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TUAW Tip: Get your animated slideshows to MobileMe
For all the things Apple does right, there are some strange decisions in the integration of iPhoto and MobileMe. iPhoto has a wonderful way to create animated slideshows with music and professional looking transitions and you can look at them all day on your Mac, or send them to your iPhone or AppleTV. But things get ugly when you want to post them on the web for family and friends using MobileMe. It's baffling, but there is no direct way to upload an animation you've created to MobileMe, even though you can easily send stills or even iMovie videos to the web. Well, it can be done, but it's a non-intuitive work around. First, create your slide show in an iPhoto folder the usual way. Then hit the "Export" button on the lower right of the iPhoto screen. From there, you can determine the size of the QuickTime movie you want to make. If it's for the web, I'd suggest the large size. The movie will render, and then be placed in your iPhoto Slideshows folder inside the Pictures folder. From there, you have a couple of options, none of which are well documented: One way is to open your newly created movie in the latest version of QuickTime. Then from the Share menu, select "MobileMe gallery" from the options presented (you'll get the screen you can see in the thumbnail above). Another way to go is to is to import the movie into iMovie first, and then export it out to MobileMe from there. You can also drag the movie back into iPhoto (and yes, I know this is nutty) and then click the MobileMe icon to upload it there. Why can't you do this directly from iPhoto? Search me. It should be there -- maybe we'll see it in the app's next version. If you have another method to do this let us know.
Some tips when visiting the Genius Bar
Nobody likes it when their shiny Apple gear breaks. About a week ago I walked in to the Apple Store here in Knoxville to meet with an Apple Genius about my iPhone 3GS. It seems my phone was crashing much more than normal -- I logged around 90 crashes in the five months or so that I had the device. I walked out of that Apple Store within about 30 minutes with a shiny-new iPhone 3GS. How did I do this without yelling? Read on. TIP: Don't take something to the store upon first crash. I had "put up" with the crashes for a long time. Patience is a virtue, although waiting until your warranty is up is not good. In this case, I had experienced enough crashes across enough updates to indicate the problem might not be the OS itself. Unless your Mac or iPhone is clearly broken, try searching for your issue on the Apple discussion boards and search the support docs for troubleshooting tips. Some basic troubleshooting tips usually include: rebooting, uninstalling/reinstalling, setting up a Guest user account (on Macs) or restoring your iPhone to factory settings. TIP: See what conditions cause the issue to occur and document or explain those to the Genius. In my case I "restored" my iPhone (a clever euphemism Apple uses to hide the true meaning: nuke your device back to factory settings) and tried starting from scratch. My frequent crashes and disconnects from iTunes while syncing indicated a hardware issue if the OS wasn't corrupted. So I had to eliminate the OS as a cause by re-installing it. The problem was, as a factory-fresh install, the iPhone worked fine. So I started adding only content, not apps. Music and videos starting eating up the gigabytes and, sure enough, things started to go horribly wrong. I was able to reproduce the issue only when the device was filled with more than 2GB of data, it seemed. This indicated it was not the sync cable (I had tried several anyway), but possibly the memory in the unit itself. TIP: Bring any supporting materials with you (error reports, logs, etc.) and explain each issue in detail. I had the luxury of using Xcode to peep my iPhone's crash logs. You can find these for your Mac in Applications > Utilities > Console, but they are essentially hidden for users on the iPhone unless you are a developer. My crash logs indicated something very, very wrong: the backup tool that runs each time you sync with iTunes was bombing in a bad way, as though I had ripped out the iPhone in the middle of a sync. That again indicated (to me) that there was a bad block of memory somewhere. When the Mac tried to read or write from that block, the OS just freaked out and crashed. TIP: Try it twice. I tried restoring my iPhone twice just to make sure I didn't get another corrupted install. It amazes me how computers screw this up, given that they are supposed to be famous for doing the same thing given the same set of instructions, but "things happen" as they say -- give whatever you're doing two chances to make it right. Three strikes if you are generous and have the time. Personally, it was a huge enough pain losing all my preferences and settings and game data the first two times. I felt I had enough info at this point to march into the store with a Genius Bar appointment.... The Genius at my store was impressed with the level of detail I was able to go into, and as a result he was able to simply confirm my findings and provide me with a new phone. It took longer to charge the device (which had been sitting in a drawer for a while) than it did to diagnose. Be patient, be aware, come prepared -- do those things and your unfortunate trip to the Genius Bar may not be in vain.
