GarageBand has a built in function to help you build ringtones for your iPhone from music in your library. Since GB comes with every new Mac and is part of iLife, free is a good price. However, folks who haven’t experience with audio recording apps or who want to make a specific ringtone for everyone of their friends, as does my daughter, (perhaps not THAT many), often find that while GarageBand works, it doesn’t “just work”. Pocket Mac, who gained notoriety building software to sync Macs to a variety of smartphones, build a utility called Ringtone Studio that makes the process of making your own ringtones incredibly simple.

The UI is user friendly and super easy. Just drag the sound file, video file or iTunes file onto the “iPhone” and then using the sliders select the portion of the clip you want for your ringtone. Ringtones should be kept short, about 8 seconds before it starts looping is a good place to start.

The only real downside to the app that I have found is the price. Frankly $20 USD is a lot to pay for what this thing does, but I see other apps in similar price ranges that do much less. One that remains unnamed inserts ringtones onto your phone. That’s it. So I suppose Ringtone Studio isn’t completely out of line, but I think that these folks would sell a lot more copies if they brought the price below $10.

The net of things is that it works. You drag your file on, you select the region for the ringtone, save it (goes to iTunes directly – or at least it did for me) then sync your iPhone, adding the ringtones you’ve created via the Ringtone tab on the sync page in iTunes. I’m not sure it could get much easier.

There are people who just burn up when your phone sounds like anything but a phone, but if you want it to sound like “you” this can work pretty darn well. Of course tastes vary so just because the ringtone was easy to make, doesn’t make it “good”.

RECOMMENDED

If you are like me and upgraded your iPhone 3G to the supported iOS4 when offered, you’re probably suffering the June of your discontent.

iOS4 while fine on the iPod Touch 3rd gen and the iPhone 3Gs is a disaster on the 3G for many users.  Lots of things are blamed, too many apps, use of the Exchange connector yada yada yada.

All I know is that my device which was slow but functional became basically useless after I “upgraded”.  So I looked for ways to downgrade.  The process I followed was using a Macintosh and the iPhone but I believe it can be done if your primary OS is Windows, but I have not tried that so if you do, best of luck with that.

After lots of searching, and ZERO help from Apple, I found this article on Lifehacker.  I don’t propose that there are not others, but I used this one because it was easy to follow and got me where I wanted to be.  Mostly, but more on that later.

So first step is to go to the Lifehacker article and read it.  Seriously read it all the way through.  Then print it off.  Then go to the link provided in the article and download Recboot (Mac link) because YOU’RE GOING TO NEED IT.

Here’s the one other piece that you will have recognized if you did as suggested and read the Lifehacker article before starting, specifically the last paragraph where it tells you that you will need a 3.X backup to get your world back without starting fresh.  Here’s the joyful surprise.

Apple in their wisdom to “help” you (into a migraine) has deleted all your old backups once you have upgraded to iOS4.  If iOS4 actually worked on the 3G this would be ok, but since it doesn’t you can now say ratzenfratzen%#(()@^*@(**(!!!!!

Fortunately you have a Time Machine backup, or other backup where you can easily recover a directory structure from the Library.  If you don’t have a backup, you can still revert your iPhone to 3.1.3 but you will be setting it up as a new device.  But since you’re very smart and have a Time Machine backup, pop into Time Machine and navigate to your_main_drive_HD:Users:username:Library:Application Support:MobileSync:Backup or use ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup in the Go To Folder finder command.  As you will recall the ~ means your username.

Now look carefully at the longnamed folders and select the ones that are closest to the date of when you did the iOS4 update but PRIOR.  Select the folders you want, using Command-Click for multiples and then select Restore.  This will restore the old backups to the right place.  You may get a message saying a newer folder exists do you want to overwrite?  If any backups have been done since you updated to iOS4 you will see this message and you do want to overwrite.  Remember if you have multiple devices syncing to iTunes, the folder naming conventions don’t make it easy to figure out which device which folder applies to so when you do the restore, you may be overwriting a backup for an iPod, an iPod Touch or an iPad.  This is where useful naming would have helped but Apple doesn’t provide it so you’ll have to tough it out.  I suggest that as soon as you get your iPhone restored you sync and backup all your other devices just to be safe.

