I’ve been going about this all wrong, evidently. For months I’ve been looking for a free utility to easily create Ringtones for my iPhone 3G (no, I didn’t rush out and buy the upgrade to 3GS) out of MP3′s I already have. On several occasions I’ve found some decent guides and a lot of free software, but that was exactly the problem: I needed a lot of free software to do what I wanted to do. As far as I’ve been able to locate, no single utility exists that you can download, install and use to create Ringtones for iPhone all within a single package. Without an unacceptable level of complexity, it just wasn’t going to happen.

That’s unfortunate, but hardly a deal breaker thanks to a free service called Myxer. It’s stupidly simple: Browse your nerdy ass over to the Myxer website and find the cute little box (snipped above so you know what to look for) that asks-no, demands-that you upload your very favorite non-DRM’d MP3. If you’re a self respecting nerd of any repute, all your MP3′s are DRM-free, but I digress. Moving on, upload your file (the speed will depend on your internet connection, obviously. I have a stupidly fast connection so for me it’s seconds) and wait while the site processes it for a few seconds.

What you’ll end up with is a dialog that shows the waveform of your MP3 and a pair of handles, which you can drag to the beginning and end of the part of the song you want to clip. In my case, I wanted 30 second clips, so I just manually typed in 30 to the duration box and then dragged around my selection until I found the ideal beginning and more-or-less ideal ending. Then click next, put in your phone number, click next again, and rather than clicking for it to send the ringtone via SMS, click at the lower right where you’ll see a graphic that says something along the lines of “Click here to download a File for your iPhone”. Once you’ve downloaded the file, simply highlight the Ringtones section of iTunes, drag your file into it, then sync your phone. Voila! You’re the proud mama (or papa, if you have dangling participles) of a fresh and juicy ringtone made just for you, by you, courtesy of Myxer.

There’s not a lot else to say about the Myxer service, because it just works brilliantly. If you want an MP3 that you don’t have, I recommend visiting BeeMP3, which seems to have everything under the sun. I don’t think they’re affiliated with Myxer, but don’t quote me on that.

Cost: Free
Quality: Superb
Ease of use: Excellent, even a child with raisinets in his nose could do it.

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