Reader Mark Silverstein is the first to lob in a question regarding iLife ‘08. He writes:
I was excited to hear that you could publish pictures from your iPhone to a Web Gallery but, for the life of me, I can’t make it work. When I try my iPhone says “None of your .Mac accounts have been configured for posting from mobile devices. You must first enable this feature on the .Mac website.” I’ve looked all over the .Mac website and I don’t see an option for doing this. What’s going on?
Mark, that dialog box is confusing. And it’s confusing because it’s misleading. And it’s misleading because it’s wrong. It’s like this:
Currently there is no such option on the .Mac website. When you click the Web Gallery link you’re taken to a page that tells you how great Web Galleries are. Right, we get that. That’s why we want to use one. Apple’s help system in this regard isn’t much help. Allow me to be of greater assistance.
First of all, if you have an iPhone, that option should be active. If it’s not, be sure that you have a .Mac account set up on your iPhone. That’s the trigger that tells the iPhone to show the Send to Web Gallery button when you tap the Send button when viewing a picture.
Next, you must have iPhoto version 7.0.1. (Yes, I know this is from iLife ‘08, but the version number is 7). The version of iPhoto that ships with iLife ‘08 is version 7.0. Use Software Update to obtain 7.0.1 and update iPhoto.
Finally, in iPhoto create a Web Gallery. When you click the Web Gallery button, be sure to enable the Allow Photo Uploading By Email option.
Now when you tap Send and then Send to Web Gallery, your Web Gallery should appear in the Web Gallery Albums screen. Tap it and then tap Send. An email message will open addressed to Web Gallery. Enter a subject heading, which will become the title for your picture, and tap Send. In a very short time, the image will be included in your Web Gallery. It should also appear in that Web Gallery in iPhoto.
Hang on, I can hear those busily tapping keyboards now, mostly typing “But Chris, that doesn’t work. The iPhone still gives me that stupid error message!”
I know, I know.
Using the technique I’ve outlined (which, I assume is the way it’s supposed to work) I’ve been successful exactly once. I’ve been unable to add more than one Web Gallery and when I deleted that Web Gallery to test some other galleries, I returned to the point where I was seeing the error and nothing more. Thankfully, there’s a workaround.
When you publish a Web Gallery in iPhoto you’ll see an email address for that gallery in the upper-right corner of the iPhoto window. Create a new contact on your iPhone, call it whatever you like, and use that email address for the contact. Save the contact.
Now select an image you want to add to this Web Gallery, tap Send, and instead of tapping Send to Web Gallery, tap Email Photo. In the resulting New Message window tap the To field, tap the Plus button to bring up your iPhone’s Contacts screen, choose the contact you created for your Web Gallery, enter a subject in the appropriate field (again, this will be the title as displayed in the Web Gallery), and tap Send. The picture will be added to your Web Gallery.
I expect Apple will deal with this glitch very soon now so that this workaround isn’t necessary. In the meantime, enjoy.