Ringtone Chop Shop
The Ringtone Chop Shop is a dream come true for anyone who’s looking to make ringtones for their phone, without having to download complicated software or purchase crappy quality ringtones from other websites. That’s right, the Ringtone Chop shop is free. I found it tonight while searching for MP3 trimming/cutting/splitting software, since my cell phone is a Smartphone and isn’t really compatible with most ringtone websites. And unfortunately, Windows Vista doesn’t seem to come with any type of MP3/sound file trimming software. Older versions of Windows, including XP and 98, contained a version of Sound Recorder that allowed you to open AND cut before and after snippets of sound files. Vista doesn’t, which is why I headed to a search engine to drum something up.
At the Ringtone Chop Shop, you can browse existing ringtones for ideas, or get right to work with uploading an MP3 file. When it’s ready for editing, you can play the whole song, and use an easy-to-follow slider to select the part of the song you want to use as your ringtone, and shorten or lengthen that clip however you desire.
Finally, when your ringtone is ready, choose to have it sent to your phone, or even emailed to you (I had mine emailed: quick note here, the Ringtone Chop Shop does not recognize .nu as a valid email address/domain extension)!
I used the Ringtone Chop Shop tonight to create a ringtone from Lily Allen’s “Smile”, and it worked perfectly. My one critique is that the song sounds a bit muffled, but hey, it’s free, so overall it’s not bad at all. 
Rating: 
Carolyn
That was the only thing that I have found that I didn’t like about my “smart phone” (a Blackberry pearl), was the limited ringtones. On my old phone, (a Razr), the ringtones were actual songs — people singing. Now its “just music”. I was able to find songs that “matched” my main callers, but still, that was the one feature I was disappointed with where the phone was concerned.
So when Ethan asked if we could buy a “Ringfactory” CD program, I said yes. Granted, it was only $9.95. But now you tell me we could have done the same thing … for free. *sigh. Oh well. You live and you learn.
Carolyn
(Prairierose from the PU2B forum board)