Finding new tones to put on your phone is another issue, since you have either to make them yourself, buy them, or find someone who is putting them out for free. Thankfully, there is a free app in the iPhone app store that makes adding new SMS tones free and easy, aptly named SMS Tones. While it does not have millions of SMS Tones to choose from, it certainly has enough to keep you busy and keep your phone sounding fresh.

Download The App

Head over to the iTunes app store and search for SMS Tones Free or simply click here, and download the application. As I said before, the application is available for free, and they offer a $.99 upgrade that gives access to many more SMS Tones. The free version grants access to over 40 tones, so there is plenty to keep you busy for a while.

Choose Ringtones

When you open the application, you are greeted by the list of available ringtones. Oddly, they are not in alphabetical order. Still, sifting through them to find the one you are looking for is not hard.

To hear what the tone sounds like, simply tap it once, and the application will take a second to load the preview. You can play the preview for as many SMS tones as you like without committing to add any of them to your phone.

Once you play a preview of a tone, a little circle will appear next to the name. If you want to add a ringtone, simply click that circle and the ringtone will be queued to add to your phone.

Getting Ringtones On The iPhone

Sadly, simply adding the ringtone in the app is not the last step for adding it to your iPhone. Apple requires you to add ringtones through iTunes via synchronizing, so even with this app you still have to go through that process.

• First, have whatever ringtones you want selected, this way when you connect your iPhone to iTunes the tones will appear under File Sharing.
• Go to the File Sharing tab in iTunes and copy the ringtones anywhere on your computer.
• Then, drag the files back to your library in iTunes, and make sure ringtone synchronizing is on before you sync your device to add the new tones.
• The last step in getting the ringtones on your device is to click Sync in iTunes and let your iPhone run through the sync process.

Now that you have finished putting the SMS tones on your iPhone, go to Settings and then Sounds. From there, you will be able to change your alerts for SMS, Email and most other sounds the phone makes. The new items you downloaded will appear in the list, and be ready for use on your iPhone.

Conclusion

With SMS Tones, adding some cool new sounds to your phone is free and easy. Simply follow these steps, and in a few minutes, you will be able to free yourself from the built-in tones that everyone has, and give your phone a little more personal flair.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

For some reason, Android’s designers didn’t include a way to easily delete built-in ringtones, or even remove songs you’ve turned into ringtones. Enter Ring Commander. For a buck, this little gem provides you with absolute mastery over your ringtone and alert tone lists, letting you prune them to a much more manageable size.

Okay, not much here in the way of bells and whistles (pun very much intended). It’s a utility, so it looks fairly….utilitarian. You’re looking at my already-pruned list – as you can see, I like sounds with space-related names (not because of the names, but they’re just the best ones, really).

Tapping the Play icon next to each tone plays it; if it’s a ringtone, it’s going to play over and over and over again, until you hit Pause (which actually means “stop”). If it’s a notification, you’ll hear it just once. Once you decide that’s an annoying tone you’d like to get rid of, just check the mark next to it:

Above you can see how I did this with notification sounds (Ta Da really is one of the most annoying ones, isn’t it?). Once you’ve selected all the sounds you wish to manipulate, tap the Update button and get this:

Absolute control! You can now remove those two sounds from the Notification list; easy. But you can also make them into alarms, or even ringtones if you’re feeling particularly sadistic (imagine having your phone ring with Ta Da).

Now, let’s say you made a change and then regretted it. Fret not – the files weren’t deleted. All you need to do is switch over to the Unassigned list and find the audio snippet you realized you do want after all.

Note how Ring Commander prints the path of the file under its name; this is helpful for putting the file back in the right place, so you don’t have to try to remember whether Big Easy was a ringtone or a notification.

I keep talking about ringtones and notifications, but you can actually use Ring Commander to change any sound your device can make. Let’s look at the list of categories:

It’s actually continues, but you get the idea. System Sounds is an interesting one:

With this little gem, you can have your phone squeak every time you hit the camera shutter button to take a picture; or you could have it play an audio file that says “Say cheese!“. Not that I would advise you to do anything like that if you want to keep your friends. A more likely scenario would be taking one of the system sounds and turning it into a notification sound. For example, the Undock sound on my system works quite well for incoming text messages.

