Whether you have a good reason for wanting to maintain more than one iPhoto library or your collection simply became un-browsable long ago, Brian Webster's iPhoto Library Manager is your answer. This slick little utility was mentioned briefly in an Ask TUAW back in May, but to summarize: iPhoto Library Manager makes it painfully simple to create multiple iPhoto libraries, keep them anywhere you want, automate them with AppleScript and Automator, switch between them with a single click and even set one library as the default. But it doesn't stop there - the features I've already listed are available in a free version, but registered users get to enjoy the ability to create library shortcuts for opening straight from the Finder, copying photos (and preserving all their metadata) between libraries, merging libraries and copying photos from multiple libraries into a folder for synching with an iPod. To top all this off, the new v3.3 brings iPhoto '08 compatibility and some other goodies.
What does it cost for this multiple iPhoto library goodness? To gain the more powerful features and give Webster his due, iPhoto Library Manager costs a mere $19.95 from Fat Cat Software.
Ollie Wagner sends word that he has release both of his Spencere apps, Menuet and Art Collector, as careware. Over on his site, you can get both of the apps for free, as long as you promise to donate to the charity of your choice (he's listed eight good choices if you don't have a preference).
We've covered both before-- Menuet is a pretty iTunes controller with a few other features built in, including Last.fm support, themes, and a sleep timer. Art Collector grabs artwork from Amazon for your iTunes library-- it's a little useless, because iTunes now does this for you, but if there are a few covers iTunes can't find, maybe Art Collector can.
Together, they used to run around $13 (although Art Collector separately was $7, and was originally bundled with Menuet). If you've seen these before and never gotten a chance to try them, here's it is, and hopefully you can help out a charity as well.
TUAW reader Jamie Phelps has possibly stumbled upon a nasty iPhone synching bug when keeping one's iTunes library on an external hard drive. While tips like our how-tos for setting up iTunes with external drives or even an AirPort Disk work pretty well even when synching iPods with them, Jamie found that his iPhone gets the brainwash treatment when he's away from the drive containing his external iTunes library. As the story goes, Jamie synched his iPhone with a few songs and playlists, made a couple new playlists and then synched again. Hitting the road, however, and getting away from his external iTunes library drive is when the bug rears its nasty head: plugging the iPhone in while on the go caused iTunes to wipe out the new playlists and songs from the second sync operation, basically reverting them to their state before the second sync. To verify, Jamie even got adventurous and tried this whole thing a second time, once again watching iTunes blow away changes from the previous iPhone sync when the external media library isn't mounted.
This is the first time I've heard of iTunes handling this kind of setup in a poor way; for as long as I can remember, iTunes has been clever enough to realize what's happening and and would either not sync anything to an iPod when away from the library drive, or it would actually sync any media downloaded or imported while away (as we've mentioned before, you can use the Advanced > Consolidate Library command to move all this new media once reconnected with the library drive). Since we don't really have any evidence of Apple deliberately changing this behavior for their iPods or iPhones, it makes sense for this quirk to be classified as a bug that will hopefully be squashed with an inevitable iPhone software update. But what say you, TUAW readers? Anyone else get bit? Sound off.
Apple makes it super-easy for you to share your iTunes media between computers. It's just a matter of three steps to get iTunes sharing up and running. If you have a local network in your house but you've never tried this out, here's a simple quick-start.
Read on to discover the three easy steps to music sharing nirvana.
Last September we showed you how to keep your iTunes library on an external hard drive. While doing the same thing over an AirPort Disk with Apple's new AirPort Extreme Base Station sounds like it should more or less be the same situation, there are a couple of new catches to be aware of. Never fear, though - we'll outline what you need to know to truly snip the wires on your iTunes library.
First, in order to do this right, we recommend backing up your library before snipping any cables (we also don't recommend actually snipping any cables; they can be expensive to replace). If you haven't gotten into the backup habit yet, Scott's How to Back your music using iTunes 7 tutorial is a great place to start.
At last, the chains that bind an auto-synced iPod have been broken; or at least, this is the first time I've heard of such a simple hint for adding music (and possibly photos and video) to an iPod already bound to another computer's library. Mac OS X Hints has a surprisingly simple tip for accomplishing this: all you need to do is select and expand the iPod icon in the left Sources menu, then simply drag from the Finder whatever new music you want to add onto the main list of music, *not* the iPod in the list. This can be useful especially for those who have separate libraries on two machines (example: one for work and another for home), since the only other simple alternative is to set the iPod for manually managing your music, which then doesn't allow you to sync some metadata like ratings and comments or tags. Oh what a twisted music management web Apple weaves.
