Poba Mobile

There it is again. That song in your head. You can’t get it out of your mind, and now you want to make it your ringtone. But the problem is, you imported the song into your library, and didn’t buy it from iTunes, so it doesn’t have the little ringtone bell icon next to it (you did, however, obtain this song legally, right?).

Thanks to the people at Rogue Amoeba (creators of a multitude of software guaranteed to delight the audiophile within), this is no longer an issue. They have a freebie software gem known as MakeiPhoneRingtone, which will soon become a quintessential part of your relationship with your iphone, especially if you haven’t had the nerve to jailbreak it yet. Download the software Mac OS X 10.4 and up, sorry Windows users and you’ll open it up to find a small window with an iPhone icon asking you to “Drop AAC Files Here.” Simple enough. But wait, your song isn’t in AAC format, it’s MP3, or something else. No problem. They recommend using another piece of their software, known as Fission, to handle your file conversion. Having used several of their programs before, I am sure it’s a great piece of software, but in all honesty, converting directly in iTunes works fine too.

But how do you do it? Follow these simple instructions from Apple’s website. It will help you to have the “Kind” option checked in your iTunes’ View Options menu, so that you’ll know which track is your new AAC file and which is your previous version.

Then what? Simply drag your new song to your desktop(copying it from iTunes), then drag the file from your desktop onto the “Drop AAC Files Here” window in the MakeiPhoneRingtone software. Magically, the file will appear in your iTunes’ Ringtones library, which you can add to your phone during your next sync. From there, just follow your phone’s settings menus to choose it as your ringtone.

But it says your file is over 40 seconds long- how do you trim it down so this will work? You can use Rogue Amoeba’s Fission software to make this a snap, or Quicktime Pro. If you don’t have either of these, with a little finagling, you can do it in iTunes too. Here’s how:

Click on your song in iTunes and go to File, then Get Info. Under “Options” are two checkboxes indicating your track’s start and stop times. Decide what part of the song you’d like for your ringtone, then type in the time that is the beginning of that chunk in “Start Time”, and the end in “Stop Time.” Here’s what I mean by that:

The exact fraction of a second might take a little trial and error to figure out, but keep pressing OK and playing back your track until you’re satisfied with how your song has been cropped. Make certain that Crossfade Playback is turned off in your Preferences, so you can hear your track without it fading into the next song.

Then, with your track selected in iTunes, go up to Advanced and click Convert Selection to AAC. The new AAC will only be the portion you’ve established between the start and stop times. Your old song is still in tact in the other file, just uncheck the Start and Stop time boxes to get your full length song back.

Finally, drag your new AAC to your desktop, and follow the directions above to get your new, perfectly cropped, custom ringtone. Woo-hoo! There’s no stopping you now! But please, for the sake of those in the cubicles around you, no Crazy Frog. Thank you.

Here’s a simple iPhone trick that could be very useful when you want to access many different Wi-Fi Networks. If you’re in an airport or a coffee shop and you can’t access the hotspot, the first thing you should do is try to renew your DHCP lease.

To do so, go to “Settings > Wi-Fi” Networks and pick the network. In the DHCP panel, select the “Renew Lease” button. In many cases, this should re-establish a Wi-Fi connection.

If it looks like you’re connected on the Wi-Fi network and every time you access a webpage it uses the Edge network, it might be related to a bad WEP password. To solve this, go to “Settings > Wi-Fi” and tap “More Info” next to the Wi-Fi network name and tap Forget this Network. Then try to make a new connection to this Wi-Fi network again.

If for some obscure reason your iPhone freezes and stop responding to any of your commands. And you’ve tried the button, switch or touchscreen input but nothing will wake up your device.

You need to reboot or reset the iPhone. Here’s how to do it:

To reset the iPhone, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least 10 seconds.

Simple? Yes, and it can save your life!

Don’t know how to control Winamp on your iphone? The guys at Simplehelp have put online a new tutorial on how to control the most famous mp3 player (winamp) via a web browser, this time controlled directly from your iphone’s Safari.

The tutorial provides a step by step instruction that help you accomplish the needed tasks, so jump to simplehelp and keep your Winamp controlled.

Visit Simplehelp: How to control Winamp from your iPhone, iPod Touch or web browser

Wanna view maps on your iphone? Schmap, a publisher of travel guides now let you turn your iphone and enjoy your map information in an intuitive and easy to follow way, the rotating map features comes with hundred of city guides with photos, sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, reviews.

At the same time the Schmap iphone application let you search locally for banks, coffee shop, golf courses, dentists, Scroll throught results, make calls with a click and rotate your iphone to see the map.

Visit Schmap here.