I’ve recently revised the Pennyworth website to make it more useful and understandable to new users. I’d like to invite any readers out there to give it a look and let me know if I’ve succeeded in this endeavor or if more work is necessary. Any comments or suggestions that you may have will be greatly appreciated.
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Pennyworth 1.7 is now available for download.
This update fixes a variety of bugs, including some issues with the Bluetooth sensor.
Prerequisites
MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Growl (Recommended): Pennyworth can be used without the Growl notification system by viewing the current predictions, but this occupies precious screen real estate and you attention. In order to receive visual notifications of updated predictions, I recommend that you install and configure the Growl notification system before running Pennyworth.
Source
There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at
http://context-macosx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Tools/Applications
The source requires Xcode 3 to build.
Bugs, suggestions, or comments?
Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to pennyworth@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.
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I just posted a few new sensors to Pennyworth’s online script repository.
TextWrangler.scpt is an update to the current script that improves reliability of detecting the types of open TextWrangler documents. Credit for this update goes to Ricky Buchanan of ATMac.org.
GMail.scpt is a script intended for end users to customize in order to distinguish between different instances of GMail (home vs. work). The GMail script does not come customized out of the box, so you’ll need to follow the example in the code to enable it to look for your own instances.
Geography.scpt is a script that uses IP-based geolocation to determine where your computer is based upon IP. It’s based upon MaxMind’s GeoLite City database. Accuracy figures on a per-country basis are available here.
Please give these a spin and let me know how well they work out. You can download and install these from within Pennyworth by selecting AppleScript Manager from the menu within the Pennyworth status icon.
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I ran across Steven Frank’s recommendations for submitting bug reports a couple of days ago.
Please check it out if you’re planning on submitting bugs for Pennyworth or related applications. It’ll help me resolve issues and get fixes back to you much more quickly.
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Pennyworth 1.6 is now available for download.
This update fixes a variety of bugs.
Prerequisites
MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Growl (Recommended): Pennyworth can be used without the Growl notification system by viewing the current predictions, but this occupies precious screen real estate and you attention. In order to receive visual notifications of updated predictions, I recommend that you install and configure the Growl notification system before running Pennyworth.
Source
There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at
http://context-macosx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Tools/Applications
The source requires Xcode 3 to build.
Bugs, suggestions, or comments?
Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to pennyworth@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.
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Pennyworth Punch Clock 1.0b5 is now available for download.
This release includes minor bug fixes that address UI and stability problems.
Prerequisites
MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Source
There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at
The source requires Xcode 3 to build.
Bugs, suggestions, or comments?
Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to pennyworth@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.
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I wanted to let any potential C4[2] attendees know that I’ll be attending the indie Mac developer conference next week.
If anyone would like to get together for drinks or dinner that weekend, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll see about getting something arranged. Likewise, you can keep an eye open for me at the conference.
I’d be particularly interested in talking to any developers who might be interested in taking their apps and making them context-aware.
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The Group Context Widget: Wanna play?
Lately, I’ve spent a great deal of space blogging about development of the Pennyworth context-sensing system. I want to blog about something a bit different today: a Pennyworth application.
One of my research goals is to investigate the effects of introducing context-sensing technology in environments such as the modern workplace. On one hand, there are likely some potential positive benefits, such as allowing coworkers to monitor each others’ availability in order to minimize interruptions. On the other hand, there will be some potential downsides, such as an overbearing manager using the technology to try and re-implement a twisted version of Scientific Management in the office.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve developed such a monitoring application called “Group Context”. The idea is that Pennyworth logs context updates to a web service, and different views of that service can be used to build different displays of participants’ context. This can be used to track a user’s “contextual timeline” over the past 24 hours or display an aggregate view of everyone’s most recent context. I have a couple private implementations running in web browsers, Chumbies, iPhones, and the like. Today, I spent some time building a simple Dashboard widget for Mac OS X users that is another display:
Currently, the widget looks pretty lonely as I’m the only one logging context at the moment. As more people participate, the more this will fill up and become more interesting.
I’d like to invite any interested readers to explore this with me. I’m planning on keeping this somewhat private, so if you’d like to view others’ contexts, you must participate in turn. If you decide to join this virtual group, you should send me (via e-mail) the name you would like to use in the display (a pseudonym is fine) and an icon to represent you. In return, I’ll send you a small Pennyworth action script that will log your context to the web service and a copy of the Dashboard widget in addition to pointers to TOP SECRET URLs that implement some of the other views I mentioned above.
You must have a running instance of Pennyworth to participate and you can choose to withdraw from this at any time. If you are also uncomfortable logging particular context details, I’ll be happy to help you modify the action script to exclude or mask those details.
Update: I fixed the e-mail link. Sorry about that.
Pennyworth Punch Clock 1.0b4 is now available for download.
This release includes minor bug fixes, new support for iCal calendar time streams, and simultaneous values. Sensors supporting simultaneous values will report them automatically. To manually enter simultaneous values, use a semicolon (“;”) as the delimiter between values. (e.g. Visitors: Tom; Sally; Bill)
Prerequisites
MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Source
There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at
The source requires Xcode 3 to build.
Bugs, suggestions, or comments?
Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to pennyworth@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.
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Pennyworth 1.5 is now available for download.
This update fixes a variety of bugs and adds support for a new idle time sensor. This release addresses application hangs caused by badly behaving AppleScripts and supports individual Growl notifications for individual context aspects (activity, location, social context).
Prerequisites
MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Growl (Recommended): Pennyworth can be used without the Growl notification system by viewing the current predictions, but this occupies precious screen real estate and you attention. In order to receive visual notifications of updated predictions, I recommend that you install and configure the Growl notification system before running Pennyworth.
Source
There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at
The source requires Xcode 3 to build.
Bugs, suggestions, or comments?
Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to pennyworth@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.
Comments Off on Pennyworth 1.5