Ask TUAW: Reinstalling, auto-saving, license keeping and more

i have a question. Which is the following (statement)

I have a central itunes library on a mac mini in my basement, it streams to my appletv in the living room and holds all my movies/tvshows and music.

I have a spare imac in my bedroom. What i would like to do is, when i start the imac to open frontrow (done) and have it open the itunes library from my mac mini as a remote source.

now when i let the imac boot, it opens frontrow and then i have to select the mac mini's library. it's no biggie to open the downstairs library myself, but i'd like to have it automatically opened.

i hope you know some trick to achieve this

dear ask tuaw,

I have a purely hypothetical (and potentially antithetical) question for you - is it possible to boot windows exclusively on a mac? i mean, you turn on your mac, and it chimes, then windows loads?

of course i know about boot camp, just i was reading an article that posited this question, and i could not find a good answer and figured you guys would likely know!

thanks

josh

Question for next time:

I have a MacBook running Leopard, and have all my events on iCal. I want my mac to speak what events I have, and when i have them, when it wakes me up in the morning. Is there a programme to do this? AppleScript?

Thanks!

S

Hi. I've just ordered a new Macbook Pro, and I'm preparing to transfer my data which, for the most part, should be easy.

My question regards what I'm going to do with my iTunes library. I've got a 290GB library and my new laptop will have a 320GB hard drive--I don't want to keep it all there.

I solve this problem now with my PowerBook G4 by keeping my library on my 500GB Time Capsule. This can be annoying, so I'd like to keep about 100GB on my new machine while keeping the rest on the Time Capsule (and using the rest of the space there for Time Machine backup).

Is there an easy way to tell iTunes that I have two separate locations for libraries and make it easy to run one of them (just my laptop HD when I'm not at home) or both of them (if I am at home)? Also, is there an easy way to set this up in the first place--and then to transfer files back and forth between libraries?

I appreciate any help you can give me.

Leopard 10.5.6, iPhone 2.2 (jailbroken!)

Question: Is there a way for the iPhone to share its library over wifi? There are times when my ear buds are missing, and the tiny speaker on the iPhone just won't cut it. It's times like these I wish I could share the internal library on the iPhone over wifi. Is this even feasible?

Really Curious,

~k.

Hey TUAW! I'm using the aluminum keyboard with my Mini for a while now, and I was wondering if there is a way to remap the F1 and F2 keys that usually (on an iMac) control brightness to control shades, but still keep the other keys, like dashboard, exposé and playback control. I know I can switch the fn keys, but then I lose all the other keys, and hitting the fn key everytime to control brightness is pretty annoying.

I'm wondering if there is a way of ripping music into iTunes into one format (Apple Lossless) and then have it automatically convert the file into a lower quality format (MP3) for syncing to my iPhone?
The reason is I play music throughout my house from my iTunes library, where I want the best sound quality, but I want to put a wide selection of music on my 8GB iPhone where sound quality doesn't matter as much.

Thanks.

I'm using a 2007 Macbook with Leopard and iTunes version 8.0.2. My question concerns crossfade. You can set it in the preferences to crossfade between songs up to 12 seconds. However, this only works when you play a song to completion. If you choose a new song midway through the previous song you still get the seconds of silence. Is there any way or any plugins or programs that would enable crossfade to function when selecting a new song before the previous one has finished? Thanks.

Question(s) for next week

1. Is there any way I can embed an IM chat client on the desktop, so I can always get to it no matter which space I'm in just by using the 'desktop' hot corner?
2. There are several smart playlists that I want but can't firgure out how to create with itune's built in rules. One is a playlist that weeds out single songs; i.e any artists with more than x songs in my library. I also want a playlist that generates a genuis playlist for every song in a given playlist, then collects all those songs into one playlist (I suspect I'll have to do it with AppleScript, but I can't find any documentation on using applescript and the genuis function)

Okay this isn't exactly a Mac specific question but it is computer/gadget/ipod related and this seems like a good place to ask it.

Anyone know of any powered USB hubs with 6 or 7 ports that will provide power to the devices without being connected to a host computer OR know of a way to fool a hub into believing it is connected to a host computer so that it can be used as a USB charging station OR know of any USB charging stations with six or more ports for less than $50 US? With the tons of USB charged devices on the market these days you would think that these products would be a little more common but so far they are not.