

I want this to work with Firefox, but I am hamstrung by Firefox’s poor-to-nonexistant AppleScript support. (In the meantime you can try the worksafer Firefox plugin, but it’s not a true substitute).

Firefox is geared towards extension through plugins, while Safari has a less-rich plugin architecture, but good scripting support. Arguably, the Firefox way is better for a web-browser. I’ve seen some really cool Firefox plugins that extend the web-browsing experience in ways a script just can’t. Unfortunately, what I’m trying to do — have NSFW content automatically closed for you when you get to work — is the sort of thing a script does well, and a plugin does cumbersomely, if at all.

If anyone has some advice on how to hack around Firefox’s limitations please drop me a line. Right now my prognosis is “a lot of work for a clunky payoff”, so right now I’m focusing on more pressing concerns.