Techlogg has released a nifty program that allows you to create ringers for your iPhone without having to pay the 99 cents from iTunes.  They have a bunch of ringer making tips as well.

We’ve got the initial release out of the way, now it’s time to start building ToneShop up and here’s the first update – ToneShop Build 9 now creates .m4r ringtones for Apple’s iPhone.

That means you can load your new ringtones into iTunes and sync them up to your iPhone in seconds.

ToneShop creates ringtones in MP3, AAC (M4A), WAV (uncompressed PCM and ADPCM), AMR-NB, AMR-WB (Nokia TrueTones), MMF (Yamaha SMAF) and now Apple iPhone M4R (AAC) formats.

You can download the latest version from the Download ToneShop tab at the top of the page.

iPhone-Codes has a great write up on some iPhone battery saving tips that may help a lot of users.

Change Mail Auto-Check: Turn off Mail auto-check or increase the auto-check interval. To turn off auto-check, from the Home screen choose Settings > Mail > Auto-Check and tap Manual. To increase the auto-check interval, go to Settings > Mail > Auto-Check and tap Every hour. Note that this is a global setting that applies to all active mail accounts on your iPhone except push mail accounts with push mail enabled.

Turn off Push Mail: If you have a push mail account, turn off push mail when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Mail, choose the push mail account, tap Advanced, and set Use Push Mail to Off. Messages sent to this account will now be received on your phone based on the global Auto-Check setting rather than as they arrive.

Auto-check fewer Mail Accounts: You can save power by checking fewer mail accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off a mail account or by deleting it. To turn off a mail account, go to Settings > Mail, choose a mail account and set Account to Off. To remove an account, go to Settings > Mail, choose a mail account and tap Delete Account.

Turn off Wi-Fi: If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. Note that if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the Web, battery life may be improved using Wi-Fi instead of EDGE.

Turn off Bluetooth: If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you can turn off Bluetooth to save power. Go to Settings > General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.

Adjust Brightness: Dimming your phone’s screen is another way to extend battery life. Go to Settings > Brightness and drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness. Additionally, turning on Auto-Brightness allows your phone’s screen to adjust its brightness based on current lighting conditions. Go to Settings > Brightness and set Auto-Brightness to On.

Turn off EQ: Applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life. To turn EQ off, go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Off. Note that if you’ve added EQ to songs directly in iTunes, you’ll need to set EQ on iPhone to “Flat” in order to have the same effect as “Off” because iPhone keeps your iTunes settings intact. Go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Flat.

To read more on this article, visit iPhone-Codes

Over at Creative Techs they have a great write up of the iPhone simulator that is part of the iPhone SDK.  The iPhone simulator allows you to view (without an iPhone) what your websites will look like on the iPhone.  This is a very handy tool considering a lot of people browse the internet with their iPhones and you may want to start thinking about developing your website for this platform.

If you are a web designer, your clients may soon start worrying how their websites work on an iPhone. That’s because after only eight months, iPhones now account for a remarkable 71% of all US Mobile Browser web traffic.

Designing websites that take advantage of the iPhone web environment requires more than simply designing for a smaller screen size. The iPhone automatically scales websites when needed. iPhone readers use multi-touch gestures to zoom or move around the page. Flash isn’t supported, and neither are larger animated GIFs (a surprise to me).

Tucked away in Apple’s free iPhone Software Development Kit is a terrific iPhone Simulator you can use to test and preview your websites. In the full version of this tip we’ll show you where that iPhone Simulator application is hidden, and include a few tips on how to test various iPhone features.

Read more at Creative Techs

There is a really cool new application that allows you to use your iPhone as a remote for your iTunes library (Mac) or iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player on your PC.  It is very simple, follow the steps below.

1. First you need to have your phone connected via WiFi.
2. Download free demo of signal
3. Open iTunes on your computer
4. Point your iPhone to the web address the demo software gave you
5. Save the web app as a icon on your iPhone or bookmark
6. Enjoy controlling your iTunes and  listening to the great  music!

There is a great little application that was developed that allows you to use your iPhone as a touchpad for your computer.  This application (Touchpad) turns jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches into a wireless touchpad control for Macs, Windows and Linux computers.  All the trackpad functions are there with the addition of right-edge page scrolling.

Jahanzeb Sherwani created Touchpad from VNSea. All you need do is add the http://cnp.qlnk.net/ repository to Installer.app, download and install it, and follow Sherwani’s instructions on how to install and enable VNC on the computer you choose to use Touchpad on.

Visit Jahanzeb’s page here for more details, instructions and a video.

