Custom Ringtones, Done Dirt Cheap

My husband, a huge Pink Floyd fan, would never prowl the Internet for a custom ringtone for his fancy Motorola V600 phone. But when I asked him what he'd choose for a ringtone if he could pick anything he liked, he instantly mentioned the ringing alarm clocks towards the beginning of "Time," a track from Pink Floyd's classic "Dark Side of the Moon" album. And now, those clanging bells chime whenever anyone calls him, thanks to a $20 program called Xingtones.

It took me less than half an hour to create the ringtone of his dreams out of Pink Floyd's nightmarish recording, and load it on his phone. Xingtones starts by asking you to register your phone number, model, and carrier--information that's then tied to your registration key for the product so that you don't produce free ringtones for the entire continent. You need to have a supported phone with data functionality, but Xingtones supports tons of phones from the major carriers. You also need an Internet-connected PC running Windows 98 or later (or Mac OS 10.2 or later).

You then import an MP3 file into the application by simply cicking on it (.wav, .wma, or uncompressed CD files also work, but Xingtones doesn't work with files that use any kind of digital rights management technology). Xingtones provides fairly simple-to-use tools for cutting and editing the audio to your liking. The app also knows the size limit for a ringtone for the models it supports.

One your ringtone is ready, you click a send button, which basically sends your phone a text message with a link to Xingtone's Web site. That link actually relays the edited tone directly from your PC to your phone (Xingtones doesn't want to be storing content it has no rights to). Once you've loaded your ringtone, you use your phone's settings to activate it; specific instructions for supported models are included in the application.

Of course, commercial ringtones generally run only a few bucks. But you'd never find the level of customization Xingtones affords at an online ringtone emporium--plus, if you're the type of person who likes to change ringtones the way some people change clothes (and these people do exist), your ringtone expenditures can easily surpass the $20 price of Xingtones software within a few months or even weeks. You can change the ringtones of more than one phone from within Xingtones by storing different user profiles, but each must be associated with a unique product activation key; you can purchase additional product keys online. I'm looking forward to customizing the ringtone for my Treo 650.