Creating a ringtone from your Mp3s may not be the easiest thing to do, provided you don’t have the right tools. There are a number of audio cutters out there using which you can create your ringtones. But the fact is that most of those are clunky software which don’t provide a good interface for the user. And professional sound editing tools like Sound Forge cost a bomb.

So, here is a web based service that you can use to create your own ringtones from the mp3s that you have or those that are available on the web. Audiko is a service available in both russian and english. To get started off with Audiko, you need to upload the song or music track to the site.

Uploading

You can either upload the track from your PC or from the web. That is, if the music track is available on the web, then you simply specify the direct URL to the track and the site auto downloads the track for editing. Once the upload/download is done, Audiko analyzes the track and gets it ready for editing.

Editing

You then need to select a part of the song that needs to be made into the ringtone. The selection can be a maximum of 40 seconds long. You can move the wave bar and select the part you want to. You can click on the selection to play it. This can get a better idea of what you want to select.

You can also add the fade in and fade out options, so that the ringtone fades in when it starts and fades out at the end. You can’t however mix several small parts into a ringtone using Audiko.

Downloading

Once the editing is done, simply click on the create ringtone button to get your ringtone ready for download. The site is also iPhone compatible and there are 3 different download options.

• Download to PC
• Download to iPhone (m4r format)
• Download via WAP

A code to embed the tone on your blog or website is also given for your convenience.

Conclusion

Overall I feel that the service is a simple and easy to use service to create ringtones quickly from your songs. Also, since no external software is needed, you don’t need to worry about cluttering your PC. Advanced features are not available, but I don’t see why you need them for creating simple ringtones.

This would be a good choice to create ringtones without hassle and I would recommend this for sure. Do leave your comments regarding this service and the tools you use to create ringtones as well! Thanks for reading!

When I transfer files from my PC to my Mobile Phone, I make use of the Bluetooth feature on my phone. However, if I am not at home and I need to receive a file, I can’t depend on Bluetooth connectivity or even the availability of a PC. Also, if the file I want is only on my PC, then I’d probably have no access to it.

Beam It Up Scotty is here to solve that problem. This service is basically similar to YouSendIt or other such filesharing sites. You can send the file’s download link direct to your mobile phone. The process is pretty simple

• Upload your files to Beam It Up Scotty
• Compress or convert it, if needed
• Enter the Mobile Number and send the file

Once this is done a SMS containing the link to the file would be sent to the number provided. The user can then download from the link using GPRS or related service on his phone.
It is as easy as 1-2-3. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. When you send a file for the first time, you will be asked to enter your email ID. A confirmation email is then sent to that ID. Once you click the confirmation link, the message is sent. The second time onwards, as soon as you enter the email ID, the file is sent to the mobile phone instantly.

The other thing is that an user is able to send only 10 files every day and not more than that. This is probably to restrict spamming. The email ID that you used to login is also mentioned on every SMS that is sent.

Features

The most useful feature on Beam It Up is the compression/conversion feature. Once a file is uploaded it is auto analyzed and options are given for optimizing the file for mobile use. This reduces the size of the file to enable faster download. The service recognizes most file types, but if it doesn’t you can still compress or ZIP the file and send it.

Also, information is displayed on the uploaded file and the estimated time that it would take to download on various connections. All files are stored for 30 days atleast on their servers. The maximum size of a single file can be 100 Mb, which for a mobile device is too big anyway!

I tried using it and I received the download link everytime in around 5 seconds flat. That’s quite an amazingly fast turnaround time and I managed to download the file without problems as well. Oh and I forgot to mention that the service is totally free as well.

What more I am looking for

I am looking forward to the following features in this service

• Send files to multiple numbers at once instead of uploading every time
• A file manager for my uploads
• More messages per day (paid, perhaps?)
• A system to store and remember contacts

But, overall I would definitely recommend this service to anybody who wants to get quick access to their files. Do you find this service interesting? Do send in your comments! Thanks for reading!

Some of the times, the mails I receive are usually meant to be scanned and no detailed reading or replying may be necessary. But actually logging in everytime to the inbox to view such mails individually is an amazing waste of time. Also, viewing these mails in a email client like Outlook or Thunderbird would also mean a waste of time.

The easiest option to scan through articles or emails in this case is by making it a feed and reading them in your feedreader. It is because of the ease in reading blog posts, that I use Feedreaders for subscribing to most of my favorite blogs. Doing a similar thing for your emails can drastically reduce time in going through a bunch of them.

Mail Bucket offers such a simple and fast to implement service for your emails. And best of all, it is free to setup and use. There are 2 ways to use this service.

