Tip #2242 - Mobile17
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Mobile17
Cell phones have been
around for a while now and the capabilities are growing faster than most
people can keep up with. More than that, cell phones are becoming a big
part of everyday life by offering cool features to their users like camera,
video and games.
One thing I’m
sure all of you have noticed is all of the different ring tones that people
are using on their phones. Well, I thought, what a good idea for the download
of the week! A program that would allow you to convert your stored
music into midi files (don't take up as much space) to be uploaded to
your phone.
Unfortunately I couldn’t
find any software for free to perform this conversion (I will keep looking),
so I decided to learn a little more about this subject. Well, after doing
some searching around Web for ring tones, I knew one thing, I needed to
clean my browser out and for good measure, I took a shower as well.
Most of the sites
I visited to look for new ring tones for my phone were filled with scams
and pop ups. I felt skuzzy afterwards. I found plenty of sites that offered
free midi downloads, but it was only free until you went out to their
site, or after you agree to some contractual arrangement. The “free
ring tones“ advertisements and links are simply cleverly worded
scams to get you to their site. Once there, you see the real deal, and
in case you were wondering, is not so good.
So I continued my
search and found a new service: an online application called Mobile17
that will send a midi file to your phone allowing you to insert it into
your ring tones configuration list. The process is simple and the site
supports 94 percent of all the cell phones out there, so it doesn’t
matter if your phone is new or old. Chances are, Mobile17 can handle it.
What Mobile17 does
is upload a midi file that you designate on your local hard drive or wherever
you have the midi file stored. Then it basically sends the file out to
your phone in one of four ways depending on the data handling capabilities
of your phone. The procedures that Mobile17 can utilize are:
1. Download the file
with your phone's Web browser.
2. Receive it in a picture message.
3. E-mail it to your phone as an attachment.
4. Send you the file and you can transfer it to your phone.
The top three are
really the procedures that shine. It allows the ring tone to be sent directly
to the phone ready for use, with no middleman. The fourth option is for
phones that may not have any of first three features enabled. In the fourth
option, you basically send the file to your PC and you upload it to your
phone from there. This method isn’t as easy and you may want to
contact your cell phone’s manufacturer for details on how to perform
this procedure.
Since the service
is free, there can be a small wait time for your file to be prepared,
but it doesn’t take that long. It takes maybe a half an hour and
I’ve seen it as low as one minute.
Unfortunately, there
is no great wealth of information on the site, but the service is new
and they are working on implementing more help resources in the future.
There is an e-mail address you can send questions to at least until more
permanent resources are enabled that will assist you in using Mobile17.
Oh, I almost forgot,
remember how I was discussing how untrustworthy these sites that offer
downloadable ring tones seemed to be? Well, Mobile17 was nice enough to
offer a couple of links out to no hassle midi download sites. That means
you can look through copious amounts of music that is stored in their
database without worrying if you’re collecting malware as well.
- You can set up your
own Mobile17 account at: http://mobile17.smashsworld.com/.
- If you want to look
through the available midi files for free, you may want to take a look
at http://www.freemidi.org/. With
thousands of songs to pick from, you’ll never get bored.
So if you always wanted
to change your tune but don’t want the hassle of contracts and malware,
then you may find Mobile17 right up your alley. I hope you enjoy the service
and as always, it was my pleasure.
~Chad Stelnicki
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