One of my favorite new features in Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii is the ability to take snapshots in the same manner as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and being able to send them to Wii Friends, a cell phone or an email address.
Facebook, Flickr, and Twitpic all provide custom email addresses which are designed to be added to the address book of your cellphone so you can directly upload photos on the go. However, using Gmail I found a way to upload snapshots from Animal Crossing directly to anyone of these services. (You can also use any other service that provides an upload email address.)
1.
First, you will need to find the upload email address provided by either Facebook, Twitpic or Flickr.
To find the Facebook address, go to “Photos” (by clicking the Photo button on the bar at the bottom of the page), then click on the “Mobile Uploads” tab. You should see a link under the tabs that says “Upload photos via email”. Click that and you will be greeted with a pop-up displaying an email address. Remember that if you want to be able to send your snapshots to Facebook.
To find your Twitpic address, go here: http://twitpic.com/upload/, and copy the address you see near the bottom of the page.
Finally, to find your Flickr address, go here: http://www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/, and copy the address under the header “Email your photos or video to this address”.
2.
Next, you’ll have to make a new account with Gmail here: http://mail.google.com/mail/signup. When you reach the inbox of your new Gmail account, go to “Settings”, click the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab and copy either the Facebook, Twitpic or Flickr address to the blank box next to “Forward a copy of incoming mail to…” Leave “keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox” as it is. It will make things easier if you ever need to check the actual Gmail inbox, which you will need to do later on. Save the changes by clicking the “Save Changes” button at the bottom.
Go to Step 5 to learn how to forward snapshots to more than one service using just one Gmail account.
3.
Now you’ll have to register your Gmail email address as a Wii Friend. To do this, go to the Wii Menu, click the “Wii Message Board” icon which looks like an envelope. Then click the “Create Message” icon which looks like a piece of paper with a pen on it. Click the “Address Book” option, then click the “Register” button. Choose “Other”, and then enter your Gmail address in the space provided. Provide a nickname, like “Facebook”, “Twitpic”, or “Flickr”. Press “OK” three times. You can now turn off the Wii. It should be on standby mode where the light on the power button is yellow/orange.
Eventually, you should a receive an email from Nintendo in your Gmail inbox. You must reply to it before your email address will be added as a friend. Just reply with “hi” or something – it doesn’t matter.
4.
Finally! We can now send photos from Animal Crossing to either Facebook, Twitpic or Flickr! To do this, just press “1″ on your Wiimote to take a picture. Go to the town hall, and speak to the person at the second window. Choose “Wii Message Board” from the list of options and then select “A friend”. You’ll be greeted by your Wii’s Address Book. Chose the service you just registered. You can write a message. I know for a fact that whatever you type won’t show up on Twitpic or Facebook (but you will see it in the description if you upload to Flickr.) The teller at the window will then ask you if you want to attach a picture. Choose “Yes, please”, and you’ll be able to attach the snapshot you just took. The only drawback is that can’t send photos from your SD card – just the most recent one you took.
Once the message is off, you will be able to see it on Facebook, Twitpic or Flickr within a few minutes.
Have fun!
5.
Alternatively, you can set up Gmail filters to send your Animal Crossing snapshots to more than one service. I have it set up to send photos to Twitpic and Facebook. Here’s how to do it:
You’ll first need to disable forwarding. Go to “Settings” again, choose the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab. Right at the top, you should see a radio button next to “Disable forwarding”. Click on that, and click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. Now click the “Filters” tab. Make sure you have your Wii’s email address (it’ll be wYOURWIINUMBERHERE@wii.com. If you’ve already sent photos, you can copy the address from a message in your inbox.) Click “Create new filter” and paste the Wii’s email address in the text box next to “From”. Click “Next Step”. Check the box next to “Forward it to”, and paste either the email address for Facebook, Twitpic, Flickr or any other upload email for an other service in the text box.
Repeat these steps to add another service, since you need to make a new filter for each service.
Appendix
Here are some other services you can post to using just an email address:
Posterous: post@posterous.com (you’ll need to link Posterous to your Gmail account first.)
Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/goodies
Picasa Web: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/settings (you’ll need check the box next to “Allow me to upload photos by email”.)
[Taken from my other blog, Little Gaming Blog. Original post.]
