Our friends over at OS X Daily passed along their story noting that Apple's site for iTunes Affiliates was vulnerable to a cross-site URL trick, letting you substitute your own images for the ones normally displayed on the page. Since the site is intended to let websites display a custom top banner, this was 'as designed' -- at least until jokesters began taking advantage.

The trick works (or at least, it did) by taking the default URL from the web browser and replacing a few things like the artist name, album name, album thumbnail source and the image link.

The Internet moves pretty fast, though. As I was typing this, Apple removed the top banner altogether, preventing the customized image display. No more pranks for us.

In any case, OS X Daily pointed out that the image issue could allow malicious folks to redirect would-be Apple visitors to malware sites or other bad destinations. Even an innocent image viewer that appears within an iframe on a branded page can cause problems; that's what the folks at Wired found out last January, when someone took advantage of their image tool to post a hoax "Steve Jobs had a heart attack" news story.

Props to Apple's web development team, though, for taking this down within the ten minutes it took me to finish the post.

Last night I was grabbing screenshots with my iPhone that I'll use in a forthcoming post. After snapping 4 or 5, I launched the camera app to look at them. I saw the preview thumbnail but when I clicked Camera Roll for a larger view, it appeared empty.

I restarted the iPhone to no avail. I connected it to my Mac, and iPhoto imported the screenshots without a problem. After a sync they were in my iPhone's photo album, but I still couldn't see subsequent photos taken with the built-in camera.

After some searching I found this thread on Apple's Discussion Board that describes my issue. It seems that the iPhone fails to display photos taken beyond number 10,000.* That's right, I've taken 10,000 photos with my iPhone. Or have I?

The iPhone in question is a 3GS that I purchased not too long ago. There's no way I've shot that many pictures in such a brief time. However, I did buy an original 4GB phone back on opening day. As I set up the 3GS, I did a restore from backup. Guess what came with it? The "counter" for all photos I snapped back then. The 3GS picked up where the original model left off. D'oh.

I'm glad to say that I've restored the Camera Roll's functionality. Here's how. I connected my iPhone to my Mac and launched PhoneView. From there, I clicked Settings and selected Show Entire Disk. Be careful here, because this lets you fiddle with typically hidden folders and files.

Inside the DCIM folder I found a number of folders with names like "100APPLE," which I deleted (AFTER syncing my iPhone with iPhoto and grabbing all stored pictures). Then I quit PhoneView, restarted the iPhone or good measure and presto! I was back in business.

I'm not the only one with this problem and I hope Apple addresses it in a future update. Note that you can get this done with the free trial of PhoneView, but it's a great app and only $20, so buy it as a thank you.

*Remember, this refers to number of photos shot with the iPhone, not number of photos stored.

Are you tired of all of those icons from screenshots you've taken cluttering up space on your desktop? If you would like them in a different place when you snap them, here's a command to change the location.

Using the Terminal, enter the following command to change the location:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures

This snippet will change the default location of saving the screenshot to the Pictures folder. You can also set this location to any folder or volume on your Mac, just substitute ~/Pictures in this command to whatever you want. Once you've run this command, you'll need to restart the SystemUIServer (used to control certain interface elements in Mac OS X), by entering killall SystemUIServer in the Terminal.

If you don't want to use the Terminal, many of the popular Mac maintenance utilities, including OnyX (free). TinkerTool (free), and Cocktail ($14.95), will allow you to change the location of snapped screenshots.

If you're snapping a lot of screenshots, changing the location can be very useful, especially if you're on a portable Mac with limited disk space. Each screenshot can sometimes be over 1MB in size, so if you're tight on space it can be a good idea to store your screenshots elsewhere, like on an external hard drive.

There's also a handy suggestion from our own TJ Luoma: redirect your screenshots to a cached/synchronized folder, like the Pictures folder on your iDisk (if you have iDisk Sync turned on) or a folder in your Dropbox, Live Mesh or SugarSync directories for instant screenshot sharing among multiple machines.

Shooting photographs of fireworks can be a real challenge. The good shots happen quickly, cameras don't always get the focus right, and there is a lot of movement that can make for blurry pictures. The iPhone is not the best camera in the world for demanding photo jobs -- that's true for all cell phone cams, with the possible exception of digital cameras that happen to include phones as a bonus feature.

Nevertheless, we asked our readers around the U.S. to send us their fireworks images, and that they did. Actually, the iPhone acquitted itself pretty well, both with still images and in movies done with the new 3G (plus one movie done with a jailbroken 2G and Cycorder).

Look below for a gallery of some of my favorite stills. Many were sent anonymously, so we can't always credit the photographer. Some were uploaded directly from their phones to MobileMe and YouTube.

Thanks to all who participated and made our 4th of July sparking and colorful. Visit this link to see the full collection of entries, check out comments in our request for pictures article yesterday for more YouTube links, and view the gallery below for our selection of some great images from around the country.

