Top 10 secret Siri commands

Maybe you’ve already mastered the basic Siri commands, read our tips on setting up relationships and improving pronunciation, and even joked around a bit and are itching to try out something a little more ninja? Well look no further! You’ve shared with us your favorite secret Siri commands and we’re sharing them back to all our readers.

There are some other super-ninja style tips in the links below, like CalDAV accounts so Siri can post to Remember the Milk, or adding URL schemes to get Siri to open apps. Do you have any other secret, advanced Siri commands? Let us know in the comments!

More: CrushApps, TUAW, MacRumors Forums, TechLand

Daily Tip: How to purchase more iCloud storage

Now that you’re running on iOS 5 with iCloud and creating OTA backups, you might find you’re quickly blowing through the 5GB that Apple gives away from free. While you can turn off some individual things, like Camera Roll backups, to save space, if you’re backing up multiple devices or lots of data, you might still need more iCloud storage. Surprise, surprise, Apple gives you the ability to buy it.

You should now be good to go with even more storage to back up all of your content to iCloud. And if you think you’ve purchased too much storage you can always go back in and downgrade your storage whenever you like.

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

iPhone 4S Photoshop template for developers and designers

Marshall Bock has posted a set of iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 Photoshop templates on his blog. They include:

Handy asset for both developers and designers.

Source: Marshall Bock via @flyosity

Talking to Siri: Learning the Language of Apple’s Intelligent Assistant

The inimitable Steven Sande and extraordinary Erica Sadun of TUAW fame have put together an Amazon Kindle book designed to help us help Siri help us.

This short, focused book teaches you how to use Siri from the ground up. You’ll learn how to achieve the the highest recognition rate as you talk. You’ll discover which categories Siri responds to and find out how to make the most of each category in your conversations. You’ll discover practical how-to mixed with many examples to inspire as well as instruct.

Talking to Siri: Learning the Language of Apple’s Intelligent Assistant is a available now for less than the price of a fancy mixed coffee beverage. Go grab it. Then ask Siri where to find a good fancy mixed coffee beverage that you can enjoy while reading it.

Source: Amazon.com

Iterate 9: Zhephree

Marc, Seth, and Rene iterate through Adobe Un-blur and CSS Shaders, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, TAT’s Cascade, interrogate webOS developer Zhephree with the help of PreCentral’s Derek, and answer questions on backups. This is Iterate!

If you’re one of the best-of-the-best-of-the-best in mobile design for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, webOS, or Windows Phone, we’d love to get you on the show, or if you’ve found a drop-dead gorgeous app on any platform and really want us to talk about it, contact us and let us know.

Streets of Rage 2 App Available Free Today Only

Sega’s Streets of Rage 2 is normally priced at $2.99, but it is available for free today. Head on over to the App Store and href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id425567844?mt=8">download your free copy.

href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/mzl.muexdapc.420x420-75.jpg" class="lightbox" >src="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/mzl.muexdapc.420x420-75.jpg" alt="Streets of Rage 2" title="mzl.muexdapc.420x420-75" width="420" height="280" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-24860" />

As one of four skilled fighters, take to the streets and battle your way through the corruption that grips the city in order to save your friend Adam from the clutches of Mr. X.

Adam, the city’s original hero, has been kidnapped and it’s up to Skate, Axel, Blaze, and Max to save him. The city is overrun with hardened thugs and criminals, but armed with your amazing fighting abilities, you’ll be well equipped to take down these villains and save Adam and the rest of your city!

Source: href="https://twitter.com/#!/idannyocean/status/130073834958241792">@iDannyOcean

Assassin’s Creed Rearmed Is Free Multiplayer Stabbing

style="text-align: left;">href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/acipad_header.png" class="lightbox" >class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-24840" title="acipad_header" src="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/acipad_header.png" alt="" width="606" height="198" />href="http://itunes.apple.com/app/assassins-creed-rearmed/id473629046?mt=8">Assassin’s Creed Rearmed — sometimes called href="http://www.ubi.com/AU/Games/Info.aspx?pId=10216">Assassin’s Creed Multiplayer Rearmed — is a new iOS entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and it’s all about sneakily murdering your friends. You can play 4-player online mode, 1v1 bluetooth, or single player practice mode as you level up and upgrade your various assassins and their weaponry.

style="text-align: left;">The multiplayer and characters seem based on those from href="http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/brotherhood/">Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood which had a wildly successful multiplayer mode.

style="text-align: left;">And even better, as part of href="http://freeappaday.com/">FreeAppADay, it’s free to download for a brief time — but as with almost every game on iOS, there are in-app purchase to bolster the pursestrings of the developers.

iPhone 4S launches in 22 additional countries today

Apple is set to launch the iPhone 4S in 22 additional countries today, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Apple took over 1 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours in the initial 7 countries where the iPhone 4S launched, and sold through over 4 million sales during the opening weekend before opening up international pre-orders.

