Hey!
I recently thought of a webbased service that might actually turn out to be pretty cool (/popular, but we're in an indie-board here, right?).
IntroductionSome of you might know a Mac OSX application by the name of "Automator". What it does is basically enabling you to build any Macro of in-OS actions you can chain together and then execute anytime you want. You can directly tell certain applications to do certain things or simply record some mouse-actions (positions, clicks) to basically chain together whatever you want.
One day I thought: Heck, what if there was something like that for the internet?
Then I went on thinking about the whole thing and soon I realized that it could be pretty cool - under one condition: Automation of the processes that even takes place when my computer is offline -> The Macros have to be executed by an external server.
The actual ideaSo what if:
There was a web-based, registration/log-in requiring (basically free?) service that allowed users to create and execute such macros.
Each user would get a tiny little bit of webspace (some megabytes for macros and as a clipboard) and a restricted amount of traffic.
(will specify further down below)
So the website of this service could offer it's own little development-environment for macros. There would basically be a list and command-lines you could fill either by hand (typing) or with a graphical menu that suggests available commands.
Another great (but more complicated to execute) thing would be a "virtual browser window" in the actual browser in which the user could simply record certain mouseklicks and keyboard inputs. The number of command-lines in the editor aswell as the clipboard-space (for copied and temporarily downloaded data) should be limited to keep the service's server(s)'s traffic in a reasonable range.
So after the macro(s) is(/are) created, the fun part begins: automation!
The user can specify certain periods or specific dates for the macros to be executed. Examples:
- Every 10 Minutes (minimum interval to prevent misuse and traffic-spam)
- Every 37 Minutes
- Every hour (minutes: 00)
- Every day at 12:00am
- Every week on mondays 12:00am and August 5th 2009 12:32pm
- Execute once: In 10 Minutes (minimum timespan)
- Ececute one: December 21st 2012.
Those commands can be combined. (say... 3 at a time) Example: "Every full hour and once on: November 2nd 2009".
What this means and what it can doOnce you start thinking about it and get creative you'll most likely get a lot of possible awesome uses of this thing into your head :
Some random idea:
1.: open my facebook-url (for example: facebook.de/lukashenning)
2.: check the newest entry and if it is not older than 11 minutes
3.: if it is not, then copy the entire text-field to the clipboard
4.: log into twitter with my email and password (specified in the code)
5.: select the "write new tweet"-input field
6.: paste what's in my clipboard into the field
7.: Activate the "send"-button
8.: Click "log-out"-button
- do this every 10 minutes
(copies all facebook-status-updates to a twitter-account automatically)
So... what do you think of the idea? Do you have any own ideas, hints, comments or anything else?
BaronCid
Developer
