It always nice to have some fun early on, so let us indulge for a moment.

While watching this YouTube clip of a 300 baud modem hooked up to a phone, it occurred to me how far the world has come since I first really stepped into the online world with my first Hayes modem. All those old pinging and clanging noises, boops and beeps that used to connect me to CompuServe and AOL (even before the web). How quaint! Well why not bring back those sounds in the form of a ringtone? What fun! Imagine the possibilities:

Scenario 1
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, excuse me. I just need to connect to the net to download some email.

Scenario 2
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, that’s a fax. It’s urgent. I gotta take this.

I give you the ultimate new dork accouterment, the modem/fax ringtone (Creative Commons Licensing 1.0 this is a reformat of the original):

• iPhone (m4r)
• MP3

These are the sounds of a 56kbps modem according to my friend @chrismarcellino who can tell by just listening. My ideal ringtone though would really be the sounds of a 14.4kbps modem, which I know when I hear it. Thoughts?

File hosting for ringtones thanks to Dropio.com!