Will you be picking up an international iPhone 4S today? If you’re having trouble deciding which generation, color, or capacity to get, we have a massive iPhone 4S buyers guide ready and waiting, and our complete iPhone 4S review to give you the full picture.

Check it out and then come back and tell us which one you ordered!

Apple investigation iPhone 4S battery life complaints

Apple is reportedly looking into complains about iPhone 4S battery life. Apple has done this before, typically after the release of new versions of the operating system, like 3.0, and asked users to install diagnostic utilities to help them track down the problem.

Previously on TiPb we’ve run a poll asking about your iPhone 4S and iOS 5 battery life, and we’ve giving you our top tips for troubleshooting and extending your battery life, but it’s nice to see Apple still takes the issue seriously. Hopefully any problems they do find will be addressed in an upcoming iOS 5.0.1 update.

Source: The Guardian

App Giveaway: SpookyTones for iPhone

With SpookyTones, you can give your email alerts a creepy sound – just in time for Halloween! In order to change your email tone, you will need to have your email forwarded to a special email address and the SpookyTones will push your wailing alerts. You can choose to make all your email spooky, or just certain contacts.

When you run SpookyTones, we’ll give you a special email address @mailtones.net – forward A COPY of your email to that address and any mail you receive will make your iPhone howl with your chosen tone. You can choose to copy all your email to mailtones.net, or use filters to just forward some. When mail arrives at our server, we send a Push message to your iPhone – causing it to scream, wail, growl or bark! Please make sure you can forward a copy of your email to a second address – gmail and MobileMe users can do this, but we understand Yahoo Mail does not provide this facility. MailTones uses the Amazon EC2 platform, to allow for extreme reliability and stability.

The good folks at Electric Pocket have given us 5 promo codes for SpookyTones to giveaway to our Halloween-loving readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! We’ll choose the winners on Sunday night, so that they can have their spooky email on Halloween Day. Must provide a valid email address to win.

SpookyTones is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

New and updated iPhone and iPad apps for Friday, October 28

Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

Pocket God: Journey To Uranus: An interactive universe that you can explore, discover your godly powers, and play games. Feed the volcano god on Earth! Fight a war on Uranus! Ward off robots from another universe! Navigate the high-tech highways of Mercury! And more! Some games are inspired by your favorite classic video games. Now with EPISODE 6: DECAPITHON! [$0.99 for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

Knight vs. Zombies A quick, action-packed arcade zombie capture game that will have you craving for more brains than the undead on all hollows eve! [Free for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

GoodReader for iPad: Now with Text Lookup for PDF files. Select a text in a PDF file and use the magnifying glass button on the popup menu to find this text in Dictionary, Google, and Wikipedia. [$4.99 for iPad - App Store link]

iCheat: The perfect student toolbox, providing a bundle of school oriented features. Getting your maths done or glancing at your class notes has never been easier! [$3.99 for iPhone - App Store link]

Print Utility: View, print and share documents on your iPad. Print Utility is easiest way for you to store files, read documents and print anything your want, including email attachments, right from the iPad. [$3.99 for iPad - App Store link]

Any other big apps or game releases or updates today? If you pick any of these up, let us know what you think!

Check out the promo video of Pocket God’s update below!

Giveaway: Pad & Quill Little Black Book for iPhone

We’re big fans of Pad & Quill so when they offered to give the TiPb Nation the chance to get one of five (5) of their gorgeous Little Black Book cases for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 for FREE, we jumped on it! (Carefully, we didn’t want to risk damaging any of those Baltic Birch and Italian bonded leather beauties!). Like we said in our Little Black Book review:

If you’re an iPhone owner tired of iPad users getting all the moleskin hipster fun, you’re in luck. Pad&Quill have brought both to iPhone with the Little Black Book. From the beautiful binding to the snap of the elastic close to the smell and texture of the materials, it’s just perfectly realized.

And the new version is even better, with a pocket to keep some cards or some cash!

So you want one of your very own? Of course you do! And here’s all you have to do to get it:

So what are you waiting for? Enter now!

