The Blog of an African NERD

Ringtone Makers, Ringtone Shufflers and March Madness Ringtones

 

March madness is here and with our RingToneMakers, ToneFXs for iPhone and Ringtone Shufflers, you can enjoy it more and show support for your team on your iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile Phone. When I lived in Kansas City, I fell in love with the Jayhawks mainly because of their fight song, which I think is the best in the country. Now with iPhoneRingToneMaker and ToneFXs, I can really enjoy these sounds on my iPhone and do some really cool stuff, particularly during this March Madness period.

It starts with getting the fight song of your favorite team. Simply go to Amazon MP3, and search “College Fight Song”. You can do the same search in iTunes.  Another good source is your College’s website. For example http://www.ku.edu/about/traditions/songs.shtml.

Once you download your college fight song, then the fun begins. Simply drag it into iPhoneRingToneMaker and create your college fight song ringtone.

 

It gets better.  For me, I love these two KU songs- Sunflower song and I’m a Jayhawk. Not to even mention the chant “Rock Chalk Jayhawk KUUUUUUUUU”. Of course I have created all these ringtone. However, how do I enjoy them all? Thanks to the Ringtone Shuffling feature in ToneFXs, I can shuffle all these ringtones, so that for every phone call I get, I hear one of these ringtones. Cool stuff indeed!!. Here is a screenshot

There is even more you can do with ToneFXs.  This app lets you customize pretty much all the mains sounds your iPhone makes. You can customize your text message alert sound, calendar alert sound, even the keyboard sound! So when a text message comes in or a calendar alert, rather than hearing Tri-Tone, I can hear the KU’s Fight Song or Rock Chalk.

As you may know, with the iPhone, you can assign a ringtone to a specific contact. I have some close friends who are passionate fans of K State and University of Maryland. So I have created the ringtones of these schools and assigned it to them so I know when these knuckle heads call me.

As you can see, with iPhoneRingToneMaker and ToneFXs, you can further enjoy March Madness in new and exciting ways.

Oh by the way, for you BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Folks, you can have these same experiences with BlackBerryRingToneMaker and wmRingToneMaker. We also have Ringtone Shuffler for these devices to. You can find them at http://www.ringtoneshuffler.com 

Ringtone Shuffler for Treos and Centros

If you love ringtones, then you should really like Ringtone Shuffler. Learn more here.

Job Openings at Gx5

Want to join us and help create some amazing applications and services for the latest and greatest gadgets? Learn more about available positions here.

Political Ringtones for your iPhone, Treo and Windows Mobile devices

If you use any of our ringtone products and you are into the White House race, you can get some fun political ringtones for your smartphone. Learn more at http://www.slate.com/id/2189303/

Savoring the KU championship on the go

One of the main ideas behind UltimatePhone and TreoWeather is that by giving the user the ability to set a custom background for these apps, it would greatly enhance the experience as they navigate within the apps. While am not a big college basketball fan, living in Kansas City I could not help but get on the KU bandwagon as March Madness approached. KU is really a fun team to watch and now that they are champions I can savor all the great memories while on the go and using my Treo.

gWeather, our entry for the Android Developer challenge

gWeather is our entry into the Android Developer Challenge. Big shout out to our development team for putting in really late hrs on this, Learn more here.

Thoughts on the iPhone SDK

After announcing the iPhone, His Highness( Steve Jobs ) once said
"You don’t want your phone to be an open platform....You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."

With comments like these, it was a bit hard to fathom what we witnessed from the launching of the iPhone SDK on March 6th. Talk about a 360 degree change in policy from a company known for being hardheaded and standing it’s ground.

At first glance, am very impressed with the SDK, but then am probably still stuck in the Mr. Jobs’s reality distortion field and once our developers fully dive into the SDK will we know just how legit this all is. Regardless, March 6th for the mobile developer community was probably one of the most important days in history. For one, it marked the culmination of the efforts of a never say die developer community that did whatever it took to get apps on the iPhone despite Apple not wanting us too. Once Apple realized it could not prevent the avalanche of 3rd Party apps, it was forced to release a public SDK.  I have had many discussions with many of the iPhone Jailbreakers and hackers form the 13 year olds to Mr. ziphone and believe me, what all these folks have accomplished is a large reason why you saw what you saw on March 6th.

