Convert any MP3 into an iPhone ringtone !

I like to assign certain special ringtones for certain contacts on my iPhone.  My blackberry will let me use MP3 format as ringtones, but iPhone don’t . It needs a .m4r format ! So I decided to figure out how to convert them to m4r.
There are few free softwares out there that will do the trick, but I didn’t want to bloat my Mac with those.  Apparently iTunes can handle it with just a few tricks.  With few clicks and right clicks I got it done. Here is how :

1. Start iTunes and find the song you want to convert. (It must be an MP3.)
2. Right-click the song and choose Get Info.
3. Click the Options tab.
4. Check the Start Time and Stop Time boxes, then enter times for each (ringtones cannot be  more than 30 seconds ). I tried 0:00 and 0:30,  on each of the songs.
5. Click OK, then right-click the song again and choose Create AAC Version. This should create a 30 second AAC version of the song.
6. Drag that version out of iTunes and into the folder of your choice.
7. Delete the 30-second version from iTunes and undo the Start Time/Stop Time changes to the original.
8. Open the folder containing the 30-second AAC file you dragged out of iTunes, then change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r. Double-click it and it immediately gets added to iTunes’ ringtone library.
9. Finally, sync your iPhone. When it’s done, you can head into the settings and select your new ringtone.

I just wish iTunes could just convert any song to a ringtone by itself. Not sure whether it has anything to do with privacy or something like that.