I’ve been playing with .mac from Apple. I’m a heavy Mac user and was keen to explore the extra features .mac customer have when opening a £69 a year .mac account. I’ve signed up for the trial and am exploring the features, I’ think it is pretty good, but I also think that it is overpriced and I doubt I will actually go ahead with the membership. If .mac cost £29 a year, then I’d sign up.

One great thing about .mac is its integration with iMovie and iPhoto. From the iMovie and iPhoto applications you are able at the click of a button to send your movie or photo’s straight to your server space at .mac. Here is a export I made from my version of iPhoto to my demo space on .mac: The Day it Snowed at Ultralab (1990-2006) (.mac). If nothing happened when you clicked the link then the chances are my 60 days .mac membership have expired and Apple have cleared my stuff from the server, this also means that I did not sign up for .mac.
So I’ve been looking for alternatives to .mac and I’ve come up with some ideas.

I’m lucky to have a server on my desk at Ultralab (1990-2006) called ‘Captain Birdseye’. The server is called ‘Captain Birdseye’ because it hosts the Lifeboats.TV website for the RNLI.

This Weblog is run off of the ‘Captain Birdseye’ server too.

I’m effectively able to connect to ‘Captain Birdseye’ from my PowerBook computer and transfer information in the same way as I would in connecting to Apple and accessing my webspace on .mac

So, I can backup to ‘Birdseye’, so I’m not needing the 250meg’s of space .mac offers me.

I guess I could also move my photo’s onto ‘Birdseye’ after exporting from iPhoto? Well I could, but I hate the default export to website template offered by iPhoto, I’m sure it is boring in order for people to take up .mac membership and enjoy a load of great templates from .mac?

So what I now need is a programme or application which works with iPhoto in order to deliver my photographs to a webpate in an interesting way which is better than the default template set as standard within iPhoto.

Ultralab (1990-2006)’s Technician showed me today an application called Galerie. Galerie is a fantastic free application which does exactly what I need it to do. The application works with iPhoto, meaning any photo’s I select in my iPhoto window, Galerie will work with to make into an interesting series of webpages.

Here is a screengrab of Galerie in action:

Now, if I connect to ‘Birdseye’ and export straight onto my server at work, I’ve got the same facility as .mac

But this is of course no help to someone without a server at work. .mac rocks and if I had a spare £69 I’d buy a iShuffle. Come on Apple, lower the price!

Of course, I conclude that .mac is the simple and easy option, fast, clean and effective, but the price still puts me off.
I love Galerie, cheers for showing it to us Mark. Here is what it did with my snow pictures!.