Beebe4

Creating Free Ringtones from iTunes

Posted in mac, tech, tips by beebe4 on August 9, 2008

After reading about it on the Apple Blog I thought I would share it here too.

To create a ringtone from any song in your iTunes library, do the following:

  1. Right click on the song you are going to make into a ringer and select “Get Info.”
  2. Go to the options tab and go down to the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” check boxes. Check both boxes and input the time you want your ringer to start/stop. The ringer has to be 30 seconds or less. Click OK when you’re done.
  3. Right click on your newly “clipped” song and select “Convert Selection to AAC.” The song will be re-encoded using the start and stop times determined (If your menu item does not read “Convert Selection to AAC” and reads “Convert Slection to MP3″ (or some other format) please go to iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > Importing and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder”).
  4. After the song is done encoding navigate to your iTunes Music folder, locate your song, and drag it to your desktop (You can just right click and say “Show in Finder” if you are using a Mac). After the song is on your desktop go back to iTunes and delete the clipped version from you iTunes library (It won’t delete it from your desktop, it will only remove it from iTunes).
  5. Go back the song on your desktop and right click on your song and chose “Get info.” Go to the name and extension section and change the extension from .m4a to .m4r (or you can just change the extension right from your desktop)
  6. After the extension is changed simply double click on the file to add it to your iTunes library under the ringtones section. Sync your phone with iTunes and you’re done!
  7. Remember to go back into iTunes and uncheck your custom start and stop times for the original version of your song.
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Spanning Sync

Posted in mac, product review, tips by beebe4 on August 8, 2008

So Google announced support for CalDAV last month. I tried it out on my MacBook Pro, hoping that it would allow me to have a free way to sync my Google Calendar to iCal and to my iPhone (using Mobile Me).

I am sad to say, that if you have more then 3 calendars (i.e. shared calendars for work), that Spanning Sync is still the way to go.

The main reasons are:

  • Each calendar is a new Account in iCal
  • The Spanning Sync Pref Pane is so much simpler then having to go find some cryptic group email address and replacing the Google Calendar URL
  • Spanning Sync “just works” and is worth the $20 ($5 discount for using the code MM397X)

Mac Tips

Posted in mac, tips by beebe4 on February 25, 2008

I just bought my first mac (MacBook Pro 15″ with souped up HDD) and am going to have a transition period where I learn how to use the mac versus a PC. So I have decided to start blogging tips I learned.

So here is tip #1:
– to delete to the right of the cursor (on the laptop), hold down the function key while hitting delete
– to delete to the left until the beginning of a word, hold down the ctrl key
– to delete to the left until the beginning of the line, hold down the command (apple) key.