Make your own iPhone ringtones!

Due to popular demand, I'm posting my homegrown instructions on how to make a ringtone for your iPhone... without paying for software and without paying Apple $2. I've only done this on OS X and iTunes 9.1.1, but I suspect it would work on Windows as well. The one caveat is that you can't make a ringtone from a DRM'd song.

1. Acquire or locate the (not stolen!) song or sound you want to make a ringtone in. It cannot have DRM. Import it into iTunes if it is not already in there.
2. Right click on the song and choose "Get Info" (or choose Get Info from File Menu).
3. Click on the Options tab.
4. Check the Start Time and Stop Time checkboxes and fiddle with the start and stop time until you get the cut you want. It cannot be longer than 30 seconds. Sometimes it's useful to turn on repeat while you do this.
5. Highlight the song and the Under the Advanced menu, choose "Create AAC Version" -- you should see a new version of the song of the length you specified in your music library.
6. Right click on the new version and choose "Show in Finder" (or whatever the PC equivalent is). Drag that song to a safe place -- desktop, wherever, just not inside your iTunes library.
   
7. Delete the song from iTunes (from the library not just a playlist).
8. Rename the song on your desktop to .m4r - don't worry if your OS is concerned about this.
9. Drag it back into iTunes and it will put it in your ringtones.

Voilà! Sync your phone and try it out!

Feel free to give me any feedback on how this worked (or didn't) for you.

GMail

Almost everyone but the true Luddites have gotten onboard the e-mail train by now (in fact, can we drop the hyphen? cool, thanks). Unfortunately, a lot of us hopped on many, many years ago and although email clients have advanced, not all have done so at the same rate. If you're still using the AOL, for example, you're probably suffering unnecessary pain.

My email client of choice is GMail (by Google). Don't be fooled by the eternal "beta" tag; GMail is the webmail service (i.e. email accessed via the web instead of by a desktop application) that pushes all the others to innovate -- for now, at least. If you're really fastidious with folders or otherwise particular about email, you're probably going to want a desktop client anyway. But for the rest of us humans, webmail is pretty darn convenient, especially while traveling.

The most important features that make GMail standout (for me) are:

• Search: Shockingly, Google knows how to do this well.
• Conversations: Rather than displaying each individual message, replies are grouped with the original message. Usually, this is a good thing.
• Fatty Limits: You can store a LOT of data, send BIG attachments, have as many labels, filters, etc. as you want. Google doesn't play the Freemium game.
• Offline Browsing: As of January 2009, you can keep a cache of your mail on your computer and browse it, search it, compose messages etc., while offline. Once you get back online, you can send your saved drafts and synchronize any changes you've made.
• Interface: GMail has an excellent interface that is intuitive, easy to use, simple, easy to look at, and tends to work well. I don't say those things lightly.
• Spam Filter: It works. That's more than I can say for any other email service I've ever used.
  
• Features, Features, Features: GMail supports a lot of features, but even more are behind the scenes in GMail Labs, essentially a playground where Google Engineers add bells and whistles they'd like to use themselves. Just a few include: Offline (mentioned above), Undo Send (that's right!), Forgot Attachment Detector, Vacation Auto-responder, and on and on and on. They are not always bug-free (hence the "labs") and should be used with care, but can be extremely handy.

Another consideration is that GMail is embedded in the Google ecosystem (chat, groups, etc.) which can lead to some handy integration if you use other Google tools. This is similarly true for Yahoo!.

Of course, there are downsides:

• Google can scour your email as much as it likes, though presumably will "do no evil" with your data. If you're fond of your privacy, it's worth noting that at some level, you really are giving it up. The ads it puts along-side your messages also may creep you out by how relevant they are (unless you block them, like me, shhhh).
  
• It's rare, but GMail does go down occasionally, which will leave you out in the cold unless, perhaps, you have Offline enabled. Of course, you could always go take a walk or read a book. And, if Google somehow loses your account or your data, well, I hope you exported a backup.