The launching of the SDK also marked a new sign of hope for developers. With the Palm OS dying anyway and nothing exciting on other Platforms, things are looking bleak. This new iPhone platform provides a viable avenue for 3rd party developers like us to make good money while developing some of the most amazing apps you will ever see.

So what does this mean for us here at Gx5/Efiko Software?
Well, we have had a great run developing Palm OS apps. We were fortunate to have best sellers that include UltimatePhone, TreoMemo and TreoWeather. Until the rebirth of the Palm OS, we have stopped new development for Palm devices and pretty much now have our sites set on the iPhone( and android by the way). Unlike the limitations of the Palm OS, the iPhone provides us a free canvas( knock on wood) to do some of the most creative things we could ever have imagined and we can’t wait to get started. Actually, we have already started, we are now just doing it the official way.

Thoughts on Apple allowing users to put custom ringtones on the iPhone using Garageband

As the Project Manager for iPhoneRingToneMaker, I really take pride in that we were part of the reason that forced Apple to do this. While we were not the first to release a custom ringtone solution, we were the first to release a commercially viable custom ringtone making product that was drop dead easy to use and allowed users to create as many custom ringtones as they wanted. Then iToner came along and many other developers came up with some neat ways to get ringtones on the iPhone. All the above got Apple’s attention and they proceeded to release updates that essentially foiled the functionality of iPhoneRingToneMaker, iToner and other methods. However, Apple did not realize that it is really hard to kill a mosquito and within weeks, we and these other developers had found ways around the roadblock Apple had put up.
Things were fast becoming a cat and mouse game, with Apple releasing updates( sometimes hurriedly) and us burning the midnight oil trying to get iPhoneRingToneMaker working again.
Then all of a sudden, Apple itself starts allowing users to put custom ringtones on the iPhone using Garageband.
So did Apple throw up the white flag and realize they can’t stop us all from finding ways to put custom ringtones on the iPhone? I would say no. Upcoming updates will show if Apple is still tenaciously intent on foiling custom ringtone apps or if they are tired of playing this cat and mouse game. One thing has been clear though. iPhoneRingToneMaker and iToner have been huge successes with tens of thousands( could be in the hundreds as I don’t know iToner’s numbers) iPhone customers purchasing these apps and should Apple intentionally foil them, there could be another heavy dose of animosity and complaining by iPhone customers towards Apple, further alienating many of these customers, who are still simmering from the iPhone 1.1.1 debacle.

With Apple allowing users to now put custom ringtones with GarageBand, it means we need to innovate, get creative and introduce new features that make the ringtone experience better.  We have started doing this with the latest release of iPhoneRingToneMaker, which now allows you to shuffle your ringtones.  This is a pretty cool thing if you have many ringtones and you just don’t know which one to pick. This is only the beginning. Barring any new cat and mouse games with Apple, we should hopefully be introducing even cooler things you can do with ringtones on your iPhone.

In summary, without iPhoneRingToneMaker, iToner and other tricks by other developers, Apple would have had a free run at making a bazillion amount of dollars from selling ringtones at the expense of giving users the freedom to put any ringtone on the iPhone, while feeding us this baloney about why there needs to be drm on ringtones.

Here comes iClueless

As the Project Manager on this application, I want to give a big shout out to our developers who worked round the clock to get this done within two weeks.

Feeling the Roc Boys ringtone

One of the cool things about our ringtonemakers is that they allow you to get ringtones on your smartphone(s) before they come out or in some cases that may never be released. Take for example Jay-Z’s American Gangster’s hit single “Roc Boys” which am totally feeling. Once I purchased the album on Amazon.com, getting the ringtone on my iPhone, Treo and Windows Mobile 8525 took about 1 min.  Also more importantly, I can choose the part of the song I want. So, before the Roc Boys ringtone comes out, you can get it today with any of these apps.
iPhone – iPhoneRingToneMaker
Windows Mobile Device - wmRingToneMaker
Treo – RingCare