Hey Motorola cell phone users! Tired of having a generic cell phone ringtone? Don't want to pay $0.99 to some fly-by-night mailbox flooder for a non-transferable soundclip? Well, fret no more! You can make custom ringtones on your Mac!

When I decided to upgrade my external storage I began looking at newer firewire hard drives. I've had good experiences with LaCie and liked their 500 GB Quadra

Follow the experience of a recent switcher at http://confessionsofanexwindowsuser.wordpress.com

Welcome to the fold, Mr. Shepherd. We hope you enjoy the experience.

From "Zeke" at MacObserver.com (a great Mac news site, if you are looking for the latest headlines and things going on in the Mac community), a wonderful tutorial on file permissions in OS X.

MacMentor's own Teacher617 celebrated the new year by having an article published in the January 2008 issue of About This Particular Macintosh . See how she combines classic children's literature and the ilife suite into a truly unique project. If you are already a regular ATPM reader and have already seen the article spread the word. If you are not a regular reader this article is a good place to start. Thanks to sidewall for starting this thread which inspired the article. Intruder also gets credit for providing some "encouragement" to get things started.

Sometimes I am amazed at the variety of content that iTunes can manage and play. Music, video clips, Internet streams, and ringtones are all at your disposal. The only problem is that it can take several mouse clicks to get to the content you're favorite content. Did you ever wish iTunes had presets like those on your car stereo? Apple didn't exactly build that feature into the current version of iTunes but you can. All you need is a Mac with Tiger or Leopard installed, a basic understanding of Automator, and the tips I'll share with you. In this month's How To column for About This Particular Macintosh I discuss Creating iTunes Content Presets. If you've never used Automator don't worry, links to everything you need to know are in that article. While you're there check out some of the excelent content at ATPM. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

A new feature has been added to the MacMentor Home Page.

Miscellaneous Musings. A place for you to comment on the world of tech.

Ground Rules:

NO POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS..... That is not the purpose of this site.

KEEP IT CIVIL.... The point is to have a reasoned discussion, not to call people names. If you disagree with someone, don't be childish about it. Remember, there are two sides to every story and people are entitled to their opinions. Reasoned rebuttals will be accepted. Name calling will be deleted.

THIS IS NOT A PLACE TO BASH.... The point is to open up discussion, not to slam other products, people, companies, etc. This is not to say that you can't bring up negatives (like "squirting seems pointless to me"), but be reasonable about it ("people who think "squirting" is useful are total morons" is probably a bad approach).

NO FLAMEFESTS.... See points 2 and 3.

There's a million app launchers out there and I swear I've tried them all only to revert back to just using OS X's plain old dock. For some reason, none have ever clicked with the way I use my Mac. I've tried QuickSilver, Butler, LaunchBar, DragThing among others but usually long before the trial period ends the new launcher is long gone from my hard drive.