Spring clean your Mac with smart folders
Call it what you will, but "Spring Cleaning" is just as important on your Mac as it is in real life. From cleaning out old files to organizing music/movies/TV shows that you "threw" into iTunes over the past few months, spring cleaning is a necessary evil. One way to find large files that might be eating up space on your Mac is with a smart folder; it's easy to set one up right from the Finder. To create a smart folder that will find large files on your hard drive, simply follow these directions: Open a new Finder window and select File > New Smart Folder. In the resulting window, select "Other" from the first drop-down menu (the default selection is "Kind), and search for the key word "size." If you wish this item to remain in the menu, select the "In menu" check box. Select the OK button once you select the "Size" item. Select "is greater than" from the next drop-down menu. Type in the size that you would like to search for files. I would suggest searching using 1 GB, but you can use any size you wish. Finder will immediately begin searching your Mac for any files that match the description that we just specified. When you are ready to save your smart folder, select the "Save" button from the top right of the Finder window. You will then be asked to specify a save name and location. Now whenever you want to look for large files that might be hogging space on your system, just open this smart folder, and let the search begin!Beyond this tip, if you are looking for utilities that can help you keep your storage lean and free of bloated, legacy files, you may want to check out GrandPerspective, WhatSize or OmniDiskSweeper.
TUAW Tips: Replace login screen background
Are you tired of the standard background for the login window? Well, if you are running Tiger or Leopard, you can easily change this picture to anything you wish. This is handy for schools or organizations who want a static background showing off their spiffy logo. For Leopard UsersTo change the background, just replace the picture file located here: /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpgBe sure to keep the original file in case you want to change it back to the original picture. We suggest changing the original to "DefaultDesktopOriginal.jpg" or something similar.For Tiger UsersTiger users don't have it as easy. You have to replace the picture by editing a login window preference file. Open Terminal and type in the following command, replacing "path_to_picture.jpg" with the actual path to the picture you want as the background:sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture 'path_to_picture.jpg'Since this is a sudo command, you will be required to authenticate as an administrator before the command will be run. Once you enter the command and logout, you should see the changes. Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's TUAW Tips and Terminal Tips sections.
TUAW Tip: Aperture keyboard shortcuts for scrolling through your library
Click To Play play_blip_movie_291511(); One of the things I mentioned in my Aperture podcast that I love so much about this app is its plethora of features designed especially to increase efficiency for power users and pro photographers. This tip centers around Aperture's keyboard shortcuts that allow for some very useful navigation and scrolling of the library browser, which is the pane that displays thumbnails of all the images in the currently selected album, project or folder. Instead of just explaining the shortcuts or giving you a screenshot, however, I thought I would go one step further and put together a short demo video of the shortcuts and the browser in action, additionally pointing out the small shuttle control on the right that helps detail just how quickly you're scrolling. It isn't anything fancy, but it should give you an idea of just how cool and actually useful this feature is.For those who want the actual keyboard shortcuts, they are: J, K and L to scroll up, stop and scroll down, respectively.
TUAW Tip: open a second Mail window to stay productive
This whole 'electronic mail' really seems to have taken off with the internets, and we need to rely on it for an increasing amount of communication with email lists, coworkers, friends and more. While many Mail.app users have at least some sort of Rules system for filing messages into folders (or tagging them with Scott Morrison's spectacular MailTags plugin), I have recently been getting cozy with a lesser-known feature that can save a lot of time with hopping between folders. Under Mail.app's File menu is a New Viewer Window option (opt-cmd-n) that opens - drum roll please - a second window in which you can browse through your messages. This is particularly useful if you have a folder (or perhaps a Smart Folder) which you keep checking throughout the day; this way, you can simply keep one viewer open to your inbox (or whatever default location that suits you), with the second viewer set on that other folder. Go up to View > Hide Mailboxes (cmd-shift-m) for either window to give you some extra room to stretch out those From or Subject headings, and you just took another step up the ladder of email zen. Finally: have no fear if you need to quit Mail or restart - Mail remembers your multi-viewer setup and will put everything right back where it belongs the next time your get your email on.
