May 2009: Monthly Archive

Entering this contest counts as an entry in TiPb’s Birthday Bash grand-prize draw for an Unlocked ColorWare iPhone 3G!

Woohoo! The week is done, Saturday’s here and it’s time for… another Birthday Bash contest? Oh, yeah, and also fun!

This time the fabulous folks at ngmoco have given us not one, not two, but three (3!) of their astounding games to gift on to three (3) of you:

• Topple 2: Enjoy the classic Topple experience, but master the new modes as well. Upside-down mode inverts gravity for a topsy-turvy play experience. Balance mode lets you weigh two towers against each other. Power Tower mode challenges you to build a power line using conductive blocks. Rescue mode uses your tower building skills to save the precious golden egg.

• WordFu: Shake your letter dice and spell as many words as you can before the clock runs out. Build up your score by unleashing an endless word barrage! Freeze time, flick dice for better letters, and let loose a fiery spelling fury! Once you’ve mastered it on your own, take on your friends over WiFi. Dominate the leaderboard on your quest to earn WordFu Belts and become a true WordFu Grand Master. Once no worldly man can defeat you, play Shaolin Style for the highest WordFu challenge!

• Rolando: Rolandoland has been invaded and the Rolandos need your help! Use innovative tilt, tap and Multi-Touch controls to solve physics puzzles, toy with interactive environments, and evade pesky enemies as you lead the Rolandos to victory.

But wait, there’s one more thing!

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UPDATE: Anon in the comments points out that, per Apple knowledge base, it’s totally real. Boy, I need to move to a warmer country!

Jeff sent this in and none of us have ever seen it before (then again, it’s still cold in Montreal so I’d have to throw my iPhone in an oven to even try and test it):

Don’t sit next to a pool in Scottsdale Arizona when it’s 104 degrees or your iphone will melt away! So how to fix it fast? I put the iPhone between 2 cold beers and it worked!

Anyone else ever see this before?

Twitterrific is looking to be the Alpha and Omega of iPhone Twitter clients. As it was first (before there was even an official SDK!), so it is also now the most recent — in snazzily updated 2.0 form.

So what’s changed? Nothing. And everything. Cliched, maybe, but Twitterrific was originally born from the Iconfactory’s passion for a graceful, gorgeous Twitter reading experience. But then came a host of other Twitter clients that banged the uber-functionality drums and while it seemed like every celebrity with an iPhone clung to the grandaddy goodness of Twitterrific, the unwashed tech-masses wandered elsewhere.

Well, with Twitterrific 2.0, many will wander back. It somehow manages to keep that quick, clean experience but — through UI wizardry — neatly tucks away most every power-user feature imaginable beneath the covers.

Old awesomeness remains — I’ve always loved the ability to quickly, and at any time, change from new tweet to @reply to direct message (dm) at the touch of a tab. New awesomeness is introduced — now I can also tap the “eye” icon to see the tweet I’m replying to for reference, to add another @username to the reply, etc.

Yes, in Battlestar Galactica terms, if Twitterrific 1.0 was the Cylon Centurian, Twitterrific 2.0 is the red-dressed Caprica 6. It has evolved. (And definitely has a plan).

Speaking of which: there’s inarguably the feature-equivalent of an arms race going on among iPhone Twitter clients, and it’s one that greatly benefits users. If the first Twitterrific was a board with a nail in it, and subsequent Twitter clients went from sword to gun, this is our first plasma cannon. And I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Note: Twitterrific 2.0 comes, as it always has, in two versions. There’s Twitterrific (Free with ad support – iTunes link) and Twitterrific Premium ($3.99 – iTunes link). I bought the original Twitterrific Premium and was startled to see Twitterrific 2.0 come to me as a free upgrade. I would easily have paid another $10 for this, much less $3.99. Donation button please?

Full gallery after the break!

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UPDATE: DEADLINE PUSHED BACK TO TUESDAY, MAY 19! See below!

