Further Tangential Possibilities For Dropbox On iPhone
3:36 pm, October 1st, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Ken Clark’s post about using Dropbox for iPhone to automatically import photos to Yojimbo is a wonderful pointer to new possibilities, and got me thinking about a few that can’t be done yet – but could be, if future versions of Dropbox add one or two features.
Ken’s trick depends on a little bit of Applescript to make it work. But not everyone knows Applescript, which is where another app called Hazel comes in handy.
Hazel is a neat little prefpane utility that performs actions on specific folders according to the rules you create. So, you can say to Hazel: “Watch this folder, and when such-and-such happens, do so-and-so.”
So you could (for example) create a folder inside your Dropbox folder and tell Hazel to watch it. When images arrive there from the Dropbox iPhone app, Hazel could automatically send them to iPhoto, and then move the original image to a folder of your choice. Hazel can do much more, though: it can run Applescripts, shell scripts and Automator workflows.
Right now, Dropbox for iPhone will let you upload photos (and videos from a 3GS), and view your existing files. If it had just one or two additional features, we could really start doing some fun stuff via Hazel.
One example: if you could use Dropbox for iPhone to do something as simple as rename files, you could use your iPhone to control your Mac at home (or in the office) from anywhere. It would be quite simple to create tiny text files, and just by renaming one you could set off a script – or a succession of scripts – on your computer back home.
Let’s say you need to periodically email a timesheet to your boss or your client. You could create a Hazel rule that locates the correct file and emails it to the correct person when Hazel sees a file called “timesheet-go.txt” in your Dropbox folder. If you’re away from your computer but need to send that file, you could dive into Dropbox, rename “timesheet” to “timesheet-go”, and Hazel would look after the rest.
That’s just an example off the top of my head, but the possibilities are wide open. Anything you can script or build an Automator workflow for, you could use Dropbox and Hazel to activate from your iPhone whenever you needed to.
Right now all of this is just a theory, since the Dropbox for iPhone doesn’t – yet – let you move files around, rename them, or create new ones. But I’m going to be keeping an eye on future updates for features like this, just in case.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, Software, Tips & Tricks, Top stories, iPhone | Comment on this article
Since you can run applescript, automator work flow from mail.app, why don’t you just use that instead. Create a rule that will run an automator work flow when you send an email called timesheet-go.
I email items I need from the store to my mail.app account with the subject line store items. Then when i go shopping I send an email with the subject line called store list. This activates an automator work flow that gathers all my previous emails from that week strips the items out of the body of the email, puts all the items into one new email, then emails it to me on my Iphone. Now I have all my items in one email. Very convenient. Now if I could only get my wife to use it.
MIke, on October 1st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Thanks for the kind words! I totally agree with you. If the Dropbox iPhone app not only added support for options to rename, delete, etc., but also added support for other file types — text is be the big one, the possibilities are pretty much unlimited. Very cool stuff indeed. –Ken
Ken Clark, on October 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Does is not work well with ordinary folder actions + automator. This does sound hard at all. Think I might try it out.
Christian Ahrenkiel, on October 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm