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.

• Pick a spooky new email tone
• Set custom tones for contacts
• Get quick alerts of incoming messages
• No need to share your email account details with us!
• Simple set-up from GMail, MobileMe and any server which supports “forward a copy” forwarding of email (sorry – NOT Yahoo! Mail)

Giveaway

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.

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:

1. Head over to Pad & Quill’s Little Black Book page and check out all the details.
2. Jump into the TiPb iPhone 4S Forum and leave us a response on the official contest thread telling us what you like most about the Little Black Book and why you want one.
3. That’s it, you’re entered!

So what are you waiting for? Enter now!

Courtesy: Pad & Quil

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!

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

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!

Mobile Nations No Tricks, Just Treats Halloween Costume Contest!

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!

What You Need to Do

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.

Submit Your Photo

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

How and What You’ll Win

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.

From all of us at Mobile Nations, have a safe and happy Halloween!!

Coffee lover, e-reader aficionado, and Instapaper developer Marco Arment put together what he describes as an informal survey of the current library landscape, including iPad and iBooks, Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle app, the Nook color, and Kobo.

If you're going to primarily read periodicals, get the iPad. If you're going to read books, all of these platforms look like safe options.

Check out his comparison charts for books, magazines, and newspapers. It’s not so much his results, which he cautions you take with a grain of salt, but the method he recommends for finding which device or app ecosystem is best for you that’s compelling.

Source: Marco.org

For today only, the TiPb Store has the OtterBox Impact Series Case for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on sale for only $10.95!. That’s a stylish silicone skin with bump and shock protection! Get them before they’re gone!

Shop BodyGuardz Armor Carbon Fiber for iPad 2 now!

Noteshelf is a note-taking app for your iPad – or shall I say: a beautiful note-taking app for your iPad. It comes with 17 digital ink pens, 20 note templates, 15 covers, and much much more. It’s been making its way around the Mobile Nations back offices and let’s just say it’s a stylus-selling, device-draining, can’t-stop-gushing-about-it in meetings hit. Bottom line, a lot of smart people around here think Noteshelf is among the most productive tools they’ve ever used on iPad, and that’s saying a lot.

The most beautiful note taking app ever designed for the iPad. Noteshelf is the handwriting note taker that features super natural digital ink, a stunning UI and a comprehensive toolset that will increase the benefits of owning an iPad by leaps and bounds.

GET ORGANIZED

• Neatly organize all your notebooks on the shelf, each with a cover and title of your choosing.
• Group related notebooks together and label the groups appropriately for better organization.
• Password protect groups of notebooks on the shelf for privacy.
• Rearrange pages within a notebook or move them to different notebooks to reorganize your notes.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR NOTEBOOKS

• Choose from a collection of 20 note templates ranging from simple ruled/checked notebooks to a day planner, task manager, personal journal, music notes and shopping lists to name just a few.
• Create your own note templates in any paint program and import them into Noteshelf to create custom note templates.
• Mix different types of note templates within one notebook.
• Choose from a selection of 15 beautiful covers for the notebooks you create.
• Browse the in-app store for many more professionally designed templates and covers.

COMPREHENSIVE EDITING TOOLS

• 17 digital ink pens that provide the writing experience very close to real-life pen & paper.
• Full set of highlighter pens and erasers.
• Cut / Copy / Paste support to move or duplicate notes. You can even paste your notes from Noteshelf into other apps like email app, for example.
• Write comfortably with your finger or stylus using our special zoom and wrist protection modes.
• Embed and annotate photos. iPad 2 users can take a photo directly from Noteshelf and use it within notes without switching between apps.
• Unlimited undo/redo capabilities should you ever decide to change your mind while taking notes.

SHARE YOUR NOTES

• Email or print your notes directly from Noteshelf.
• Export your notes to EVERNOTE or DROPBOX as PDF or image files.
• Present your notes on an external display by using Apple’s VGA adapter. Use Noteshelf as a whiteboard tool to conduct seminars or facilitate brainstorming sessions.

Giveaway

TiPb is such a fan of Noteshelf for iPad that we’re gifting copies of the app to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! (U.S. App Store account required to redeem gifts, Apple’s rule, not ours!)

Noteshelf is available on the iPad for $4.99.

[App Store link]

Want a stylus to go with it? Check them out at the TiPb iPad Accessory Store or Amazon.com.

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.

Rather than table manners, Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz at CNN have written up a not-so-new list of tablet manners — the dos and don’ts when using your iPad in the office, on a date, or around others in public spaces.

And of course, among the droves of somnambulant screen-tappers are a goodly portion who have no manners. The confusion about what constitutes good “tabletiquette” is understandable — they’re a weird hybrid between smartphones and laptops, and they’re still novel enough that we haven’t as a society agreed upon some codes of conduct.

Pro-tips include dealing with stares, clearing porn links from Safari’s history before handing your iPad to a client — we’ve got you covered there — and keeping it in a case when you’re out on the town. Of course this is nothing particularly new as we’ve all had to deal with rude people talking loudly in restaurants, playing videos without headsets in coffee shops, and the turds in movie theaters who think that it’s perfectly acceptable to check email in a pitch black room while hundreds of others trying to enjoy a movie.

I digress. Ehrlich and Brartz try to address these with some instruction. I address it by becoming more of a recluse. How about you?

Source: CNN