How to create MP3 ringtones for free using Apple iTunes

Since Tammy and I both got new phones not too long ago, I decided to get a bluetooth module for our computer so we could transfer photos and such wirelessly from our phones to our computer without all of the proprietary USB cabling for each phone and junk software. This also allows us to upload our own ring tones. I did a little research and you can actually make your own MP3 ringtones using iTunes and it’s free. Just make sure your phone can read MP3’s as ringtones (most can).

First you want to set the import settings to something the phone can read and play easily. Go to preferences (On a Mac Apple Menu > Preferences, on Windows Edit > Preferences). As shown in the screen shot below, on the General tab, click the Import Settings button. Make sure your using the MP3 encoder, then in settings, select Custom.

Change your Sample Rate to 22.050khz and Channels to Mono as shown below.

Click OK and close out the preferences pane.

Now, pick out a song you want to make a ringtone, listen to it and determine what 30 second or less clip you would like. I chose Flare by Relient K. Write down the start and end time of that clip. Once you determined what section of the song you want, do a Get Info on the song. You can do this by highlighting the song and right clicking or on the keyboard using CRTL+I in Windows or Command+I on a Mac. In the info pane, you want to click the Options tab as shown below.

Put in your start and stop times you wrote down. This is considered non destructive editing which means that it does not change the original file, so you will still have the complete song intact. Just remember to go back and uncheck the Start Time and Stop Time boxes when you are done so iTunes will play the whole song.

I did a 25 second clip to be safe. Please note that iTunes uses time codes not just the number of seconds, so remember to complete the time code.

Now play it to double check that it is playing the clip of the song you want. If you are satisfied with it, right click (CRTL+click on a single button Mac mouse) and select Create MP3 Version from the sub menu (as shown below).

Please note, selecting Create Ringtone will lead you the iTunes store and prompt you to create and purchase the ringtone from Apple of the song you selected. You can do this, but then it isn’t free.

iTunes will encode and create an MP3 using the settings we entered earlier. Then, just select the resulting MP3, click and drag to your desktop, as shown below.

Then transfer this to your phone via bluetooth or USB. Please note that some phones have size limits for ringtones. For my phone (a Samsung Solstice) the limit is 300k. Just check the size of the MP3 on your desktop before uploading to your phone to make sure it is under the specified limit for your phone.

After you are done, remember to go back to preferences and change your iTunes import settings back to their original settings and to also deselect the Start Time and Stop Time boxes in the info pane.

Upgraded to Windows 7

I got my free upgrade disc in so, this weekend I upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows Vista. I chose to do a complete reformat because I wanted to eliminate possibility of something going wrong . I had to back up my data, reformat and reinstall all of my programs, so all of that took several hours, but it’s worth it.

Click image above for original size image

Windows 7 is definitely a lot better performance wise and is starts up in about half the time. The tool bar takes a little getting used to  for me because it looks like the dock in OS X, but it works differently. Overall, it seems very stable, visually pleasing and runs like Vista should have.

Here are my sub scores from Windows 7. Windows 7’s max sub score is raised from Vista’s 5.9 to 7.9

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @2.83GHz – 7.3
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB – 5.9
Graphics Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset – 4.6
Gaming graphics 1695 MB Total available graphics memory – 3.6
Primary hard disk 405GB Free (466GB Total) – 5.9

Not to bad.

Atlanta Flood waters

This is a few miles from my apartment. Crazy!

Linux Project Computer update

After weeks of working on this machine off and on between other projects, I finally got it running. The hardest part was finding hardware that actually worked, but I guess this was to be expected with hardware from circa 1996. I found a PIII motherboard and processor, but the first power supply I hooked up was apparently bad and fried that motherboard so I changed power supplies and motherboards and it powered up. I checked the BIOS and adjusted all of the settings, took off the zip drive and floppy drives and disabled it in the BIOS. Went to install xubuntu 9.02 on it and found out I had a faulty cd-rom drive, swapped it out with another and tried again. Another faulty cd-rom drive. After 3 tries, I finally successfully installed xubuntu. After installing everything, it seemed to work okay, but it would randomly log me out when I resized windows. I tracked it down to a faulty memory bank in the video card I had installed, so I had to swap that out as well. After that final swap out, everything works perfectly.

Here is what I ended up with:

A Dell custom mother board and 400 mhz PII processor
320 mb of PC-100 SDRAM
13 gig IBM hard drive
ATI 16 mb AGP graphics card
40x cd-rom drive
10/100 ethernet PCI card
200 watt power supply

All in all, this ended up being made up from parts of 5 different computers that didn’t work before and were on their way to be recycled with an OS that was free,  It’s not a speed demon but definitely fast enough for general office work and internet browsing, which is what it will eventually be used for once I get through playing around and learning linux. I learned a lot by putting this together and hope to learn a lot about linux as well.

Xubuntu was definitely a good choice because it requires minimal resources to run, runs pretty fast considering the hardware and is still supported by linux and recent linux apps, unlike if I had chose to install Windows 98 which isn’t supported by Microsoft anymore or any recent software at this point.

Linux project computer

After talking with Scott Tam the other day about computers and him wanting to build a computer to run Linux on, I started doing some research on Linux I found out that besides the regular installs of unbutu and others, there are multiple distros out there that are optimized for old hardware. This got me thinking, we still have a few old Pentium II and III machines at work we just haven’t sent to be recycled yet. So me and a co-worker decided today to cobble together a PIII computer from the 3 or 4 waiting to be recycled old WIN 98 computers and run one of the leaner Linux distros on it to one see if we can do it and get a functioning computer out of scrap parts and two to play around with Linux and see how it works.

The distro I am considering is DreamLinux or xubuntu (depending on how much RAM i can find. Both looks pretty cool and doesn’t take a hefty hardware requirement to run.

I will keep you posted as I put the computer together and load Linux on it.

For all of you interested in the same thing, it looks to be pretty easy. Here is a video on how ubuntu installs and looks: