iPhone Live, the best darn iPhone podcast in the ‘verse, is coming your way tonight, so clear your schedule and get your snacks ready, because we want to chat with you!

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

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

If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, just leave them in the comments then come be part of the show!

(And yes, you can watch from iPhone via Ustream Viewer app (here’s how) — just search for “mobilenations” and iPad (we recommend Duet Browser.)

With this week now in full swing, we figured it was a good a time as any to remind you all of our Win the iOS device of your dreams contest! The week 1 thread can be found in the TiPb forums so if you’re looking to get entered into the contest that is where you’ll want to be headed as you’ll need to post in there. You can register now for the forums and get started today! While you’re in there entering, be sure to check out some of the other threads as well:

• iPhone 4S Forum: Week 1 thread: Win the iOS device of your dreams in the TiPb holiday giveaway!
• iOS 5 Forum: Toddler deleted video, can I get it back?
• iPhone 5 Forum: iPhone 5 is real [Humor]
• iPhone Accessories Forum Who uses the Bumper Case for their iPhone?

If you’re not already a member of the TiPb Forums, register now!

Marc, Seth, and Rene iterate through Nest and the future of consumer electronic design, photos under glass, Google search as an app, kicking users to the Facebook curb, and interrogate Jessie Dodds of Campaign Monitor. This is Iterate!

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

• Windows Phone 7 HTML5 demo (open on an iPhone or Android phone)
• Dianne Hackborn from Google discusses GPU acceleration on Android
• Glass multitouch keyboard and mouse on Kickstarter
• Path 2.0
• Max Rudberg’s concepts for iOS gestures and features:
  • Notification Center falling down, revealing notifications underneath
  • Recent apps via swipe up (similar to webOS)
  • Home via squeeze
  • More concepts and info on Max’s blog

• Gedeon Maheux of the Icon Factory

Hosts

• Marc Edwards (@marcedwards) of Bjango
• Seth Clifford (@sethclifford) of Nickelfish
• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) of TiPb.com

Feedback

• Email: podcast@iterate.tv
• Twitter: @iteratetv
• Facebook: Iterate page

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.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Evernote has release two new apps today: Evernote Food and Evernote Hello.

Evernote Food is a food diary. You can takes photos of each part of your meal, take notes about each food item, and keep track of them by meal. Want to share your delicious food with your friends? No problem! It’s a breeze to share with Twitter and Facebook.

Evernote Hello is an app for keeping track of people you’ve met – a replacement for business cards. When you meet someone, hand them your phone and have them fill out their information and snap a pic. After your meeting, add some notes regarding your encounter.

• Evernote Food, free – App Store link

• Evernote Hello, free – App Store link

Evernote Food

Just in time for the holidays! Evernote Food lets you capture, share and relive your memorable meals. Whether you’re eating at home, at a restaurant, or embarking on a culinary adventure, use Evernote Food to remember all of your delicious experiences.

• Remember the food and meals you love.
• Snap and organize photos of your food, setting and fellow diners.
• Add a title, your location, tags, captions and additional notes about the experience.
• Share meals with family and friends on Twitter and Facebook, or via old fashioned email.
• See related content from your Evernote account right inside the Evernote Food app.
• Browse through pictures of your recent meals.
• Automatically sync to your Evernote account, where you can access your meal notes from any computer or mobile device.

Evernote Hello

Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time, trying to remember a person’s name, or recalling important aspects of a previous encounter, Evernote Hello is here to help. Here’s how:

• See the faces of everyone you have met in a beautiful mosaic layout
• View a history of all the encounters you’ve had with individuals
• Remember all aspects of your meetings: location, notes, photos, and faces
• Connect Evernote Hello to your Evernote account to see all your related notes

Evernote Food and Evernote Hello are available for on the iPhone for free.

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.

Missed a compelling piece of iPhone news, a great review, or a killer how-to? We’re not collecting absolutely everything in iPhone here — you can hit up TiPb.com/iPhone for that! — but we’re carefully picking what we think is the best of the last 7 days and presenting it here for your review.

And hey! — these double as show notes for our iPhone Live! podcast tonight at 6pm PT/9pm ET. So join us at TiPb.com/live and follow along!