Ring Remover

Ring Commander has a small brother – a freebie that goes by the name Ring Remover. It’s even more limited in scope than Ring Commander: It lets you remove songs you’ve added to the ringtone list by tapping “Use as phone ringtone“. That’s right – Android won’t let you do this on its own. If that’s all you’re trying to do, Ring Remover is tiny and free.

Bottom Line

Ring Commander is not a utility you’ll be needing every day; but for a one-trick pony, it sure gets the job done, and is bursting with useful options. If you’ve ever wanted to tweak any sound your device can make, this is how.

I actually found that even though the app store is smaller in comparison to the iPhone app store, I really didn’t notice a difference or even a deficiency of applications. In fact, I found quite a few Android applications that I now consider indispensable. Let me note that this is not a “top list” or my “very favorite Android applications” because if it was, I would overlap severely with Mark’s article detailing 10 Free Android Apps For Your New Android Mobile. That said, I absolutely love the programs mentioned in this article and use each of them on a weekly basis at least.

Shazam

Shazam is one of the most useful apps a music fanatic can have for their phone. Just hold up your phone to the audio source, and Shazam will figure out what song is playing””for free. Many iPhone users have enjoyed this application for a while, and now a free (ad supported””not intrusive don’t worry) version has made its way to the Android OS.

I actually tried using Shazam to detect a song playing on a stereo at a party over the past weekend, and even with considerable background noise it retrieved the CD and Track name perfectly. Once a song is found, Shazam will give you a quick link to the Artist’s MySpace, a YouTube search for the song (yes!), or a link to buy it on Amazon MP3.

You can also view songs you’ve tagged in the past with Shazam, along with all the information availible for that track. Overall, this must have for music enthusiasts, or anyone who’s ever wondered what song was playing on the radio.

PDANet Free Edition

If you have an Android phone, it’s likely that you have a data plan to go with it. This plan supposedly gives your phone unlimited access to the internet for a monthly fee (though phone companies are beginning to slap boundaries on it). The PDANet Android application allows you to tether your Android phone’s internet to a Windows or Mac computer for free via Bluetooth or USB.

The catch is that the free version does not allow access to secure (https) websites. If you’d really like to access sites that use https, there is usually a “˜secure login’ setting you can disable on the service (Facebook or Gmail for instance)

Keep in mind that some service providers will charge you an extra $30 a month to tether your phone line, so using this application as a permanent desktop connection probably wouldn’t fly. From what I’ve read and tested however, don’t worry about using PDANet on a car ride or in a pinch!

Ringdroid

I remember that for the longest time, decent ringtones had to be purchased either online, or directly from a cell phone. This is all in the past with wonderful apps like Ringdroid. This program allows you to go through a list of songs already on your device, and cut out a clip to set as your recording.

After you finish this very intuitive process and save your ringtone, Ringdroid even asks you if you want to set that ringtone as your default, or as the ringtone for a specific contact.

This is one of my favorite aspects of the program; everything is very intuitive and well thought out for convenience and ease of use.

In addition to the previously stated functions, Ringdroid also allows you to record your own audio for use. More importantly, a recording can be saved  for use. Even more importantly, a recording can be saved as an alarm, music clip, or notification as well. This means that Ringdroid can be useful in basically everything audio on your Android device.

Key Ring Reward Cards

I once worked at Best Buy and the number 1 thing I noticed quite often was the, “Ohh crap, where’s that card” problem. This is the common occurrence that plagues many of us when we reach the register and fumble through a wallet or purse thinking, “It’s gotta be in here somewhere.” Well, never forget a single card again with an excellent free Android application called Key Ring Reward Cards.

This app scans the barcodes from your card using your phone’s camera, and stores them in your phone so that you always have them. In fact, the image that Key Ring stores is far better than the one on the card in most cases because it re-generates the card on the device. If it sounds risky to you, give it a try and see what I mean.

I had actually mangled my Blockbuster membership card so much that while testing this application I couldn’t scan it””but all I had to do was type in the numbers under the barcode and Key Ring generated the barcode for me! Actually, it came up with 3 versions of the barcode and told me to pick the one matching the one on the card (which was easy and accurate). Overall, Key Ring ensures that you at least have a reliable backup if you’re ever in need of a card.

Dolphin Browser

I know what you’re thinking””doesn’t my phone already have a browser? Yeah, but if you’re like me and you own a Droid, your phone has multitouch capability that the browser never utilizes. Dolphin Browser presents an excellent free solution to this problem by providing the user with not only multitouch capability, but also multiple tabs, a very social interface, and quite a bit more. I’m still exploring this app, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s better than the stock browser on my Droid (which is excellent as well).

