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Short History of Cellphone Ringtones

Posted by Hemos on from the the-joy-of-MIDI dept.

RobotWisdom writes "This week's New Yorker magazine includes an interesting short history of cellphone ringtones, including statistics on their (huge) profitability worldwide. My favorite quote: 'I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtone versions of speed metal, trying to find exactly the ringtone that expressed my personality with enough irony and enough coolness that I could live with it going off ten times a day. In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?'"

5 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. wow by Quasar1999 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It's like he's saying what I'm thinking!

    Since this is slashdot... I'm sure more than half the reader can identify with wasting tons of work time listening to ring tones... I know I have... ;)

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    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
  2. Re:Purchasing Ringtones? by scottp · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Easily, get ringtone ripper from planetringtone.net, rip song you want from cd or .mp3, upload to your website (manually, without going through planetringtone.net), browse to file (URL of file) from phone, save to phone......you are done. Note: this is for .mp3 ringtones. There are other ways, this is easiest for me.

  3. Re:Purchasing Ringtones? by mdbales · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Bitpim?

  4. Re:Purchasing Ringtones? by ejort79 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Here's one bitpim

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    The Internet couldn't tell a good bit from a bad bit if it bit it on its naughty bits.
  5. Re:Purchasing Ringtones? by jwilcox154 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I have a Sprint RL-4920 phone, and I use Sprint Users to upload my ringers. Midi needs no conversion, but the software I use to convert non-midi files to the Qualcomm PureVoice format using the Purevoice Converter. I have not had to pay a single penny for ringers, Applets, or Screen Savers. Like what the original post said, I can put what I want on there, not what is "popular" and it's free instead of paying at least $1 for 20 to 30 seconds of audio.