As we talked about the other day on our blog post Unlock iPhone for Free, the developers blog has some new information that might be helpful while trying to unlock your iPhone.  To summarize, they talk about how the ziphone application does not harm the iPhone at all and doesn’t mess with any security settings.  It also talks about how the unlocking process can be revered very easily in case of any failures.  It also mentions that the ziphone software can repair previously bricked (failed unlockings) iPhones and do complete the process correctly.

Read the rest of the blog post located at Zibri’s blog

Handbrake a DVD to MPEG-4 converter has been updated to include support for the iPhone and Ipod touch. I have been using this software on my mac for over a year to convert DVD’s to my ipod and now we can do the same for the iPhone. The only problem is that this new version is only available for OSX Leapoard. Windows users are ok with XP and Vista with this new version.

Download handbrake, install, open handbrake, insert DVD, Rip, and then copy the ripped movie into itunes, Sync iPhone! Enjoy

Visit handbrake today to get your free program to put DVD’s on your iPhone.

the blog located at http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/ has a great write up on how to use your iPhone in Canada.  Some of the questions answered at the Canadian iPhone blog include:

• When is the iPhone being released in Canada?
• Should I update my iPhone’s firmware? I want to update to 1.1.1/1.1.2/1.1.3!
• How Do I Go Abouts Buying an iPhone in the USA? Will I have to sign a contract? What about firmware? Will I have to pay taxes/duties on my iPhone?
• Will an iPhone work in Canada? Can I just pop in a SIM card and use it in Canada?
• Where can I buy an iPhone? I want one soooo bad! What features will work?
• How do I setup EDGE settings on my iPhone?
• How do I download 3rd party applications to my iPhone?
• My speaker volume is so darn low. I’m missing calls. How can I fix this?

Update, the two sites below have combined efforts to release a better product.  The new version ZiPhone 2.5 has been released which is compatible with iPhone version 1.1.4.  See this thread for more information.

The time has come where you don’t have to manually unlock your iPhone anymore. The old process was a great and useful tool, but seems very archaic compared to the new software called “ZiPhone” developed at Zibri’s blog.

It is compatible with the latest iPhone firmware and doesn’t require downgrading your iPhone’s firmware version prior to unlocking it. What could be easier than that?

The ZiPhone software can be downloaded from the following locations.

• ZiPhone 2.4 (win+osx) *FAST MIRROR*
• ZiPhone 2.4 OSX GUI Version
• ZiPhone Source (svn)
• ZiPhone OSX Source (svn)
• The new download site is located at http://www.downloadziphone.org/

unlock.no created a version with a graphical user interface for easier operation, and better descriptions. It is available at here at the download location above. See the image below to see what the program looks like.

When using this version of ZiPhone, If you get error “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)” you need to install .NET Framework 2.0.

If you have any problems, have some tips for improvements etc, please post them here

Update: There is a new program available that automatically unlocks your phone for you in less than 3 minutes. Check it out here.

We have searched all over the internet for free ways to unlock your iPhone and have come up with this tutorial from a few different websites. This has been tested and it seems it works just fine but we don’t guarantee anything so use at your own risk. It can always be undone by re-flashing your iPhone to the original files.

The best tutorials and information I have found come from unlock.no

Follow the simple steps below to unlock your iPhone for free today! To start the unlocking process, you will want to first downgrade your firmware to 1.1.1 as it seems most stable for the unlocking.

STEP 1: Install Firmware version 1.1.1

To install firmware version 1.1.1 , you will need to enter the iPhone’s recovery mode.

1. Connect the iPhone to your computer and press and hold the power button (on top) and the home button (on bottom front) simultaneously.
2. After about 15 seconds, the iPhone will appear to turn off, release the power button but keep holding the home button.
3. After about 15 seconds your computer and iTunes will detect the iPhone in recovery mode.
4. Download the following two files to your computer: 1.1.1 firmware and 1.1.2 firmware
5. Hold down SHIFT key (Windows) or Option/ALT-key (Mac) when clicking the Restore button in iTunes, and it will let you choose the firmware file. Select the 1.1.1 firmware file you downloaded in previous step.
6. iTunes will give give a 1015 error, and you iPhone will get stuck in recovery mode.
7. To get it into normal mode, Windows user can run AppTapInstaller.exe (select 1.0.2 firmware), or iBrickr, while Mac users can use iNdependence. In all cases, close/eject iPhone from iTunes before running these applications, and as soon as your iPhone have rebooted in normal mode you can close the applications and ignore any errors. If you are downgrading from 1.1.3 you might have problems getting it started in normal mode. The solution is simple, just restore your iPhone to 1.1.1 again, and this time it will work
8. Now your iPhone should be at the activation screen.

Step 2: Jailbreak and activate

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