Marco? Polo; MarcoPolo tells you where you are

Mac OS X has had locations for a long time. These are sets of preferences based on a ‘location’. However there has never been an official way to automatically switch between locations.

Applications like Location X have gone some of the way to solving this problem by allowing you to switch location based on the wifi access point you are connected to. You can run scripts or actions based on where you are switching to from where. This would allow you to stop your Torrent client in the office but then restart it automatically when you get home, for example.

However access point name is not the most indicative thing. We use Be Internet at home and their hardware refuses to be renamed from ‘BeBox’. If any of my friends also had a ‘BeBox’ access point my laptop would run my home settings at their house as well.

MarcoPolo attempts to address these issues by using ‘hints’ to guess your location. For example if you have a USB mouse you keep on your desk at work, then having it plugged in means you are at your desk, at work (duh!). By building up sets of hints instead of hard rules MarcoPolo attempts to switch your location (and run scripts) in a smarter way. I have to say I love the idea. Not least because it’s free and the developer David Symonds has said he is going to release it under the GPL.

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Productivity, mac, locationx, marcopolo, locationswitching