Hasta La Gadget!

Ford shows off the Start Concept at the 2010 Beijing Auto Show. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20003324-48.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Car Tech blog/a/p

The LG Mystique is a rebranding of the LG Lotus Elite for U.S. Cellular. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20003320-85.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Dialed In/a/p

This article was written on August 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Windows; Mac
One of the things that Apple hasn’t made easy for iPhone owners is providing a way to create custom ringtones in Windows. If you’re a Mac owner you can use GarageBand, but Apple doesn’t provide that application on Windows. Instead what they expect you to do is purchase a song for $0.99, and then convert it to a ringtone for another $0.99.

As it turns out in a few steps you can actually convert a DRM-free song into a ringtone using only iTunes in Windows. The trick also works for Mac users, but using GarageBand is a lot simpler so we’re focusing primarily on the Windows side.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Start iTunes and find the [DRM-free] song you want to convert to a ringtone. Right-click on it and select the Get Info option.
   
2. On the Options tab locate the Start Time and End Time options. This is where you want to specify the portion of the song you wanted converted into a ringtone. Check both of the boxes, and make sure your ringtone is under 30-seconds. Press OK when finished.
   
3. Right-click on the song you just modified, and choose the Convert to AAC option. If you don’t see this in the context menu navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing, and make sure the AAC Encoder is selected in the Import Using menu.
   
4. Once the song has finished being converted to the new format it will appear in your music list, and the “Time” should reflect the correct duration of the ringtone (which should be less than 30-seconds). Now navigate to your iTunes music folder to find the converted song. Here’s an example of where my Green Day ringtone was located:
   
5. Make sure you’re able to see the file’s extension (.M4A) like in the screenshot above. If you don’t see the extension go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View (Organize -> Folder and Search Options on Vista), and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types box. Then click OK.
6. Copy the music file (with the .M4A extension) to your desktop. Once you’ve done that rename the file’s extension to .M4R which will make iTunes recognize it as a ringtone. Make sure there are no symbols (underscores, hyphens, etc…) in the file name.
   
7. In iTunes go to File -> Add File to Library, and then browse for the file from step 6. Once you’ve selected it press the Open button. iTunes will place the ringtone in the respective section in your library:
   
8. Sync your iPhone with iTunes and your newly created ringtone should get transferred over. If it doesn’t be sure to check the Ringtones tab in the iPhone configuration section of iTunes to verify that it is setup to sync your ringtones.

–What is DRM?–

I’ve been getting all kinds of questions and emails from people asking what DRM is. An anonymous commenter below did a great job answering the question. Here is his response:

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. In a nutshell, a song with DRM is meant to keep you from giving it to someone else. If you’re using Windows XP (and I’m sure there’s some equivalent for Vista), you can right-click on a song file, and choose Properties. Under the Summary tab, click the Advanced >> button if it’s there. Under the Origin heading, you will see an entry named ‘Protected’. If it says No, then the song does not have a DRM. If it says Yes, well, you may be able to pay Apple money to convert the song to an iTunes Plus track, which will be DRM-free. Hope this helps, best of luck!

That’s all there is to it. Now you can save yourself a bunch of money on ringtones. A big thanks to the Apple Blog who assembled the original instructions on how to do this for the Mac!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryApple Announces iPod Touch and $399 8GB iPhoneNew iTunes 7.3 Required for iPhoneiTunes 7.2 “Plus” Offers DRM-Free Music and Vista CompatibilityCyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

In an effort to answer as many reader queries as possible, we turn to CNET Labs’ Julie Rivera, who will tackle some of the best laptop and portable computing questions in this public forum.

(Credit:

Overdohse.com)

The subject of Jeff’s bad cell phone luck has come up several times on The 404 Podcast already, but we’re coming back to it once again because he just received his NINTH Palm Pre from the good folks at Sprint, who are now offering a “trade nine, get one free frozen yogurt” stamp card in his honor.

We’d love to promise that this will be his last, but judging from the laundry list of parts that broke on the other eight units, it’s not looking good. The best we can hope for is that number nine won’t spontaneously combust before Jeff can cash in for a HTC Evo 4G…that is, unless Lenovo announces a ThinkPalm phone first.

Big thanks to Cheryl, aka The Official 404 Grandmother, for recommending this inspiring story about a 99-year-old woman in Oregon who’s rediscovered the joys of reading and writing poetry thanks to the zoom feature on her brand new Apple iPad. We’ve been vocalizing our frustration at the technological ineptitude of our elders for the past two weeks now, so it’s about time someone sets it straight!

(Credit:

KPTV)

Virginia Campbell was born in 1910 and a tough fight with glaucoma recently left her struggling to read fine print until her family bought her an iPad. As a result, pinch-to-zoom is her new best friend, even inspiring her to write a short poem that we’re proud to read over the air. Campbell had this to say to a reporter: “You’re never too old to take advantage of something that will help you.” +3!

We’ve also got a semi-SFW story about a kind-hearted film star that saved a man from a 20-year prison sentence in Puerto Rico, but you’ll have to download today’s episode to get the full story, because we want to address complaints about the iTunes feed.

We do our best to put the show on iTunes as soon as possible, but if you can’t wait to hear an episode, you can always visit this blog and click the “play” button down below to hear the audio podcast. Or, if you’re especially Web savvy, you can right click on “download,” copy the URL and edit the numbers to the current date. Thanks for being patient with us, and have a great weekend everyone!

EPISODE 566

Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video

…

Originally posted at The 404 Podcast