On my PowerBook, I, like many others, have the postfix mail server running. In 10.3, there was a way of getting this mail server to start automatically upon login, but that doesn't seem to work anymore in 10.4, creating the annoying problem of having to open the Terminal and start it every time. This can be especially annoying when you think it's running and try to send an email and get an error as the server isn't running (I don't even bother with other SMTP services as it is too much hassle).
I decided I wanted to use the power of Automator to be able to run the server without having to open Terminal, etc. (it's a lazy man's way of doing things, I know, but this will allow for extensibility). Not knowing much about Automator, I searched this site and found this hint. I modified it slightly to be able to run the postcast mail server.
Basically, what you to do is as follows...
Open Automator and select the Finder option in the Library column, and drag the "Get Selected Finder Items" Action into the workflow area. Then choose the Automator option in Library, and select the the "Run Applescript" Action and drag it into the workflow area. Put this AppleScript into the text area:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Terminal"
activate
if (the (count of the window) = 0) or ¬
(the busy of window 1 = true) then
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "n" using command down
end tell
end if
do script "sudo postfix start" in window 1
do script "my_password" in window 1
end tell
return input
end run
Replacing the my_password bit with your actual administrator's password, as this will allow it to actually work!
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050925143254121