Ask TUAW: iChat problems, keyboard control, SRS iWOW bugs, iPhoto desktops, and more

In this exciting round of Ask TUAW we'll be looking at questions about using the keyboard to control dialog boxes, getting iTunes to play when a Mac wakes from sleep, using selective iPhoto sources for an automatically changing desktop, port forwarding for iChat, using one Mac to control another Mac running Front Row, and more.As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!Continue reading Ask TUAW: iChat problems, keyboard control, SRS iWOW bugs, iPhoto desktops, and moreRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One way to randomize order of an iPhoto slideshow

There are two ways to have a slideshow in iPhoto. From within an album, you can click the Play button and get a quick slideshow. With this method, you have the option to shuffle the order, and play music -- but you can't "fit" the duration of the slideshow to the music. The other way is to create a slideshow in the sidebar. Here you have the option of setting the duration of each slide to match that of the music (in my case, I had a 20 minute montage), but there is no way to randomize the order -- you have to drag by hand to set the manual order. My idea is to title the photos with a random number, then sort by title, thereby randomizing the images. Run this AppleScript in Script Editor to do just that: tell application "iPhoto" --tell album "photos" -- Note: change the album name above to reflect the album -- whose images you'd like to re-title, then remove the "--" -- at the beginning of the line. Note that if you leave it -- as "photos," th...

Launch iPhoto only on camera, not iPhone, connect

I have been continually annoyed with the way that iPhoto would start whenever I plugged my iPhone into my computer. The only pictures I take with my iPhone are to help me find my space in a parking lot, or so I can reassemble something I am taking apart. I do not want to archive these pictures. However, I do still want to use iPhoto to take the pictures off my digital camera. My previous solution was to set Image Capture to disable launching iPhoto in every case of camera attachment, and then manually launching iPhoto when necessary.Luckily, Sam Stephenson at 37signals provided me with a solution that will launch iPhoto when a camera is attached, but not when my iPhone is attached. Sam realized that within the preference pane of Image Capture, an arbitrary application can be set to launch whenever a camera is connected. This solution utilizes the shell command ...

Possibly restore older iPhoto themes in iPhoto '08

Upon trying to create a book in iPhoto '08, I noticed a lot of the old themes were not available. Browsing around, I found the theme folder for iPhoto in the top-level Library folder, in Application Support » iPhoto » Themes. Inside that folder were many themes not available through iPhoto itself, but that were available in older versions. As one example, BabyBoy-Hardcover.IPBookTheme isn't available in the list of book themes pop-up menu, but it is in that folder. I can't guarantee how safe/legal the following process is, but I was able to enable the old themes by editing a parameter in that theme's Contents/Resources folder. I opened Contents » Resources » Implementation.plist in a text editor (or Property List Editor) and changed the Hidden parameter from yes to no. After saving my changes and restarting iPhoto, the old theme was available in iPhoto. [robg adds: I used BBEdit and ran a multi-file search to find the hidden th...

Digital Photo: Master your image library

Much of the attention for iPhoto ’08 has focused on the new Events pane, which organizes your photos based on when they were taken. But Apple’s newest photo manager has many more tricks up its sleeve.

Uploading full-size JPEGs from iPhoto ‘08

Sometimes you want to allow friends and family to download your full-size JPEGs for printing or creating iPhoto photo books. Web Gallery makes it easy. 1. Select the photos you want to publish in iPhoto ‘08 and click Web Gallery. 2. In the options window, select “Allow Downloading of photos or entire album.” 3. Click the Show Advanced button and choose Actual Size in the Download Quality drop-down menu. Click Publish and iPhoto ’08 will upload your full-size JPEGs instead of optimized images, so