Freeware Review: iRinger-Free Ringtone Maker for iPhone!

It’s no secret that the iPhone is a huge success even in its current, highly-breakable, poor-signal-if-you-hold-it-normally incarnation, and like any other popular phone, people want custom ringtones for the thing. It’s not that the built in ones are crappy–well, it’s not just that–but more that we want to have something personalized, something that says something about us. Or, at the worst, we want to blare our favorite MP3′s ad-infinitum when we receive a call. But whatever your reason might be, there’s a single truth worth being conscious of: Apple’s iTunes store will bend you over and repeatedly rape you in exchange for the privilege of using music you already bought and paid for as a ringtone. Frankly, their fees are ridiculous, and we think you should avoid them wherever possible.

Luckily, that’s very possible thanks to a free downloadable app called iRinger, which will allow you to convert almost any audio format you can throw at it to an iPhone appropriate ringtone that’ll work with any version of the device, included the much-maligned (yet celebrated) iPhone 4. There is no application to install–you simply download the executable and run it. In my tests I found the app speedy, easy to use and virus free, though as a precaution I do encourage you to always perform a virus scan on any executable file you download from absolutely anywhere before you run it. You can never be too safe, after all.

The process is pretty simple. Open the program, click “Import,” and your music will appear on the timeline. By dragging the “In” and “Out” sliders at the bottom right of the app window (it’s a small app window, you can’t miss them) you can select the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. When you’ve got the clip you want to use (up to 30 seconds in length, which is the maximum the iPhone supports,) simply click “Export,” browse to the file location where you want to save the ringtone, click the checkbox that says “also export to iTunes,” and click go. In about 10 seconds your new ringtone will both save to the folder you specified and add itself to iTunes, making it quick and easy both to sync to your phone and to email your ringtone to friends, family, and of course to Steve Jobs, along with a note that says “Neener-neener-neener, I still have my $1.50!” Or something like that.

Software: iRinger

Price: Free, though they do ask for a donation if you like it.

Rating: Highly recommended if you prefer an app on your PC vs a web based solution like Myxer.

Download: iRinger

Windows Home Server ‘Vail’ Beta Available!

Yes, I know-we’ve been slacking off on the updates for awhile. We’re leaving that in the past and moving forward now; hope you don’t mind!

Today the Windows Home Server Team Blog (don’t try typing that while holding your breath!) lifted the veil on ‘Vail’, the next version of Windows Home Server. Like all of Microsoft’s other server products, WHS will be turning x64 only starting with this generation of the software, so for those of you with existing Intel Atom powered devices–sorry, you’re SOL. On the bright side, chances are that if you own a WHS device already, you’re a bit of a nerd and will be eager to drop the cash to upgrade your hardware along with your software. Thank goodness for Capitalism! And Chef Boyardee. They both warm our hearts and tummies!

Anyway, they’ve got a nice introductory video available on their blog site showing off some of the cool new features (streaming to devices outside the LAN and video transcoding ftw!), and the WHS Team would just love to have you test out the software, give them some feedback, and maybe help shape the final outcome of Windows Home Server’s snazzy new design, built from the ground up on the Windows 7/2008 R2 codebase.

Check out the video, and look for our impressions of the beta here in about a week!

MAG: The Beta I’d be playing if PSN didn’t suck

Update: Finally got into the beta, and it sucked. BORING as dirt.

So, it’s been nearly two weeks, and generally speaking I have been enjoying my PS3 quite a bit. I finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night (more on that later), I’ve played a fair amount of God of War Collection (including the very nice looking demo of God of War 3), and I’ve tinkered a little with Little Big Planet. And of course, I’ve downloaded some demos from Playstation Network, AKA PSN, thinking it would be awfully fun to play some potential purchases.

