Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with automatic

I need email updates on my blackberry from a private authenticated rss feed.

Chamunks — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:57:46 -0800

I need to be notified on my blackberry of RSS events on a secure authenticated RSS feed. These notifications can be sms texts or preferably plain text emails. They could and should filter for keywords as the site doesn't as far as I can tell. I was thinking of using yahoo pipes but I have no idea how to start but I've heard its a good way to start. I'm looking for ways to be notified immediately of events on member sites I go to. One in particular is https://ssl.what.cd and a keyword would be something like "freeleech". Its the only example that I can think of right now but I have many other uses for something like this any insight related to fulfilling my need here is fully appreciated.

Also if this (assuming but not limited to the use of yahoo pipes) pipe could also benefit from being able to push this feed to google reader as it would be nice to find a way to get authenticated feeds in google reader.

Please if you must troll over invites and morality issues please restrict them to direct messages to my user via mefimail I would prefer to keep this questions answers related to solving my problem and not a possible piracy flame war when that is not the focus of this question it was only an example.

Automatic Air Freshener Dispenser

Noodles — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:44:11 -0800

I am looking for an Automatic Air Freshener Dispenser that uses regular cans of Lysol instead of the little cans that most dispensers are made for.

Magic Chord-O-Matic Machine!

phrontist — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:04:20 -0800

I was playing around with a keyboard at a Guitar Center that had an auto-harmonize feature. Below a certain note pressing a key would play a chord instead of a single tone. What was interesting was that playing chromatically (white and black keys) it played chords that retained a firm sense of key (C major) - if you jumped around randomly or did chromatic runs it didn't sound like there were a bunch of modulations taking place. What formula do you think it used to do this?

Please don't let my cat eat me.

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:13:11 -0800

Is there a service that will email me once a day, and if I don't respond, contact local EMS? I live alone. I have no family or friends that contact me on a regular basis, often a year or more will go by between phone calls. As I get older, I worry that I could slip and fall (or other medical emergency), and be unable to get help on my own.

Please help us improve our office phone system on the cheap.

4ster — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:38:24 -0800

I work in a small office with a small budget where the only full-time employees are my assistant and I, and we have separate offices. Our office has two phone lines. When one is busy, the other rings. Line one is our published office number. We each have our own voice mailbox. The problem is that you only get the "Press 1 to speak to [her], press 2 to speak to [me]" when both lines are busy or no one answers. I want to set up things so that people can select who they would like to speak to before the phone rings on our end. My reason for this is to cut down on the number of distractions my assistant has to deal with, so I'd like for calls to me to come straight to me, so I can handle them for her.

Our phone company is Embarq, and their fees for having them change things around on their end are prohibitively expensive. I'm trying to see if there is some other way to accomplish that we can afford. I'm open to most anything, including forwarding calls to my (Sprint) Blackberry. However, nothing I can think of deals with the matter of my assistant having to deal with so many calls.

I know it is a long shot, but I'm just curious if there are any workarounds we have not considered.

Thanks.

Auto-click timer utiliuty for Mac default buttons?

ranebo — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:03:34 -0800

A few years ago I used to use a handy Mac utility that would automatically click the blue default button after x number of seconds of inactivity. I have not been able to find it in recent attempts and, for that matter, do not know if it would work with OS X. Anyone have any familiarity with this or something equivalent?

Stop Gmail auto-adding to my contacts list?

wastelands — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:20:45 -0800

Gmail, can you please stop automatically adding to my contacts list!? How do I get Gmail to stop adding every single person I email -- even one-off crap -- to my contacts list? It bugs me because those addresses show up in the keyboard address completion when I'm adding contacts to a new email. I find myself regularly pruning the All Contacts list. Even stuff that's NOT in any contacts list will auto-complete when I'm typing in the To/CC/BCC fields.

I absolutely love Gmail, but this feature drives me nuts. I've looked through Settings, nothing. I've googled for help, no real luck.

MeFi to the rescue?

Automatically connect to VPN on specific wireless network?

chndrcks — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:44:30 -0800

Is there a way to automatically connect to a vpn upon connecting to a specific wireless network (preferably in Windows 7)? I'd like to automatically log on to a certain VPN when I connect to my wireless router - is there a way to do this in Windows 7? Ideally, it would log in when connecting to my wireless router, but not other routers. Also, it would be great if it would log in even before I sign in to windows so that my network shares can map automatically. Any way to do all / some of this? My googling has failed me.