It's true. I'm delighted to find free applications that stimulate and involve. The iPhone/iPod touch continues to open new vistas for those willing to explore the app store.

If you love great art, then get thee to iTunes and download Love Art [App Store link] which is a tour of some of the great works at National Gallery in London.

The app features about 250 art treasures, with videos, audio commentary, zoom-able high-res images, and galleries and themed tours.

The download is 207 MB, so don't try this if your iPhone is on the edge storage wise. I really enjoyed browsing through all the material, and learned a great deal listening to the commentaries and viewing the videos.

Having been to the National Gallery myself when I lived in London, it brought back happy memories. It is not a substitute for visiting the great art treasures on display there, but it will do until my next trip.

This is the kind of app that could sell for real money. For free, it's a great demo of what the iPhone can do, and a great app to explore and enjoy.

If you want to see how the app works without the big download go the the developer's site and click on 'watch the video demo'.

One of the real advantages of being a TUAW regular is getting tips to great free software. Here is your bonus for today.

Here are some screen captures of the app in action:

Well! Our tips line has certainly been a beehive of activity with WWDC just around the corner. We've gotten several purported iPhone images, which range in quality from meh to ludicrous. Particularly interesting: the iPhone Blog's 16x9 widescreen model.

As for availability of the rumored phone, GearLive is laying it on the line for an on-sale date of Monday, immediately after the announcement. Technologizer responds with four reasons we wouldn't see the new device in stores right after the keynote.

Interested to see what everyone else has cooked up for Apple to release on Monday? Check out the gallery for pictures galore.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in!

Up until recently, the Image Upload widget from Model Concept wasn't exactly working as designed. We described in detail a process for fixing the widget, however it was not particularly easy. The developer responsible for the widget, Tom Stoelwinder, contacted me to say that he had fixed the widget and officially released version 1.1.1.

If you were interested in the functionality of the Image Upload widget and considered the process to modify it too daunting, you can now grab the updated version here which features the fix we covered. Thanks, Tom!

The Image Upload widget featured here is a freeware widget by Model Concept which allows you to upload an image to ImageShack simply by dropping it onto the widget. The result is that the URL is auto-magically saved to your clipboard. The overall experience is pretty slick; it supports audio and Growl notifications as well as URL shortening with help from TinyURL ... at least it used to. Read on for my journey from widget woes to uploading bliss.

Have you ever been using Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch and wanted to save an image? Well, the 2.0 firmware makes this easy!

Just tap and hold on any picture in Safari. When you do, a menu will pop up allowing you to save the image to your camera roll or follow the image link. Apple even places a subtle outline around the selected image (nice touch, Apple).

The great thing about this tip: it also works in Mail. Now you'll never be without your images. Now for that copy/paste (ahem, looking at you, Apple).


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Most desktop messaging clients (Apple's Mail.app and Microsoft's Entourage among them) give users the option to skip loading images when reading rich-formatting emails, which both speeds up the loading/reading process and limits exposure to spammer scavenging, which can leverage embedded images to verify that the evil emails were received by a valid address. The iPhone's version of Mail, however, doesn't give users the option to turn images off, as pointed out by Stefan Seiz. This has been the case all along and hasn't been corrected in 2.0, unfortunately.

While this exposure is less of a problem if you've got good spam filtering in place, it does raise an interesting question: wouldn't an optional images-off mode be ideal if you wanted to speed up your iPhone's mail performance, or (perish the thought!) limit your data usage on a less-than-ideal service plan. Unfortunately I don't think adding features and options to Mail is within the official capacity of third-party devs, so we're going to have to wait for Apple to address this directly.

Sometimes I see the name of a new piece of software that someone tips us off to, and the name conjures up something completely different from what the reality is.

PhotoTiles, for instance, brought to mind the ability to create those cool pictures that are made up of all of your other photos. You know, like having a TUAW Logo that is made up of 2,500 thumbnail pictures that are chosen for their hue and intensity, then placed in the proper location.

Well, PhotoTile doesn't exactly do that, but this small program from Limit Point Software is a handy utility. Instead of doing what I imagined, it basically takes a folder of image and turns that into one grid-like "über-image."

For example, I took my Photo Booth folder, added a TUAW logo to round up to an even number of pictures, and dragged it onto PhotoTile. In a few seconds, it created the image that you see at right.

This is great for creating contact sheets of photos. PhotoTiles is donation-ware. If you use it, make a donation and you'll get an unlock code that unlocks all utilities from Limit Point Software including PhotoTiles.

Late last night, several rumor websites, including CrunchGear, reported that they had received copies of "leaked" iPhone advertisements. These ads depict matte black and Product (Red) iPhones. Most of the sites that were sent these images are calling them fakes, including our own Engadget.

