bamf-hacker in our iPhone 4S Forum wrote up a quick but smart tip on how to use Siri to access Bluetooth and other Setting with only… the power of your voice.

All you need to do is create a contact and in the Web site field put the code for the system preference. for example.

Contact name is Bluetooth and the Web address is prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth

Then activate Siri and say “Bluetooth” the contact card will open with a clickable link right to the Bluetooth settings.

It’s not the much-sought-after “Siri, turn off Bluetooth” feature we’ve all been hoping for, but it’s better than the nothing we have now.

bamf-hacker has also posted the URL schemes for other popular Settings, so hit the link below and get the details!

Source: bamf-hacker from the TiPb iPhone 4S Forums

The best dang iPhone and iPod touch show in the ‘verse hits the net again tonight!

Special guests: Steve Sande and Erica Sadun, of Talking to Siri and http://www.tuaw.com fame.

Time: 6pm PT, 9pm ET, 1am GMT!

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 have been wondering how Siri reacts so quickly when you “raise to speak”, the answer is a tiny infrared LED that’s added into the proximity sensor in the iPhone 4S. iFixIt discovered the sensor after a second look, determining that it shines brightly whenever the screen is activated. The light isn’t visible to the human eye but it’s there. And it’s constantly letting Siri know how close your face is to your iPhone 4S.

It does raise a few questions, though. IR is fairly light on battery drain but every little bit extra does add up. Also, iPhone 4 and other older models lack the extra IR sensor, making it seem even more unlikely Apple will ever offer an official port.

If you’re interested in seeing how it works you can check out iFixIt’s video via the link below.

Source: iFixIt

Former Apple engineer Bret Victor over at Worry Dream has an interesting article up about the future of touch technology. The main focus of the article is how we interact with with devices like the iPhone and iPad using our hands. His main point is that our hands are meant to interact with objects and feel things in a more “tactile” way than simply “photos under glass”.

While companies like Apple have made great strides with devices like the iPhone and iPad, he believes that using our physical hands are the future. That’s how we should interact. He argues that using your hands to touch and feel things is not the same experience as using devices such as the iPad where everything you are “touching” is under glass. And that the sooner we get away from this mindset and move forward, the better.

This technology is a long way off but given how far Apple has always brought us, I can’t help but agree. We’re at the very beginning of a really exciting future.

Source: Worry Dream

Danny Winokur, VP and GM, interactive development at Adobe, confirms earlier rumors that Flash Player mobile is getting scrapped.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

Good for Adobe. Flash, like ActiveX before it, filled holes in the browser HTML was simply incapable of filling on its own — at the time. But time marches on. Now with Adobe, Google, RIM, et al, no longer wasting time in petty competitive feuds with Apple, HTML 5 can move on further and even faster than before.

Source: Adobe Featured Blogs

If you’re looking for a stylish pair of headphones without a hefty price tag – the RF3 LIVE natural wood stereo earphones may be worth taking a second look at. Everything from the design of the actual earbuds down to the elegant packaging makes these headphones stand out from a lot of others in the same price range. But what about the most important feature of a good pair of headphones? Sound quality. Follow along to see how we felt they performed.

When it came to sound quality I thought the RF3 headphones held up extremely well for the price. The headphones themselves are noise isolating and come with a few different sets of tips for a better fit. They were rather comfortable to wear but I wouldn’t suggest them as the best option for athletes or runners as I had them fall out of my ears a few times.

The 3.5MM headphone jack has a longer adapter which also allowed me to use them with virtually any case. One quirk I’ve never really gotten over with my Bose headphones is that the jack is shorter and some cases including bumpers don’t like to play nice with them. That isn’t the case here.

The headphones also have a built-in mic that you can interact with just like you can default Apple earbuds. This means iPhone 4S users can easily interact with Siri quickly and easily. I tested the mic on several occasions and had no issues with Siri picking up on what I was saying even in a semi-noisy environment.