Courtesy: Pad & Quil

Samsung Passes Apple In Revenue

href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/28/samsung-overtakes-apple-smartphone">According to the Guardian, this quarter has seen Samsung overtake Apple in revenue to become the largest smartphone maker in the world — but that analysis is based on some pretty glaring assumptions. The most important thing to note going into this is that this is for the last quarter — namely the one href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/apple-q4-results-break-records-still-miss-mark/2011/10/18/">where Apple shares dropped even after record earnings because so many people were waiting on the iPhone 4S rather than the iPhone 4. So this hasn’t exactly been a killer quarter for the iPhone.

The other factor is that this isn’t based on official numbers, but rather on those from an analyst:

Although Samsung declined to give figures for its smartphone or feature phone sales, Jae Lee, a Daiwa Securities technology analyst, estimated that in the third quarter it sold 28m smartphones – well above Apple’s figure of 17m for the period.

Well, if there’s one thing analysts are known for, it’s getting all their numbers and facts right before talking to the press! Oh wait, no, that’s the one thing they’re not known for. Nevermind.

I don’t see it as too unlikely that Samsung has passed Apple in revenue due to flooding the market with Android handsets, but without official numbers and a slightly longer term look at trends, I’m hesitant to draw conclusions.

[via href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/28/the-king-has-fallen-samsung-dethrones-apple-as-smartphone-leader/">TechCrunch]

Sprint iPhone 4S In Stock

While both AT&T and Verizon have limited stock of the iPhone 4S (AT&T has black only), that is not the case with Sprint. According to their href="http://sprint.com/landings/iphone/?ECID=vanity:iphone">updated website, they have the iPhone 4S in stock. Not only that, it’s available in all storage capacities and colors. If you have your heart set on a 64GB white iPhone 4S for Sprint, you’ll want to order now. No telling how long it will take before these go back out of stock.

href="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-28-at-3.19.20-PM.png" class="lightbox" >src="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-28-at-3.19.20-PM.png" alt="Sprint iPhone 4S" title="Screen Shot 2011-10-28 at 3.19.20 PM" width="475" height="327" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-24853" />

Report: Apple Engineers Contacting iPhone 4S Owners Regarding Poor Battery Life

There have been a number of complaints regarding the battery life of the iPhone 4S. Look no further than our forums, for issues related to the href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/threads/battery-draining-with-everything-off.80727/">iPhone 4S battery life. According to The Guardian, Apple engineers have been actively reaching out to iPhone 4S owners, attempting to solve the battery snafu.

href="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/HT1808_01.jpg" class="lightbox" >src="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/HT1808_01.jpg" alt="" title="iPhone 4S poor battery life" width="250" height="375" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-24847" />

“I then got a call from a senior [Apple] engineer who said he had read my post and was ‘reaching out’ to users for data and admitted this was an issue (and that they aren’t close to finding a fix!) and asked lots of questions about my usage and then asked if he could install the file below and that he would call back the day after to retrieve the info. I extracted the file from my Mac after a sync and emailed it to him. He was incredibly helpful and apologetic in the typical Apple way!”

In our href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/iphone-4s-review/2011/10/19/">iPhone 4S review, we found battery life to be somewhat lacking compared to the iPhone 4, but far from terrible. How had has your battery life been on your iPhone 4S?

Source: href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/28/iphone-4s-battery-apple-engineers">The Guardian

Found Footage: Fruit Ninja Movie Trailer

width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fZkbxWMUfco" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fruit-ninja/id362949845?mt=8">Fruit Ninja. Not really coming to a theater near you.

Apple Lossless Audio Codec Goes Open Source

ALAC — href="http://alac.macosforge.org/">the Apple Lossless Audio Codec — is Apple’s own brand of lossless audio compression, and they’ve href="http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/27/apples-alac-codec-is-now-open-source/">released its source code free and into the wild. Released under an Apache license, the codec will shrink an audio file down to almost half its original size without losing any audio quality at all.

ALAC is the only lossless format supported by iTunes, so all those enormous FLAC files you know and love to rip from high quality recordings won’t work on your iPod. Hopefully by ALAC going open source, more organizations will be able to offer files in that format, so you can listen to them without need for further editing.

Like The App Store, Get A Free Game

href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Apps_Codekeeper_JetpackJoyride_LandingPage_FanView_Revised.png" class="lightbox" >class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-24830" title="Apps_Codekeeper_JetpackJoyride_LandingPage_FanView_Revised" src="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Apps_Codekeeper_JetpackJoyride_LandingPage_FanView_Revised.png" alt="" width="519" height="498" />In a move we’ve not seen before, Apple is willing to give you a free iOS game just for being a fan of the App Store. href="https://www.facebook.com/AppStore/posts/265118583523429">Over on Facebook, liking the App Store and giving them access to your public information can score you a free download code for href="http://itunes.apple.com/app/jetpack-joyride/id457446957?mt=8">Jetpack Joyride, a $0.99 app from the makers of Fruit Ninja. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Apple’s offered a free title like this.

