AAUG Reviews

by Dave Enders ,AAUG Member

So you have an iPhone and you want to install custom ringtones on to your phone. How do you do it ? Well if you purchase the song through the iTunes store , Apple will gladly sell you another copy for you to make a ringtone suitable for your iPhone. You can also use Garageband to make a custom tune and then Send Ringtone to iTunes command. But what if you have some of your own music that you want to make ringtones with ?

Well the good folks at Ambrosia Software have created iToner to do just that task for you !. Please note that iToner simply syncs the ringtones you drag on it to your iPhone. From my using it, it doesn’t seem to interact with iTunes. I would had assumed it had to and the documentation was a bit lacking here. Well after fiddling with for about 15 mins , I had my custom ringtones installed on my iPhone. Ringtones installed on your phone will not show up under the Ringtones folder in iTunes.

If you have an audio file , you will probably want to edit it for this I used Fisson by Rogue Amoeba. I saved my files in AAC format which gave me the .m4a extension. iToner works with MP3, AAC, WAVE or AIFF format files.

You can drag and drop files or used the Advanced tab and select playlists from iTunes. It will not move any protected content purchased from the ITMS to your phone. (more…)

by LeLinda Bourgeois ,AAUG Member

Wow! This program is amazing! Immediately upon opening, I was able to snap a picture of my desktop without even knowing how the program works. I generally identify the user friendliness of a program by how quickly I can use it. If I don’t need to consult the user’s manual, I give it a high rating for usability.

Snapz Pro will instantly capture anything on your screen with a quick punch of 3 keys (default is ctrl, option, 3.) You can easily select the entire screen or just a portion of it and then save in a variety of formats, my favorites being .jpg and .pdf. You can even place a watermark if you’re worried about copyright protection. Dual monitors? No problem, Snapz Pro will capture both!

This program is perfect for those who are writing an instructional manual or demonstration. You can even use it just to show your best friend your latest computer software. If you need video recording capabilities, Snapz Pro can easily record and save video segments for you. You can purchase the program with or without the video recording feature. Without video, it is reasonably priced at just $29. With video, you’ll need to pay $69. All in all, its an easy program to work with and will save you valuable time in creating your projects.

My main thing is that I got confused easily between which was my real desktop and which had been captured. Another difficulty I had was when it auto opened a movie I made; the movie was bigger than the screen and I could not get the handles that I needed. (more…)

by LeLinda Bourgeois ,AAUG Member

Start out with the video tutorials and this will be a very easy to use and practical program. Especially for those who are into all things audio. There is so much that you can achieve and do with this program. Ambrosia makes it easy as pie to use. The video tutorials are simple and very straightforward. I love the fact that you can record Skype calls on here and that is probably the biggest thing that I liked about it. It was a breeze to get recording quickly, but obviously there is at least a little bit of a learning curve when doing the editing. My podcast has been held up in the online interview department due to not having a good, effective, and easy to use way to record calls. Luckily Wiretap studio came to my rescue and solves this problem for me. There are so many neat things about this program, if you are into audio you will deff want this program.
One drawback for me seems to be at this point, and perhaps it is because I am new to it, but it seems that there are many different pieces to this program and they all pop up in different areas of your screen i,e two inches here two inches there etc.. I would like to see it a bit more streamlined and perhaps all in the same spot, and opened in one window; however this may add difficulty to the program. The only other thing I did not care for was that sometimes when I talked into the mic my voice did not transpose on the spot but there was a lag and it confused me and my thinking more than anything. I also would like the ability to download the video tutorials and perhaps you can, I just couldn’t. And now back to the positive….
I love the fact that you can add TWO inputs and record interviews instead of sharing a mic (more…)