Entering this contest counts as an entry in TiPb’s Birthday Bash grand-prize draw for an Unlocked ColorWare iPhone 3G!

Hard as it may be to believe, not everyone in the ‘verse know about TiPb. Yet. Even some of our friends don’t really know us. That’s where we need your help. In the age of user generated content, in honor of our birthday, we need our users to generate us a little content! Namely:

• A TiPb-themed YouTube video intro!

Introduce us to the world. Not the iPhone hardware — everyone knows about that already! — but the actual blog and forums, the places where we talk and share and rumor and rant.

Yep, just that simple. What teaser would we see before the big budget TiPb sci fi movie? What entrance video would we use before TiPb fights Brock Lesnar for the heavyweight title? What walkthrough would you present for the TiPb iPhone app? (Check out the awesome Birdhouse intro for the current high-bar on that!). How would you tell people to leave Britney alone… but come visit TiPb?! That’s the video we want to see!

Funny, spoofy, dramatic, goofy — just shoot it off your webcam, iSight, camcorder — whatever’s handy — upload it to YouTube, and make sure you include “the iphone blog” in the keywords. Then copy the URL and paste it into our TiPb Birthday Bash: Make Us a Video – Win $100 iTunes Gift Card! forum thread.

We’ll check them out, love them all, and pick one to receive a big, honking $100 iTunes Gift Card thank you!

• Open to everyone with a US iTunes Store account (see here)
• Inappropriate content will not be considered for the contest at the sole discretion of the staff.
• Contest starts now and runs until Tuesday, May 19, at 12pm.

Apple Insider has a pair of reports up, the first of which cites one analyst following up two other analysts who would all really, really like to see AT&T reduce data plan charges by $10 a month.

So would consumers. However, nothing to back it up yet but wishes and analyst musings to make it so.

The second report highlights that if AT&T does drop rates, and drives adaptions, they’ll only reach saturation level faster, forcing Apple to look again at Verizon and their 15 million customers to drive further growth.

Verizon customers would certainly love it, but can Apple wait long enough for LTE-compatibility to roll out?

Lastly, Dmackdaddy tipped us to what looks like AT&T seeking a lot of “retail sales consultants” in the Bay Area. Looks like some other areas may also be stocking up on staff. Regular business cycle, or just one more sign of the big iPhone 3.0 and iPhone next generation release expected for the summer?

Slacker’s music catalog has reached well over 2 million tracks. If you’ve been living with your ears in the offline sand, here’s the skinny:

Slacker is an Internet radio service allowing users to create their own customized music stations starting with either Slacker’s preset stations or their own custom built stations. Slacker offers many traditional genre, specialty and artist stations pre-made by professional DJs like “Today’s Hits”, “80’s, 90’s and Today”, “Country”, etc. while also letting users build entire stations of specific artists just by typing in their name. Users can continue to evolve any of these stations by rating favorite songs and banning artists or songs. Stations can also be fine tuned to play older or newer music, more hits or more eclectic music all through the intuitive interface at Slacker.com.

To celebrate their achievement, and TiPb’s Birthday Bash, we’re teaming up together to not only offer 1 FREE YEAR of Slacker Plus service, but a brand new pair of iharmonix Platinum i-Series Stereo Earphones to listen with — courtesy of the TiPb iPhone Store.

How do you win this one-two-combo punch of prize-ness? Remember our Birdhouse Twitter Notebook give-away from earlier today? This is part two of the same contest. If you entered that, you entered this! If not, what are you waiting for?!

5 chances to win a great app, 1 chance to win a great Slacker Plus radio service AND great set of earphones for FREE! Get to ‘em!

• Must have a Slacker Radio account. They’re free, so if you don’t, go get one.
• Must be able to receive Slacker Radio service, which is US-only.
• Contest is already started! Finishes same time too! Go read them previous rules!