Meta

• Iterate 12: Icon Factory
• ZENandTECH 26: Self-esteem
• Weekly Mod: How to replace an iPhone 4 battery

Contests

• Win the iOS device of your dreams in the TiPb holiday giveaway!
• App Giveaway: Batman: Arkham City Lockdown for iPhone, iPad

Siri

• Debunked: Ridiculous claims of ‘pro-life’ bias in Siri (Update: Apple responds)
• Why is Siri in beta?
• Apple hiring more Siri engineers, working to expand API and features
• Siri ported to iPhone 4 via questionable jailbreak mod

News

• Apple sweeps PCWorld satisfaction survey
• Research shows Apple makes top 3 connected devices in US
• Why does iPhone seem more fluid than Android?
• Less than openy
• AT&T "Top 5%" data user throttled down to 2G speeds
• Prudent parenting in the age of digital photography

Apps

• Flipboard comes to iPhone, brings Cover Stories
• iBooks updated with nighttime reading and full-screen

Accessories

• Megaphone, a big honkin’ amplifier for your iPhone
• For iPhone Lens for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
• Review and giveaway: Qmadix Dual Mobile Charging Kit for iPhone and iPad

Microsoft has released My Xbox LIVE for iPhone and iPad. With it, you can track your achievements, update your 3D avatar, and get news about the latest games, tips, and tricks.

Take your Xbox LIVE experience wherever you go with the My Xbox LIVE app. Track and compare your achievements, connect with your Xbox LIVE friends, and change up your 3D Avatar. Review all your recent great games you and your friends love to play and compare achievements with them. Jump into our games hub to learn about the latest LIVE games and apps. Access Xbox Spotlight feeds, get breaking news from Xbox LIVE, game tips and tricks, gamer spotlight and much more.

My Xbox LIVE is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• 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 Qmadix Dual Mobile Charging Kit for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch lets you charge two iOS devices — even the power-hungry iPad! — at the same time. If you’re going on a long family trip, or even an extended drive for the holidays, this can make all the difference between peacefully playing children and happily tapping significant others, and the agony and pain of bored passengers with dead devices turning their angry gazes in your direction.

The Qmadix includes the twin-charging USB hub made out of “rugged” (rugged they say!) polycarbonate, advanced circuitry to prevent overheating/overcharging, and 10W (2.1 amps) of charging power. There’s also a 4-foot USB dock cable included for good measure.

There’s really not much more to say — the Qmadix performs as advertised and if you’re planning to be in the car with more than one iOS device for more than a couple of hours, you owe it to your collective family’s sanity to pack a couple of these babies with you!

• get the Qmadix Dual Mobile Charging Kit for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch from the TiPb Store

Giveaway

Want to win a Qmadix Dual Mobile Charging Kit for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch of your very own? Just leave a comment letting us know how this little beauty might save your car trip this holiday season, and we’ll pick one of you to win!

Ready… set… post!

• Diamond Dash: Join your friends and compete in weekly tournaments. Connect with Facebook to unlock special features and play with your friends! [Free for iPhone and iPad - App Store link]

• Calculus Auditus – Calc’n'Speak: Solve mental arithmetic tasks by speaking out loud your result. Because of the integrated voice recognition your iPhone is able to understand it. [$0.99 for iPhone - App Store link]

• Bleat: Makes it easier to post updates on Twitter and Facebook: there's no typing required; simply say what you want and share it – audio-based status updates are finally here. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• Twosift: Opens a new way of finding Internet content based on recommendations from celebrities. [Free for iPad - App Store link]

• Tick Tock Time to Stop: A child activity timer – set the timer and then let your kids play. When the time runs out they need to bring the iPad or iPhone back to you in order to enter the password. [$0.99 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.

With rumors ramping up of a Siri-controlled Apple television coming from Apple, Todd Treece was able to beat them to the punch and get Siri to fully control his television set using an Arduino IR remote setup and SiriProxy.

We’ve seen Siri do amazing things like start your car and control your home thermostat using SiriProxy as well, but this setup actually shows the power of having Siri used as a remote control for your TV.

We’ll have to wait until Apple ultimately releases their own television set with Siri control before we see something like this hit the masses, but in the meantime you can get your own setup going as long as you don’t mind a little bit of hackery.

Source: Todd Treece via iDB

Apple has released their 12 Days of Christmas app a little early this year. The promotion will run between December 26 and January 6 but Apple hasn’t put any content in there just yet.

You and your friends can download a fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps and books for free. Each download will only be available for 24 hours. Get our special 12 Days of Christmas app to make it even easier to access your gifts while you're on the go.

Don't have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? Don't worry. Come back 26 December to download gifts from your computer.

