“Ring, ring”, “Ring, ring”. The family watched “Bedtime Stories” last weekend and Adam Sandler has a very distinctive ringtone in the movie. I liked it so much that I HAD to have it for my iPhone. iTunes, however, seems to be very stingy with it’s ringtones. It shows that you can make ringtones out of certain selections in your iTunes library but not anything you want. What to do? Enter: THE INTERNET!
There are many sites that share this but I’ll tell you how to do it also:
The song you want to use must reside on the local hard drive of the PC/Mac you are using
Right-click the song and choose “Get Info”, click the “Options” tab, then enter a start time and a stop time for the clip. It has to be 30 seconds or less. Click on “OK”.
Right-click the song again and choose “Convert selection to AAC”. Then delete the song from your iTunes library but choose to save the file when asked.
Find the converted song (it will have a “.m4a” extension) on your hard drive. Change the extension to “.m4r”.
Add the new file back to iTunes. It will automatically go to the “Ringtones” folder.
Synch your phone and make the change on your phone.
I’ve never been a fan of RF modulators so that you can listen to your iPod in the car. In any metropolitan area there are just too many radio stations to interfere with whatever frequency you choose. This is what led me to purchase the DICE Electronics iHOND3 iPod interface for my car. Not only did my iPod touch charge in the car but I could control it using the wheel mounted audio controls. Life was good. Then I got an iPhone and life was no longer good, it didn’t work in the car.
Enter DICE Electronics. I emailed them and Travis in sales got back to me right away. They explained that the 3G wouldn’t charge at 12V like the original iPhone. He asked for the serial number from my unit and after giving it to him he again got back to me right away. He gave me 2 options:
Option A-Send the module box and the cable that goes to the iPhone back. They’d upgrade the software, install a 5V chip, and get a corrected cable. It can be done now and only take a day or 2. $99
Option B-Wait until mid December for a new cable that will make it work as is. No software upgrade. $45
I choose to wait until mid December as there wasn’t any additional functionality in a software upgrade. I wanted to post about all of this because of how responsive DICE Electronics and Travis have been. You don’t purchase their products directly from them, they work through dealers, but they sure do have a way with making customers feel valued.
iPhone 3G
I did it. I just went in the Apple store and did it. I purchased a white 16GB iPhone 3G. I’ve been spending a lot of time working/playing on my iPod touch and have been carrying that and my work Blackberry. Since I’ve been carrying 2 devices anyway I decided to add the phone/GPS/3G features to what I was carrying. It was also getting a little frustrating to only have network access when I was near wifi. As I’ve been getting used to using the iPod as an email device I have been cutting back my use of my Blackberry. It is a faithful system but it isn’t as easy to use or as enjoyable. I had to get a new phone number as I made the mistake of porting my personal number to DowJones when I got the corporate Blackberry. So far I removed all items from my iPod and synched them onto my new iPhone. The process went smoothly but I did lose all of the data from my car database program, CarCare. I have paper backup though so I will be able to re-create it. I am going to try to forward my calls from the Blackberry to the iPhone so that I’ll only have to carry the Blackberry when I’m oncall. The iPhone still does not allow a different email notification based on the “To:” field like the Blackberry does with it’s “Level1″ messages. I will sleep right through the notification that is native on the iPhone and that won’t do. I was hopeful that the September firmware update would include that change but they have scaled back the “push” feature that I thought would allow it.
Now this made me laugh. It’s an app in the iTunes iPhone App Store called “I Am Rich” and all that it does is to show a “work of art with no hidden function at all”. From the App description: “The red icon on your iPhone or iPod touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this”. “After pressing the (i) on the main page, a secret mantra will be shown. This may help you to stay rich, healthy, and successful”. The price of this App? Only $999.99! Programmed by Armin Heinrich.
