SOS iPhone Backup is a cloud service for storing documents and backing up your photos and contacts on your iPhone. Additionally, you can use your account to backup your computer and Facebook account.

SOS iPhone Backup comes with a free 5 GB account and 50 GB and 100 GB plans are available with a subscription.

SOS iPhone Backup is the ultimate personal protection solution designed to back up your iPhone and protect all your contacts and photos in the SOS cloud. It also lets you stream all of your music straight from your cloud to your device, giving you access to all of your music and photos from anywhere! Share your photos, stream video, access all your documents and more!

Backup your Mac or PC with SOS, and access your files anywhere using the SOS iPhone Backup app.

Giveaway

The good folks at SOS Online Backup have given us a 50 GB SOS account for one lucky TiPb reader! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! Must provide a valid email address to win.

SOS iPhone Backup is available on the iPhone for free and you can sign-up for the service either in the app or on SOS Online Backup’s website.

[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.

The best damn iPhone and iPod touch podcast on the net, hits the air again tonight to talk iPhone 4S, iCloud, iOS 5, and more. Join us!

Time: 6pm PT, 9pm ET, 2am BST!

Place: http://live.tipb.com/live/

(You can watch from iPhone via Ustream Viewer app (here’s how) and iPad (we recommend Duet Browser.)

Look for Mobile Nations in Ustream after 9pm EDT!

If you have any questions or stuff you want us to make sure we cover tweet them to @TiPb, email them to podcast@tipb.com, or leave them in the comments below!

If you’re anything like me, now that you’ve had iOS 5 to play around with for a while, you’re probably already starting to wonder what Apple might have in store for us for iOS 5.1? I’m not talking about an iOS 5.0.1 bug fix update, mind you, but about a 5.1 minor feature enhancement. You know, the kind of iOS x.1 we used to get with the new iPod touch in September back when the iPhone came out in June with iOS x.0.

This year iOS 5 only came out in October so I don’t expect iOS 5.1 until January (iPad 3 feels like an iOS 5.2 update.) We haven’t even gotten a beta yet, so it won’t be any time soon at least. But when it does come, what do you want to see in it?

• iPhone OS 3.1](http://www.tipb.com/2009/09/09/iphone-31-software-walkthrough/) got non-destructive video trimming, Genius for Apps, and a few other, minor tweaks.
• iPhone OS 2.1 got Genius Playlists and a few other, minor tweaks.
• iPhone OS 1.1 got the iTunes (then Wi-Fi) Music Store

So… Genius for iBooks it is? I hope that’s not all. I hope we get the ability to delete individual pictures from Photo Stream and to disable the fast camera access bypass. Siri getting the ability to launch apps would be sweet as well, as would giving Siri the ability to read more than just SMS/iMessages. Speaking of which, being able to tell iMessage not to send if it’s going to fall back on SMS would be nice when chatting with people in other countries. And I’d still like them to stop kicking us out of the App Store every time we make a purchase…

But we need to be realistic — we won’t get huge things like BiteSMS-style interactive notifications, a Theme Store, or anything else in a x.1 update, but we’ll hopefully get just a few more rough edges shaved off.

What are the top things you want Apple to give you in iOS 5.1?

DIRECTV has updated its iPad app and it now offers the ability to use your iPad as a portable TV. Before you get too excited, it can only work within the walls of your own home and does not offer any form of remote viewing access to your content. Of course it does a lot more than just in home streaming to the iPad. It also lets you search, record and control all your DIRECTV content from home or when you are away.

The latest update also adds a few other new features:-

• Turn your iPad into a portable TV and watch your favorite shows in any room of your home. Quickly scroll through a list of channels available to watch on your iPad with a dedicated "Live TV Streaming" Module.
• Get tips in the help section to guide you through features in the app.
• Set parental controls to block live TV channels viewed on the iPad.
• Change start and end times to add padding to a program when setting a recording.

DIRECTV for iPad is a free app but does require a residential DIRECTV subscription and website registered account.

[App Store Link]

 

Clearly a conspiracy to force me to buy a Galaxy Nexus…

Running iOS 5 and iCloud and wondering how you can manually trigger a backup? iCloud will automatically backup at some point during the day when you’re on Wi-Fi, but if you need to replace or restore your phone, or you know you’ll be leaving for a while and want to make sure the backup is done before you go, you do have that option.

Here’s what to do:

1. First tap into your Settings app and tap into iCloud.

2. On this screen you’ll see a list of all the services you are syncing with iCloud.
3. Scroll down a bit further and you’ll see a button labeled Storage & Backup. Tap it.

4. Scroll all the way down to the Backup sections and you will see a button labeled Back Up Now. Tap it to start creating an iCloud backup.

