Comments on: Use Automator to Append from Anywhere!

By: Wesley Mason

Wesley Mason — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 15:39:04 +0000

@ is not an ampersand, it is an “at” symbol. & is an ampersand.

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:52:25 +0000

More thoughts: For extra points, I also put "%" at the end of each item to make it compliant with my Remind-piped-through-Geek Tool desktop to-do system. The other big caveat that I didn't mention is that you've got to be sure to totally delete the messages from Mail once they've been caught by the script or else they'll be caught again the next time it runs and you'll end up with the items in there twice. I'm working on something significantly more brilliant/evil to do with Automator scripts triggered via Mail. More on that soon. . .

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 21:18:58 +0000

George —
That’s a nice alternative for people who are more comfortable in Applescript than Automator (I don’t turn out to be one of those people). I actually figured out a way to simplify my Automator action, too. I always append an ampersand and a keyword with the context of each todo to the the items in my list. Like this: “@blog: automator to trigger shell scripts”. So, since each of my todos will always start with an ampersand, I was able to greatly reduce my filtering of the content of the Mail messages to just look for lines starting with an ampersand.
I also set up my phone (an LG6000) to make adding these context indicators super easy: I added all my common context indicators (@blog, @home, @work, etc) to the phone’s “insert quick-text” menu, which let’s me add each inidicator with a single click. This really came in handy while traveling this Thanksgiving (why do I always have so many good ideas right at the front of airport security checkpoint lines?).

By: George Sudarkoff

George Sudarkoff — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 05:14:11 +0000

Sorry, this is the link (in the form of link) for my previous comment.

By: George Sudarkoff

George Sudarkoff — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 05:11:11 +0000

Excellent idea! I simplified it a bit, take a look: http://george.sudarkoff.com/2005/12/email_yourself_a_todo_item.html

By: Timmargh

Timmargh — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 03:19:01 +0000

Excellent idea – I’ll try this.
I guess I was being a bit narrow minded when I thought of the possibilities when sending text messages to my Mac.

By: david

david — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 03:17:36 +0000

Wow! This is a great idea. I have so much “capture” related trouble (and follow through related trouble…). I figured that it must be a fairly common problem, at least amongst a certain Type, but I had no inkling that there were, you know, schools of thought involved and everything. Cool.