Happy Labor Day!

Introduction

I’m an ironclad skeptic when it comes to free deals. I rarely bother to even look at something offered for free when it crosses my path.

But its Labor Day and I’m chilling just a little instead of working on a video for YouTube about decluttering a free Amazon Fire tablet’s homescreen. So, when I saw this today on How-to Geek I was in the right frame of mind to be summarily disappointed.

A 1 in a Million Chance Prevails

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me that this was a scam…but the reverse wasn’t true either. It really only dawned on me how unique this offer was when I arrived at the download page. But one thing on the information page leading up to it did sound promising (shown below.)

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We created the tones we’ve always wanted; sophisticated, professional, and envyingly fashionable.

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There are 3 Collections which are described here. All are prefaced with the above statement. The site seems safe enough and nicely designed too.

The Download Page Confirms My Good Fortune

I’ve been there before…everything seems good until that very last moment when I click on the download link.

Once again however I was in for a surprise. I was met with the webpage shown below when I clicked on the download link.

Still not entirely believing my luck I scrolled down a little further looking for the box where I was required to create a user account and enter my credit card #…which wouldn’t really be charged but was needed for some bogus reason.

Instead I found the statement below and I finally understood that this wasn’t a scam at all but a pretty cool sort of tribute to the author’s former business partner, Jeff Essex. The author is Joel Hladecek.

What to Do After Downloading the Notification Tone Collections

I downloaded the ios collection which is in a zip file, so I imported it into GoodReader. You can use any file sharing app to place it in. Then I opened GoodReader and unzipped the file to view its contents. Inside the file are Read Me Instructions which explain how you import the tones into iTunes and then sync them to your device.

Since I don’t have an Android phone…just a tablet…I didn’t download the Android tones, so I can’t give specific instructions for what to do. But the ios files seem very easy for anyone to use just by following the great written instructions.

Sample of Some of My Favorite ios Tones

I’ve never tried to upload an audio file to WordPress, but I’ve been wanting to give it a shot. So, below is (hopefully) an audio file you can play which is a sample of some of the tones I liked the best in the ios collection (there were a lot to choose from and this sample is tiny!)

More About Joel Hladecek (the free tone benefactor)

I always want to know the reasons behind things. In this case I was curious about who Joel and Jeff really were. I can’t say that I got too far in that pursuit because I became immediately distracted with a section on Joel’s website entitled ‘Messages from the Future.’ I found this to be so entertaining that I never really moved past it…and then it was time to go. So, while I can’t tell you much more about our benefactors, I can tell you that The Interactivist’s Messages from the Future are fun and interesting!