I’ve had my Apple iPhone for awhile now, but what really irks me for all the music-power of the iPhone, is how incredibly difficult it is to get good ringtones for it!
Sure you can pay $0.99 to iTunes to download a ringtone, but that feature is really limited. I had already purchased the JXL Remix of Elvis’ A Little Less Conversation (regular iTunes), liked the song, and figured that it’d be a cool ringtone. So after paying another $0.99 to get the “ringtone version”, it turned out that the sound quality was crap. The ringtone (which sounds fine on my PC’s speakers) sounded tinny and crackly on the iPhone’s ringer. Technically speaking, the ringtone’s “range” was set too wide and too loud to be handled by the iPhone’s ringer. And because the ringtone was encrypted by Apple’s proprietary AAC encoding, there was no way for me to lower the volume (even though iTunes allows you to “modify” the default volume of songs on iTunes, it does not offer this feature for ringtones). Basically, $0.99 down the drain!
After alot of searching (there were various articles online which explains how to make your own ringtones for free, but all of these loopholes had since been closed by Apple), I discovered the best way to get around the problem was to create ringtones myself using a few simple tools. The process is:
For $14.95 (the price of iPhoneRingtoneMaker), there’s really no easier way to get ringtones onto your iPhone! You can download 15 crappy ringtones (at $0.99 each) from Apple iTunes, or just make great quality ones them yourself (with fade in/out effects so that it actually sounds like a real ringtone).
I fully support musicians and artists (the MP3s I have were purchased legally from places like Amazon MP3 Store and Music Today). I love my iPhone, and I’d also love to support iTunes, but until they get me a real way of putting quality ringtones on my iPhone, there is no other practical option available to me.
For the record (no pun intended), and to give my favorite band a bump:
Net result, I now officially own The Eagles’ latest album. And my iPhone has some ringtones that I really love!
I bought an iPod system for my wife at Christmas: the iPod, 200 iTunes credits & an FM Transmitter for her car.
The problem was that in the 2+ months since Christmas, she got so frustrated at the FM Transmitter (not working properly) that she’s stopped using it!
Looking into the problem, it appears that static (or more powerful radio stations) were drowning out the iPod music. This didn’t seem right because this was the latest Belkin, with their fancy technology to find clear frequencies to minimize/eliminate interference! When I Google’d this problem, most people seemed to say that it couldn’t be helped, especially for newer cars where the radio antenna is “built” into the rear windscreen.
Playing around with it myself, I discovered that I could push buttons on the Belkin to find a clear frequency, but when I changed the FM dial on the radio to that frequency, it often had static or worse yet a radio station! How could this be? Was my Belkin broken and not able to correctly identify a clear frequency?
Interestingly enough, as I reached to the Belkin again, to attempt to find another frequency, I could hear the Ipod clearly. As long as I held my hand on or very near the unit, the iPod music was coming over the car’s speakers loud and clear! This got me thinking that, because I was touching the Belkin, I was acting as the antenna for it to determine a “clear frequency”. But if my hand wasn’t near the unit, the car’s antenna over-powering whatever internal antenna the unit had.
So in short, I pressed the button for the Belkin to search for the clear frequency. And then quickly moved my hand away from the unit (allowing it to search without using me as the antenna). Once it locked onto a good frequency, I set the radio to the same, and the iPod music came through clearly. I drove over 20 miles (around town) and was able to perfectly hear the iPod music without having the change frequencies once!
It’s such a simple solution (to an otherwise frustrating situation). I’m really surprised that Belkin didn’t put it on their instructions. And I’m even more surprised that this information wasn’t more obviously published on the Internet!
iMoron tries to corner the iPhone market on eBay… goes horribly wrong!
The war between Netflix and Blockbuster, to win your online DVD rental business, has been going on for awhile now.
As you might have guessed, I was an early adopter of Netflix many years ago. While they have a great range of DVD titles, I was always suspect of their queue system. It always seemed that if you’re a new customer, you would get the New Releases almost immediately. But after awhile, the New Releases seem to get more and more delayed. As a test, I signed up for another account, and was able to get New Releases ahead of my older account. I quit shortly after that. Of course, that’s old news. There was a class-action lawsuit, and while “no one” admitted any wrong-doing subscribers were given a “discount” on their next bill (or a similar discount if you’d sign back up with them again).
I’d been eyeing Blockbuster’s offer for awhile now. The idea of being able to exchange my DVDs in-store was appealing. Like Netflix, they would provide free shipping to and from your home, but the concept of being able to go to your local store to exchange it was a reassurance that I wasn’t going to be screwed by any queue-system. While in-store, I could easily see if the next DVD I wanted was in-stock, and demand the exchange on-the-spot.
Anyway, it looks like Blockbuster started offering a 2-week free trial on the web. What’s better, is that there’s a coupon code that’ll boost your free trial to 1-month. When you register for the free trial just enter “morevalue32” as the “promo code”.
I’ve had my Samsung i320 for over 9 months now, and I have to say that I still love it! For thsoe that know what kind of gadget fiend I am, will be surprised. Usually by now, I’d be itching for something newer and better. I admit I was rather envious when the Cingular Blackjack came out. But I just didn’t think that the HDSPA or Wifi made up for the slower processor and shorter battery life. My friend Kenny is probably even more of gadget-afficionado. When I met up with him a few weeks ago, I wasn’t surprised that he had a Blackjack. With first hand experience, Kenny told me that the Blackjack’s problems were a horribly short battery life (unless he turned off HDSPA) and that the key-response was very slow.
A few days ago, I stumbled across Kooldesignz, which that lots of great looking (and free!) skins. Essentially designed for the Motorola Q, they also work great on my i320 (because the two devices have the same resolution and screen size).
Everytime I travel overseas, I turn off my unlimtied PDA data plan. And then have to turn it back on, when I get back to the US. The problems arise when speaking with Cingular Customer Service. Whatever system they use, don’t seem to be able to handle non-Cingular phones when it comes time to add/remove data plans. I’m not sure why that is, and when I mention “Samsung i320″ they always seem to go into a tail-spin. They don’t have an issue with me having a non-Cingular phone, they just don’t know how to enter it into their system. They insist on needing to know my IMEI number, and even their system doesn’t seem to want to register it.
Anyway, I’ve since learnt that you can move past this stalemate by telling them one of two things:
The second option (telling them that it’s a “Cingular Blackjack”) is the much faster and smoother option, but I’m not sure if I have an ethical dilemma with not being completely truthful…
Smith