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Baker Street Blues

The world's greatest sleuth and his companion are in a quandary.


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Things can get hectic at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock and Watson are in dispute. Watson accuses Sherlock of stealing his glory. Sherlock denies all.

But their landlady knows something they don't. All the while they've been constructing their complex scenarios to solve the crime, Mrs Hudson has figured it out on her own - and it was a lot simpler than either of them ever imagined.

It was right under their noses - right where Watson holds his pipe and Sherlock holds his violin. Right there all along.

It wasn't complicated after all, it wasn't hard to solve. Thank you, Mrs Hudson.

We need to be able to dynamically download scripts from the corporate server, bellowed Sherlock. Nonsense Holmes! retorted Watson. Scripts aren't fast enough! We need plugins! Plugins plugins plugins! NSBundle plugins!

Who provides the plugins, Watson? asked the famous sleuth. How often will people be able to get them? What kind of delay will there be between the change of URL at a search engine and your customers being able to access the new URL? We need a lot of dynamics here, my dear doctor friend!

But it's too slow, Holmes! Scripting creeps along like you before your daily fix! Like me before tea! It's too damned slow!

Nonsense to both of you! said Mrs Hudson as she entered the study with the afternoon Cocoa. Scripts, NSBundles - what nonsense! Why can't people access search engines contextually - from wherever they are on their desktops? And for heavens sakes why must they force the scripts and NSBundles to break the HTML output down piece by piece only to build it back up again? Where's the logic in that?

People don't have time, you scoundrels! They want answers today, this minute, this very second - not when you're through showing off! You're supposed to get the data, not play with it!

Sherlock and Watson stared at their landlady in dumbstruck awe. My dear Mrs Hudson! We've never heard you speak out like this before! said a decidedly pale Sherlock.

Well it's about time! You two ninnies carrying on! Your ridiculous architectures! Let people access their searches right inside their every program - right on their Services menu! Here boys - have a cup of hot Cocoa!

Sherlock took out his violin; Watson lit his pipe; Mrs Hudson left the two of them to it. For the longest time there was the greatest silence as Sherlock stared out the window, mouth hanging open, and Watson sucked on his briar, looking flustered.

She's got us, my dear friend! said Sherlock at last. We are the fools!

I'm afraid so, Holmes! replied the doctor.

Mrs Hudson knew what she was talking about: the answer's been there all along on your Services menu, the menu found on every Cocoa application built for OS X. You've seen hints of it with Mail and Safari but you've never seen it like this before. And it was there right under the noses of all those engineers in Redwood City - and later Cupertino - and no one saw it until the ACP Web Services were born.

The ACP Web Services are a subset of the ACP Services. They're infinitely extensible and have a life of their own. And the code running them is so simple, so straightforward, it's almost like already having the web on your desktop. And with the install of a 17 KB module they really are.

The ACP Web Services come with a 'grab bag' of thousands of web services. And you don't need to reboot or log out and in to make them work - the ACP Service Manager takes care of all that for you.

Customise your menu as you wish, delete, edit, add new items, then just update your services through ACP Service Manager and they're ready to use.

ACP Service Manager Pro

And with ACP Service Manager Pro you can edit not only the ACP Web Services but any service on your computer. You can eliminate services, change or take away keyboard shortcuts, change service menu item titles, response timeouts - anything you want.

You can back up menus and restore them. Insert new items from the grab bag. And so on. Most importantly you can finally eliminate the eyesores you've lived with for so long and finally make your menu look the way you want.

Never before has a user of OS X been able to configure the Services menu - it's just been there and you've had to live with it. ACP Service Manager Pro finds all your service providers on disk and makes them readily accessible for editing. It's never been done before - anywhere at any time.

The ACP Web Services afford you an immediacy you didn't know was possible: highlight text anywhere and immediately search at hundreds of different search sites. No additional plugins or channel data downloads. No extra application packages on disk - ever. No script or bundle architecture to put up with. Highlight your text, choose a destination, and you're there - in 'one click'.

You get your answers before Sherlock and Watson can finish their Cocoa.

See Also
ACP Services: Secret Services
ACP Service Manager: Very Close
ACP Web Services: We're There, DP
ACP Service Manager Pro: Get Control
ACP Service Browser: It's in the Past, DP

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