This is a crosspost from The Cat Convention.
If you’re not familiar with Dropbox by now, you should be. Dropbox is what MobileMe‘s iDisk aspires to be one day. For now, it isn’t.
For the uninitiated, Dropbox is a fantastic cross-platform bit of code that synchronizes files across all of your computers. It also provides a look into the folders via a web browser if you should need it. They also offer an iPad app that allows you to browse and download files to local applications such as Pages.
Alas, Pages on the iPad, however, doesn’t speak Dropbox. It will allow you to edit the documents and export them to:
- An email
- iWork.com
- iDisk
- A webdav server
Dropbox is missing from that list. You could save your files back to your iDisk, but then you’d need to go to a regular machine and copy that file from the iDisk to your Dropbox folder. That’s pretty obtuse.
While we wait for Apple to purchase Dropbox and implement it as an iDisk replacement, we can use the magic of Apple Mail and Applescript to create a nifty workaround. Today I spent some time on a script that will do the following:
- Take the contents of an email message with a particular subject line
- Extract the attachment
- Save the attachment in a Dropbox folder depending on the keyword you use in the subject line of the message
Since Dropbox runs all the time on your Mac, it will notice the file change event and automatically sync the file to all of your computers linked to that Dropbox account.
Making an Applescript that will save an attachment to your file system is quite easy. Linking a mail rule to that Applescript is also quite easy. Therefore, the implementation of this is easy. What makes this script a little different is that you can specify keywords in the subject line and it will decide where to put the file inside your Dropbox folder based on the keyword. Editing those keywords are completely up to you.
To implement, download the “Save Attachment to Dropbox.scpt” file below. You should open /Utilities/Applescript Editor.app and modify the script’s keywords for the subject lines you plan to use. Save the .scpt file to your favorite location for AppleScripts. (For Mail scripts, I use “~/Library/Scripts/Mail”).
Next, create a rule in your Apple Mail using criteria to judge when to fire off the rule. In my case, I told it to look for messages that meet all of these criteria:
- Messages coming from a particular email address
- Containing a subject line keyword that starts with“-savedb”
The script will execute and look at the subject line of your email message. The subject line should start with “-savedb…” and have some kind of keyword in there. You edited the script to define those, right? Well, you don’t use the rule to define those keywords. Note that I said in the keyword to use “starts with” the string “-savedb”. The script will determine what to do with it based on what you code there.
I also recommend adding an action to move the processed messages over to a folder. In my case, I created a folder called “Processed to Dropbox” and told the rule to move the message there.
An important note: the script will overwrite any files that have the same name as the file. I felt that this was a safe thing to do since Dropbox automatically backs up 30 copies of the file on the site and you can retrieve any version you like. Deleted versions of the files are tossed in the Trash. They are not deleted completely until you empty the Trash. If you still do not like this behavior, feel free to modify the script to remove that action.
Now all you have to do is send yourself an email from the proper address with the proper keyword from your favorite app on the iPad and voila, it’s instantly synced to all of your computers and backed up.
Another way to use this is via “DropDAV” at http://dropdav.com. I was close to using that solution until I read more about it. I decided I wasn’t entirely comfortable with giving another third party my Dropbox username and password, so I developed this method instead.
If you want to encourage the developers of Dropbox to add WebDAV support, be sure to give them a +1 vote here.
I hope you enjoy this script and it helps band-aid the interruption in workflow until Apple purchases Dropbox. 
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below.
Click here to download “Save Attachment to Dropbox.scpt”.
Related articles
- Dropbox – Features – Simplify your life (lirax.wordpress.com)
Here’s an interesting article on sleep. Due to my own sleep issues, this is an interesting topic for me. I believe there are a lot of problems in health and society today that are based in misunderstandings in sleep science. I truly believe everyone should stop and take a measurement of the quality and quantity of sleep they get every night.
Sleep Experts Answer Your Questions On Teens And Shuteye : Shots – Health Blog : NPR
Tags: sleep
Tonight I was browsing through my normal websites with Safari on my Mac when suddenly, this window took over my entire browsing experience (click to go full screen on it).