Automatic Twitter message to new followers?

toomuchkatherine — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:28:14 -0800

Is there a way that I can get Twitter to automatically send a private message to new followers, to thank them for following me? I've been trying to do this by hand, but I'm tweeting on behalf of a brand, and it's a lot to keep up with on top of all my other work.

I just want to send new followers something that says 'Hi there! We're looking forward to your tweets. Here's our blog address.' That kind of thing.

I think this may be a dumb question, but I've been looking around for the answer for about an hour now, and haven't found anything. Thanks!

Hungry, hungry kitties

oflinkey — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:50:05 -0800

Anyone have suggestions for a good timed feeder for cats? My sister is going on a trip and her usual catsitter cannot come by this time. She has another person who can come by, but not in the mornings when the cats eat. She would like to have a good automatic timed feeder so that the persom could come by after work, load up the feeder for the cats, and then have the food ready in the morning.

She has a triangular-shaped cat feeder, which she recently bought, but apparently the food somehow gets caught in the mechanism somehow and it does not work. Anyone have suggestions for feeders which are well-designed, sturdy, and able-to-withstand-"big boned"-kitties?

Automatically generate mix from folder of mp3s

jcruelty — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:01:23 -0800

Is there a program/script that will automatically create a beatmatched mix a from a folder filled with techno mp3s? I have a bunch of techno tracks on my computer that I haven't listened to, and I was thinking it would be great to have some script or program that creates a 'preview mix' so I don't have to sit there fast-forwarding past the intro parts for each song.

There's this program 'musicmatch jukebox' that automatically beatmatches tunes into a mix, but you have to manually select each track, drop it in at the right place, configure the transitions, etc. Ditto with Reason. Anybody know how this could be done more automagically (i.e. computer picks the tracks and track order, either based on bpm or randomly or using some rule)

Looking for reputable watch companies!

PetiePal — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:45:30 -0800

Looking to buy a new watch, something nice for daily wear but that won't break the bank. Suggest some great watch-makers. Looking for reputable and quality watch company suggestions. Criteria and background expanded on in full q! I used to have a really nice Fossil watch my brother gave me for my Confirmation gift years ago. It was a leather band, off-white pearlish face and the crystal was raised to a diamond point on top. It had Roman Numerals and a big sun/moon dial that rotated through the day. Sadly it was stolen years ago.

Since then my brother gave me an ESQ Swiss watch for my college graduation in '04, quartz timed which I love and wear only for really nice occasions as it's a much fancier watch than for every day. I may be getting an automatic I've had my eye on for Christmas from the 'rents but I'm looking for another every day watch.

Here are some criteria:

-Can be quartz or automatic movement
-Preferable steel or titanium metal bands as leather tends to rot away too quickly
-I am however open to some cool leather "cuff" watches if they are inexpensive as I might buy one of those and another nicer watch
-I'm not very fond of Chronographs, they feel too "busy" to me so no Tag Heurs lol.
-I'd LOVE if it had sun/moon dials. I miss that from my older watch
-Looking to spend no more than 1200 at the very very most. More likely I'd love to stay under 1k.

Can Mefites out there suggest some great watch companies I could look into? I've checked out Hamilton, Fossil, Invicta, ESQ Swiss. Feel free to suggest more than one watch, I'm looking for classic variety here.

Thanks :)

Automatic contact sheets?

sandra_s — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:11:11 -0800

I have to create a bunch of contact sheets (actually like 600) of photos in different directories. This sounds like it should be easy, but of course there's... "Automatic" is the solution I'm looking for :-)

For years, I have been using the Automate>Web Photo Gallery function is various versions of Photoshop to create these photo galleries. On my local drive’s backup for the website, I have around 600 directories/folders of photos (each directory containing anywhere up to 100 photos, but the average will be about 30).

They are very organized. All the folders are located in the following directory structure:

…members\Galleries\Gallery001\
…members\Galleries\Gallery002\
…members\Galleries\Gallery003\
up to
…members\Galleries\Gallery600\

A typical GalleryXXX folder contains:
images (folder)
pages (folder)
thumbnails (folder)
index.html

I need to make hard-copy contact sheets for the contents of all 600 “thumbnails” folders located at:

…members\Galleries\GalleryXXX\thumbnails\

Each of the contact sheets must only have one directory’s images on it, although each contact sheet can have multiple pages. Each image must also be labeled with it’s filename somewhere near or on it.