Anyway, back to the show.  If you’ve done the restore properly and BEFORE running through the process to downgrade, when you get to Step 4 in the Lifehacker article, you’ll be able to select to restore from backup.  You will see all the backups available to iTunes in the drop down, so select the iPhone 3G backup with the date you just restored and click continue.  Your iPhone settings will be restored.

Slow down a second there friends, because you are not done.  You’ve downgraded and you’ve restored your settings.  Now go watch TV or read a couple of chapters because iTunes now needs to put the content specified by the settings back on the iPhone.  This will take as long as it takes depending upon how much stuff you had specified to be synced in the settings.

I would suggest you let the restore process work it’s way through before you make changes such as adding or deleting music, podcasts, TV shows or Movies.  Keep it simple.  Also remember that if you had set up iBook syncing when iOS4 was installed that setting is now hosed because iBooks needs iOS4.  Of course I live in Canada and the only thing on the iBooks store up here is the same content I’ve been able to download for years from Project Gutenburg, so iBooks at least to me is a complete waste of time.

When all is done, you should have your iPhone back to normal with the 3.1.3 OS.  Sync it up to current, make sure your mail and calendar work and you’re back in the game.

There’s lots of speculation about whether Apple will fix iOS4 to work properly on the iPhone 3G.  I have always enjoyed my Apple products, but I also believe that Apple is a business that has turned planned obsolescence into an art form.  Compared to the 3Gs, the 3G is very slow, and with iOS 4 being designed for the A4 chipset in the iPhone 4, my guess is that iOS4 is always going to suck hard on the iPhone 3G.  I should have waited to see the impact of the upgrade so I did not have to go through this time wasting effort, hopefully if you jumped too, this will help save you a lot of time.  If you have to have the functions in iOS4, then better to buy an iPhone 4 or a 3Gs and understand that in two versions whatever you have will be useless again.  And yes, I believe that that sucks hard event was well known at Apple and is a design point to get iPhone users to upgrade.  You can certainly choose to believe that Apple would never do this to a customer, and that’s fair.  If you do believe that, I have some wonderful vacation property for sale completely surrounded by water.

US carriers tend to run 24 month terms that align with the Apple obsolescence plan.  Canadian carriers are bloodsuckers and the 36 month terms are customer hostile, so expect to take a bath every couple of years.  Apple Canada has announced that the Apple Store will sell unlocked iPhone 4 units that won’t be bound to a carrier and whenever the devices show up in Canada I will go that route instead of looking at the subsidized price as a saving at the price of being shackled to the carrier.  You should do what suits you best.

Warning! If your iPhone is a 3G give serious thought to this upgrade as a substantial number of users have found the upgrade to more disaster than benefit. Complaints abound about slow performance and app reliability, especially around mail and calendars. My experience was so bad I’ve gone back to iPhone OS 3.1.3 on my own 3G. Users of the iPod Touch third gen and users of the iPhone 3GS have reported extremely positive experiences.

But the point of this post relates to the 3G, so unless you want your iPhone to become a beautiful rock, don’t upgrade.

NOT RECOMMENDED

I really wish I could say more nice things about these headphones than I actually can. But that’s not going to happen.

The Motorola S9-HD A2DP headphones look like a decent product despite being a behind the head unit that is floppy on small heads and too tight on folks with large craniums. The Bluetooth receiver is in the middle of the neckband and based on my own experience and that of others, we all must be emitting interference from within our brainstems.

You can find the headphones at BestBuy, FutureShop, the Apple Store and other retailers.

The Good

The sound coming from these headphones is incredible. When they work. Two different sizes of earpieces are provided. The headphones support A2DP and advanced bluetooth controls. If your devices support the advanced functions you can skip and rewind. If not, you cannot. Even with my Apple kit which only does A2DP, I could pause/play, answer a call, hangup a call and change the volume. Pairing the device is as for any other Bluetooth device but may take a bit longer than you expect. Battery life before recharging is decent at about six hours. Pricing at around $120 is comparable with other bluetooth headphone options. Charging is accomplished using a wall wart. There is one soft button and a multi-coloured LED on the receiver that you cannot see while wearing the unit because it’s at the back of your head. The best part about these phones is the audio quality when listening to music.

The Bad

The electronics are an embarrassment to the brand reputation of Motorola. Wearing them while walking around requires that they have line of sight to your bluetooth transmitter, which is tough since the receiver is on the back of your head. The reputed 30 foot range is a complete crock of poop.

