Have AIM page you when a buddy signs on

Jul 08, '03 09:00:00AM

Contributed by: siluro

I'm not always within earshot of the audible Buddy Alerts that AIM produces, but I always have my pager on my belt, so I wrote a few scripts to email a quick notice to my pager when a buddy signs on. Although I much prefer Fire as my chat client, it does not yet allow a buddy alert to call an AppleScript, so you'll have to use AOL's AIM client to achieve this. This method uses the UNIX mail command to send a message via sendmail (which must already be configured properly). Also, you must be using a Dynamic DNS service.

  1. Execute the hostname command to ensure that your machine's hostname can be resolved by reverse-DNS lookup. Some mail servers will reject the mail if they cannot do a reverse lookup. If necessary, modify /etc/hostconfig as follows:
    HOSTNAME=myhostname.dyndns.org
    
  2. Create a text file that contains the message that you wish to email to your pager. Use your favorite text editor (ie pico message.txt).

  3. Create a shell script that contains the following, including the full path to the message.txt file:
    #!/bin/sh
    mail  mytextpager@domain.com < /Users/username/Documents/message.txt
    
    Where mytextpager@domain.com is the email address of your digital pager. Save the script with the .sh extension; for example, save as aimmail.sh. Make the script executable by typing sudo chmod a+x aimmail.sh

  4. Open Script Editor and create an AppleScript with the following, including the quotes:
    tell application "Terminal"
      do shell script "/bin/sh   /Users/username/Documents/aimmail.sh"
    end tell
    
    Save the AppleScript as an application and check the box "Never Show Startup Screen."

  5. In AIM, edit the Buddy Alerts for your buddy to call the AppleScript that you created.
Now when this buddy signs on, you will get a text page on your digital pager.

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