View iPhoto albums on a cell phone

Apr 19, '05 09:43:00AM

Contributed by: juz10mac

Here's a way, as seen at left (larger image) to have your iPhoto library on your cell phone. Here's what you'll need to pull it off:

Here is what this hint does ... basically you export an iPhoto album to a web page and call it up on your cell phone. However, you use small thumbnails and images so it will fit on the screen of the phone.

Please note: I have only tested this with my equipment (Sanyo 4900 and a Mandrake server), and while I have included instructions on how to set it up differently and I see no reason why it should not work, just be aware of that.

If you don't have a web server, but have high speed internet (like cable or DSL), you can visit dyndns.org to get instructions on setting up a URL that points to your computer. Best of all, they have a free service you can use. Once you have that set up, choose 'Personal Web Sharing' in the Sharing System Preferences panel. That's it, you now have a web server. Open the webserver port (80) on your hardware firewall if you have one. If you do use dyndns.org, you will need an update client if you want to maintain your URL. They should provide instructions for that. I have a separate machine running Mandrake Linux that I use for my web server. A web server service that you might be subscribed to would also work.

In iPhoto, make an album that you would like to see on your cell phone. Now, export that album (using Web Export). I use these settings (but you might want to play around with them a little): 2 columns, 5 rows, thumbnail max width 50, height 34, image max width 100, height 67. Put the contents of the export in your 'Sites' folder (in your user's folder). That's it.

Assuming you called your export 'iPhoto,' o your cell phone call up this address:

http://your.domain.name/~user_name/iPhoto/iPhoto.html
Replace your.domain.name with the name you set up on dyndns.org, and replace user_name with your OS X user's short username. It would be a very good idea to bookmark this on your cell phone once you have it, so you don't have to retype it each time. Also, if you know enough about Apache, you can set up password protection so not just anyone can view your album (this is what I have done), but instructions for that are a bit more complicated, and I feel they are out of the scope of this hint.

It might also be possible to write an AppleScript (or use Automator when Tiger comes out) that will re-export your iPhoto album every so often to keep it up to date, but for me, it isn't that much trouble to transfer the iPhoto export to my server.

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