Fun with iPhone Ringtones

I've been having a great time lately playing around with my iPhone ringtones. It's a fun and easy way to customize how your phone talks to you, and allows you to assign specific sounds for individual contacts, particularly the ones you hear from often, so you know who's phoning or texting you without even looking at your phone. In a room full of iPhones, it can help distinguish whether it's actually your phone that's ringing or someone else's. And with some of these tones, it can help you sound super-cool when out in public.

The process of installing these ringtones is simple. Download the file (it's an .m4a audio file), locate it in your Finder, change the extension to .m4r, double click to open it in iTunes, and sync your phone with its new ringtones.

To assign a ringtone to a specific contact, call up that contact in your phone's address book, below his or her phone number, you will see 2 tabs that say ringtone and text tone. Open one up at a time, and browse through the default and custom tones until you select the most appropriate one. Tada!


Napoleon Dynamite Text Tone 1 m4a file - "Uh..Idiot!" the perfect text tone to alert you to when idiots are trying to get ahold of you - 4 seconds

Napoleon Dynamite Text Tone 2 m4a file - "Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know I'm training to be a cagefighter." - 9 seconds

Ron Burgundy Text Tone 1 m4a file - "Hey everyone! Come and see how good I look" - 5 seconds

Ron Burgundy Text Tone 2 m4a file - "I'm kind of a big deal. People know me." - 4 seconds

Mac Boot Chime Text Tone m4a file - That's right, everybody's favourite sound. So gentle, so friendly. For the music dorks out there, it's a rich, wide C Major chord - 3 seconds

Steve! - m4a file - This one's pretty funny, I recorded it myself for a married friend of mine, meant to emulate the sound of his wife hollering at him to take out the garbage. Tongue somewhat in cheek. 8 seconds.

Office Space Text Tone m4a file - "I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people!" - 8 seconds

You Sexy Thing m4a file - by Hot Chocolate - 18 seconds - Perhaps an appropriate ringtone for your paramour, or maybe a default ringtone to remind yourself of your own sexiness at every call.

Superstitious m4a file - Classic Stevie Wonder riff.

Opening Theme from Grease m4a file - Great attention grabber from one of history's finest movies.

Communication Breakdown m4a file - Opening riff from Led Zeppelin's debut self-titled album, it set the stage for the future of hard rock and heavy metal. Rock On! 11 seconds

Show Me Your Genitals m4a file - Hilarious and probably offensive, it's the chorus of Jon LaJoie comedy song. Obviously a ringtone you want to assign to that special contact(s). Can be embarrassing if it goes off anywhere in public. 12 seconds

Golden Retriever - The Gorillaz m4a file - For your favourite golden retriever or dog lover. Such a dumb and beautiful creature. We all know one. - 28 secs

The Beachcombers Theme - Punk Rock Version m4a file - Who wouldn't want to be able to hearken back on old Nick, Jesse, The Reach and Relic with every ring of your phone. You can use these as alarm tones too. - 17 secs

Giddy Up Go m4a file - Possibly kinda stupid, opening shots from Red Sovine's CB era trucker song. Useful as an annoyance towards people who hate CB Trucker songs. 27 secs

Hey Ya, by OutKast m4a file - "Lend me some sugar. I am your neighbour! Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it like a poloroid picture. - 30 secs

O Green World - Gorillaz m4a file - Good songs make for good ringtones.

Passwords and Security for Macs and for Mail

t’s a common perception that Macintosh computers are immune to viruses and malware, but technically, that’s not quite true. Despite Apple’s more secure UNIX based operating system, any computer is susceptible to attacks from unscrupulous programmers. However, in 20 years of using Macs online on a daily professional basis, I’ve yet to hear first hand of any successful, debilitating mass attack. To this day, the only reason I have an antivirus software on my computer, is because I was asked by a client to test it. I check it every 2 weeks or so, with no reported attacks.

Email is another issue that can be problematic from a security standpoint, particularly webmail services, such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. Hotmail is probably one of the most hacked email services out there, and you’ve probably gotten emails in the past year from ‘friends’ whose accounts have been compromised, and who have unwittingly spammed their entire contacts list. Your best defense against such potentially harmful hacking is to change your password to something more secure, and change it again every few months. 

When I say a more ‘secure’ password, that means that it should not be a common word, or string of numbers.  According to the New York Times, the most common passwords out there are ‘12345’, followed (logically) by ‘123456’, and then, if you can believe it, ‘password’. And if you’re one of the 70% of people I meet whose password is the name of their pet, or their children, don’t worry, there’s help for you.

One trick I use when creating a new password is to substitute certain letters for numerals, ie., if the word contains an ‘O’, I’ll use zero. If it has an ‘E’, I’ll use  the number three, and if there’s an ‘I’, I’ll substitute a one. Also, any letter in the word that falls on the top row of the qwerty keyboard, I will capitalize, thus making the password far harder to hack by any online robot. Visually it will look similar to the word I find easy to remember, but it’s far more secure against hackers. For instance, if one of my favourite authors is Farley Mowat, I might have a password that looks like faRl3Y. If my pet’s name is Luther, my password mght look like lUTh3r. It might. 

Passwords are probably the most problematic issue for casual users. If I had a nickel for every time I asked a client for their computer, email, Skype, Apple ID or wifi password, only to be greeted with a blank stare, I’d be a wealthy man. As discussed in the last installment, the Keychain access utility on your Mac will remember your lesser passwords for you, and allow you to retrieve them if need be, but you will need to know your computer user password to access them. 

You can get away with not having your Apple computer’s password for a short period of time, but any software updates or installs will require that you remember it eventually. Luckily you can change the user password by booting from your system disk, included in the box at purchase time. To do so, insert the disk, click restart and hold down the ‘C’ key until you see the grey screen and spinning gear. Once it’s up and running, there will be a list of utilities in a drop-down box. Choose ‘reset password’ and input a password that you will remember, according to some of the previous hints. If you’re running Lion or Mountain Lion, hold the Option key on startup and choose the Recovery HD icon. That will bring up a similar set of options.

When it comes to passwords, my suggestion is to use one or two straightforward passwords for inconsequential websites, like Facebook or Skype, and another one or two more secure passwords for more sensitive uses, such as email or online banking. And it wouldn’t kill you to write them down somewhere and store them somewhere not far away, because your main security threat is not the person who breaks into your home to steal your valuables, but some professional in an office in Russia, or his mom’s basement in Dakron, sniffing around for trouble. Protect yourself with strong passwords.