Falling in line with their 12 Days of Christmas promotion last year, Apple will promote specials daily deals on music, apps, books and more for the holidays. You can download the app now from the Portugese App Store, but content won’t start showing up until the promotion begins. If you’re outside of Portugese and see the app available, let us know in the comments!

• Free – App Store Link

FireCore has released a version 1.1 update for aTV Flash. If you’re a jailbroken Apple TV user, aTV Flash is definitely something you’ll want to check out. It adds a great deal of functionality to your AppleTV, and new features include custom view options, web page auto-load, playback improvements, and much more.

aTV Flash for the 2nd generation Apple TV is super easy to install after you’ve jailbroken and doesn’t mess with any of the current features your Apple TV already offers. If you’re not already jailbroken, you can jailbreak your AppleTV via Seas0nPass. You’ll just need the most recent version of Seas0nPass and a micro-usb cable. For help, you can check out our guide on how to jailbreak the AppleTV second generation. All the steps will remain the same as long as you grab the correct version of Seas0nPass for your AppleTV firmware.

If you’ve checked out the new version of aTV Flash, let us know what you think of it!

Why was Siri, the iPhone 4S’ flagship intelligent assistant service, launched as a beta, something very unusual for Apple? Benoit Maison published a blog post which sheds some light on the reasoning.

I worked on speech recognition with IBM Research for nearly six years. We participated in DARPA-sponsored research projects, field trials, and actual product development for various applications: dictation, call centers, automotive, even a classroom assistant for the hearing-impaired. The basic story was always the same: get us more data! (data being in this case transcribed speech recordings). There is even a saying in the speech community: "there is no data like more data". Some researchers have argued that most of the recent improvements in speech recognition accuracy can be credited to having more and better data, not to better algorithms.

While some may think it was not in Apple’s best interest to release something so rough around the edges, getting millions of users on Siri might just be the best, fastest way to get it polished. (That and those extra people Apple is putting on the Siri team.)

Source: Benoit Maison

The highly anticipated Grand Central Apple Store will be opening the doors this coming Friday, Dec 9. This location will be Apple’s fifth store in Manhattan and filled with 315 employees, and various different rooms for services like personal set up and personal training. Will you be heading out to the grand opening?

Source: Apple PR

Image credit: jennydeluxe

AT&T has been warning the top 5% of iPhone data users on their network for a while now that they’d start throttling their speeds. TiPb reader David, who previously got the infamous SMS nasty-gram, just received it again and since then can’t seem to get download speeds any faster than an EDGE-like 150Kbps.

His friends and co-workers are still getting full speed, ruling out a tower problem.

I called AT&T because I thought it was an issue with them and I did a trouble shooting session on the phone. After finishing they asked if I received any text from them and I replied “yes” and told them which one and that’s when AT&T told me “problem solved”. I asked how do I go from 14mbps to straight EDGE, bypassing 7.2mbps, and they couldn’t reply

Are you one of the top 5% who’ve previously received warnings from AT&T? Have you experienced any throttling this severe?

• AT&T data throttling thread in the TiPb AT&T Forum

For today only, the TiPb Store has the Mobi Products Hard Shell Case for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 on sale for only $4.95!. Get them before they’re gone!

Get the Mobi Products Hard Shell Case for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 now!

Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, a spin off of the hugely popular Batman: Arkham City console franchise optimized for iPhone and iPad, has begun hitting the iTunes App Store.

It’s live in Australia/New Zealand already and should become available in the US later today.

The inmates have escaped and Batman has his hands full defeating an army of henchmen and some of his most iconic villains. Scour the rooftops and the seedy underbelly of Gotham City through a series of one-on-one battles with the Joker, Two-Face and more, as well as the Batman: Arkham City Lockdown exclusive – Deathstroke. Choose from several Batman skins and power-ups as you punch, kick and combo your way to cleaning up Gotham City.

• App Store link

Giveaway

As you can see from the picture up top, we’re huge Batman fans here so, while we’re all waiting for Batman: Arkham City Lockdown to hit the U.S. App Store, we figured… why not gift it away to the TiPb Nation? We'll gift Batman: Arkham City Lockdown to 5 lucky readers, all you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling us which was your favorite Batman story ever. One of the recent Christopher Nolan movies? The older Tim Burton franchise? One of the Batman: The Animated series? A Frank Miller, Alan Moore, or Grant Morrison comic perhaps? One of the Adam West camp shows? Which one?

Must have a U.S. iTunes account to win. Apple's rule, not ours!

