Proxi

Proxi is a free automation tool for Mac OS X. It is similar to Automator but has "Trigger" events that can cause it to perform its tasks.

Proxi is designed to work with Griffin's products, but it isn't limited to that. For example, I can easily create a Proxi "blueprint" (that's what they call the combination of a trigger and its tasks) to automatically open up new web pages from this site.

First, I simply create a trigger using the predefined "RSS Monitor" type and set its URL to point at one of the RSS Feeds here. For this simple task I don't need any "extra values" or "filters".

Don't click "Update Now" until you have defined a task. If you do, the blueprint will run, but since you have no task defined, nothing will happen, but it will have gone out and checked for new links. That effectively disables anything from happening until the site is next updated. As I usually update only once per day, you might have a long wait to see your Proxi blueprint actually work.

The task is simple: Open A URL. Again we can pick that from predefined tasks, but this time we will modify the settings to choose "ItemLink". This means that any new RSS items will be automatically opened in our browser.

You could also just have your computer announce the new items or flash the item descriptions on the screen by choosing differents tasks.

After doing that, if you go back to the Triggers screen and click "Update Now", all new items will open up in your browser. There will be fifteen of them the first time you do this, so it may take a few seconds.

Of course there are other triggers available. You can monitor folders, trigger on keystrokes, watch mail and so on.

The documentation for Proxi is a little sparse. For now at least you are pretty much on your own to figure out how the triggers and tasks work. There is a Wiki, but it's not all that helpful. On the other hand, most of these are easy to understand after a little experimentation.

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