Apple’s built-in automation tool, Automator (in /Applications), is capable of performing wondrous feats, yet far too many people ignore it—believing their work wouldn’t benefit from automation or that Automator is too difficult to use. Neither is the case, as evidenced by these tips for the Snow Leopard version.
1. Access your media anywhere
If you spend much time with Apple’s $79 iLife and iWork suite applications, you’re probably accustomed to having your media close at hand via the Media Browser—a pane that displays the contents of your movie, photo, and iTunes libraries so you can more easily use these elements in projects. Yet when you want to access these files with a different application, you often have to open your Movies folder, iPhoto, or iTunes to do so because the pane is absent. It needn’t be, as a collection of Automator services makes the Media Browser available anywhere.
Travel to the Mac OS X Automation Website and download the Media Picker Services collection. When you install it, you’ll discover that the Services menu—found in all your Snow Leopard applications under Application Name -> Services—includes three new entries: Browse iTunes Library, Browse Movie Library, and Browse Photo Library. Choose the most appropriate one based on your needs and a Media Browser window appears, containing your media. Just select the file you want and drag it into a document.
2. Listen to your documents
Snow Leopard includes another helpful Automator service that lets you take your documents with you in audio form. This is a great way for both those always on the move and those with visual impairments to access text documents. To invoke it, launch System Preferences, select Keyboard, click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and select Services in the window’s first column. Scroll down to the Text heading and enable the Add To iTunes As A Spoken Track service. (If you like, select the service, press the Return key, and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.)
Now open a text document that you’d like to save as an audio file. Select all the text, choose Services from the application’s menu (for example, BBEdit -> Services), and then invoke the Add To iTunes As A Spoken Track command. An Automator workflow kicks in that uses OS X’s built-in text-to-speech feature to convert the text to audio and then saves the file to iTunes. You’ll find it under the new Spoken Text playlist with the name Text To Speech.
3. Trigger workflows through iCal
When you launch Snow Leopard’s Automator, the workflow sheet that appears contains a list of templates. One worth paying attention to is the iCal Alarm template. Using it, you can create helpful workflows that are triggered at a particular time and date.