The connection to your transmitter drops in and out with increasing frequency the longer you use them and only deleting the pairing and then repairing fixes the issue and then only for a short time. With my iPad they played fine for an hour, then cut out completely. When I reconnected they dropped out every couple of seconds and then would alternately speed up and slow down the music. Gord Downie’s voice warbles as it is and this pitch shifting was not helping.

Unlike my other bluetooth headsets, the S9-HD can only pair with one transmitter at a time, which is annoying if you want to use them with more than one device.

Wearing these headphones while working out (which would seem like an ideal scenario) is an exercise alright, but one of frustration since your gym like mine is probably filled with wifi enabled phones, wireless devices, other radiation emitters and members with bluetooth phone earpieces stuck to their heads. This electromagnetic free for all makes the S9-HD spend most all of its time dropping the signal. I have read reviews of people who dared to perspire while working out and had the units short out. Think I’ll pass on that.

I selected these headphones to pair with my iPhone so I could listen to music wirelessly and still take and make calls. i can hear the incoming caller no problem but every caller said that hearing me was a challenge and that I should get out of the wind tunnel I was obviously standing in. I tested this by calling my own voicemail and leaving a message from the quiet of my studio. The message playback sounded like I was on a carrier deck while spitting into an echo chamber. So not a good choice for a bluetooth connection to the mobile.

I began to wonder if the problems were related to using only Apple bluetooth transmitters, so I paired the headphones with the corp issue Blackberry 9000 I carry for work. Short answer, the issue is the headset not the iPhone or iPad.

The Results

My first mobile was a Motorola brick. Then the slimmer brick. Then a series of StarTacs. My first bluetooth headset came from Motorola. Things went downhill from there with idiotic proprietary chargers, firmware issues on the last Motorola flipphone, earclips whose silicone rotted in a couple of months, just a seemingly endless stream of quality issues. I was really hoping that the S9-HDs would reverse the trend. They don’t. Perhaps Motorola could put more money into building quality products and less into dorkozoid websites for urban trendies more concerned with how they look to others than whether the kit they are carrying actually works.

NOT RECOMMENDED – DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY – RUN AWAY – On a scale from 1 to 10, minus 5. Only the great sound when it works keeps these from being a complete disaster in design, concept and execution.

Now available in the iTunes Store in Canada, after being in the US store for a month or so, are two apps from Nuance Corporation. Nuance is hugely respected for their voice recognition technology and these two apps for the iPhone are absolute game changers, what I call MUST HAVEs.

Dragon Dictation records you speaking into your iPhone or 2nd gen iPod Touch and uses the acclaimed Dragon NaturallySpeaking® engine that is renowned for its accuracy. I also use the full fledged MacDictate application that is superb but is in no way inexpensive. Dragon Dictation has a limit to the time you can record of around 30 seconds and the new version can detect when you stop speaking. The new release also supports updating your Facebook status or sending a tweet into the Twitterverse. Of course you can use copy/paste to collect the text for use in other applications. It does what it says. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Dragon Search makes iPhone searching incredibly simple. You speak your search term and it searches the web for what you asked for. It uses an innovative carousel model to show all your search results. It doesn’t break typed searches but if you are hands full, it absoolutely changes the game. The newest release also supports the 2nd gen iPod Touch. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

At the time of this posting, both apps were free in the AppStore.

If you are like me and bought into things like the original Bose Sounddock or an Apple HiFi or any of the other legion of devices released for the earlier iPods, you’ve got perfectly functional kit lying around that definitely won’t charge the current collection of Apple gear and may not work at all.

Enter the excellent Scosche Passport, now available in the online Apple Store. Live stores don’t stock it and the staff usually have no idea what you are talking about. It’s not cheap considering what it does, but what it does is make those older devices work with and charge your iPhone 3G, iPod Nano 5th Gen, iPod Touch 2nd Gen and the like.

I ordered two from the online store. They showed up quickly as usual and plugged right in to the Apple HiFi in the kitchen and the Bose Sounddock in the bedroom. Now my iPhone and new Nano plug right in, charge while docked and operate fine with the speaker system’s remote.

http://store.apple.com/ca/product/TV684ZM/A?mco=MTExMDM0NTI

A great way to extend the life of your existing iPod accessories. Comes in black or white.

