Don't worry about the Test field. Now click the Test button. (You'll need to be web-connected.) This gives you the current price of Coca-Cola stock. And since the true indicator of the status of life on Earth is the current price of Coke stock, this can be really useful. The number in the Test field is what the action passes to the next action.

How does it work? It's called SOAP. It's a Microsoft invention for Fetching web data. The action creates a request, sends it and returns the result.

What's the practical application? You could follow this with a New Message and Send Outgoing Message action to email data to your cell phone. If you save it as an iCal plugin, the process could be done automatically. This could also be used in a workflow to create a screensaver that changes hourly. Or hourly appended to a TextEdit document to keep a running track of data. Since you can do a lot more than just stock prices, I'm sure you'll com up with a few.

XMethods has more for you to play with. Please tell us at the Garage of your successes so we can share them.

Rename for Web This will turn file names websafe. The first Rename finds underscores and changes them to dashes. The second finds spaces and changes them to dashes. The third lowers the case of all letters, including the extension.

Deleting Extensions Deleting extensions sometimes reveals what's inside a package. This one is to reveal the images inside a TextEdit rtfd file. You can also delete ".app" to get access to the innerworkings of applications. The Copy Finder Actions is placed here to make sure you don't destroy working apps or files. Just make sure you don't drop a file already in the desktop. It needs to be in a different location so it doesn't overwrite the file.

Renaming a File You Don't Know the Name of This is more useful in a workflow when you don't know the name of the finder item. In these instances the Replace Text option will not work. The Make Sequential option will rename any file but will also but a "-1" after the name. The second Rename action will delete it by leaving the replace field untouched. This will only work on one file .

The confirmation screen offers you a choice of icons. Two is still considered a choice, isn't it? Click on the icon and it changes. Might be a way to modify this to custom icons, but realize that it would only work on your computer and not when your workflow is shared.

Save your workflow as a Printer plugin. Your workflow will appear on the Print page of every app that allows printing, most notably TextEdit, Preview and iPhoto.

The EscherSketch here is that that folder called "Folder" doesn't exist until the workflow is run, so you can't call up a folder that doesn't exist in the last three actions. The trick is to create a new folder called "Folder" on the desktop, call it up in the necessary actions and then delete it. Having the reference to it and its location is all Automator wants.

You can add a Move Finder Items action afterwards to move this where you like. But it must be created in a defined location, like the Desktop or Hard Drive, before moving it. You can also extend this structure, either by creating an action for each folder needed or by using Copy Finder Items and Rename Finder Items actions to put folders full of folders inside folders full of folders.

You can custom name folders in each workflow by using the option: Show workflow when run. Don't to offer to much leeway or you'll wind up having to click return for the creation of each folder.