InstantLinks is a system service that allows you to quickly perform a web-based operation on the selected text. What does that mean? Well, let's say a friend sends you an invite to a big bash:

You've never been there, so you could use a quick view of the area. Enter InstantLinks:

And in no time at all your favorite web browser gives you a pretty map like the following to play with:

That's just one of the expanding list of functions provided by InstantLinks. Others include:

• Do a dictionary/thesaurus/encyclopaedia lookup of the selected text.
• Do a web search for the selected text.
• Open the selected URL.
• Submit the selected text to SpamCop for report processing.
• Do a reverse lookup of the selected phone number.

InstantLinks comes as a either a .dmg file or .tar.gz file. The .dmg file can be opened directly in the Mac OS X Finder. The .tar.gz can be opened with Stuffit Expander as supplied with OS X, but we highly recommend you use a tool like OpenUp to extract the files from it (and many other Unix archive formats).

Simply move or copy InstantLinks into the Library/Services directory (create it if it doesn't already exist) under either /, /Network/, or your home directory. Mac OS X requires you to log out and then log back in to make these services available to other applications.

The SpamCop Submit item is the most complex service provided by InstantLinks. To use it properly, you need to sign up for (at least) a free reporting account at www.spamcop.net.

If you are using Apple's Mail application on Mac OS X to read your email, you will find that it will not forward messages easily/properly for spam reporting. SpamCop, contradictory to their own instructions to simply show all headers, wants the full source of a message for processing. In Mail, that can by had by selecting a spam message and then the menu item Message->Show->Raw Source. What is commonly done is to click on that text, do a Edit->Select All, Edit->Copy, switch over to your browser, click on your SpamCop bookmark, click in the text area, Edit->Paste, and click on the "Process Spam" button to submit it. Whew! A lot of work, but at least it was pointless.

Yes, pointless.

The problem is that Mail alters the raw source ever-so-slightly that SpamCop can't process it properly. It tries, and you might even see the message Fixing mangled apple-mail paste, but when it comes to finally sending the reports, it will return with Reports have already been sent, which is simply a lie. So your efforts were indeed pointless, which is why you need InstantLinks.

After selecting the raw source, you can now instead use Mail->Services->InstantLinks->SpamCop Submit to do a proper submission. It corrects the message and creates a simple form that is automatically (if you have JavaScript turned off, you still may have to click "Process Spam" manually) submitted by your browser to SpamCop. Then when you have it send the reports, they actually will get sent. Simple!

Clearly it would make more sense if Mail could do this itself. If there is enough interest in this feature as part of InstantLinks, we'll further consider making a bundle for the Mail application that does spam reporting more simply. Given that we've put a GUI on the SpamCop configuration at this point, it's really only a matter of time before the bundle comes out.

Payment
$5.00 is the minimum payment suggested for this software. See the Serviceware section for details, or go directly to the payment form.

Status

Please direct email regarding this software to InstantLinks@subsume.com.

The main page for InstantLinks is at http://www.subsume.com/static/WebObjects/SubsumeSite/SubsumeSite/Tech/Software/InstantLinks.html.

Please go to http://www.subsume.com/ for other information about Subsume Technologies, Inc.

My SpamCop reports are opening in OmniWeb (or whatever) when my preferred browser is IE (or whatever).
It seems to be due to the way the system handles URLs and how you have your Finder file associations set up. If you've set your HTML files to open with a browser other than your preferred browser, that appears to be what the system uses when given a file:// URL scheme to open. Hopefully this won't bite too many people in practice, but it sure came up in testing (along with the fact that IE is confused by the files unless they have a .html extension on them; bloody IE).

Hey, another SpamCop problem is that certain HTML messages funk up the form. You gonna do anything about that?
Nope. Well, we might alter the form that gets generated so that some manual workaround is simple (instead of having to view source and paste the clean mail source into a clean SpamCop page). This is another case where it shows that an integrated Mail bundle would make more sense. Show your support of a Mail bundle by registering InstantLinks and saying so; your registration will automatically be transferred to the new software if/when it gets released.

SomeSuch text isn't parsed properly for ThatThere service.
The parsing is far from robust, so be sure to send in any examples of improper URL generation.

• The mapping code is quite stupid, and definitely needs more work in parsing any novel location formats.
• Find a way to get portals to pay me for the reference. Right now, we're just using the ones we like. If your preferred portal is not the default we happen to use, contact that portal and ask them to include software like InstantLinks as part of their affiliate program. In the mean time, localization allows the strings mapping to be altered by the clueful user (this workaround is unsupported).
• Now that we're supporting phone numbers as a data type, we've played around doing a speaker dial service but decided not to include it because of some playback issues (and the fact that it had nothing to do with the web! :-). If you have some ideas for interesting phone number services, now would be a good time to pipe up.
• Do some additional specialized munging for SpamCop submissions.
• Your suggestion/code addition here.

12 Apr 2002 - 2.4.0

• Feature request by Keith Lathrop
  Worked around long filename issues for using SpamCop with Mozilla.
• Made changes to support SpamCop member accounts.
• Added a config app to adjust all the SpamCop goodness.
• Feature request by Joe Block
  Added a phone number reverse lookup service.

14 Jan 2002 - 2.3.0

• Added a "SpamCop Submit" service.
• Fixed a minor URL hex encoding bug.

8 Jun 2001 - 2.2.0

• Base localization supported. Properly localized versions will require a volunteer for the translation, but base support does at least allow the clueful user to change the web portal used (to an extent) for any of the services.
• Feature request by Rudolf B. Blazek
  Added an "Encyclopaedia Lookup" service.
• Feature request by John Rosborough
  Canada address mapping supported. Detection is tricky, so send an email if you come across a proper address (USA or Canada) that doesn't map correctly.

23 Mar 2001 - 2.1.0

• Updated for Mac OS X Release support. This version will not work on the Public Beta.
• Improved web search URL generation by encoding spaces as the now common +.
• Repairs and opens URLs broken by whitespace (wrapped in email, split by Slashdot, etc.).
• No longer have to call Carbon code directly to open the URLs, thank goodness!

08 Nov 2000 - 2.0.0

• Updated for Mac OS X support. Dropped Mac OS X Server sync.
• Uses the default browser instead of requiring OmniWeb.
• Added an "Open URL" service.

29 Apr 1999 - 1.0.0

• Original Mac OS X Server version.
• InstantLinks subsumes DigitalWEBster.

Unlike most companies, we actively encourage you to try out the competition to see if their offering better suits your needs. If so, we would appreciate hearing what features you like so that they may be considered for future updates of InstantLinks.

Here is a list of other software we know about that does things along the same lines as InstantLinks. If you have or know of a similar piece of software that is not listed, let us know and we'll add it.

• LeoLookup
• NetService
• OpenService
• SearchGoogle

You're lookin' at it!