The problem is, PSN sucks. It sucks a LOT. For all those fans who decry Xbox Live and its yearly fees, citing the free PSN as the holy grail, let me tell you something: You get what you pay for, and PSN is the proof in that pudding. Let me give you some examples of why this is so. I decided to try out the demo of Dante’s Inferno, which weighs in at about 1GB, and I thought at the same time that it would be fun to try out both the PS3 and 360 versions. So I fired up my PS3 and kicked off the download, and watched as the progress bar slowly crept to 1%. “Well,” I thought, “This is boring. I might as well start the 360 download too.” And so I did. One hour later, I was playing the 360 version-and the PS3 version was at 30%. 5 hours later and the PS3 version finished downloading at last. “Woohoo!” I thought: “Now I can try it out, too!” And then the install screen popped up. The Install Screen, people. On a CONSOLE. Luckily the install only took about 5 minutes, but still: On Xbox 360, you never, EVER install demos. Once the download is finished, you’re ready to play.

So today, they released the public beta of MAG: Massive Action Game. I’ve been a little excited about this. I’m not typically an FPS fan, but this one seemed like something special, what with its 256 player online doolabob and huge levels, and so I eagerly signed into the Playstation Store and found my download. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s only 289MB!”

Three hours later, it finally finished. Three.Fucking.Hours.

I know what you’re gonna say: “But Jason, it’s your internet connection, it’s too slow for the awesome size of 289MB!” And to you I say “Ha! In your dreams, buddy! I’m on a 10Mb Fiber connection! I can stream HD movies from Netflix and hulu and rarely have so much as a blink!” But here’s the fun part: So I go to launch the MAG demo, and what do I find? After going through the tedious 5 minute install process, it pops up a screen to ask if it’s OK to download another 1.8GB before I can play the demo. That’s about as lovely as it can get, isn’t it? So that’s where I am.

Waiting on PS3 to download. Can’t do anything else with the system while that happens.

Good thing my 360 still works. Moral of the story? You get what you pay for, and you need look no further than the free PlayStation network to see that in action.

Xmas Aftermath: My PS3 Slim Micro-Review

So, for Christmas this year (my favorite Consumerist holiday; go Commercialism!) I was fortunate enough to receive a brand new PS3 Slim console, with a 120GB hard drive. I’d been looking forward to it for a month (we actually got it on Black Friday, but figured since it was an expensivish item close to the holidays we’d make it a gift), so I was excited when, late on Christmas Eve, I finally got permission to open it up. The experience was cool at first (is opening up a new gadget ever not fun?), but quickly took a dive into frustration before it finally emerged to become cool again. Here are my thoughts:

Little Big Planet is awesome. Blows away almost every other game this gen, especially the “realistic” garbage! BRILLIANT art design!

Metal Gear Solid 4 looks pretty good, but certainly no better than games like Modern Warfare 2 or Gears of War 2. This is one of those games that was supposed to be a “360 can’t do this” example but, ummm…it’s not. Controls sucked at first, but I got used to them after an hour or so and then it became fun. The Cinematography and voice acting are phenomenal.

God of War Collection kicks ass. Looks very nice. Clearly still just an upscaled PS2 game, but the filtering and other enhancements make it passable, like a first gen PS3 or 360 title almost. Still a great game!

PS3 itself-is not a consumer friendly product at all. Out of the box I had to manually enable Optical audio out (connecting an HDMI cable automatically disables all other audio output. Why? Silly!), then find out which codecs my Onkyo 6.1 receiver supported and manually enable those before it would work. The download of the firmware update was fast (5 minutes) but the install was ridiculously long (literally, 30+ minutes. WTF?). Software updates to games are unbelievably slow. 2 hours to update MGS4 so I could play it, 20 minutes to update LBP. Mind you, I’m on a 10MB Fiber connection, and the downloads were speedy enough, it’s the installation process that’s slow, which is systemic. Four other friends have told me that’s the way theirs are as well. Why is it so mind numbingly slow?

