Cleartones are the antidote to all the janky ringtones 'enjoyed' by the kids of today
Remember the Crazy Frog? Those were the dark, dark days of cellphone ringtones. Now, annoying novelty tunes seem to have been replaced by one of two things: a tinny snippet of some currently popular tune, or a bell that mimics an old landline phone and makes me pull my own phone out of my pocket every time I hear it.
Sound and music designer Hugo Verweij wants to fix this, and he has composed Cleartones to do it. These super-simple ringtones are minimalist snippets of sound which will both still the cacophony of a typical city scene, and cut through the racket letting you know that your phone, and only your phone, is ringing.
You can preview four of the 50 tones on Hugo’s Cleartones page, and if you’re willing to shill for him in one of your Tweets, you can download those four tones for free. I took one for the team and grabbed the tones for testing, and they are indeed clear, precise, minimal and yet still piercing. You’ll need an iPhone to use them, or you can convert the M4R ringtone files to MP3 using the software of your choice.
I tried to convert them for my piece-of-crap Samsung “smart” phone, but it just has a kind of spastic fit whenever you try to play them, so you’ll have to see for yourself whether you can actually hear them in public places. The only shame is that we still have to have ringtones at all. Why can’t the rest of the world civilize itself and just email people instead of calling them?
Cleartones product page [Cleartones]
See Also:
- Please, No! Video Ringtones for IPhone
- Five Antisocial Gadgets That Should be Banned
- Islamic Ringtones Get Thumbs Down
Full story at http://feeds.wired.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/Jhwu1yb3DjI/
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