Find yourself knocking out formula letters or emails with just a few words of difference between them? The Form Letter Machine is your best friend in textual automation. This free Windows app gives you the tools to create a “configuration tree,” letting you select and check off items that should be included in each letter, along with leaving room for variables. So if your form letter needs a different name and company, plus a decision on whether or not you’ll be accepting their office supplies pitch, you can easily throw in those two variables and create radio buttons for deciding yea or nay. It takes just a few minutes to grasp the configuration options, and while the app can’t automate output to email apps, browsers, or the like, its straight-up text pastes easily into pretty much anything on your computer. The Form Letter Machine is freeware for Windows from the Donation Coder site, but the author asks for (wait for it) donations to remove a benign nag screen upon start-up.
Donation Coder’s Form Letter Machine [via Download Squad]Weblog TUAW details how to take advantage of your Mac’s built-in automation tool, Automator, to send out birthday greetings on the day-of to everyone in your Address Book. Using the Birthday field in Address Book, putting together automated birthday emails is just a two-step process in Automator. Naturally, you shouldn’t rely on this method as your only means of remembering and recognising birthdays, but it’s a nice way to send simple notes and get a birthday conversation started, especially with people you aren’t in touch with that often. While you’re at it, you may also want to import Address Book birthdays into iCal. Mac Automation: Birthday greetings [TUAW]
