Make Ringtones For Free on The iPhone

I recently picked up an iPhone. It’s sexy. However, I’m definitely not going to pay money to create a ringtone out of a song that I already own – sorry Apple, RIAA, AT&T, your mom thats not going to cut it. Lucky for me I discovered a free solution to get ringtones straight to your iPhone, just follow these steps:

1. Install MakeiPhoneRingtones2.app
2. Change your iTunes Import Settings to encode AAC
3. Import the MP3 you have already sliced up as a ringtone, into iTunes
   
4. Right click that MP3 in iTunes and select Convert to AAC
5. Rename the extension to m4r and add to your iTunes Library
6. Drag the AAC file into MakeiPhoneRingtone2.app

DONE. Your ringtones will now appear under the iTunes Ringtones section which will automatically sync with your iPhone the next time you connect it. How’s that for stickin’ it to the man?

UPDATE: This works only with the 1.1.2 iPhone update

Songbird – Music To My Ears

I have recently just purchased a new Macbook. I have lost some friends in the switch, and will be forcing myself to try out OS X for a month so I can learn the system before I load up Ubuntu. Music is always a high priority for me, and iTunes’DRM-infested software just wasn’t going to cut it for me. I’ve dabbled with Songbird in the past when it was a very early beta but there have been lots of improvements since.

 

Songbird is the Firefox of media players. It runs on Mozilla’s platform so you can use it on any operating system, and allows extensions a la Firefox. Not to mention its also developed by the same boys who brought you the good ol’ Winamp. One of the features that sets Songbird apart from the rest is that it can detect songs on web-pages like MySpace and play the file like an mp3 that is local – so you can skip over it at your leisure. This makes listening to music on the web VERY powerful.

If you want to check out a hassle-free media player I suggest this because it can index your entire library, help you find new music, and of course as always is free like the air we breathe. Songbird is still a developers beta, but it is very stable, and very usable. The term “beta” is somewhat obsolete these days with Google keeping GMail in beta for what – a year? 😉