Check into your current email client/service and see if it supports forwarding. In that case, you can have any email sent to your old address automatically forwarded to your new GMail address. If not, it actually can be kind of liberating to jump to a new email address... not quite email bankruptcy (I give up!), but like moving to a new physical address, you can weed out all the people (or organizations, Russian gangsters, you get the picture) sending you mail that you don't really want to hear from.

Signing up is a snap. And who knows, perhaps you'll be intrigued enough to make the switch. If not, you can choose not to use it, or you can forward your new GMail address to your current email address. Free your inbox! Or feel free to disagree!

iPhone Tip: Beyond .com

If you work in education or otherwise make frequent use of domains that do NOT end in ".com", you may have felt ever so slightly left out the first time you entered a url (that's what dorks call a web address) in Safari on your iPhone. The ".com" button in that bottom right corner is just not that inclusive, is it?

Fear not! You can actually end your urls with .net, .org or .edu as well with just one (extended) click. (Sorry, .mil, .gov, foreign countries, etc., you were sacrificed to the screen real estate gods.) Next time you are entering a url, hold down the ".com" and up they pop. Thank god you don't have to hunt and peck for those last three letters anymore!

Credit goes entirely to my Mac-obsessed friend for this little tidbit. She knows who she is!

Next up, a not iPhone-related post, promise.

iPhone Tip: Taking a Screenshot

My Home Screen
My guess is that many an iPhone user has discovered a random image in his or her Camera Roll that looks suspiciously familiar.

Well, if you are one of these people, using an iPhone running version 2.0 or later of the firmware, you probably accidentally took a screenshot (for the non-techs out there, this is exactly what it sounds like, a picture of your current screen).

To do this deliberately, simply click the home button and the power button at the same time (or hold down the home button, then click the power button). You should see the screen flash white for a moment but otherwise be unchanged. You can do this from inside an application, while sending mail, or anywhere else. When you go to Photos, then Camera Roll, you should see any screenshots you've taken.

Whether you're documenting a strange bug, succinctly sharing the apps you use, or just think something looks cool, this comes in handy every now and then. Or at least explains random photos appearing in your Camera Roll.

Firefox Add-On: Pronounce

It's always disconcerting when you begin to read some text aloud to someone and run into a word you just aren't sure how to pronounce. You may often know precisely what it means, or be able to suss out the meaning from the context, but the pronunciation is just a total crap shot.

Well, if said text is in a browser, you're now in business. With the simple little Pronounce Firefox add-on, you simply highlight the word (often double-clicking will do this), right-click the highlight, and choose "Pronounce" from the pop-up menu. If your sound is on, the word is spelled correctly (!) and Mirriam-Webster has it in its dictionary, you should hear a male or female voice pronounce it for you. You can also add a Pronounce button to your Firefox toolbar (from View -> Toolbars -> Customize...) rather than right-clicking if you're really into learning how to pronounce words -- or if you just like looking at the smiley little Pronounce button guy.

I can't say I use this add-on every day, but it does hit the spot when you have that particular need. Install it and try it out on the words below. I'm tossing in definitions in the interest of literacy.

• barbiturate - n. any of class of sedative and sleep-inducing drugs derived from barbituric acid
  
• hierarchical - adj. of the nature of a hierarchy; arranged in order of rank
• nuclear - adj. of or relating to the nucleus of an atom (I just couldn't help myself!)
  
• obstreperous - adj. noisy or difficult to control
• prerogative - n. a right or privilege exclusive to a particular individual or class
• segue - v. move without interruption from one song, melody, or scene to another
  
• sherbet - n. a frozen dessert made with fruit juice added to milk or cream, egg white, or gelatin
  
• wizened - adj. shriveled or wrinkled with age

This one is for all you word nerds out there! Comment with any words you find hard to pronounce!

Heard about it from: net@night podcast, I think
Get it from: Mozilla Add-On library

iPhone App: Free Memory

Has your iPhone ever seemed particularly pokey? Or do applications sometimes crash when you open them? One culprit could be the iPhone's relatively teensy amount of runtime memory: 128MB. Before anyone gets too confused, this is not the amount of storage on your iPhone (e.g. 8GB or 16GB), but rather the memory (RAM) that the iPhone uses to "think". Most of that 128MB is used by the operating system, leaving only about 30-40MB for applications. (!!)