Some of the commenters on Facebook are complaining of not receiving the code after they go through the process, and it is USA only, so not everyone will be able to grab it. For those who do, enjoy your 4 1/2 star game for free!

[via href="http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/27/get-jetpack-joyride-for-free-from-apple-via-facebook/">TUAW]

 

Halloween Costume Contest: Email us a photo of you in costume with phone or tablet in hand and you could win!

With Halloween falling on a Monday this year, we know a lot of you will be out this weekend in costume getting your party on. So to celebrate Halloween and the official launch of our new Mobile Nations network branding, we thought we’d have some fun with a cross-site mobile device + costume contest!

When you’re out at Halloween parties this weekend or out trick or treating on Monday, get a photo snapped of you in costume holding your smartphone and/or tablet visibly out in hand. Be scary, funny or do a crazy pose. Whatever you want is cool. Have fun with it. For brownie points, load up TiPb in the web browser or throw a TiPb.com wallpaper on. Group photos with friends and co-workers are welcome too. And hey, if you have a mix of phones in the group photo and want to go for extra-awesomeness, you can load up the appropriate Mobile Nations website onto each different type of phone: TiPb.com on iPhones/iPads; AndroidCentral.com on Android devices; PreCentral.net on webOS devices; WPCentral.com on Windows Phone.

With your photo taken, all you need to do is email it in to halloween@mobilenations.com by midnight PST this Monday, October 31st.

On the morning of November 1st we’ll go through all the photos and pick out a bunch of winners in a variety of categories – scariest costume, funniest costume, sexiest costume, best group photo and more! We’ll put all the winners and other photos received into a video collage and post it up on the blogs Tuesday afternoon.

As for the prizes? Well… it’s Halloween – which means you might get a treat, or this could all be just a nasty trick. But you know us… we like treats. We’re going to keep the treates a surprise though, so take your photo this Halloween, email it in, and stay tuned.

iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Jailbroken On iOS 5

style="text-align: left;">href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Featured11-642x359.jpg" class="lightbox" >class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-24833" title="Featured11-642x359" src="http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Featured11-642x359.jpg" alt="" width="578" height="323" />The Dev-Team’s href="https://twitter.com/#!/MuscleNerd">MuscleNerd has released some great jailbreak news over his Twitter account: they have a preliminary jailbreak for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S over iOS 5. href="https://twitter.com/#!/MuscleNerd/status/129811190066061312">He said:

style="text-align: left;">VERY preliminary 4S JB:title="http://twitpic.com/76vcp4" href="http://t.co/5lgqpLHa" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" data-expanded-url="http://twitpic.com/76vcp4" data-display-url="twitpic.com/76vcp4">http://twitpic.com/76vcp4title="http://twitpic.com/76vct2" href="http://t.co/2WOJ50zS" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" data-expanded-url="http://twitpic.com/76vct2" data-display-url="twitpic.com/76vct2">http://twitpic.com/76vct2 (Huge missing pieces prevent public release. LOTS of work left)

style="text-align: left;">yeah same for iPad2 (but with the same big hurdles ahead too before a public release is possible)

style="text-align: left;">Here’s a short video of current JB working on iPad2:title="http://youtu.be/oJVGl1eRW2A" href="http://t.co/0qbwhPab" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" data-expanded-url="http://youtu.be/oJVGl1eRW2A" data-display-url="youtu.be/oJVGl1eRW2A">http://youtu.be/oJVGl1eRW2A (Just like iPhone4S, lots of hurdles remain, no ETAs)

style="text-align: left;">(For completeness (& post-verification this is real), here’s the iPad2 iOS5 ioreg dump title="http://musclenerd.com/ioreg_ipad2.txt/" href="http://t.co/mM39CN8H" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" data-expanded-url="http://musclenerd.com/ioreg_ipad2.txt" data-ultimate-url="http://musclenerd.com/ioreg_ipad2.txt/" data-display-url="musclenerd.com/ioreg_ipad2.txt">http://musclenerd.com/ioreg_ipad2.txt .. 4S is earlier in timeline)

style="text-align: left;">So it’s obvious we’re a long way from seeing this in anywhere near a complete form. Just keep an eye on this folks, the Dev-Team seem to always come through.

style="text-align: left;">[via href="http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/10/musclenerd-posts-video-demonstrating-preliminary-ipad-2-ios-5-jailbreak">AppAdvice]

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