Apple why must you hurt us like this? Ever since the announcement of the iPhone OS 3.0 software you’ve left first generation iPhone owners with a bad taste in their mouths by claiming MMS — Multimedia Messaging Service — would not work on their devices due to “hardware limitations”. Well MacLife went on a mission to find the truth:

We decided to get to the root of the problem by calling up the makers of the chip–Infineon. We contacted an Infineon representative in Milpitas, CA to uncover the details. The gentleman that answered the phone kindly explained that there is no way the Infineon chip inside the original iPhone is incapable of receiving MMS since that function relies on software rather than hardware.

None of the above should shock any of you, in fact TiPb thought this was the case from the moment it was announced during the 3.0 keynote. If developers of Jailbreak apps, such as Swirly MMS, can figure out a way to send a picture via MMS then there must be a genius at Apple who can surely do it, if not better!

MacLife also went ahead and contacted Apple to see what they had to say about this and we are sure all of you can pretty much guess what their response was. If not, here you go:

“Now the hardware has changed enough between these two devices that not all the features will be available on the original iPhone. For instance, MMS and stereo Bluetooth will not be available on the original iPhone.”

If you own a first generation iPhone and don’t plan on upgrading it anytime soon, how do you feel about this? TiPb is curious…

[Via Maclife]

Birdhouse isn’t your 9-to-5, six-pack guzzling iPhone Twitter app. Birdhouse ($3.99 – iTunes link) your fine wine sipping special occasion iPhone Twitter app. It doesn’t try to do everything; indeed it does only one thing:

• It crafts tweets.

And it does it very, very well. The connoisseurs over at — love the name — Sandwich Dynamics have given us five (5) copies to give to you. How can you get one? Wicked obvious:

See, it’s TiPb’s birthday. Yep, we’re getting older and we’re just the slightest bit bummed about that. What would make us feel oh, so much better about it is this?

• A “happy birthday” tweet. Scratch that. A highly crafted happy birthday tweet.

Get on over to Twitter and give us your slickest, sweetest, most humorous, most ironic, most iconic, punniest, or just plain most awesome happy birthday tweet. Be sure to include @theiphoneblog (our Twitter name) and this URL: http://bit.ly/14rREB (where we’re having the Birthday Bash).

• Must have access to US App Store to redeem promo codes
• Must include @theiphoneblog and http://bit.ly/14rREB in happy birthday tweet
• contest ends Sunday, May 10, at 12pm (but get to it quick, as Twitter’s gonna have some down time today!)

Oh, and you’ll need that tweet posted for the next big give away we’re doing in a few hours. Yes this is part 1 of a 2 part contest! We have some gear to give away as part of this next, so what are you waiting for? Tweet us good!

BGR, citing sources of the shinobi-kind, has posted a couple of screen captures showing the Settings for the digital Compass enabled via debug menus in iPhone 3.0 Beta 5.

We’d heard rumors of a digital compass being included in the next generation iPhone — widely speculated for a WWDC 2009 introduction this coming June — but it’s nice to actually see some confirmation.

Google Maps integration is a no-brainer, but could Apple figure out more ways to leverage this? Could 3rd-part developers?

Confession: I bought my first PDA so I could work on some book projects while mobile. Several Palm PDAs, Treos, and Windows Mobiles later, and I was still looking for that holy grail: seamless back-and-forth compatibility between my desktop tools and my handset. Of course, the iPhone didn’t have any document editing features when it was launched, but flashforward to today, and Quickoffice is the first to fill that huge functionality gap. Quickoffice Mobile Suite ($19.99 – iTunes link) sets the bar:

Quickoffice’s integrated application is the essential high-performance mobile office productivity tool for anyone on the go. Experience enterprise-grade Microsoft® Word and Excel® Office functionality with leading-edge innovation and unparalleled ease-of-use. Edit important files with confidence; Quickoffice maintains 100% data integrity and guarantees Microsoft compatibility.

Is this my holy grail? Let’s find out: courtesy of Quickoffice, we’re giving away two (2) copies of the full Mobile Suite to two lucky forum members and all you have to do to win is help me finish my latest story:

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