[For proper disclosure - I am co-founder of a company that enables extending of rich media to mobile phones. The service, which will launch soon, will involve some overlapping with Phone Sherpa. However, it is significantly different in purpose, technology, model and feature-set so I feel comfortable with my objective view of Phone Sherpa]

I bumped into Seattle based Phone Sherpa by coincidence. Phone Sherpa provides a web based service which let’s you create your own ringtones and wallpapers from your own personal content. The service is available internationally, is well localized (worked very well with my Israeli orange phone) and is supported by a wide array of mobile phones. As a matter of fact, it looks like all you need is support for MP3, SMS and Mobile Internet (WAP).

The ringtone editor is pretty advanced. It let’s you crop and equalize the media file you wish to “ring tone-ify” and review your findings before you actually send them to your phone. It did go through some hiccups on my Firefox, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Phone Sherpa. The Wallpaper editor supports cropping as well and also offers some visual affects. Nicely done.

There are a few shortcomings to the service though. The upload time is pretty long for an average song but I guess that’s inherent to such a web service. You do get sample credits , but very quickly you need to pull out your credit card, a task not so simple when you consider the young age of the target crowd. The credit plans themselves are not that cheap, although Phone sherpa does offer yearly and unlimited plans for the heavy users.

I am a very big believer in the power of personal content. Services like Phone Sherpa that let you extend and make use of your own content are making a nice step forward.