Experts agree that listening to music above 85dB can cause hearing damage. Most parents probably remember their parents telling them to turn the music down. The difference nowadays, however, is that kids (and grownups) are listening to excessively loud music piped directly into their ears via the ubiquitous earbud headphone and parents don’t know when to yell “Turn it down!” The modern solution is headphones from iHearSafe which always remain below the 85dB level no matter how high the volume is cranked up.

You can create a custom iPhone ringtone from most iTunes songs by purchasing the song for 99 cents, downloading it, choosing your start and end points using the iTunes software, then buying your custom ringtone from iTunes for another 99 cents. For details on this iTunes feature, read Dave Taylor. Chris Pirillo however, has a different method that bypasses paying iTunes and lets you create a ringtone from any song in your iTunes library for free.

The new iTunes 8 comes with a recommendation engine named Genius. If you give it permission to read your music library (which will take a bit of time, depending on how many songs you have), Genius will create playlists for you based on a single song as a seed and recommend songs from the iTunes Music Store. Learn more at Apple and at PC World.

Using free tools, Tinkernet’s Daniel Davis explains how to create an Internet radio station that all your friends can listen to. The tools needed are Winamp, Shoutcast DSP Plugin, Shoutcast Sever, and a supply of digital tunes to play. Sorry, today’s tip is for Windows users only.

There are a variety of ways to convert an iPod from Windows to Mac, depending on how much metadata (such as playlists, album art, ratings, and date added) you want moved, and how your Windows iTunes library is configured. To transfer with CDs or DVDs, use iTunes Backup. To transfer a lot of music quickly (but not the metadata) try this technique from Cnet.com. Or, to use the iPod itself as a transfer hard drive, with these instructions from Apple.

Leaving your iPod in a hot car will quickly eat up its battery charge. It’s best to leave your portable music player in the trunk, where it is likely to be cooler than in the glove compartment or passenger cabin For more tips on preserving iPod battery life, read “iPod Tips: Play On – Get More Battery Power From Your Player” .




Gary “Yuma Yuma” Broslma, unintentional star of a homemade lip-sync music video that went viral last year is back with a new video and a new commercial website . If you’ve managed to avoid all the Yuma Yuma or YouTube excitement, this is your chance to catch up.

Although your computer can play both MP3 CDs and audio CDs, most car and home CD players can not play compressed MP3 audio. If you want maximum compatibility, you need to specify “Audio CD” format when you burn your own discs. For more about compression and audio formats, read Ask Leo.

Got photos? Got CDs? How about creating a cool CD cover from your own photos? This fun tool from Flagrant Disregard will create a personalized, printable page that integrates your photo and text into a CD or DVD cover that you simply print, cut, and fold. You can upload a photo from your own computer, or use an online photo from Flickr or your own website.

What started as music trend, is now a popular Internet genre: a mashup is a mix of two (or more) tools to make a new one. For example, JackTracker is a Google Map that tracks the whereabouts of the television character Jack Bauer from the Fox show 24. To keep up with all the newest mashups, check out Mashup Feed.