Apple has posted a couple of job listings for iOS software engineers, and they describe work needed on UI elements for Siri, along with additional language support and a new API that could indicate Apple may be opening up the feature to 3rd party app developers.

This is a broad-ranging task – we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application’s UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

Siri launched with the iPhone 4S with limited language and region support and beyond built-in apps, currently only interfaces with Apple’s own Find my Friends App Store app. Even built-in app support is inconsistent, for example SMS/iMessages can be read via text-to-speech but not email messages.

More engineers might also be necessary if Apple wants to expand the service to other devices, like the iPad or rumored Apple television set.

Source: Apple Insider

As reported by iPhoneincanada, Apple has submitted revised plans for the “mothership” campus they plan on building in Cupertino. The new renderings outline the internal layout and surroundings of the structure, and… They’re absolutely gorgeous.

Apple originally sent Steve Jobs to the Cupertino City Council back in June to pitch the idea of building a new space for Apple employees since outgrowing their Palo Alto headquarters. They picked up the lot from HP back in 2010. The new plans detail the inner workings describing a restaurant and dining area, entrances and parking layout and more.

Check out some of the renderings below and let us know what you think in the comments!

Source: iPhoneincanada

Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight after refusing to turn off his iPad because of a particular intense game of Words with Friends. The flight which was bound for New York from LAX was idling at the gate when Baldwin apparently ignored request by cabin crew to turn his device off.

The “30 Rock” actor was playing a game called “Words with Friends” while the plane idled at a gate Tuesday, said Baldwin’s spokesman, Matthew Hiltzik. ”He loves `Words with Friends’ so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it,” said Hiltzik, who added that Baldwin boarded another American Airlines flight to New York.

After leaving the flight, Baldwin confirmed the incident via his twitter account, claiming that a flight attendant on America had reamed him out for playing Words with Friends while sat at the gate. He also carried on with more disparaging remarks aimed at American Airlines and its flight attendants. American Airlines declined to make any comment on the incident due to customer privacy.

Source: Associated Press

 

Flipboard, the renowned personal, social magazine for iPad, has just been updated to version 1.7 and brings with it universal support for iPhone and iPod touch as well. Flipboard is also giving the iPhone version a short term exclusive — Cover Stories, a quick, smart way to keep up to date on the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter content most relevant to you.

Full update list and gallery after the break. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

• Free – App Store link

• New iPhone edition puts the power of Flipboard in your pocket.
• Cover Stories for iPhone, a selection of interesting articles and photos being shared with you right now. And it gets smarter every time you use it. (Coming soon to iPad.)
• Speed. Flip through pages as you would through a printed magazine, all with the flick of a thumb.
• Flipboard Accounts:
  • Sign into your Flipboard from either iPhone or iPad and get instant access to all your favorite content.
  • Check out All Timelines. Flip through a single feed containing all articles and all photos being shared across all your social networks.

Update 1: While it’s showing up in iTunes, Flipboard for iPhone is failing to load at the moment. Wait a while, get a beverage, try again, and hopefully it fixes itself asap.

Update 2: Deleting the partially installed app and re-downloading worked.

iBooks have been updated with some nice new features including a nighttime reading theme, full-screen layout, and new fonts. Apple has also replaced those ugly, boring covers to public domain books with beautiful, classic covers.

• Free – [App Store link]

• Nighttime reading theme makes reading books in the dark easier on the eyes.
• Full-screen layout lets you focus on the words without distraction.
• iBooks now features an improved selection of fonts, including Athelas, Charter, Iowan, and Seravek.
• Beautiful new classic covers for public domain books.
• Support for pop-up footnotes, included in select iBookstore titles.
• A redesigned annotation palette makes it easier to choose a color for your highlighted text.

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.

Griffin has announced a new iPhone, iPod touch and iPad accessory called GuitarConnect Pro, and it aims to add both an instrument input and gain controller to really let you rock out with Apple’s GarageBand.

Designed to work with any instrument that has a ¼ inch jack (including guitars, bass guitars, electric violins, keyboards, etc.), GuitarConnect Pro was created to turn iPad or iPhone into a compact performance or practice rig. A built-in gain control wheel allows the user to adjust the strength of the instrument's input signal.

Any music loving, guitar wielding members of the TiPb Nation planning to try this baby out?

• Get the Griffin GuitarConnect Pro on Amazon.com
• Get GarageBand for iPhone and iPad from the App Store
• Get your groove on in the TiPb Music, DJ, and Jamming Forum