5. iCloud will begin creating a backup for you. It can do this in the background so you can continue using your device like normal while the process completes.

iCloud will create backups for you regularly but it will only perform a backup when you are connected to Wifi and plugged in to a charging outlet. So as a note to users on tiered data plans, if you need to create an iCloud backup manually at least make sure you are on Wifi if at all possible. If you have any other questions about iCloud backups or anything iOS in general, check out our TiPb forums for all questions related to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch!

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…)

Sorry, but when the Charlotte Observer reported that Apple was planning to build a solar farm across from their massive North Carolina data center, that’s the headline that popped into mind.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

Source: The Charlotte Observer

Dan from WPCentral is over in London getting his formerly slab-hating hands on the first steel and glass tech to run Windows Phone 7.5 Mango… from Nokia. It’s dubbed Lumia and Dan wants one. Badly.

The device is pretty smashing. The screen really is one of the best we’ve ever seen both in terms of color (“wet” blacks) and just how it pops up at you. The touch sensitivity, always a finicky setting, seems perfect to us on the device as well. The unibody design makes it truly an elegant piece of art and with a top notch camera, really makes this an excellent device.

Check out the video, and WPCentral‘s complete Nokia World and Lumia coverage and then let us know — do you think Nokia and Microsoft together can give iPhone I run for its money?

Since I began using smartphones in 2004, they’ve become an indispensable part of my daily workflow. When I bought my first iPhone (a 3G in 2008), that workflow changed immensely, and for the better. The wide variety of apps available for the platform and the connected nature of the tools Apple provides make iOS a very compelling choice for managing many aspects of our business.

Systems and Information Management

At Nickelfish, I do a lot of different things, but a large part of my daily routine is maintenance of all our systems, both user desktops and laptops as well as our online accounts, backups, and services. I use a combination of apps to manage all of this easily. 1Password syncing to Dropbox means I have all the information for everyone’s accounts as well as software licenses and secure notes at my fingertips. I use Screens to monitor a few different machines via VNC around the office, making sure backups and updates are running and completing, and test machines are still testing the way we need them to. I use a variety of Dropbox-linked text editors to take and refer to notes throughout the day, notably WriteUp and Elements on iOS and nvALT (a Notational Velocity fork by Brett Terpstra) on my MacBook Pro.

Mail, Calendar and Contacts

I’m currently using iCloud for my contacts, personal calendars and a personal email account. But we synchronize our company mail, contacts, and calendars with a Google Apps business account, so we’re set up with the standards on everyone’s Macs. Apple Mail and iCal run all day, and we all have those accounts hooked into our phones too. We used to run iCal server off of our Xserve internally and had our mail hosted externally, but we made the decision to bring everything together into Google Apps several months ago because of the availability of apps plugging into it. iOS has a ton of different calendar apps that can either sync with Google or with the iOS calendar accounts, as well as apps that tie into Google Docs, so people can choose how they want to hit those services, and there’s definitely something for everyone.

After Hours Communication, Tasks and Alternatives

When I’m out of the office, I rely on a few of the iPhone’s heavy hitters – Mail and iMessages – to stay in touch, as well as a few fantastic third-party apps. I use Verbs for IM when I’m away from the computer, since work doesn’t always stop at 5pm each day, and I’ve begun using a combination of Captio (see my Pick of the Week) for dropping to-do items in my inbox and the new Reminders app with Siri when I either can’t or don’t want to use my hands to remember something. I’m currently using WeekCal in place of the iOS default calendar because of a few great calendar views I prefer, but that seems to change on an almost weekly basis (no pun intended).

Ultimately, the best thing about using iOS to keep everything moving is that there are so many choices and so many ways to get things done, I can always switch things up if I get tired of an app or need new features. My 3G use is relatively modest, so I’ve also recently made the jump from a grandfathered unlimited AT&T data plan to a 4gb Data Pro with tethering, so that I can more easily stay online when we’re out at meetings with limited or unavailable wi-fi access, which happens all too often. Hopefully this allows me some more freedom as I continue to rely on iOS to make all the things I’m currently juggling stay in the air.

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!

• Movie Remote Kids: Control playback of your movies on one device and remote control it with another. Now with TV Out using a composite or HDMI connection cable on supported hardware. On sale! [$0.99 for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

• Lil Painter: An interactive coloring book which offers gorgeous illustrations that are simple to paint and it’s meant to increase children’s imagination. [$0.99 for iPad - App Store link]

• WEB To PDF for iPad: Convert web pages into PDFs. Don’t want a bunch of single paged PDFs? WEB to PDF allows you to convert several web pages into a single PDF! [$1.99 for iPad - App Store link]

• Disassembly 3D: Ultimate Stereoscopic Destruction: Simulates the experience of taking everyday objects apart. Remove screws, bolts, nuts and every single part with your bare hands. All with realistic disassembly physics! [Free for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

• LifeTopix: Lets you capture, track, connect, know and act upon all the information in your life! Get things done – everything – your own way! [$4.99 for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

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.