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by: Bernard Teo

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Bernard Teo
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List of Categories : Commentary * Singapore * Technology * Travel *

Wed 06 Oct 2004

A Map Plug-In for Address Book (for Panther users)

Category : Technology

I've created an Address Book plug-in for Singapore Maps (based on Stephen Wither's WhereIs plug-in for Australian Maps).

From Panther (OS X 10.3.x) onwards, Apple's engineers gave Address Book users a new ability to work with plug-ins. And smart people are starting to exploit it.

I modified Stephen's AppleScript code and made it work with Singapore's streetdirectory.com. I also wrapped a one-click installer around it.

The installer looks like this and you can download it from here.

Once you've downloaded and installed the plug-in (you can choose to install it at the system level so that it'll work for every user on your Mac), you can go over to Address Book and find a new function in the pop-up menus of Address-related fields :

Choose "Singapore Maps" and your browser will launch streetdirectory.com and point you towards where that address is in Singapore :

Please note: you've got to store your STREET field in Address Book in a regular way - "3 Shenton Way, Shenton House #11-05/06" - i.e., Block No. first, then Street Name, and (very important, don't forget) the comma (or a carriage return), then Building Name and then Unit No. for this to work. You need the comma or carriage return to separate the Street Name from the Building Name.

Neat, right? I've always wanted to be able to do this. This makes Address Book so much more useful.

With AppleScript, and the ability to extend Address Book with plug-ins, and the ability to move the information around to wherever you want it using either Apple Scripts or Unix shell scripts, the things you can do are limited only by your imagination.

Thanks, Steve Withers, for the use of the code.

Posted at 10:34PM SGT | permalink

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