Remember the good ol’ days when Steve Jobs was all about a good joke and hacking? Like his failed graduation middle-finger banner that was to wish all the on lookers good luck in the coming year, Jobs has failed to consider all the details once again. With Apple lieutenants shooting off their mouths about how it doesn’t care about third-party apps to Jobs himself calling this hacking issue a “cat and mouse” game, Mr. once iCEO is loosing sight of his roots. There was once a Steve Jobs that didn’t care about a record company called Apple Records, Limited or a phone company called Bell while he and Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” used a “blue box” to make free phone calls to where ever. When faced with possible jail time with some local Bay Area cops one very late night with the now famous blue box, Jobs was relieved to have escaped justice and still have use of his box without fear of it being bricked.

Now decades later, the Zen man Jobs himself has a whole new outlook on things. Never mind the fact that Jobs once was able to call anywhere in the world on Ma Bells tab without a feeling of guilt in his bones. Nope, Jobs now wants all-yall that freed your iPhone to be punished for it. Screw you! That’s the message Mr. Jobs is sending nice and loud and believe you me, it’s coming in clear.

What happened, Steve? Maybe a few dollars in the Apple bank account made the difference? When it was you ripping off a big company, that was okay, but now that your company is the one getting ripped, different ringtone, huh? With all the “enlightenment” and other new age stuff Jobs has been known to embrace, it makes you wonder if this is just some bad trip like he had once experienced in the early 70s. I can understand removing the ability to unlock a phone, but to brick one? Man, that’s bad karma, brother. To also flaunt how your phone runs on OS X and then prevent others from exploiting its power, not cool, hommie. Not cool at all. No, this isn’t the Steve Jobs that started Apple with another buddy in his garage. This is a cooperate Jobs that has more similarities to his arch rival in Redmond than the guy that once loved hanging out with Capitan Crunch.

Pitty the fool that spends 99 cents for a song and then another 99 cents to make it into a ringtone for their iPhone. Why a fool? Because they could be doing all this for free! We told you about the insane easy iToner last week and now we’re going to tell you about the just as easy MakeiPhoneRingtone. MIR if you’re nasty. With MakeiPhoneRingtone, you simply drag your AAC files (rename those MP4s to AAC if you’ve got ‘em) and MIR automatically takes care of the rest. Next thing you’ll see is your newly dragged music in the Ringtones section of iTunes. It does the “hack” magic all in the background!

Now, some have experienced some odd errors (like the inability to change the extension of the file…an important part in getting those files on your iPhone), so we recommend you use the latest 1.1 version. It uses the more stable “stik” method of “converting” your files into iPhone ringtones and it cleared up our problems lick-a-tee split.

Rouge Amoeba promises to keep up with this free application even if newer version of iTunes breaks this great trick. As of now, it sees no reason to charge for this application, so get it while you can!

I’ve been using iFuntastic until 3.0.3 failed to work for me for all of my iPhone ringtone management. It left me in the frustrated state of how to get more ringtones on my iPhone. I had known about another software application out there claiming to have the quick and easy way to custom ringtones for the iPhone. Now that iFuntastic wasn’t working, I rang up Ambrosia Software’s site for a speedy download of its iToner.

Once the download completed and the disk image expanded, I gave iToner an immediate task. To my amazement, it did work quickly and was as simple as dragging Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” to iToner’s iPhone-like interface and clicking the Sync button. The transfer was fast, in fact, I thought it had failed and I removed my iPhone from its dock to check. Sure enough, “Like a Rock” was listed in the Ringtone list. Sweet!

There’s not much to look at in iToner. It’s basic and job-one is to just handle ringtones. It does not sniff the current ringtones on your device, but does keep track of what you’ve copied over to your phone via iToner and list those tracks. One thing I did notice from iToner’s advanced settings is the ability to copy over playlists from iTunes. Very cool if you want to just make a quick playlist of all your ringtones in case the next Apple update wipes out your current set of MP3 and M4As.

While iToner is fast and easy, I think $15 is a very steep price for what you can find for free (or donation) elsewhere. Again, this is without a doubt the most easy and fool proof ringtone manager for your iPhone, but it’s about three times the cost that I would be willing to pay for it. Yes, iFuntastic 3.0.3b1 isn’t working on my phone, but at least 2.1.x is still on my drive and that does work. And it’s free. But, if you’re not into soft-resetting your iPhone and fear bricking it, then maybe $15 may be a value at insurance policy pricing.

While the hacker community doesn’t have a ton of native applications for the iPhone out yet, there are some gems available such as Doom available for the OS X-based phone. The only issue with these hacks are that, well, they’re hacks. You need to be a hacker just to get them on your phone. But a new installer is helping many of us non-hacker iPhone users get some of the over a dozen applications onto our phone.

Logically titled, Installer.app is a free little utility that, yes, you need to install on your iPhone via command line. BUT after that, it’s Install City right on your iPhone via Wi-Fi! With Installer.app you can download and install applications right from the iPhone itself. You can also update and un-install all from your phone. Using the UIKit, Installer.app may be the way to get all these and future applications onto your phone until the next Apple firmware, sure to kill this great utility, or until Apple itself opens the doors to third-party applications. Give it a try. It’s free!

