MoodSwing 2 and Qurl Clipboard

Major new version and a new download page. Check it out!

After being featured at TUAW yesterday and getting a few comments, I decided to take a closer look at MoodSwing. I’ve added a few new @keywords, more Skype support, Jaiku support, and the ability to clear out your mood message on your chat clients…

MoodSwing is (yet another) Applescript that integrates Quicksilver with iChat, Adium, Skype, Twitter and Jaiku for simultaneous status and mood/message updates.

Download the new script here. There’s a text file version included for those who want to edit it without installing all of the clients it calls. There’s so much borrowed code in my library that I can’t even remember where it all came from. So if you see hints of your code in the script and you want credit, let me know. I didn’t intentionally fail to name anybody, just lost track.

MoodSwing 2 Basics

To reiterate the instructions:

Put the script (moodswing.scpt) into

youruserdirectory/Libary/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions

. If the Actions directory doesn’t exist, just create it. Then restart Quicksilver and you should have the moodswing action available.

Launch Quicksilver and type a period (.) to enter text mode. The syntax for a string is just your message (under 140 characters), optionally including an @keyword that will set your status in the three chat clients. The keywords available are “@gone”, “@away”, “@here”, “@busy”, “@hidden”, and “@goaway” and they set fairly obvious statuses in each client, differing slightly depending on the available settings. The @keyword can be the first or last word in your string. You can also send just an @keyword. Also, you can send the keyword !blank to clear out your status message in all chat clients (sending nothing to Twitter or Jaiku). This can be used in combination with an @keyword or by itself.

There’s no word count function. Are you really setting 140 character status messages? I am including a neat trick, though. Again, I’m certainly not the first to do this, I just felt like doing things my own way:

Qurl Clipboard

Download qurlclipboard.zip and unzip it to youruserdirectory/Library/Scripts. If you have your user scripts directory set up in your Quicksilver catalog, it will now be available for this next step.

In order for this script to work, you need to have “Enable access for Assistive Devices” checked in your Universal Access preference panel.

Hit ⌃-Space to launch Quicksilver, and then hit ⌘-’ (command-apostrophe) to open triggers. Define a new custom trigger that launches qurlclipboard and runs it, and assign a hotkey to it. I used ⌘-⌥-v. You’ll see why in a second.

What the script does is use Qurl to shorten URL’s. It’s basically another version of TinyURL. I happened to like the API. This script takes what’s in your clipboard, sees if it’s a URL (starts with “http”), and sends it to Qurl. It takes what it gets back, puts it in the clipboard and then hits ⌘-v, which will paste it into whatever application you’re in, including the Quicksilver text window.

So now you can copy a long URL from a browser window or an email message in the usual manner, and then paste it into a web form or Quicksilver text window, another email message, or anything you want as a shortened URL by hitting your hotkey combination instead of ⌘-v.

Moodswing: Major new version and a new download page. Check it out!

Qurl Clipboard: qurlclipboard.zip

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