As far as the acoustics and sound while listening to music, I thought they held their own against many other headphones in the same price range. They even performed better than some more expensive headphones I’ve used in the past. The only issue I did see was when it came to bass levels. I felt that they were rather shallow. Even with my iPod settings set to enhance the bass they didn’t seem to perform near as well as my Bose MIE2i headphones. That is not as fair of a comparison though since they are nowhere near the same price range.

Overall, I’d say they perform well for the price if you want a decent pair of headphones that stand out from the rest without breaking the bank. You can find the RF3 LIVE natural wood headphones in the TiPb accessory store for $34.95.

Pros

• Great price for a quality product
• A variety of ear tip pieces included
• Built-in mic works exceptionally well
• Noise cancellation works just as good as most expensive noise isolating headphones
• The sound doesn’t distort when at a high level like some lower priced ear buds
• The headphone jack seems to fit well with almost every case I have, bulky or not

Cons

• Not great for runners and athletes as the headphones don’t offer a very firm and secure fit (or I just have little ears)
• The bass levels seem to be rather shallow compared to other ear buds

Giveaway

Just leave a comment below telling us what you’d listen to if you were given a set of RF3 LIVE Natural Wood Stereo Earphones of your very own! A special song? A great audio book? A bunch of Mobile Nations podcasts? What?

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!

• System Monitor with Battery Max: A comprehensive all in one health check app. on the App store, that frees memory, boosts battery performance, monitors your system memory, CPU utilization and disk utilization. [$0.99 for iPhone - App Store link]

• AppsGoneFree: Every day hundreds of apps reduce their price to free for a limited lime to try to stimulate excitement. Wouldn’t it be great to get a hand picked, human curated list of ONLY the ones that are good? Enter AppsGoneFree. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• ShopSmart by Billeo: Helps you get the most out of your credit card reward programs, alerting you to special deals and offers as you shop at your favorite shopping sites. You can "double dip", getting additional cash discounts, cash back, or reward points, on top of regular retailers’ discounts and your credit card rewards. [Free for iPad - App Store link]

• Lookout Mobile Security: Protect your phone, your data and your privacy. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• Pulveriser: Take a photo or sync photos from your library and let various gaming-enhanced destruction techniques ensue! Start the destruction with a free Machine Gun to destroy a photo and send to your friends, starting a gallery of obliterated foes. [Free for iPhone - 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.

Beachbody’s popular workout program, P90X, is now available on the iPhone. It will schedule your workouts for you, chart your progress, and allow you to compete with friends. Need some positive reinforcement? P90X has got you covered with achievements that can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.

P90X® has evolved. The breakthrough workout program that revolutionized home fitness now has an app that lets you Bring It!® on your iPhone®, so you can get even more amazing results—and work out with P90X anywhere. Keep track of your sets, reps, and weights, view your progress, log your nutrition, and share your results. With interactive features like these, you’ll stay motivated and accountable to get more out of P90X than ever.

• Schedule – You’ll never have to sweat which workout is on deck each day. Select P90X Classic, Lean, or Doubles, and your Calendar simply auto-populates with the correct workouts. You can even schedule your own workouts like running, hiking, swimming, and more.
• Charts: – Find out where you’re improving and where you need to push yourself to meet your goals. Chart your progress easily, so you stick with it every day. Conveniently keep a record of your sets, reps, and weights as you complete each P90X DVD workout. You can even log your nutrition. Customized progress reports at day 30, 60, and 90 keep you motivated and help you push through your plateaus to get more ripped than ever.
• Earn and Share – Up for some friendly competition? Mark your success! Rack up achievement badges for accomplishments like meeting fitness goals, completing workouts, or even for working out on a Friday night! Then share your results and compete with your friends on Facebook®, Twitter®, email, and Game Center.
• “X” Anywhere – Want to do your P90X workout at the gym? Outside? On the go? With the P90X Official App, you can purchase guided versions of the P90X workouts designed specifically for the iPhone. They feature timed video demonstrations for every move, tips on form, and audio guidance from P90X trainer Tony Horton.

P90X is available on the iPhone for $4.99. This includes the P90X Fit Test and Ab Ripper X. Additional workouts are available as in-app purchases ranging from $6.99 for individual workouts to $59.99 for the entire bundle.