I either got this from macdailynews.com, macnn.com or msnbc.com. I’m not sure which. I did a force-quit on Safari and moved on with my life, but still… beware.
Have you heard of Yammer? If not, you will.
You will likely hear about Yammer after your corporation or business signs a deal with them. Your users will start to flock toward the service and sign up. Lo and behold you will discover that they will be offered a piece of software to install. During the software install they will have the option to invite other users in your organization.
It appears this feature enjoys crawling through your local address book or global address list to invite folks. If you’re in a large organization with thousands of employees, congratulations! You now have a spam attack.
Yammer needs to fix this. Other social startups need to learn from this. Because of this, I’m actively staying away from Yammer, even though my large business is asking us to use it. Screw that. I have work to do.
Tags: social, things i hate, yammer
I was reading the blog post over at Microsoft from the fellow… Oh, I forget his name already. Anyway, he was explaining why Microsoft is filing a complaint with the European Commission about Google’s unfair business advantages and whatnot.
At first, this whole thing comes off as a company entering legacy mode. Microsoft reminds me of the RIAA, MPAA and the newspaper industry. They clearly feel the edge is blunted and their technology is dying. They are unable to adapt. As a result they are engaging in a strategy of sue and destroy.
Back to the blog post from the executive. One of the complaints is that Google purchased YouTube in 2006 and has made it difficult, if not impossible, for search engines to index the content. Apparently this is a progressive action.
I do believe that when you are as big as Google, you have a responsibility to allow openness of this nature. However, I’m rather disturbed by the complaint. Essentially, Microsoft is saying that if Google were to put in a robots.txt file on a website they own to block search engines from indexing content this should be illegal. Uhm, what?
A great many people have employed the use of robots.txt throughout the web’s history to prevent indexing of pages. Could Microsoft’s complaint set a precedent for companies complaining about the use of robots.txt to force the hands of web masters?
I’m just asking the question. Sometimes I wish Microsoft would just quit whining and get back to making great software like they used to. It seems more and more that will just not happen. When a big company out-innovates them or outsmarts them in business, their first reaction is to sue.
Reminds me of the RIAA, MPAA and the newspaper industry. Get back to solving hard problems, Microsoft. Stop wasting your time and money on lawsuits. Are you a software company or a whiny bitch?
Guess who didn’t get a ticket? There’s absolutely no way I will ever be able to purchase a ticket through my corporation if the windows is down to the hour. No way. I was going to be lucky to pull a purchase within 48 hours.
Apple needs to expand this conference and offer paid developer accounts a first right of refusal.
Really, Nintendo? Maybe the games were overpriced to begin with.
When we were looking to get our son a Nintendo DS I pushed hard to get him an iPod Touch. My reasoning:
- There were no cartridges to lose
- The games weren’t overpriced
- The games were more “throwaway” – he’s a six year old boy. His interest level in a game will come and go as quickly as the day
He pushed back. He really wanted the Nintendo DS. After 7 months he barely ever touches the thing and has lost multiple cartridges. In his defense, he found them pretty quickly, but still, managing your game collection is just stupid.
Sounds to me like Nintendo is upset about the loss of business. Why are they losing business? It’s the same reason the entertainment industry and press are losing business. They refused to innovate and evolve the business model.
Nintendo chief slams iPhone, Android for devaluing games | Electronista: “”
(Via Electronista)
Tags: internet kills you, moving on, stupid
There’s nothing fair about Fair Isaac anyway.
5 Red Tape Traps: Getting a credit score – The Red Tape Chronicles – msnbc.com: “”
(Via MSNBC)
I ran across this article this morning. It shouldn’t surprise anyone… well, with the exception of the people that are getting scammed.
My favorite part of the article is the comments. Someone claims in the article that AOL invented email and uses that to defend paying them a monthly fee. Hilarious.
Tags: aol, email, stupid people
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