The “contact sheet” option in the Windows Vista explorer photo wizard works great (I pick “ADOBE PDF DISTILLER” as the printer, but I’d have to do it 600 times, name each one… ) so other software options are being looked for.

Since the directory structure is so regular, and the actions needed are so regular, there has GOT to be an automated way for me to generate something like contactsheet001.pdf through contactsheet600.pdf automatically.

Any thoughts?

Oh, I have PhotoshoCS2, Illustrator CS2, Acrobat Pro 6 Available if that helps, but Im not married to using those programs.

Thanks in advance!!

Mass installation?

Whoop — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:59:34 -0800

What's the best way to mass install over an Active Directory network? Currently I'm running an network of around 60 computers, most of these are XP although there's some Windows 2003 and 2007 also.
The problem is all these computers remain logged in 24/7 and are locked when not in use, never logged out. I'm a novice Windows network admin and any ideas on how to push software to these computers?
I understand that you can set group policies to run .msi installers, however these are only run upon login and due to these computers rarley actually logging in...as they don't logout this isn't much use.

Any suggestions would be extremely appreciated. Thanks.

Having my first ever surgery and I have two questions.

Blackie — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:45:31 -0800

I'm going in for my first surgery ever in a week or two and have two different questions... 1) can a person get "life insurance" that covers surgery? Short term, specific type. 2) is there a way to write out notes to folks (emails, things to be printed) and have an automatic delivery system if for any reason I don't stop the delivery? I have a good sized tumor in my upper neck/base of skull region that needs to be worked on and as it is my first time going in for anything like this (in 43 years) it makes a guy think.

#1) I do have some insurance through work (50k I think), but I was thinking more along the lines of an extra 100-200k to spread out among family in the case, well, whatever might happen. Just trying to think of my kids, their school needs, my girlfriend and her kids and a new on the way grandson.
Are there places to get short term specific policies, and are they worth the effort?
Will they even cover something like this when a specific problem is involved?

#2) I guess I am thinking of a "Doomsday" type device. I set it in motion with some type of date to "go off" and send out a email that leads to the rest or sends them out all at once. That way I could write up some stuff and if it wasn't needed than I don't have to drag everyone down thinking about it and just turn off the mailing before the date hits.

I'm really not hyper worried about the whole thing, but these two thoughts just keep popping back up in my head.

Automatically remove certain items in Firefox history?

sittered — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:02:36 -0800

How can I arrange it so that my Firefox history is automatically purged of sites of a certain domain like imdb.com or facebook.com? I don't know much in terms of scripting languages, but I won't rule that out as a possible method. I was thinking in terms of a greasemonkey script or a full-fledged extension, but a script that directly edits the history database file is OK, too.

I use Mac OS X with Firefox 3.0.4.

Better than automatic watering...

wongcorgi — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:30:38 -0800

Automatic watering tanks/reservoirs? (not necessarily for plants) I have several items that use water regularly that require filling every 1-2 days. (ie. several earthboxes, several indoor Venta humidifiers). I'd like to extend having to add water to at least a week, and I'm already at the largest sized units.

I was wondering if anyone knows about some kind of water detection/water pump + water storage device that I can use to refill these. I know about using gravity driven tanks, but I'd like something that doesnt have to be mounted up so high, more discreet, possibly smarter.

I get an electric charge from you, this second-hand drumming it just won't do

infinitewindow — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:16:41 -0800

What drum machine / sample set / sequencer did the Jesus and Mary Chain use to get the distinctive drum sounds on the song "Head On" from the Automatic album? I like recreating songs in GarageBand, but I find the included software instruments for drums to be limited. Currently I'm remaking "Head On" by the Jesus and Mary Chain, and I want to get the drums sounding a lot closer to the actual recording than the standard Rock Kit will let me.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to purchase/download a new software instrument that contains the samples used by the Reid brothers for that song, but I have no idea how to start looking for it. My google-fu does nothing but tell me that yes, they used a drum machine. I have access to an old 808 sample set, so I know it's not a stock one of those. O almighty hive mind, please help me!