I've found the Free Memory application to be helpful in making my iPhone a wee bit snappier. It's a very simple app that allows you to see the process currently running on your phone, and if applicable, free up to 20 MB of memory. It also displays a numeric value for the battery charge remaining, which is handy. (Apparently, Apple is not a fan of this, and the battery indicator will be removed in the next version, 1.5, due out "soon").

A true geek will have a jailbroken phone with all kinds of nerdery to this and more, but for us humans, it's worth a buck.

One word of warning: some reviews in the iTunes store complain of serious issues after installing this app. I haven't had any at all, and most such issues can be resolved by restoring your phone or reinstalling the application, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Developer: Recession Apps (what a depressing name!)

Get it from: iTunes
Current Version: 1.4 (but "soon" to be 1.5, which has no battery indicator, bleh)
Current Price: $0.99

Current Rank: #6 in Utilities (paid), #98 Overall (paid)
Reviews: iTunes: 3/5, Average Review at apptism: 3.5/5

Twitter

If a web service is being covered by David Pogue and major news sites, produces over 199 million search results, and it is used by the President and Britney Spears then it's safe to call it mainstream.

Twitter, available at twitter.com, is ostensibly very simple. You can "tweet" 140 characters at a time, what some call a "microblog". Your tweets are available to anyone on the web unless you protect them (which sort of misses the point). You can follow other twitterers and if they also follow you, you can send them a message directly. And, that, technically, is really all there is to it.

What gets complicated are all the ways people use Twitter, proper Twitter "etiquette" (twittiquette?) and the myriad of Twitter clients. There are oodles of articles on all those topics and tips on getting started, so I'm going to write about how I use it.

My account: zazerh_news just to follow news and zazerh as myself, following everything else

How I access it: with Tweetie on my iPhone, Twitterific or Spaz on OS X, and rarely, via the web

When/how often I read my feed: Often I'll browse headlines first thing in the morning unless I have to rush off. I'll peruse it from my phone while waiting for something somewhere (e.g. in line). Many of my OS X use Growl to flash little notification on the upper right of my screen, so sometimes I'll see them flash by as I work. Of course, if I'm crushingly busy, I tend not to check it all.

What I tweet about: I try to avoid answering the actual question Twitter asks ("What are you doing right now?"), unless it's interesting or funny. I'll sometimes "retweet" other people's interesting tweets, pass on interesting links with TinyURL (or some other link shortener) or what I think of a movie or book, make a witty (I try) observation, post a picture with TwitPic, or rarely, reply to another tweet. You get the idea.

How often I tweet: Usually once or twice a day, unless I gotta lot of interesting going on. From following other people, you tire very quickly of people twittering every five minutes if it's not very high quality.

Who I follow:

• for news, CNN @cnnbrk, Newsweek @Newsweek, NYTimes @nytimes, MacRumors @MacRumorsRSS, to name a few.
• the few family members and meatspace friends of mine that are on Twitter
• web developers like Paul Boag @boagworld
• web celebs like Veronica Belmont @veronica and Wil Wheaton @wilw
• political figures like Ahhhnold @schwarzenegger and Obama @BarackObama
• software vendors I use like @CulturedCode (they make Things)
• services like @TrackThis and @FuelFrog
• podcasters like LeoLaporte @LeoLaporte and @GrammarGirl
• musicians I like, such as Ingrid Michaelson @ingridmusic and Trent Reznor @treznor
  
• tech notables like Tim O'Reilly @timoreilly and Craig Newmark @craignewmark
  
• actual celebrities, like @TinaFey
• deal finders like @woot and @gotodaily
  

Other uses: I feed my tweets into my Facebook status using the Twitter facebook app. Twitter is also a great way to find out what people are talking about right now, such a disaster, a live event, movies out right now, what have you. It's surprising how unsuccessful it can be to Google for some of these things... so try http://search.twitter.com and you might be surprised at how useful it can be.

Overwhelmed yet? Take it slow. Read David Pogue's introduction. And a word to the wise, Twitter can be flakey!