Installing demos after download is lame and varies wildly. Fairytale Fights took about 30 seconds, Ghostbusters about 5 MINUTES. Why do these need to be “installed” at all?

DVD playback is gorgeous. Easily the best upscaling dvd player I’ve ever seen, not even a question. It’s dvd upscaling playback capability pisses all over the 360’s, and to my surprise even passed up my dedicated DVD player’s upscaling. Nice indeed. I haven’t played or bought any bluray movies, but I don’t really care, either, as I don’t think most movies are worth paying double or more. The only way I’d buy the bluray version over the DVD version is if they were the same exact price, maybe a dollar more. With the upscaling, though, I don’t think I’ll have a need in most cases anyway. Visual Effects heavy epics might be an exception on occasion, but again, only if the cost is comparable to the cost of a DVD.

Audio output is phenomenal-easily better than 360’s, especially on DVD’s. Star Trek sounds and looks better than ever when played on the PS3.

The lack of an IR port for the universal remotes is lame, as the selection of Bluetooth capable remotes is simply awful. The dedicated PS3 dvd remote is garbage, useful for absolutely nothing but the PS3, as it has no IR port for compatibility with other devices, making it essentially useless. I’ll just keep using the controller, I guess, but in my view, Sony really missed the boat on either a)putting an IR port on the PS3 itself, or b) adding IR capability to the official remote so you could use it as a universal. Remotes that only control one device are so…1980′s.

I love the design of the slim. It’s sexy, relatively small (compared to the phat) and has a nice finish instead of that “ghetto fabulous” gloss crap on the old model. I’m still not sold on the controller, because even though it’s dual shock 3 it still feels a little too light and flimsy compared to the solid heft of a 360 controller. It’s also not nearly as ergonomic or comfortable, but then, we’ve been dealing with the exact same controller shape since 1995. Sigh.

All in all, I really like the system. The games, of course, look about the same as 360 games, but the audio is better on movies (and I’m using an optical connector on both). It doesn’t do streaming as well as the 360 does (for some reason the PS3 stutters video from Hulu, streamed via PlayOn media server, while the 360 does not, from the same server. Errors in the server event log indicate that PS3 doesn’t handle the DLNA implementation correctly, which is probably why. Hopefully it gets fixed in a firmware update).

I love that I can stream stuff from the PS3 to the PSP, I just wish the PSP had a more reliable battery. Even my double capacity battery only lasts about 3 hours with wifi enabled. So far the functionality of streaming to PSP from a remote location over the internet is spotty-sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, which is a bit of a drag, but to be expected.

Anyway, I’m glad to add the system and a few games to my library. So far I have MGS4, LBP, Warhawk and GoW Collection. I plan to snag Motorstorm next week, since gamestop has it for $9.99 used, and it seems like a nice HD Excite Truck type game, so hopefully I’ll enjoy it.

Well this is funny: PS-Thriimote anyone?

When Sony announced their very own evolution of the Wii Remote this year at E3, nobody was particularly surprised. After all, even Microsoft joined the fray with it’s no-controller motion controller system, Project Natal (oh, but for a cooler name), and let’s face it: Nintendo’s more than proven that motion control in some form is the way forward for video game interaction. At this point, it would be more shocking if the big boys didn’t leap in and try to parrot Nintendo; after all, they’ve managed to nearly outsell the two combined.

With that said, I can’t claim to have seen this one coming: The Wii Remote…now for Playstation 3. Luckily Sony’s not exactly behind this (it’s coming from Blaze Products Europe), because oh how the fanboys would howl. No doubt there’s a collective sigh of relief at Sony HQ today, the kind that comes with the ability to smile and say “wasn’t us!” As you can see from the diagram at left, the new “BLAZE PS3™ Motion Freedom 3D Controller” (yeah, I copied and pasted, so sue me) is virtually identical to the Wii Remote, with the sole exception being the addition of a ton of buttons (wonder how often they’ll get pressed by your palm while swinging a virtual tennis racket or baseball–err, cricket bat).

