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 

Maybach Music ringtone

While I was leaving NYC from the iPhone Madness last week, around the Holland tunnel area, I think I may have spotted Jay-Z’s Maybach. Of course you can’t see him cause the curtains are drawn and yeah they are perfectly like a Picasso painting. For real, press the play button on the Image above. Rumor has it that he has a house in this area and I had seen him in some paparazzi picture on theYBF entering what seemed to be a Brown Maybach. So off course the next thing down I-95 was listening to Maybach Music over and over and dreaming how I will move up from my 350 slk to a Maybach when am ready to be chauffeured around. By the time I got back to Maryland, it had to become a ringtone for my iPhone. Now here is the real sweet part about iPhoneRingToneMaker. I can actually make multiple versions of the same ringtone for my iPhone. So now I can choose if I want the chorus or that ridiculous verse he had on the song.

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/

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.

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

Easy to use tutorial for downgrading from iPhone 1.1.1 to 1.0.2

As promised to all iPhoneRingtoneMaker users and for everyone else that despises iPhone 1.1.1, here is a very easy to follow tutorial.  Use it to get get iPhoneRingToneMaker working now. Getting iPhoneRingToneMaker compatible with iphone 1.1.1 might still  take some more time. I stress, don't wait for us to get iPhoneRingToneMaker compatible with iPhone software 1.1.1. You need to do this right now for your own good or you might be forever under Apple's control, locking you in, so as to be able to extract every nickel and dime from you and prevent you from using the iPhone freely as you deserve to.Your tutorial guide is our main guy "Wild Buddy" on the left. Enjoy. Launch Tutorial

Bye Bye iTunes, Hello Amazon Music Store

For those of you like me, who are sick of Apple/iTunes drm hell, Amazon just announced a beta version of their DRM-Free Music Store. For the first time since the days of Napster, am actually excited about downloading music again. Learn more about it here.

What a difference 5 years makes

It was just over 5 years ago when as a College Senior I was in California visiting my sister. I was reading in the newspaper about this so called macworld event. Since I did not know much about macs I decided to go. It was pretty overwhelming seeing all the cool new sunflower iMacs.  So I decided to go to the balcony and get a better perspective of things. While I was up their, two men were approaching the same area I was. One was in  jeans and a black turtle neck shirt( if my memory serves me right). As they got closer, it was apparent they were coming to the balcony to get the same view I was getting. It became clear that one of them was Steve Jobs.  I stupidly ignored the other guy, and proceeded to be awestruck of being in the presence of Steve Jobs. Say what you want, the man has the “Presence”. I proceeded to shake his hand and if I recall I did not let go cause well, I was in awe. By the way the other guy I was ignoring happened to be Jonathan Ives.

Now here I am today, being a nasty little mosquito in Mr. Jobs’s plan to make a bazillion dollars off ringtones and of course they have apparently tried to squash us with the change to the syncing method of iTunes, thus causing minor problems for iPhoneRingToneMaker.

Never in my wildest dreams when I met him face to face would I think the day would come where I would be issuing a press release touting how my product is better than his.
What many don’t realize is that the ringtone business is a billion dollar one. So don’t let Steve Jobs’s casual demonstration of Apple’s ringtone offering fool you. The man knows big money when he sees it.
So to think just like yesterday I was in awe and today am a disruptor of the multimillion dollar ringtone scheme of Mr. Jobs is kind of mind blowing.

Note: while I conceived and spearheaded iPhoneRingToneMaker, it was only made possible by our talented team of coders, ui artists, web designers etc

iPhoneRingToneMaker vs Apple's iPhone Ringtones

Learn more about iPhoneRingToneMaker here

new version of iPhoneRingToneMaker

We are happy to let you know we just released an important free update to iPhoneRingToneMaker which
-Supports songs purchased from iTunes for Windows XP users
-Better syncing of ringtones with iPhone.
Learn more about iPhoneRingToneMaker here