• Redirect your mail from one of your email addresses
• Setup a new email ID at Mail Bucket for this purpose

The process is very simple and all you need to do is

• If redirecting, simply redirect your mails to any email ID of your choice @mailbucket.org
• Even if you are setting up a new ID at mailbucket, the step is the same
• Le’s assume that the email ID is mymail@mailbucket.org
• All the mails received at the ID (at Mail Bucket) can be obtained as an XML Feed at the address http://www.mailbucket.org/mymail.xml

All you need to is subscribe to the feed at that address using any feedreader and you’ll get regular updates as usual. Also, you can get a HTML version of the feed by visiting the address http://www.mailbucket.org/simple/mymail

Before forwarding to a email ID at Mail Bucket, be sure to check that no other mail is being forwarded there. You can do that by visiting the feed address before forwarding the mail. If the page is empty, go ahead and set it up.

Redirecting is not the only option. You can simply send a new mail from any of your accounts and it will automatically appear as part of the feed.

The disadvantage with Mail Bucket is that all the feeds are publicly viewable and hence your mails will not have any security. So, make sure that you don’t redirect mails from a personal or professional ID to here. However, the address from which the mail was sent will not be visible in the feed.

Do let me know if you found this service interesting. Thanks for reading!

Who Is The Owner, a site related to Who Is Hosting This, offers to provide information regarding the owner of any domain name along with all their available contact details. All you need to do is enter the domain name and the security code and the information is delivered to you.

Does It Work? 

It does, to an extent. However, the service does not display only the contact name and details, but the entire WHOIS record of a particular domain name. Now, that means you get the details of the web host, the nameservers and the domain name registration and expiry details as well.

The incredible fact (if the site owners haven’t realized) is that the complete WHOIS record can be got from atleast a 100 different and better WHOIS sites like Whois.sc or Who.is etc. Here are a few of my observations

•  Contact details are in the WHOIS, but that doesn’t justify showing the complete WHOIS record and claiming them as contact details

Who Is The Owner is a free online tool which enables you to discover who is the owner of any domain by querying more than 350 whois servers in the world.

• You don’t need 350 WHOIS servers to show the complete WHOIS record, one is more than sufficient (for each domain extension, that is)
• A WHOIS service is a WHOIS service even if you name it Who Is The Owner

Naming this a simple WHOIS site would pretty much give the same result as it is giving out right now. If you are an amateur, then this is one site that can continue to amuse you. The rest of you can switch to Whois.sc or Who.is and those are my personal recommendations!

What Whois service do you use? Do drop in your comments! Thanks for reading!

PS: Forgive my bashing, but a site that doesn’t do exactly as it says, fails to earn my respect!

Hard drive recovery software, as earlier discussed can only be effective in recovering lost data up to an extent. Such software are basically designed to recover data from hard drives that are actually working since installation of recovery software requires a proper hard disk just like any other software program.

However, sometimes you might just find that your HDD has crashed completely, meaning that it may not power up at all or simply fail to read data from it. In these cases, a data recovery software is just not enough. The data on the HDD can only be recovered by means not available to the average computer user. Here is where DTI Data comes in.

About DTI Data

DTI Data is a professional data and hard drive recovery company that boasts of several years of experience as well. DTI Data recovers data from your HDD using hi-tech facilities available at their labs.

DTI data provides you with a pre-work quote that is fixed. This means that you won’t be charged higher depending on the difficulty of the job or any such thing. DTI Data also has a no-data, no-charge policy for problematic HDDs that have not been opened elsewhere.

Another guarantee that they provide is that you get 100% of your data recovered without any problems whatsoever. Also, hard drive repair work is done if there are physical problems in the HDD and then the data is recovered for you.

The working time is anywhere between 2 to 5 days. For those still unconvinced by the arguments, DTI Data gives you testimonials from some reputed clients that they’ve worked for. Some of these clients include NASA, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Motorola, Pfizer and more.

Another resource that they guarantee in recovering data from your hard drive is the use of class 100 clean rooms. A clean room is basically a environment controlled room and this is used to minimize interferences from environmental factors such as dust or other pollutants which may damage data on your hard drive.

They also offer data recovery services on general servers and also on exchange servers. You can learn more about the Data Recovery Resources available for your use as well. DTI data also develops a number of softwares that help in data recovery at home. They also provide free downloads of file recovery softwares for NTFS and also a file undelete software. The amazing thing is that these are not trial versions but full versions of the software.

Other software for digital music recovery, image recovery and for data recovery from scratched cd/dvds are also available. Do check out the site for more details.

Have you ever used a professional data recovery company to recover data for your company? How effective was it? Do let me know your opinions! Thanks for reading