This isn't a revolutionary tip -- it just puts together several well-known tricks into something useful. Today I was downstairs with my iBook, and I wanted to play some music. Thanks to iTunes4, I can play all the songs in my desktop G4's library via the wireless network. That's great, because now I can keep everything in one place, and the G4 can be the music server for the entire house.
But two problems: The G4 is upstairs in my home office, and iTunes wasn't running. he easy solution is, of course, for me to get off my ass, trudge up the stairs, call up the dock, and start iTunes. Then go back downstairs and enjoy my music on the iBook. But, like any good computer geek, I'm lazy. So instead I did this:
In step one, I could have used telnet instead of ssh, if the G4 were set to allow it, but ssh is more secure, of course. And of course, the library will only be available if I've previously set the G4 to share its music library. Hopefully this tip will be a useful reminder to anyone as lazy as I am: You can log on remotely and use the open command to start up any app you might need.
[robg adds: Yes, it's basic, but useful and not (near as I can tell) published here before in this general form. I do a similar thing to launch VNC (a remote control client), as described in this hint.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030510201753850