Most everyone with an iPhone has heard about the 22 step procedure to get custom ringtones on your iPhone and nearly all of these people move on in disappointment. Well, rejoice, iFuntastic is here!

iFuntastic will let you add custom MP3 or M4A ringtones on your phone as well as remove tones off the iPhone. Simply drag the file or files onto the iFuntastic GUI and click the plus icon and add it to your iPhone. That simple! You can also change the AT&T logo to whatever you’d like (I chose an Apple logo,) and reorder the application buttons on the home screen. With easy to follow directions and the simple drag-n-drop procedure, you’ll have a hacked iPhone in no time. I got my Cisco VoIP (aka CTU 24) ringtone as my default tone and my 10 other custom tones on my iPhone in just under four minutes. Piece of cake!

Now do note, the newly update iPhone update (1.0.1) BREAKS this hack. As is the custom with Apple, Jailbreak (the main component behind iFuntastic) no longer functions in the updated firmware. Further, if you do attempt to update your iPhone, iTunes will complain that it does not reqonize your iPhone and will restore it to factory defaults. Many have said they lost all their past SMS conversations as well as their customized settings for the phone in general. So, only upgrade if you’re looking for IMAP/Exchange folder displaying and the Safari hack patch.

Me? I’ve lived this long without my Exchange folders and I know what sites to avoid that I’d rather keep my custom ringtones instead. Once Jailbreak breaks the iPhone again, I’ll go for the update.

So, you’re kinda having buyers remorse, huh? Missin’ those custom ringtones on your free LG or Motorola phone you tossed to the junk drawer for that $600 iPhone of yours. “But I really love this phone!” Ya, ya, we know, we love it, too. But man, no custom ringtones? Come on, Sci-Fi ain’t that good and who’s going to use Motorcycle for a ringtone? It’s not even a Harley!

http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/ringtone/CTU24.mp3Well, don’t worry young iPhone 1.0 user, you can have custom ringtones. Anything you want in M4A (AAC) format. You just have to download some hacking software, perform some Terminal commands, kill -9 iTunes, and cross your fingers. That’s it! But hey, when your phone rings with the CTU Cisco ringtone, you’ll be looking sharp. Real sharp. Okay, okay. The link. Proceed with caution.

While not Safari on the iPhone, BareSite.com will help your web-challenged phone formatting web sites for that dinky screen of yours. Much like other web-reformatting sites, BareSite.com strips out many of the graphics and formats the text to easily flow on your small screen. BareSite.com told SvenOnTech that it removes, “‘unneeded content’ creating an extremely light mobile version that shows well on mobile devices.” Claiming that 90 percent of “unneeded content” is removed from your request, BareSite.com will save you a ton of cash if you’re on a metered Internet plan. Adding the ability to search the dictionary, weather, traffic, news, and even jobs, BareSite.com puts many needs right there in one place. Add the fact that it is very customizable, BareSite.com may be a new reason for you to use your Internet capable phone again.

I don’t get Entourage. In some ways it’s way better than Outlook. In others, it’s horribly worse. What gives Microsoft? Couldn’t it at least be consistent on some features like Insert Web Address? I mean, E-mail does use the Internet, right? That said, it would suppose that from time to time, one would want to add a link into a message for a friend to go visit. Right? But don’t try looking for Insert URL or Web Link in Entourage thinking it’ll be there like it is in Outlook. Nope. You’ll be stuck wasting time and coming up with a big empty. Lame.

This one’s for you Fletch. I found a work around.

Barry Wainwright is a man who has felt our pain and has written a few AppleScripts to get that stinkin’ web address into your Entourage message. He has written a script for both Firefox and Safari. Similar to a script I use for submitting articles to Macsurfer, Barry’s script will insert the address of the current web site you are at to the foremost Entourage window. It’ll insert the full address in pure HTML code. Just like that!

Thankfully, people like Barry understands our needs more than Microsoft. He’s got a pulse on the people. Thanks, Barry.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading Mac and PC technology company, announced today that its new Axiotron ModBook, the first and only OS®X Mac tablet solution, will be available with special discounted pricing for a limited time until February 1, 2007. Priced at only $2,199, the OWC’s Axiotron ModBook solution now includes a free GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) receiver and free delivery in the U.S. for a total savings of $249 (price includes the cost of the Apple® MacBook™ and the comprehensive 1 year OWC solution warranty). After February 1st, pricing will start at $2,279 with the optional Axiotron™ GPS Module for an additional $149.

Macs and PCs are just different. Not just at the operating system level, but even at the hardware side as well. I’ve always felt Apple hardware is a superior design in computer technology but its lack of forward delete on its notebooks has been one con to using a Mac. Now, if you have a full sized keyboard, you can use the forward delete above the cursor keys (it has an X inside a forward arrow on it) but us MacBook, MacBook Pro, iBook, and PowerBook users don’t have such a key. Thankfully there are many keyboard mapping applications out there to assist in this problem.

One keyboard mapper I found is DoubleCommand. Doing more than just giving me my beloved forward delete, the freeware application sits in your System Preference’s Other section awaiting your command. Mmm, sorry for the pun. Other cool tricks include turning that ENTER key, down by your space bar and Command key to the right, into a Control, Option, or even a Function key. You can swap keys and their uses as well as make those HOME and END keys act more like they do on a PC. It’s just all good stuff, really!

Hey, I have installed and I’m a happy camper. I know you will be too when you give it a go on your system. Try it out and if you like it, give author, Michael Baltaks, a donation to keep him going.