How to Make Ringtones out of your iTunes Music

Hey you guys it's me again. I recently learned how to make ringtones out of any song in your iTunes music library, for free. All you need is iTunes, your iDevice, and a little patience. If the pictures are hard to see then simply click them to make it bigger!

First off select the song you want to make a ringtone out of and right-click it. Click "Get Info" as shown here:

On the window that pops up, click the Options tab and enter the start and stop times to which part of the song you want. Keep it under 40 seconds, but I'd recommend 30 just to be safe. Make sure the boxes are checked on both Start and Stop. I'm using from the start of the song to 30 seconds into it for this example.

Now go to Edit, then Preferences. Click "Import Settings..." and set the AAC Encoder settings as shown. 

Now right click the song again and click "Create AAC Version". There will be two instances of the song in the library now, with one of them being 30 seconds long. Copy it to your desktop, then right-click and rename it to ------.M4R. So whatever your file name is change it to the extension M4R. That makes it a ringtone. Now drag that baby back into your iTunes library and voila, you have a ringtone!

Look in your Ringtones folder and there it is! If you have any questions or run into any snags let me know by commenting...

--The Author

Robotic Rubik's Solver

I found this on YouTube today, just browsing around in random stuff. I've seen another version here:

but this one is rather slow (still amazing for a robot nevertheless) compared to this one:

I think it's pretty awesome that a Lego robot can solve a Rubik's cube, let alone in 15 seconds (not including scan time, that's solve time). Have you built any Lego robots? Comment below and let us know...

I'm currently building a Lego NXT robot that is remote controlled, has an on-board camera, and various other sensors. Once I finish programming it it will be a exploration robot that can retrieve balls or various other items. You can see from its point of view as you're driving it...

Alrighty I'll talk to you guys later. And like I've said, feel free to talk back!

-The Author

iOS 5

Seeing as to how iOS 5 came out yesterday, I thought I'd write my review/summary/pros-cons list... If you think different or want to add something, comment!

Notifications:

Swiping down from lock-screen? Pure awesomeness. No more accidentally tapping through a notification without reading it, and you get a history of what notifications you have received. Also being able to view notifications from the lock screen will allow you to look at what you want to see, when you want to see it.

iMessage:


It's hard to tell whether this will really be useful or not. Sure it's great have it, but with having Textfree available, it's a bit harder for me to justify. Still looks great and should work well pending most people update to iOS 5. Tracking messages will be nice, along with group messaging...

Newsstand:


I don't read any newspapers and I don't have any magazine subscriptions, so this feature doesn't appeal to me at this time. Sheesh, could I be any more politically correct there? :-D

Reminders:


Reminders is another part that would be cool, except for the fact that I own a 4g iPod Touch. Basically, the reminders with locations would be sweet, but all you get for 4g iTouch is reminders. :-$ Darn you Apple...

Built-In Support for Twitter:


Sure that's cool. Maybe it'll encourage me to use Twitter more often... :-)

Camera Improvements:


Double clicking the home button when your iOS device (that has a camera of course) is asleep brings up a camera button that you can use to quickly jump into the camera app. (As a side note, it also brings up the music controls). Volume Up acts as a physical button for taking pics as well. You can swipe between the camera roll and the preview screen, which is nice and quick. A sweet feature is being able to tap and hold on the screen to lock focus and exposure. So all in all, quite a few new additions here!

Photo Improvs:


You can now crop, remove red-eye, and auto enhance pictures. And here's the best part: You can now put photos into albums right on the iOS device. No more fussing with iTunes and manually putting photos in folders etc... This is awesome! Well at least I think it is. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Mail Supreme:

Mail has received a makeover as well. Format text using bold, italic, or underlined fonts, indent it, etc. Drag to rearrange names in address fields (makes it easier to see if you've forgotten someone etc). Mass mark mail as flagged, read or unread, (sweet). Custom email sounds let you know whats up. And then they've even added S/MIME. (Digital signatures and encryption for starters, look it up).

The Rest:

And there's been various improvements in these areas as well:

Calendar (attachments and misc)

Game Center (recommendations, personal avatars/photos etc.)

iCloud (check it out for yourself, iThink it's pretty handy)

Weather Forecast (hourly)

Wireless Sync to iTunes (YES!!!)

Auto-correction (personal dictionary. It's about time...)

And bug fixes galore...

So that's it, if there's something I've missed let me know! Speak your mind in the comments!

-The Author