Ringtones Aren't Just for Cell Phones Anymore

In an era of extreme customizability, your home phone's brring brring can seem rather... quaint. I mean, come on. Your cell phone can let you imagine that you're Jack Bauer or Kim Possible, so why can't your wired phone be a little more exciting?

This is the logic behind Home Phone Tunes' Ringboxx, a device that gives you the ability to customize ringtones in any house with an RJ-11 jack. You connect the $79 Ringboxx to your PC via a USB cable, download ringtones, then place it between the phone jack and your phone, much like an answering machine. When you get a call, the Ringboxx plays your downloaded ringtone.

As with cell phones, you can specify certain ringtones for certain people, and assign a ringtone just for 1-800 numbers to weed out telemarketers -- sort of like a spam trap for them. (Of course, you'd need Caller ID for this.)

A variety of audio clips have been licensed to Home Phone Tunes so that you can download, say, a snippet from Gwen Stefani's "Orange County Girl" or a Looney Tunes cartoon. However, you'd better hope you like what they have to offer: right now, you can't download your own ringtones to the Ringboxx.