The description isn’t clear as to whether it has a pointer functionality to it or not, nor does it tell us whether it has the full range of detection found in the Wii’s Motion Plus adapter, so we’ll just have to sit on our hands and wait for more info. In the meantime…sit back and chuckle a bit as the “fad” migrates to the “big boy” consoles.

Hot deal on Xbox 360 Pro!

OK, OK, so I’ve been slacking off lately. I might as well just admit it and get it done with. Here’s hoping this will make some headway in making up for lost time, then: Woot is having a Sellout sale in which they’re letting the always desireable Xbox 360 Pro 60GB console go for just $229. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, but it’s probably a refurb, and we all know how MS tends to treat refurbs”. Lucky for you, then, it’s not a refurb but a brand spankin’ new console.

Of course, you probably already know that the story has the 360 Elite (120GB) receiving a $100 price drop (to $299) to counter the newly minted PS3 slim 120GB version that was announced the other day at Gamescom, but still, for $229 you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal on the 360 right now. My feeling is snag it while it’s cheap, it won’t be too long before all you’ll get in this price range is the hard-drive-less Arcade model at $199 (though if Microsoft is smart, they’ll drop that sucker to $149 post-haste!).

Now about that Wii price drop…

I almost wish I were a smoker…

Let me tell you for the record, I am not a smoker. I have the good fortune to have been born allergic to tobacco, and learned that at the curious age of 5 when I begged my mother for a drag off her cigarette, only to be rushed to the hospital with an almost totally closed breathing dealabob thingy. Since that day I’ve never had so much as the faintest inkling of desire to smoke anything whatsoever. Until now.

There’s a new Windows Home Server device in town (by the way, WHS is a PHENOMENAL product!), but this one’s a bit different from the devices on offer from HP and Acer. Aside from the fact that it’s a bit less capable and expandable (due to lack of space for hard drives), this is a product that blends two things I would never have thought to blend: A Humidor and a Server.

That’s right, the new Home Servidor (seriously!) offers you the ability to serve up stinky death via a top mounted humidor, thermally isolated from the server guts below it, while simultaneously ensuring that your computer’s data, pictures, documents, etc are handily backed up. When you die a choking, coughing, gasping-for-air death…your data remains safe and secure. It’s brilliant! This, my friends, is the fucking key to immortality.

If you’re one of those few elite who truly must have the finest in craftsmanship, this lovely little box of safety and doom is hand crafted at the time you place your order, by the King of Irony himself. If you’re in the market for a Home Server for Home Server purposes, you can get a lot more oomph for a lot less money, but friend let me tell you, you’re gonna have a helluva time finding anything more ironic to decorate your house with.

I…almost want one!

Proof that BevMo has EVERYTHING

It’s a well known fact: nerds love alcohol, and we love it not because it tastes good but because we imagine that it makes us look cool.

Sometimes, however, that’s undermined by something clearly not cool: an alcoholic drink with a Sci-Fi tie-in, and where cool goes out the window, nerdy impulse takes over. Such was the case for me when, on a trip to acquire some cool (yet tasty) Michelob Ultra Pomegranate Raspberry beer, I spied (with my big eye, as my little eye was tastefully zipped up) this 6 pack of Romulan Ale.

And what was I to do, resist? Nay, not I, for the nerdy impulses seized control and the rest was utterly predictable: I bought it.

I’ll be back later to report on the flavor, after I down a couple glasses and piss off some Klingon diplomats.

Update: It tastes remarkably like plain old light beer. Kind of a bummer, really, I was hoping the Romulans would be smarter than humans, but I guess life is just full of disappointment, now isn’t it? Oh well, look at the bright side, at least we’re not the only culture in the galaxy where men have a predilection for self flagellation in their drinking habits.

