[aktau]

Cool. I immediately wanted to check out how it works to find out it works by sending some bits to Messages.app through applescript. The most relevant portion seems to be:

if is_i response puts "Sending \'#{str}\' to chat number #{response}" `osascript -e 'tell application "Messages" to send \"#{str}\" to item #{response.to_i} of text chats'` else puts "Sending \'#{str}\' to buddy \'#{response}\'" `osascript -e 'tell application "Messages" to send \"#{str}\" to buddy \"#{response}\"'` end

Though I must say I kinda like the way they've done it in OS X 10.9, where I can respond inline even when I'm on another desktop.

The best thing about this is probably that you can send messages when you're logged in to your OSX box remotely. Though for that to be handy it misses a real "chat" feature, in which the app can also playback the messages you've received.

[aktau]

I immediately thought it would be cool to make some of my cronscripts send some messages to myself when something interesting happens. Sadly, the form used in this utility does not lend itself to sending to self, Messages.app returns an error when you try.

Turns out it's quite easy to get around, here's a gist that allows to you make a nice mini-commandline app: https://gist.github.com/aktau/8958054

(reproduced here):

  #!/bin/sh
  exec <"$0" || exit; read v; read v; exec /usr/bin/osascript - "$@"; exit
   
  -- taken from:
  -- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11812184/how-to-send-an-imessage-text-with-applescript-only-in-provided-service
  -- thanks to users @Senseful and @DigiLord
  on run {targetBuddyPhone, targetMessage}
      tell application "Messages"
          set targetService to 1st service whose service type = iMessage
          set targetBuddy to buddy targetBuddyPhone of targetService
          send targetMessage to targetBuddy
      end tell
  end run

Now I can do:

  $ imessage XXXXXXXXXX "gofinance: stock AAPL went up, possibly because of imessage..."

Where XXXXXXXXXX is my own number.

There are some other cool hacks with this, among others is a Lisp REPL with iMessage: https://46b.it/2012/hacking-with-imessage.

[chrisfsampaio]

Handling received messages is on my to do list. (: Thanks for your feedback!