How to email photos to your mobile me account from a computer eye-fi card

Question

For use with Eye-Fi SD Camera Cards! Set up your eye-fi account first and check it by uploading a photo or two to see that is working. Set your preferences according to your card capabilities. Ie. Upload to computer via folder or iphoto. Upload to photo sharing service. We'll upload to Mobile Me's Gallery via email. If you want the albums to be seen by the public make sure you have selected this public option according to eye-fi/Mobile me settings/instructions etc.
To try and follow the directions given by mobile me's help menu under the heading: Adding photos via email or mobile phone to your Gallery, is in error. It took a couple of days to resolve issues with the directions because they tell you to look for buttons with text on them which don't exist. Some of the directions are copied here with corrections.
First, in iPhoto, make a Mobile Me Gallery Album. You can do this by making a folder under the File Menu of iPhoto, clicking on it to select the album, and then under the share menu in iPhoto click on Mobile Me. We will only sync once to create the Mobile Me Gallery folder for Eye-Fi to auto-upload Eye-Fi photos via the Eye-Fi Manager/or email. This means iphoto will Sync and update itself according to the contents on Mobile Me Gallery (I set my iPhoto's RSS tab to Sync every hour).
If you select your chosen upload Mobile Me Album folder in iPhoto and click on Mobile Me under the Share Menu to sync it again it will make a duplicate album with the same name which could lead to confusion about which folder we are setting up to sync with. All we need here is to create an Album in Gallery and sync it once so that it adds the Album to the Mobile Me Gallery's drop down menu on iPhoto. You can edit the contents of later if need be by adding or deleting photos, dragging photo in/out etc. You can delete this initial album in your Album's drop down menu, (Not the Mobile Me Gallery Drop Down Menu) after the first sync because smart albums etc. will not sync except manually.
Once the Mobile Me Gallery Folder is created you can use Safari or iPhoto to manage it. Go to your Gallery web address via Safari or Firefox etc.: Your Mobile Me Gallery site should be something like: http:// gallery.me.com/YourMemberName. Once logged in, select the Sunflower icon in the upper left area of the Safari/browser window to load your Mobile Me Gallery and leave it on that page. We'll be back to it later.
In iPhoto, go to the Mobile Me Gallery drop down window (left pane), single click the photo album to which you want to email photos to. If you want to change the name, click again on the name and change it to something like "Uploads" and do not remove it, delete it, rename it, or otherwise render iPhoto and/or Mail and/or Eye-Fi unable to find or sync to it.
In Safari, choose Safari Menu, Preferences then the RSS tab. I have mine set to "default RSS reader is Mail" and I selected Check for Updates every 30 minutes.
'"Click the “Send to Album” button above the photo album, and then follow the onscreen instructions."'<-- This is from the Mobile Me help menu and I'm assuming they are talking about your web browser, Safari etc. So go to your web browser's display of your Mobile Me Gallery.
Corrections: THERE ARE NO 'Send to Album" BUTTONS! In Safari, in the Mobile Me Gallery window, inside the black band across the upper part of the window, in the center of that black band is a very small grey rectangle with what looks like switches. To the left of it is a rectangle with an Up Arrow. If this Up Arrow is greyed out it means you have not set it to upload to an email address which we'll do now. Click on the rectangle icon that looks like switches beside the up arrow icon. This will display a settings window when you click on it. Click on it now.
In this new settings window, Under Album Name: under Allow: click the square box beside: "Adding of photos via email or iPhone"
Further down the list, under "Show", click the check box beside: "Email address for uploading photos". You will need to find this email address and it will need to be displayed for that purpose. You may have to set this check box a couple of times if you've had problems like I've had with it being turned off again. It may take some time for the servers or whatever to update.
Under "Advanced" click on the program you'd like it to sync with. It says "Syncs with" beside this check box Ie. Select iPhoto or (Aperture if you have it). Then click publish. When you check the up arrow icon it should no longer be greyed out.
Mobile Me's Help directions refer to a "Send to Album" button. There is no "Send to Album" text on any button as given in the Mobile Me Help Menu. There is a small square with an Up -Arrow inside the box. I guess this is suppose to mean "Send to Album"? In iPhoto you can also drag the photo from somewhere in your collection, desktop or whatever into this Mobile Me Gallery upload folder in iPhoto and sync from there. For now, let's use Safari or your browser and login to Mobile Me and access your gallery that way.
If you are using Eye-Fi you will need to setup Mail to handle the process of forwarding photos from Eye-Fi's server to this new email address (I'll give you info on how to find it in a sec). This email address will upload photos sent to you by Eye-Fi's server/manager which you will instruct Mail to forward the message (attached photos and all) directly to your selected Mobile Me Gallery Album (via the new email address) and thereafter auto sync with iPhoto. (it also uploads the eye-fi logo photo in each email... sorry about that).
If you are using a phone you will need to record this email address. To find the email address you need to upload a test photo now. In your browser window click on that up arrow icon in the black band on your screen. This is the upload window. Give it a few seconds to load and click on the choose button or drag a photo onto it. Let it complete the upload.