How can I get an email alert when a web page changes?

tamagosan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:27:22 -0800

I need to automatically refresh a web page and be alerted via email (or run an applescript) when it changes. There are a few commercial apps that do this, but they're Windows based and I'm on a Mac. I'd also prefer something that's freeware. There's also a couple Firefox add-ons which will automatically check a page for changes, but none that I've found allow for an email alert (or to run an applescript).

Automatic Phone Dialing Game

jackround — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:44:06 -0800

Automatic phone dialing game: Is there a product or software application that will automatically dial the next number after one hangs up with the current number? This is a personal efficiency-oriented question. Thanks!

Daily Blogger Post of All my Twitters

davidstandaford — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:36:33 -0800

Is there a way to automate a daily post to a blogger blog with all my twitter posts of the last 24 hours? I have searched and found a bunch of ways to install a widget/badge to my blogspot blog that will be constantly updated with all of my daily twitters, but that is not what I am looking for.

I would also like there to be an automatic post to the blog itself each day that includes all of the twitters. Can blogger do this in any sort of automated fashion?

It seems there are plenty of solutions on wordpress, but none for blogger. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

How can I get automate my daily news searches?

abkadefgee — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:28:39 -0800

How can I automate the news searches that I'm performing on the same subjects day after day after day? I'm working for an employer who needs current information on what the press is saying each day. It would be great if it were an issue of what the big national papers were saying and I could simply use Google News, but I need information from our state and local papers, including those that have only a weekly distribution cycle.

Right now, I'm forced to spend time searching through ten websites a day, often to find no new information. It seems like there should be a way to automate this process so that new information pops up in my email box or RSS reader and I can see what's new right away.

So far, I've been considering applications like Dapper, Yahoo Pipes, Google Alerts, or Feed43. I can't simply subscribe to RSS feeds from the sites directly, since most of them are written in 1998-style code and don't have RSS feeds or tagging of articles.

Google Alerts seems to be out of the running since it often pops up with articles that are months old and misses the local papers.

Dapper seems like it could be great, except that I'm having some trouble tweaking it so that it doesn't send me an update just because a banner ad changes. I think I could get it to work, but I could use a tutorial.

Yahoo Pipes seems like it could be very powerful, but it's a bit intimidating.

Feed43 I've heard good things about, but it doesn't seem to do much more than turn pages into RSS feeds and this doesn't help me with the search.

If you have any tips for using the above services or could point me in the direction of a better solution, I'd really appreciate it. I'd bet someone else out there has had to work through a similar situation at some point. Thanks in advance!

How to save time with auto-configuration for laptops?

fsmontenegro — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:07:32 -0800

How can I reduce the hassle of reconfiguring multiple applications in my Windows laptop when switching between networks (home, office, VPN, hotel, ...) ? What options are people using for automatically (or as close to it) reconfiguring their laptops when switching between networks? This is not just the case of using DHCP (most places do nowadays) or changing IE proxy configs with registry changes. I'd like to automate as much as possible the following:
- proxy configuration for IE and Firefox
- connection settings on Miranda (IM)
- mounting or not mounting certain network shares
- choosing the default printer

So, for example, if I'm "home" there's direct access outbound and I can mount my home share, but if I turn on the VPN the share gets disconnected (because we don't use split tunneling). Now, at a "hotel" I may get direct access but not want to try to mount home shares.

Ideally, I'm looking for a tool that would monitor something (maybe the current default route) continuously and be able to trigger these configuration changes or commands based on location.

Any ideas? I thought about using Perl, but I'd much rather support some existing community project than start from scratch...

Can I have my phone automatically forward incoming text messages to my email?

Maia — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:56:21 -0800

Can I have my phone automatically forward incoming text messages to my email?

automatic keycap cleaining?

ArgentCorvid — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:53:47 -0800

What (automatic) methods would you recommend for cleaning grime off the keycaps of a keyboard? The keyboard on my desktop went out the other day. I have a backup I can use, but it's really dirty. I've taken off the keycaps, and cleaned underneath, but I still need to clean the crap off the keys. I really don't feel like scrubbing them off one-by-one.

I have this awesome idea to put them in the washing machine, but am not sure if this will work without damaging them.

If you have a better idea, let me have it!