There are even rumors of flash support to watch sites like YouTube directly in the browser! I could go on telling you about this application, or you could watch a short video about it instead.

(Bonus) Waze

Here is the last one. The Waze is a community-powered app that allows drivers and motorists to passively send GPS data and thus help other drivers with information regarding road conditions, traffic levels, speed traps, hazards and pretty much any similar problems faced while driving.

The driver’s driving speed is relayed to Waze servers and depending on the speed, the quality of traffic is judged. If the traffic is clogged, then that information could be given to other users. All automated and anonymous. The user only has to launch the Waze app and leave it open while driving.

The apps like Waze are fully dependent on its community, the more people use it the better it gets. And though it’s a relatively new app I already found it rather useful. Check it out.

Thanks to the Android applications I’ve listed in this article, my Android phone has become far more than just a phone for me–and I hope it helps you as well. I’m going to write an additional article about Android applications I’ve found useful, so if you have an app to throw out there or something you’d like to see included, let me know in the comments box and I’ll see what I can do.

I was very proud to own the gadget that cost me a few months of my salary, because only a few people could afford cellphones in those days, and not all cellphones from that era could play monophonic ringtones. Most could only beep.

Now, the ringtone technology has gone way beyond monophonic. Polyphonic is also outdated. Even cheap China-made phones used by the street fruit and vegetable sellers – who walk the damp narrow alleys of poor third-world countries – can use MP3 songs as the ringtones.

While you could buy ringtones for your cellphones if you want to, creating one feels more rewarding. As a bonus, you could show off to friends and relatives your unique ringtones that nobody else has. And if you use an iPhone, your path to being able to create one of your own ringtones is very clear.

Grabbing goods from Garageband

Maybe there are many Mac users who are not aware that they have a tool to create their own quick and unique iPhone ringtones: Garageband. This easy to use music creation software comes free with every purchase of a Mac unit as part of the iLife suite.

To create your own ringtone using the latest version of Garageband – v ’09, you just have to choose the “iPhone Ringtone” menu from the start up screen, then choose either Example Ringtone (to use and edit pre-made sample), Loops (to use and build a new one using Apple Loops) and Voice (to user your own voice as the ringtone).

The next step would be giving a name to this project and choosing the place to save it. Unless you speak music language, I suggest that you not meddle with the song adjustments (tempo, signature, and key). And actually you don’t need to because we wouldn’t deal with complicated song building anyway.

For those who chose Example Ringtone, you’ll see the 17 second sample. Click the play button to listen to it. Should you want to use it, you could export it as a ringtone (more on this later).

The same thing applies if you choose Loops. But here you could enhance your tone by adding more loops from the loop library on the right pane.

Recording your own voice

Voice option will give you two pre-configured tracks: Male basic and Female basic so you don’t have to adjust anything to optimize the recording.

There are many other voice configurations available from the track info pane on the right.

You’ll also have an alloted 20 second loop to use, but you could adjust this by dragging the end of the yellow loop bar to the time position that you’d like.

Actually, the one that we call the ringtone could be anything from a standard song to a spoken word. If you have a deep broadcaster voice, for example, you can just speak out your own ringtone. But Voice option is also a good place to start if you could sing (or not) and want to record a mini-choir of yourself as the ringtone. Garageband allows its users to create songs from many tracks like Voice 1, Voice 2, Voice 3 etc.

To add tracks, go to Track –> New Track menu or use Command + Option + N

Using songs from iTunes

I personally would like to choose part of an existing song from iTunes as the ringtone. So after the main Garageband window opens, I’ll just delete the existing track (Command + Delete) and choose the Media Browser from the lower right corner of the window.

Then I dragged and dropped a song from the list to the main pane.

The song was converted into Garageband track and ready to be edited.

To determine which part of the song will be converted into a ringtone, I adjusted the loop bar to the position that I prefer. This loop bar time should be 40 seconds or less.

Exporting to ringtone

To export the part of the song into the ringtone, I went to Share –> Send Ringtone to iTunes menu.

Another conversion and export process will take place and…

The ringtone will be placed under the ‘Ringtone’ folder in iTunes as a m4r file and will automatically be synchronized to iPhone the next time it connected.

