Ear-Piercing Sirens Used to Drive Teens Away, or Hip High Tech Secret Communication?

Fresh off of Digg's front page.

The so-called "Mosquito" device emits high-frequency noise which is audible — and annoying — to young ears, but generally not heard by people over 20.

OK, so I've seen stories about these for a while. I would really hope that shop owners don't really buy this idea that only people under 20 can hear them. I'm almost 30 and these things drive me batty. Insta-headache.

I just think it's funny that for more than a year now kids have been using the exact same technique to secretly notify each other on cellphones.

Want to make your own Mosquito tone? Fire up Sound Forge (or any editor with a tone generator), and create a tone over 17KHz. I can hear up to 18KHz in my left ear, so I tend to push even higher. You can test yourself, just keep increasing the frequency until you can't hear it anymore. Then just edit the tone (I prefer a series of quick pulses to help differentiate from random noise), and there you have it. A ringtone guaranteed to give me a migraine!

read more | digg story

News Sound Bites - WHOLE TON o STUFF

Yep. There's a lot of news to cover today.

Apple finally gives in on custom ringtones for the iPhone. A not so mysterious "Share ringtone with iTunes" button has popped up in Garageband. It's about time. The ringtone lock down was a stupid, ill advised, arbitrary way to milk customers for extra revenue, while simultaneously providing little to no benefit.

Seibertron.com interviews Frank Welker! Yup, the REAL Megatron. Not to say Hugo didn't do a good job in the movie, but if you grew up in the 80's, this man's voice represented everything that was evil.

It never even occurred to me that they would bother, but apparently they did get "names" for Alvin and the Chipmunks. Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Jesse McCartney voice the rodents in the up coming movie. Why? Really, I mean, why bother? No one cares. They weren't used to promote the movie. You can't recognize the voices. The performances wont be "better" than using true blue VO people. There's no benefit. I don't get it...


The Cincinnati Post takes a look at narration in TV series. I finally saw Amelie for the first time, and Pushing Daisies totally nails the quirky yet emotion tone of that film. Good times.

CNET News has a photo gallery up of Skywalker Sound, a totally drool-worthy look at one of the most advanced post production facilities in the world. Careful clicking on the link, because if you're anything like me, there's going to be a LOT of gear lust...

And lastly (i know right?), Do you own a Wii? Have you noticed an increase in the cockroach population of your abode after your acquisition of said Wii? There's a rumor floating around "teh intarwebs" that the Wii emits a sonic frequency that attracts the little buggers. I don't think it'll stop me from trying to grab one to rock some Mario Kart.

iTunes Hack for FREE RINGTONES

Just posted up on Engadget...

If you read my last story on this, it's just ridiculous to me that ringtones should cost extra on the iPhone. It's another example of them fundamentally missing the market.

If Apple had said "Those other companies make you PAY for ringtones, with Apple the music IS your ringtone!" or some other such nonsense, he could've driven so much more business to the iTunes music store. Instead Apple/AT&T are trying to shear a sheep that's already been shorn (I know that was meta).

The fact that music costs about .99 a song anywhere you go (except eMusic!), and ringtones cost about $1.99, is retarded (and I mean that in the classical sense of the word as in "to retard progress of the music/cellphone industry").

Anywho, there's a story up at Engadget telling us how to get around their 99 cents extra charge:

To get this to work, we hear you only need to rename an AAC track to .M4R, then double click it and iTunes
will automagically load it into iTunes for you. Next time you plug in
your iPhone to sync up, just check off the song in the Ringtones tab
and voila, instant tone gratification.

Read the rest here @ Engadget!

***EDIT***

Having read this over now, it doesn't look like this will work for music purchased through iTunes (which has copy protection on it, but should work fine for unprotected songs (like the ones you rip off CD's).

Also while I'm schilling for Engadget, they've posted a story up regarding your rights, and what protections you have when it comes to making your own ringtones.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: Is it Illegal to Make My Own Ringtones @ Engadget