[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.

Not really a great surprise to be honest, but when contacted by a developer about the chances of Siri coming to older iPhone and iPod touch models, Apple support responded with:

Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue: Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.

Did anyone really expect Apple support to announce future product plans or feature support? In the meantime, it looks like users of older devices will have to rely on the unofficial method that may or may not be released.

Source: Michael Steeber via 9to5Mac

ZDNet, citing developers who’d been briefed on the plans, claims Adobe is getting ready to pull the plug on mobile Flash Player for Android and BlackBerry Playbook.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

For Flash, this could be the end of a long, tortured existence. When the iPhone debuted in 2007 Adobe immediately complained they weren’t on there, despite it taking until 2011 for them to even begin to roll out halfway decent mobile plugins. Back and forth feuding with Apple didn’t get Flash onto iPhone or iPad, since Apple believed Flash to be a dead technology, and Steve Jobs announced they’d not support it. And the plugins Adobe did roll out for Android only supported video, not Flash app, and always felt like a McGyver effort at best. (Frankly, if Google, Palm, and RIM hadn’t been playing a silly games with Adobe against Apple, we all could have been a couple more years ahead in HTML 5 apps by now.)

For Air, it’s a mixed bag. Cross-compilers, which Apple initially banned and then un-banned from the App Store, can make life much easier for developers but can also lead to lowest-common-denominator apps that don’t take advantage of platform-specific features and lag behind native SDK’s in their support. For games it rarely matters, for regular apps it can be more of a challenge.

For HTML 5 this could be a huge win. Adobe is great at making content creation tools and distractions like the Flash runtimes and Omniture analytics have led to a split focus and failure to embrace emerging technologies fast enough. If this rumor pans out, it will be great to see if Adobe can make HTML 5 tools a first class citizen, finally, in their creative line up.

Somewhere, Steve Jobs’ Force Ghost is smiling.

Source: ZDNet

Peel, the suppliers of the iPod touch phone case has gone one better this time and is set to release a dual SIM case for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The device which will be called the Vooma Peel PG92 works with any jailbroken iPhone 4 or 4S and adds dual SIM capabilities.

The Vooma Peel is in the form of a case that wraps around your iPhone and offers a backup battery as well as a second phone. The second phone is built into the case and is activated via the Vooma app; which can only be installed on a jailbroken iPhone 4 or 4S. You can then call up a second phone dialler within the Vooma app and use that to dial numbers on the second line. There is no mention if the second line will support any data services or if it is purely for calls.

The release is currently shown as coming soon and as yet there is no pricing information. We will keep you informed as soon as we hear anymore.

Source: Vooma via Techcrunch

Turns out there’s a way to enable that as-yet unsurfaced iOS 5 panorama mode in the Camera app without having to Jailbreak — though you do have to be comfortable opening up iPhone backup files, editing plists, and restoring the modified backup. It’s not difficult mind you, just a little be of time and effort.

If you’re itching to get your tinker on, hit the link below for all the details.

Source: Funky Space Monkey via 9to5Mac

LinkDots is a new puzzle game that is similar to the classic Dots game. The goal is to drop your dots on the grid in a manner that will result in more connections. Two adjacent dots will give 1 connection, 3 dots placed as a triangle will give 3 connections, and 4 dots placed as a square will give 6 connections.

I’ve played several rounds of LinkDots on the iPhone and I’m really enjoying it! I love puzzle games, especially when they are relatively challenging like LinkDots. It took a few games before I was able to win a match against one opponent, and the game only gets more challenging against more opponents. You must strike the perfect balance between playing offensively and defensively.

Connect Dots has never been so fun … Your mind will never rest on such an addictive deployment of shapes and strategies, while blocking your opponent’s efforts to win.

• 1-4 players
• 10 Different Backgrounds
• Openfeint enabled
• Share your scores on Facebook and Twitter
• 3 Difficulty levels
• Easy (Against one Computer)
• Medium (Against 2 computers)
• Hard (Against 3 Computers)

LinkDots is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99 each.

[iPhone App Store link] [iPad 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.