AppleScript is the Mac's built-in scripting language, a programming language that allows programs to work together, exchanging data and performing automated tasks based on specific business logic or commands written into the AppleScript itself.

Companies as diverse as TV Guide, the Los Angeles Times and Hallmark Cards use AppleScript to take highly repetitive, mundane tasks and automate them. Instead of having an operator spend hours or days performing these highly manual duties, an AppleScript can run at any hour of the day and do the exact same job in a mere fraction of the time.

TV Guide and the Los Angeles Times use AppleScript to build their TV listings in minutes instead of days, enabling them to have far more accurate listings since they are current as of the day the issue goes to press instead of several days prior. Some companies use AppleScript to monitor folders on a server and copy its contents to remote offices around the world. Real estate companies, grocery chains, and used-car periodicals use AppleScript to turn a predefined template into a fully populated advertisement, complete with the items for sale, prices, details, and contact information -- each of which has been sequentially pulled out of a database which contains all of this information.

Sun-Current Newspapers, the well-known chain of community newspapers, uses an AppleScript developed by Escape to take hundreds of individual advertisements destined for the weekly issues of its various local editions and convert them from Quark XPress files to EPS files, which can then be placed into the newspaper as it itself is laid out in Quark XPress. During the process, several custom attributes of the EPS file are set so that everything about it is press ready. What was once a highly manual process requiring days of work by an operator to meet a Wednesday afternoon press deadline now takes under an hour.

A local advertising agency uses a cluster of Escape-authored AppleScripts. One script is a content-management system that permits designated agency employees to add content to any of several password-protected client-communication websites -- without knowing a single thing about HTML. The agency has avoided the need to hire anyone to manage its web sites, turning a $3,000 investment two years ago into an $80,000 return on investment since then.

A group of three interrelated scripts used by that same agency form the core functionality of the Electronic Press Room, a public relations press release management, mass mailing, and summary reporting tool. The agency first prepares press releases for distribution to the client's designated PR email list. With just a few clicks, a synopsis of the press release and a link to the full text is emailed out to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of trade contacts. Then, once these media contacts begin to open their email and click through to the press release, an AppleScript records exactly which individuals viewed the press release, as well as at what time. The agency inexpensively provides a unique and valuable service to its client, and the client learns what kind of interest the media has in their product announcements, as well as the individuals with whom they need to spend time cultivating interest in their products.

Escape has built a reputation as a leading AppleScript developer. If your business has a time-consuming and repetitive task that follows definable logic, it can be scripted.