Subscribe to RSS Feed - Bing Wallpaper

Question

Level 1

0 points

Subscribe to RSS Feed - Bing Wallpaper

Hi -

I just downloaded iPhoto from the app store for Mac OS X Lion and I would like to subscribe to the bing rss wallpaper feed. I found the link http://themeserver.microsoft.com/default.aspx?p=Bing&c=Desktop&m=en-US and when I put that into the subscribe to RSS feed option in iPhoto it sets it up, but it will only download the first 5 images in the feed. It shows spots for another 143 images, but they are just boxes. I'm trying to set that up so I can rotate through the images as desktop wallpaper. Any suggestions/help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

PS - Are there any other feeds similar to what Bing offers that work well with iPhoto?

MacBook (13-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 28, 2012 5:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Sep 25, 2012 2:27 PM in response to ssn771

I couldn't get any photos to load in iPhoto, but it did show that there were 50+ items. I think it has to do with the way the RSS feed puts the images in enclosures. If you view such a feed in Google Reader, it wont show the pictures either, only links to the images.

So I solved my problem, which was using the images from the themeserver feed as my wallpaper, but I also use Parallels and subscribe to the feed on my Windows 7 Theme.

The Windows 7 theme stores the images in a Temporary Internet Files folder, mine was at c:\users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Enclosure\

On the Mac side I opened my Parallels PVM package and drilled down to that location, then created an alias to that folder and put it under my Mac Pictures folder for easy finding.

Then in Sys Prefs I set this alias folder as my folder for Wallpaper images and set auto rotation.

It works ok since I run parallels, but relies on me running the VM to refresh the images.

If someone else finds a way to get the images to show in iPhoto I'd be interested. Or find a way to cache feed images (in the feed format Themserver uses) to a local folder would work too.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 11, 2013 6:50 PM in response to ssn771

The problem seems to be that the file Microsoft's server returns is one big line and iPhoto chokes on it.

And possibly related is that two results are returned for the HTTP request for that address, a 404 error and the expected xml file.

Anyway, a manual work around is to download the xml file using something like curl (a few tries may be needed because curl accepts whatever the first response is and you need the xml).

curl "http://themeserver.microsoft.com/default.aspx?p=Bing&c=Desktop&m=en-US" > tmp.xml

Once you've got the xml file you can format it so that it's not a single large line using a code editor, so that iPhoto can handle it. And then put the file up on a web server or dropbox or something. Anywhere that you can get an http uri for it. Then use iPhoto to subscribe to address you put the modified file at and iPhoto should begin downloading all the photos.

Not at all convienent, I know, but to me its better than nothing.

Reply