Thursday, May 15, 2008

I, um, paid for that - already

I'm not really all that tech savvy - not, say, compared to your average 14 year old.

I hate Facebook. I'm only on MySpace so I can read Diablo Cody's blog. I discovered Twitter today - and I don't get it

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

This is interesting, why?

Seriously - some sample twits (they got the name right, at any rate):

    I have eaten my weight in Goldfish crackers this month
    STOP! COFFEE TIME!!!
    At kelsie's baseball game

Call me what you will - lame, old, out of it, Data Ditz (told you I liked that one) - I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

But I do have my moments. I mean, let's talk ringtones. I'm all over the ringtone thing. I'm kinda music oriented (I have over 40gb of music hanging around) and I like not only matching a song to a person, but the convenience of knowing who's calling by the ring.

So, when I hear "My Heaven" by Mary Chapin Carpenter - I know my sister's on the line. "Queen of the Night" from The Magic Flute? That would be Mom. And now that I have a phone that actually plays the song, not just that awful tinny, can't even call it a facsimile of the song- song, well, it's all good.

Except for one thing: they want to charge you for that 30 second ringtone. On iTunes, even if you buy the whole song, they're going to charge you another $1 for the ringtone. Let's walk through that again. You buy the song - the whole song - for $1, but if you want a specific 30 second portion of it to ring on your phone, you need to pay another $1. The awesome and amazing David Pogue wrote about this, and noted that Sprint ringtones cost $2.50/ea (and expire after 90 days), while Verizon's are $3/ea (though they last a whole year).

Well, ya know, call me crazy, but I think if you own a song, you should be allowed to listen to it whenever you want, even on your phone. And guess what? I'm not alone - the good folks over at MyxerTones.com feel the same way.

They have this very nifty site; you upload any song from your computer (if it's a 'protected' aac file, that is an iTunes file, you'll have to do a little fancy mp3 burning first) and then you can create your own ringtone - what slice of the song you want, how long you want it to be - and then just send it to your phone. It's that simple.

And so easy, even a 30 year old can do it.

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