Oh and by the way, I almost forgot to mention: it turns your tongue blue! It’s almost like eating a Louie Blue Raspberry Otter Pop. Or Smurfette.

iPhone 3G-S inbound, my wallet weeps

Today Apple, in what appears to be a vicious pattern of flogging my wallet until it cries, introduced the new iPhone 3G-S, which will launch in just shy of a week and a half. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some hot iPhone action and I’ve been in a perpetual state of enthrallment with my current iPhone 3G since I got it in December. Nevertheless a gurgling, hissing voice has arisen with me and several heads have turned as I’ve uttered (uncontrollably) the words “We wants it, precious! Give it to us, it’s ours!” Yes, that’s just the kind of day I’ve had, thank you very much, Mr. Jobs.

So, beyond the obvious shiny, what does the new iPhone 3G-S bring to all those patient consumers who decided to tough it out? Here’s a quick and dirty chart to show you the difference and what you can expect to pay for that difference. Note also that the chart reflects todays price drop of the existing 8GB model iPhone 3G to 99 effing dollars.

Nevertheless, even the iPhone 3G remains an amazing device that can offer you the ability to be much more productive in your daily doings, so if the price has been what’s holding you back you no longer have any excuse. Unless I’m horribly mistaken (a distinct possibility, I haven’t done the research), this officially makes iPhone 3G the cheapest non-refurb Smartphone on the market.

Device	iPhone 3G	iPhone 3G-S
Storage & Price	8GB ($99)	16GB ($199) 32GB ($299)
Features	Cut, copy, paste MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search	Cut, copy, paste MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search PLUS!!!: Faster performance (2x!) Improved Camera Video Recording Video Editing Post straight to Youtube Voice Control Compass (Digital) My Effing Envy
Camera	2MP mediocrity	3MP Video Record Video Edit Auto Focus Tap to Focus (dammit!)
Battery Life	Good	Better (I can’t bare to rub any more salt in the wound)

Microsoft announces “We just invented the FUTURE: Suck it!”

So, this was a couple of days ago now, but I’ve been so busy over at E3 and blogging at our sister publication All That Gaming Stuff, that I haven’t had time to drop a note about it here. Project Natal is, in a word, the single most advanced motion control system ever devised or introduced for a home game console (OK, so that’s not a word, it’s more of a…phrase-like construct…thingy). And yes, that includes Sony’s newly announced Wiimote Duo (and yes, you should check out the Demo, it’s actually very cool as an evolution of the Wiimote concept).

So what does this sucker do? Well for starters it detects your entire body and the motion of 48 of your joints. It also detects your face–and will automatically log you into your profile when it sees you. It can detect your voice–and distinguish it from those of your friends, your family and even the game or movie characters you’re watching or playing. It can rapidly scan real world objects and convert them to real-time objects in a game as you can see in both the above video and in Lionhead’s demonstration of its advanced AI character Milo. But the most impressive thing shown with regards to Natal so far is that it enables the game software to do something that no game software has ever done before–it can recognize your emotional states by reading your facial and vocal patterns. No other system on the market or announced for a home console has this capability, and what it can mean for games where characterization is of great significance (RPG lovers take note) is simply off the charts.

Sadly, Microsoft has yet to announce a release date for this impressive new device, but given that they’re now in a race against time to beat Sony’s new Wiimote to market, to say nothing of Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus, which is already on the market, it’s likely that this device has already been placed onto a priority track in Redmond. I wouldn’t be surprised in the coming months to hear of a massive internal push by Microsoft to get developers up to speed with this technology, retrofit high profile existing games for which it will make sense, and get the device into the hands of consumers as soon as possible. If they’re smart, they’ll also bundle it with consoles moving forward to ensure a reasonable amount of developer support, but we’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled.

What do you think of Natal? Next-Gen or gimmick (or both?) Let us know what you think in the comments!

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Freeware Review: iRinger-Free Ringtone Maker for iPhone!

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