Go back to that small switch like grey box in Safari (or your browser) mentioned earlier. It once did not contain an email address but now it does! Once it has accepted the photo upload there will be an email address for this folder near the middle of the window...(this is why you should not alter this folder, delete it, re-add it later etc. because it could invalidate the email address (I'm assuming.) Hold down the Control key on our keyboard and mouse click once on this email address which will copy the email address to the clipboard which we'll need later to paste into Mail once we set up new mail rules.
In the left pane in iPhoto is the Mobile Me Gallery drop down window. In there is the sync folder you setup. There will be an icon of radiating radio waves to the right of each folder item in your Mobile Me Gallery. If you want to sync any folder at any time just click on its radio wave. The radio wave icon will become a rotating wheel, showing that the album is being synced.
OK. I'm going to set preferences for a new rule in mail. When it receives an email with a photo from Eye-Fi's website Manager, we will tell Mail to mark the email as read, turn its background green, forward the email with photo attached to the email address given by the little grey settings icon and then run an applescript to verbally say the photo was uploaded.
Open Mail. Under the Mail Menu select "Preferences". This opens a window. Select "Rules" on the far right end of this window. Click on Add Rule. Make a name for this rule in the appropriate box. Something like Eye-Fi upload will do. You can name it anything you want.
When you setup Eye-Fi you will have chosen an email address. We need to have Mail determine the account we will forward the photo from and the email address for our Mobile Me Gallery upload folder.
Mail Rule #1. To enter the first rule click on the + button beneath the name of your rule. This adds a rule. In the leftmost dropdown window beside the - and + signs, choose From. The next window to the right: select "contains" and in the right most window enter [email protected]
Rule #2. Click on the + button for the next rule. From left to right, in each drop down window, first select "Subject", then "contains" then enter "Complete camera upload" (minus the quotes). Spell "Complete camera upload" not "complete camera upload" because these are two different things.
Rule #3. Following the same sequence as in rule #2, select "To" then "contains" then enter the email address you set up with the eye-fi manager website.
Below the rules is this section where it says "Perform the following actions." We need to instruct Mail what to do.
Following the sequence of drop down menus from left to right select: "Set Color" (spelt wrong. should be colour), select of background, select the colour you want. I chose green.
Next click on plus to add another rule
Click on the leftmost drop down window and select "Forward Message". A new drop down window to the right of it will say "to". Enter the email address you got from the window in your safari browser that is on the Mobile Me website in that switch like square, the settings window, (where you got the email address from). You can do this by clicking once in the window and then pressing the apple key and the "v" key at the same time. This will copy the address we pasted into the clipboard earlier, and it will paste the email address into this rule. This is where the photos will be directed via mail to upload onto our Mobile Me Gallery upload folder.
On My computer when I pasted the email address into this box it turned red. But it still worked. No idea why it is red.
Click on + again to add another rule. This time select "Mark as Read". Why not? Saves us having to do it.
Click on + again to add a third rule. This time select "Run AppleScript" and click the choose button to select where the following applescript is saved and the name of the script. Pause here for a moment while we make the applescript and save it in documents folder or wherever you want. Just remember where you put it.
Run the AppleScript editor in the AppleScript folder in the Applications folder in the Finder window.
Copy this script into the main window, press compile to check for errors and then save it as a script file. The default should be script file anyways so you may not have to choose it. Just don't select app or some other format. We need the script format to run it from Mail.
say "Hello Dave, This is Hal. Your photo has finished uploading."
say "doh doh deh deh doh dah dah dah dah dah dah" using "Bad News"
say ((current date) as string)
You can change the name and what you want the computer to speak in the first line inside the quotes. Keep the Quotation Marks though!
When Mail runs it will speak this message and the date/time.
Enjoy!
How it works. Eye-Fi manager can be set to select an email address to forward notifications of when it starts and stops uploading. You must do this for this process to work. We tell Mail that when it receives a message from Eye-Fi stating the upload is complete, that it should then forward the message with attached photos to the Mobile Me Gallery upload folder and carry out the Mail rules we created. The photos are then placed in the Mobile Me Gallery and can be synced with iPhoto so you don't have to set Eye-Fi to upload to Mobile Me. Now you can set Eye-Fi to upload to another photo sharing website if you want to (there's about 20 of them now). I also tell Eye-Fi to save a copy in an Eye-Fi folder in my pictures folder as an extra precaution just incase something goes wrong with the email system. There is a drop down window that appears in the upper right side of the screen when the Eye-Fi manager uploads the photo. If you miss seeing it, don't worry. Hal will let you know via email and voice!
Depending on the Eye-Fi card you bought, it may or may not have some features. I have the Eye-Fi home card. You can check their website for the capabilities of the card you have.

Answer 1

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. Check out this Apple document: MobileMe: Setting up MobileMe email on your Mac.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. Just put the application in the Dock and click on it whenever you want to backup the dB file. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
Note: There's now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.