Peter Redmer's blog

Question:

I'm searching in vain through my iTunes to find a way to make my favorite songs into ringtones for my iPhone.  I can't seem to find it.  How do I do this?

Answer:

Well, unfortunately for hundreds of thousands of iPhone owners who want custom ringtones, Apple doesn't make this easy for you.  Of course, you could always buy ringtones from the iTunes Music Store, but what if they don't have your favorite song available?  What if you want to use something completely different, like a video game sound effect or a recording of your kid playing the drums or something?

There are a few ways to do this - a sneaky (and lengthy) "manual" way, or you can use a third party program to make it easy.

The Manual Way

If you're a rabid follower of Caffeinated Pixels (please tell me you are? *hopeful eyes*) then you already know that I currently own and love a Dell Inspiron Mini 9.  Ever since I first unwrapped it from its sparse packaging (fitting for a refurb) I've wanted to get something else other than Windows on it.  Now, don't get me wrong, XP actually runs great and I've used it A LOT.  It's just... so... sluggish... and takes forever and a day to boot.  I can actually crack a beer, make a snack, use the washroom, and change clothes before it's even ready to use.

Back in the day, a mobile device that could browse the Internet was incredible, expensive, hard to find, and often cumbersome.  I remember how absolutely cool it was to browse the mobile web from my Sprint PCS Vision phone, although it was only black-and-white text, of course.

Before the advent of the iPhone, the Palm Pre, the BlackBerry Storm, HTC Mogul, T-Mobile G1, and other phones fully capable of browsing the Internet gracefully - the Internet tablet attempted to bridge the gap. 

I always wanted an Internet tablet, but they were far too expensive and limited to make it worth it, and besides, only a few years later I was able to browse the web reasonably well on my PocketPC with a tethered Bluetooth connection.  My phone didn't have a decent browser or PDA capabilities, but my PDA did.