A commenter at Mac OS X Hints says they can add photos and videos using this method as well, but I unfortunately don't have a second machine to try this out on right now. Anyone in the audience care to give it a go?
After discussing how my iTunes library is set up with a few readers in the comments on my First Impressions/2G iPod nano post, I figured this might be a handy tip for readers who find themselves running out of room to store an expanding iTunes library. My only machine is a MacBook Pro with a 120GB hard drive, but after installing ~ 40GB of the entire Final Cut Studio suite and other various software and projects, I don't have room for my ~ 35GB iTunes library.
I decided to do some experimenting a couple weeks back with moving and keeping my library on an external hard drive. There are obvious initial disadvantages to this, but after some tinkering and getting comfortable with iTunes' baked-in library management genius, this can be a pretty useful setup for those who, like me, are cramped for space but aren't willing to trash those albums you're too embarrassed use in a Party Shuffle playlist. This setup also has the inherent, and obvious, advantage of keeping your library on an external hard drive, so it's more or less already backed up - though I, with my paranoid data habits, keep a backup of my library on a second hard drive, and I now also use Scott's iTunes 7 backup tip (instead of a previous Smart Playlist system) to burn my library to DVDs (the lesson from someone who knows: your data can never be too backed up - ever).
Getting back on topic: read on for a walkthrough (from a very mobile notebook user) of how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive. I'll include some tips on how iTunes is already one step ahead of this setup, as well as a few habits you might need to adopt when living la vida external-iTunes-library.
Macintalk has posted a how-to on enabling a really slick Constellation menu plugin for Quicksilver β49. Granted, this menu is quite a bit of eye candy, but if you follow Macintalk's post all the way through and assign this menu to a hotkey, it then becomes a bit of really handy eye candy.
Keep in mind, however, that (as far as I know) you need the latest developer β49 to bring this plugin to fruition, so just like with the last slick Quicksilver Cube eye candy plugin, if you're not interested in the beta side of things, you should probably leave this one alone until it gets ironed out a bit more...
...but on the other hand: look at how cool that is! The entire thing is clickable, and it's also bigger in 'real life' - on my 1440 x 900 display it's 512 x 512 pixels, so it's much more legible than the 225 x 225 screenshot in this post. The small button just to the right of the iTunes icon in the middle of this menu, for example, displays a popup list of your playlists. Clicking on any of the larger slices, such as the albums or artists, pops up a second, similar menu you can browse through by using the down arrow at the bottom of the inner circle. The whole menu system seems pretty zippy too, once it takes a second to load all your iTunes information. Of course, I'm also using a 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB RAM, so YMMV. Check out Macintalk's how-to if you're done drooling and want to get down to business.
You'd better get out those credit cards boys and girls, as the Delicious Monster Gambler's Sale has entered its fourth and final week. For those not familiar with this type of sale: Delicious Monster set aside a secret number of Delicious Library licenses and put the app on a four week sale. Each week, they drop the price by $5. Herein lies the catch: the sale ends when either four weeks are up, or the secret number of licenses is sold - whichever is first.
This is the fourth and final week of the sale, and Delicious Library has hit $20. I just purchased my own copy, but only Delicious Monster knows how long you can keep waiting to taking advantage of a killer sale on a killer app.
iPod.iTunes offers 8 different ways of synchronizing your iTunes library and playlists between both devices, giving you powerful control over what files are moved where and how. All formats are supported, including MP3, AAC, protected AAC (iTMS purchases), Audible books, and video files. PC-formatted iPods are compatible, and all metadata such as your song ratings, play count and album art are preserved in the transfer. This is a great utility for anyone in need of an easy method to clone an iPod, keep iTunes libraries on different Macs in sync or simply back up your iPod's library if it's the only place you keep all your media (Apple sadly doesn't provide a way of doing this).
Check out the full list of features of everything iPod.iTunes is capable of. Another handy trick this app performs is that it can live and run directly from your iPod, in which case your registration ($35 USD) travels with you. A demo is available from crispSofties.
I'm on a big book kick today, so I thought I would point out Library Books. What does it do? Well, it is a little menu item that tracks the books that you have checked out of the library (see if your library is supported here).
You could also file this under "fantastic
Automator actions that Apple should've advertised when Tiger was being released."
A post at macosxhints has discovered a simple
Automator action you can use to open panel containing your entire iPhoto or iTunes library (pictured), complete with
albums/playlists, DnD and even search abilities. This is for all those times you groan at having to start iPhoto just
to grab an image or two. Bonus points for the iTunes library action: songs are playable from this panel.
Check out the macosxhints post for the drop-dead simple 3-step process (it's really only two steps) for creating this
handy panel.
This tip could
definitely be classified as rudimentary to some, but I thought it would be handy to shed some light on a folder in the
Home directory that is rarely opened by many users: the Library. For those who sometimes wonder things such as where
Safari stores your bookmarks or where Mail.app keeps all those messages you never reply to, your Library folder is
calling your name. The Library in your Home folder is where Mac OS X stores all the data you enter into almost any and
every application you use. Take a look at ~/Library/Safari, for example (the (~) stands for your Home folder). In there
is just about everything Safari stores for you, including your bookmarks and history. There are plenty of other handy
folders to check out in your Library, such as the Fonts folder which stores all the fonts you install, but I think the
real meat of the Library is the Application Support folder. This is where most applications will store their
information, such as Adium extras, Camino/Firefox bookmarks, NetNewsWire subscription information and the database file
iWeb uses to create your website.
The Library is where (almost) all of it happens boys and girls, so take a
look around. There are a lot of handy folders in there, but more importantly: in addition to the rest of the folders in
your Home directory, the Library is one of the most vital to back up. So feel free to look around and familiarize
yourself with your Library, the "guy behind the guy" of your Mac OS X Home directory.
Delicious Library has gone Universal as of version 1.6.1, which was just
released. This point release also enables user to use Delicious Library with the built in iSights in both the iMacs and
MacBook Pros.
There are also numerous bug fixes which is to be expected in any point release, as well as
several new translations so you can now lend out your movies in Swedish.
I came accross a neat freeware app today coded
by Rick Neil called iPhoto Buddy. This app allows you to
create more than one Library of photos so iPhoto can load more quickly. Each Library can be named, given an icon, and
doesn't have to respect chronological time.
If you've been struggling with iPhoto taking a century to load
because your Library has more than a couple thousand photos (or you are on a less zippy Mac), fear not, iPhoto Buddy
will make your iLife easier.
iPhoto Buddy is compatible with iLife 04, 05, and 06, requires a minimum of OS
10.2.4, and even allows you to import an iPhoto Buddy created Library into iMovie or iDVD.
Ollie Wagner sends word that he has release both of his Spencere apps, Menuet and Art Collector, as 
TUAW reader Jamie Phelps has possibly stumbled upon a 
Apple makes it super-easy for you to share your iTunes media between computers. It's just a matter of three steps to get iTunes sharing up and running. If you have a local network in your house but you've never tried this out, here's a simple quick-start.
After discussing how my iTunes library is set up with a few readers in the comments on my 
Macintalk has posted a how-to on enabling a really slick Constellation menu plugin for Quicksilver β49. Granted, this menu is quite a bit of eye candy, but if you follow Macintalk's post all the way through and assign this menu to a hotkey, it then becomes a bit of really handy eye candy.
iPod.iTunes offers 8 different ways of synchronizing your iTunes library and playlists between both devices, giving you powerful control over what files are moved where and how. All formats are supported, including MP3, AAC, protected AAC (iTMS purchases), Audible books, and video files. PC-formatted iPods are compatible, and all metadata such as your song ratings, play count and album art are preserved in the transfer. This is a great utility for anyone in need of an easy method to clone an iPod, keep iTunes libraries on different Macs in sync or simply back up your iPod's library if it's the only place you keep all your media (Apple sadly doesn't provide a way of doing this).
I'm on a big book kick today, so I thought I would point out 
You could also file this under "fantastic
Automator actions that Apple should've advertised when Tiger was being released."
This tip could
definitely be classified as rudimentary to some, but I thought it would be handy to shed some light on a folder in the
Home directory that is rarely opened by many users: the Library. For those who sometimes wonder things such as where
Safari stores your bookmarks or where Mail.app keeps all those messages you never reply to, your Library folder is
calling your name. The Library in your Home folder is where Mac OS X stores all the data you enter into almost any and
every application you use. Take a look at ~/Library/Safari, for example (the (~) stands for your Home folder). In there
is just about everything Safari stores for you, including your bookmarks and history. There are plenty of other handy
folders to check out in your Library, such as the Fonts folder which stores all the fonts you install, but I think the
real meat of the Library is the Application Support folder. This is where most applications will store their
information, such as Adium extras, Camino/Firefox bookmarks, NetNewsWire subscription information and the database file
iWeb uses to create your website.
