intercom

[mjmtaiwan]

I know this is a long shot but since I rarely come up with an idea for an app (they have all be thought of before) I thought I’d post it here and see if anyone had any ideas.

Is it possible to create a simple intercom system for locally networked macs. If one were to hit a hot key and be able to chat, walky talky style to ones networked mates… it would be kinda cool.

Can you imagine Applescript being able to do this… (I can’t) and if not… what new language do I need to learn?

Mike

[eaglesong3]

There is an old program called pgpfone which will do this. It was developed and maintained by MIT until 1997 so it may or may not work on newer macs (it was still in beta when development stoppe).

However, the source code is freely available as are the application itself and it’s manual.

You won’t find them at MIT but you can get them here : http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgpfone/

Also, here’s an ingenius idea on how to do this using Applescript. I ran accross it on yahoo and you can view it “in line” with the rest of the discussion here : http://www.shed.com/digests/digests2000/01-25-00.txt

Here’s just the idea

Subject: Re: Mac-to-Mac Intercom Solution?
From: “Jeff Kandt” jeff@scrollbar.com
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 21:12:55 -0500

Darryl-

I’ve been thinking about something like this using just AppleScript
and the “Record Sound to” OSAX (part of the GTQ Scripting Library
available at
http://www.scriptweb.com/osaxen/gtq_scripting_library.html).

Basically, I have a script which uses the above OSAX command to
prompt the user to record a sound which it then drops into a shared
folder on the network. Another script – a folder action (so you
have to be running 8.5 or later) – simply opens any file dropped
therein. The shared folder is “Open” in the Finder of any machine
which wants to hear these “announcements”. (Folder Actions only
execute when the folder’s window is open in the Finder.)

Future enhancements might include using a stay-open application
instead of a folder action to watch for new sound files; this would
allow pre-8.5 clients and would also do away with the requirement
that the folder window be kept open. Another enhancement would be to
use a separate folder for each recipient, so that I can target a
specific Mac.

One problem is that it’s not instantaneous; the sound doesn’t start
playing until the recording is done, and even then it takes a few
seconds for the recipient Mac to notice that there’s a new file to
open, especially if its busy. There are also security concerns,
which might be addressed with the careful set-up of sharing
permissions and by checking to make sure the file is a sound before
opening it (you probably wouldn’t want to automatically open any old
application someone drops there, for instance).

Maybe this kind of thing would do the trick for you? Tonight I got
it to the proof-of-concept stage; I can post some sample code if you
or anyone else is interested – it’s pretty basic.

-Jeff

[mjmtaiwan]

Thank you very kindly for pointing me to that resource. At least I’m not the only one to think that it would be kinda neat.

I’ve emailed the author of pgpfone to see if he has any ideas.

Thanks!