Jim Zimmerman's Technical Blog

Recently, I was up in the heart of San Francisco. As somebody who lives about 15 miles north of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles and gets ok AT&T/iPhone service, I have to say that I think that people that are complaining in the Bay Area are a bunch of spoiled, whining babies. From every corner of the city, I was amazed by the great service I was getting compared to what I get at home. Just goes to show you, it is all relative. Come to Santa Clarita Valley and then you guys might have something to complain about.

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To create a custom SMS tone for a jailbroken iPhone on MacOS from iTunes:

1.) Start iTunes.
2.) Go to Preferences/General.
3.) Click “Import Settings” next to “Ask To Import CD.”
4.) Change “Import Using” from “Mp3 Encoder” or other to “Aiff Encoder.”
5.) Right click on the song you want to convert and go to “Get Info.”
6.) Click on the Options tab and go to “Start Time” and “Stop Time.”
7.) Enter the desired time range that you want and click “Ok.”. It should be less than 30 seconds in duration.
8.) Right click the clip and click “Create AIFF Version.”
9.) Rename the resulting .aif file to sms-received[1-6].cap.
For example: Rename myfile.aif to sms-received1.cap.
10.) Ensure that ssh is installed on your jailborken iPhone.
11.) Replace one of the sms-received[1-6].caf files in /System/Library/Audio/UISounds with your newly created sms-received[1-6].cap file. I used FileZilla to transfer the file from my Mac to the iPhone, but you can use any sftp/scp client or the command line from Terminal.
12.) Now, on your iPhone, you can find your newly create sound in Settings/Sounds/”New Text Message.” The selection names do not change, but you can select each one to hear the sample to find your custom SMS/MMS text sound.
13.) Remember to switch back to Import Settings in iTunes.

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Got my iPhone4 on Wednesday (6/23/2010), so I spent the previous weekend jailbreaking and unlocking my 3Gs. Unfortunately, I used Spirit to jailbreak my 3.1.3 iPhone3Gs with the 05.21.01 baseband and it was the first time I did jailbreak the phone. So I was unable to update it to IOS4. I need it be unlocked to work on Tmobile. Nonetheless, using it was better than I thought it would be, but the signal in my home is really weak unless I am upstairs. I am keeping an eye out to figure out how I can update it to IOS4 and unlock it.

By the way, I like the new phone a lot. I had issues getting it ordered, but I only did it through Apple. And I have to say to everybody that was complaining about AT&T, Apple had their own issues too. A lot of the time was when it was verifying my AT&T account, but there were other times when it was all Apple. I was able to get my order processed at about 5pm Pacific time.

My only issues so far have been the sharp edges. I hate having to use a case, but I think I going to have to. Also, I have noticed the signal degredation, when holding the phone in my left hand, which I do all the time. The case should help with that too.

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