I listen to a lot o podcasts so I give credit to Leo Laporte and MacBreak Weekly for the suggestion to try Reqall.  I had heard of the service before but it was originally a fee only service (I think) and never really checked it out fairly.

More fool me.  Reqall allows you to use your phone, your Blackberry or your iPhone to leave notes for yourself as voice or text that gets synced to various devices and services in the background.  It transcribes your voice notes to text for you automatically.  So I tried something innocuous from the Blackberry by leaving myself a voice note to “buy milk”.  In a couple of minutes the note came as an email to my email account, was loaded automatically to the “shopping list”, arrived in the Reqall client as a push notification on my iPhone.

Reqall has a number of other functions including to do list management, calendar integration to iCal and Google Calendar, plugins for Outlook and IM integration.  There is a free version and a Pro version that costs $24.99 per year.  When you sign up for the free service you get the Pro service for the first 15 days.

It’s very cool.  Will update on successes and issues as usual but at this point I’m pretty darn impressed.

Until next time, peace.

Many people are unaware the regular version of Mac OSX (not Server) has VPN server capabilities built in, but Apple has turned them off hoping that people will make the leap to OSX Server if they need a VPN solution.

I recently discovered iVPN and have been testing it rigorously.  iVPN is a simple a GUI that allows you to activate the VPN server capabilities of the client version of OSX. It supports both PPTP and L2TP over IPsec.

At 14.99 Euros it is a fabulous solution for small companies and non-technical people but still provides the piece of mind that only a VPN can provide.

The interface is very easy to navigate and understand. iVPN supports multiple users, running both PPTP and L2TP simultaneously and 128 bit encryption. Customizing the IP addressing for client connections is a snap. The user guide is mercilessly short and easy to understand.

iVPN's interface is super simple. One screen. That's it.

Setting up the server takes just minutes. Connections from remote Mac workstations and iPhones was easy to setup and it works flawlessly. Within minutes my team and I were able to swap files securely using the iPhone and the Air Sharing app from remote locations. I have yet to test this with a Blackberry.

I did have some initial problems however. You’ll have to be careful which router is used. Although my DLink DI-624 is designed with VPN passthrough, making a connection was next to impossible. After switching to a Speedstream DSL modem/router and opening TCP ports 1723, the connection began to function as expected.

PPTP with Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base station does not function, but L2TP works perfectly.

I have yet to get Bonjour to work over a VPN function, but as long as you have an IP Address, connecting to computers within the VPN work just fine.

If you are a Daylite user, connecting to Daylite from Daylite Touch iPhone works great over VPN. I tested it substantially and had no trouble syncing.

I’m a big fan of Twitter and find it very useful.  I’m not so nuts about the web interface and a lot of the desktop apps are challenging.  I was using the very good Tweetdeck that uses the effective and powerful Adobe AIR engine, but have switched to Tweetie from atebits.

Tweetie is light and very fast, doesn’t clutter the screen with junk I don’t care about and runs beautifully on both Mac and iPhone.  If you’re using another platform do try Tweetdeck with AIR on Windows or Linux, and Twitterberry on the Blackberry.  They’re good but they aren’t Tweetie.

Tweetie easily supports multiple Twitter accounts and has a very simple but rich UI.  There’s good information and screenshots on the developer’s page at http://www.atebits.com/

Twitter is an incredibly useful new media tool but accessing it with something ugly or cumbersome wrecks the experience.  Tweetie is not free but imho it’s worth every cent.

Many iPhone users have been looking for ways to use Skype on their iPhone. I’ve tried Fring and really like Nimbuzz but today Skype released an iPhone native app. Apparently its available now, but since I am on the Canada Appstore I cannot get it, like I cannot get a lot of stuff. Hopefully it shows up later this week. I use Skype a lot from my desk and when on the road. Be cool to be able to do it over wireless with my iPhone.

C’mon Apple, keep the Canada App Store up to date. Review when I can get the app

RETRACTION – Posted April 9, 2009

Ok I blamed Apple and I was wrong. CNET revealed that it’s not Apple keeping Skype off the Canadian AppStore, it’s at the instructions of the pinheads at Rogers. Why am I not surprised. Fortunately the good people at www.iphoneincanada.ca have a clear workaround.

Skype for the iPhone works well when you are in a wifi area. Does exactly what you expect, simply and elegantly.