There are two major flaws that stick out in these images, the first of which is the lack of a sleep/wake button on the red iPhone in the image above. The second of which: where the iChat details are shown, the requirements state "Windows Xp." However, Apple always states "XP" as just that; not upper case, then lower case letters.

We do have to agree with Engadget when it comes to the video chat images. Ryan Block states, "No Apple design would be laid out the way this guy's got his page laid out here." We have to agree -- Apple designs are normally clean and minimalist; not jumbled as these images are.

[via CrunchGear]

Considering the graphical nature of the web, I'm surprised more features and plug-ins haven't appeared to solve the problem of downloading images from sites as well as iPlace does. Operating as a SIMBL plug-in for Safari (including the 3.0 beta), iPlace allows you to specify multiple locations on your Mac for downloading images, but that's not all. It then gives you a contextual menu item when right-clicking an image or a web page that will allow you to instantly download any image to one of your specified locations, or - and here's the kicker - bring up an image downloading window that shows you each image on the page, along with your download locations provided as drag and drop wells in a sidebar on the left. Opening this window on I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER, for example, brings up the long list of images you see above, all ripe for efficiently dragging and dropping wherever I want.

In a word: iPlace is awesome. There are of course enhancements I would like to see, such as the ability to scale these images up and down to make it easier to view more from the page at once, but for a spankin' new product straight out the gate, this is a really handy plug-in.

iPlace is provided as donationware from Tekuris.

The day is finally here. After an introductory video back in May and a more in-depth teaser earlier this month, the Pixelmator crew have begun sending out the private beta downloads and I just took it for a spin, creating the image in this post. It is indeed a sexy app - the UI is a gorgeous translucent black, and it really does offer a lot of functionality and innovation aimed squarely at Adobe Photoshop or, perhaps more appropriately, Photoshop Elements. While Pixelmator is still very much a beta and too buggy for shop or casual work, I am able to play with most of the promised features, including snapping pics from an iSight, the iPhoto browser and all the powerful color and manipulation tools.

Thankfully, Saulius and the Pixelmator crew gave me permission to write up some initial thoughts with screenshots, so check out a preliminary Pixelmator gallery I've put together of some handy features and clever details, and read on for more of my first impressions of this highly anticipated image editor.

The new .Mac Web Galleries sure are pretty slick, but their dependency on iPhoto '08 can have some unfortunate side effects. When I first installed iLife '08, I moved my original iPhoto library so I could tinker around with the new version using a few pics I had lying around on my Mac. I then created a Web Gallery with these images just to see how things looked. After deeming it safe to proceed, I replaced my original library to actually begin using the new iPhoto features - the only problem is that, somehow, the .Mac Web Galleries you create seem to be library-specific. In other words: when I created a gallery with my test library and then swapped it out for my true library, the .Mac Web Gallery listing in iPhoto's sidebar was no longer there. I couldn't find any kind of web admin panel at the .Mac site for managing these galleries either, so I quickly found myself in a predicament.

Fortunately, I'm not alone here, and I found this thread in the Apple Discussions forums that describes a method for deleting a gallery manually if it no longer appears in iPhoto's sidebar. The solution basically involves logging into your iDisk from the web (http://idisk.mac.com/UserName) and browsing to the directory that houses your galleries, then manually deleting it from there. For some odd reason, this folder doesn't appear in your iDisk on your Desktop like your other .Mac website files, even with hidden files turned on (I used the Show-Hide widget to quickly toggle hidden files. As far as I can tell, Apple simply doesn't sync this folder down to your Mac or give you access to it with the iDisk). The only problem I had with the solution as it is described in that forum thread is that I didn't find the _gallery folder where the forum poster said I should; instead, it's in iDisk > Web > Sites. Each gallery you have created is stored in its own directory under that folder, so you should be able to delete just the ones you want without affecting the others.

[Update 2: Matt Ronge, developer of upcoming Mac OS X email client Kiwi, enlightened me in the comments with an even easier solution to this problem: simply go to iPhoto's Web Gallery pane in preferences, and simply click Check Now to cause iPhoto to check your .Mac account for any new photos. This should also cause it to catch any galleries not already listed in iPhoto's sidebar, ultimately allowing you to manage and delete them from the comforts of iPhoto.]

[Update: Some commenters are reporting that the _gallery folder in question does actually appear in their iDisk when viewed in the Finder. I don't know why only some of us see it, but you could be one of the lucky few.]

Considering that your Sites (for the old homepage.mac.com pages) and Web folders are synchronized and fully available in your iDisk, I hope that this strange gallery behavior is simply the result of an oversight. While I understand Apple's desire to use software to manage this stuff instead of forcing users to dig around in folders, having manual access to this directory will be useful in a pinch, especially for users who, for example, buy a new Mac or need to have a sick Mac restored.