Cidney - Distributed Caller ID for Macintosh

The latest release from Audacious Software is Cidney, a Caller ID application that unobtrusively lives in the menu bar of your Leopard-based Mac and offers some very interesting advanced features.

For example, Cidney allows you to define "filters" that specify how the program reacts to incoming phone calls. Here's how the developer describes the feature:

"Filters allow you select which calls interrupt you based on some simple criteria. For example, you may wish to have a filter that only allows calls from friends and families to interrup you during your off-time and one that only allows coworkers to interrup you while you are working. Another filter may allow you to silently ignore calls from numbers that you don't recognize (such as junk calls)."

You can also have Cidney trigger AppleScripts when the phone rings, and it provides access to the Caller ID information from the phone company. For example, you might have an AppleScript send you an email message if you receive a call from your company's telephone exchange.

At home, my computer receives Caller ID data from PhoneValet, which runs an AppleScript that sends a Growl notification to all the Macs on my network. With Cidney, support for Growl is built-in, and I'd use an Apple USB modem to gather the Caller ID data from my phone line.

The author of Cidney also writes Shion, an Insteon-based home automation program that I've mentioned before, and the excellent Books that I use quite extensively for my library. It will be fun to watch how this new app continues to grow.