Non-iPhone users could also use Garageband to create their own mp3 ringtones, but that process requires a different method and enough to be written as another article for another time.

Have you tried to use Garageband to create iPhone ringtones? Share your opinions using the comments below!

All you have to do is visit Make Own Ringtone and follow these easy steps. And when I say easy steps, I mean really easy steps. Your Grandma could do it!

Once you arrive at the site, you will see something that looks like this:

Next up you will need to upload your audio file. Make sure you know where it is located and hit the upload button. Once you click this button your file browser will pop up.

Select the audio file you want to use as your ring tone and hit open. Don’t worry if you only want to use the chorus or a small part of the file we will get to this shortly.

Once you click Open the file will be uploaded to the remote server for processing. All the editing will happen in your browser. This makes everything VERY easy! You will see a progress bar that looks like this:

Once the file has been successfully uploaded you will see the audio layout of the track. There is a time line so if you will know how far in the part you want is ““ this is the best way to do it. You can also play it here and when you find the start and end point of your ringtone, mark them with a simple click.

The first click marks the beginning and the second click marks the end ““ simple right? Go ahead and set yours when you are ready move on to the final steps.

The Make A Ringtone button is a little hidden if you have a small monitor so scroll down and find the button. There are also buttons to normalize the sound (make it all one volume) and to fade in and out at the beginning and end.

Once you click the Make A Ringtone button you will see the following screen allowing you to download your free ringtone and either email it to your friends or share it with them via your favorite social network!

Mark previously showed us how to make free ringtones using Audacity. How do you make ring tones? Let us know in the comments!

Unfortunately, mixing audio not only entails picking the tracks to mix, but also downloading beats, sound effects, and an audio mixing program. Sometimes, doing all that is worth it, but if you’re looking for something simpler, like an online audio editor already packaged with beats to mix, then give the following websites a shot.

DubStep Studio

Previously known as Electro-House Blender, DubStep Studio’s interface is beautiful and extremely simple, and it includes a decently sized sound library for your mixing pleasure.

To add a track to a song, simply click the “Add Sounds” button, and a panel will pop up that splits the available sounds into further categories, such as “Keyboard” or “Sound Effect.” The tracks are not named according to how they sound, and there is no search box, so you may need to preview all of the tracks before you find the right one. Adding the track to the song is as simple as clicking the plus sign next to its name, and then clicking the beats in which you want the it to be heard. From the workspace, you can delete tracks, change the volume of each track, and control whether the track is heard primarily from the left or right speaker.

You can try DubStep Studio to mix your own music without registering, but in order to save or open files, you must register. Even so, users cannot upload their own music into the mixer, nor can they export the song so it can be accessed offline. Despite these shortcomings, DubStep Studio’s ease of use and polished presentation make it a worthwhile app to check out”“ at least, for someone who wants to try mixing music without any heavy duty commitment.

Jam Glue

Though Jam Glue is not the eye candy that DubStep Studio is, its wider range of features outshines DubStep Studio in every aspect. Not only does the search function exist, but it also gives the user the option of searching by the song’s approximate tempo.

Registered users are allowed to either upload a .mp3, .wav, or .wma file, or import audio from an URL, although there is a large statement warning the user not to upload copyrighted material.

The process of editing is virtually the same in both webapps ““ there is no option to scale the size of the track to inspect the waveform more closely, and Jam Glue’s “snap clips to beat” feature replicates the effect of clicking where youwant your track to go in DubStep Studio. However, Jam Glue has the added functionality of being able to scale the speed of any track and sync the tracks to a user specified beats-per-minute. Jam Glue also allows users to rearrange the order of their tracks, making editing overall a much smoother process than it would have been in DubStep Studio.

After you have completed and saved the track ( assuming you are a registered user), Jam Glue gives you the option of downloading the track. However, this option is hidden in the bottom of the mix details page and is only accessible after the song has been “published” to Jam Glue’s database.

After you have tried these two webapps to mix your own music, perhaps you will decide that DJing is indeed your forte. In that case, I would highly recommend Audacity, the tried and true software for editing music, or the previously covered Mixxx. Or, if you’re just looking for a simple editor to make ringtones, check out Zedge or Make Own Ringtone. Both are browser based, although Zedge requires registration before use.

Have you tried any of the aforementioned apps? Do you have your own secret weapons, to be deployed when you suddenly decide you really really want to mix music? Lets hear about it in the comments!