We asked you to show us why TiPb should give you an iPhone 4 (technically a gift-certificate for the US Apple Retail Store in the amount of $499) and boy did you show us. You made it so tough for me to pick a winner, I didn’t even try — I recused myself and made the folks at SPE do it for me (sorry, I love you all too much, I would have gone all Oprah, given the to everyone, and gotten fired).

SPE did pick a winner, however. And we’re going to announce who it is, who’s getting the iPhone 4 — and the surprise twist we also came up with! — after the break!

Bonus Prize

So here’s the thing. Dude got a tattoo first video out. That’s a heck of a bar to set. And anyone crazy enough to get a tattoo deserves a phone. Now, I know some of you doubted that it’s real, so we’ll give him a chance to prove himself — send us a photo asap of the tattoo as it looks today, take it next to newspaper or next to a current story from TiPb or something — and I’ll personally send you a phone. That one’s on me. (Side effect — I’m banning tattoos from future contests — this is the last one!)

So here’s your bonus round, RyanShitlipz, send me the pic — rene (at) tipb (dot) com.

RyanShitlipz’s Tattoo

Runners-up

There are also a few folks who, while they didn’t win the big prize, got enough votes that we wanted to give them something. Courtesy of the TiPb iPhone Accessory Store, you’re going to get a case for whichever iPhone you want – iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (when they’re available). We’ll contact you and you can let us know.

cregan4584 – iPhone Vacation

pazafuera – Life Before FaceTime

rodrigo19bran – The Best for Last

Winner

And that brings us to our winner. It had drama, it had tension, it had thrills, it had chills, it had a TiPb logo that looked, quite frankly, terrified out of its icon. The winner of our iPhone 4 give-away is…

BBVISUALIST – ENVY Movie Trailer

But wait, there’s more…

Thanks again to everyone who entered, from safesolvent and his gorgeous Cannon 5D Mark II 1138 to Gerorne going hilariously black and white to the vocal stylings of justdrew1985 to Doodle Jumps and Funeral bumps, Timmy and farmdreads. We appreciate all of you…

And make sure you check back in day or few because we just might be doing another iPhone 4 contest…!

And TiPb’s iPhone 4 give-away goes to… is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple recently released iTunes Connect Mobile [Free - iTunes Link] which allows registered developers to track app sales and trends.  The app is available via the App Store now and is a free download.  For developers, this provides an extremely easy way to not only check sales numbers but to see trends on the go.

Simply log in and you’ll get a nice layout that shows you not only your total sales but a breakdown of sales by application. From what I understand, you can see either daily or weekly totals as of right now. As we are currently working on applications and haven’t released any yet, I don’t see any breakdowns.  Any developers have any feedback on the breakdown or things you’d like to see in an update?

I think another really neat app idea would be if Apple released an app that let regular users see purchased app histories and showed totals of all iPhone/iPad apps they’ve purchased, as well as a monthly breakdown of what they’re buying.  It would be interesting how much users spend on apps in total.  After 3 years of using an iPhone, I’d be nervous to see how much I’ve actually spent on apps.  Hit the break for some screenshots!

iTunes Connect Mobile now in App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Summary of the new features include:

• Safari Reader
• Even Greater Support for HTML 5
• Better Performance
• Bing Search
• Safari Extentions

How about our readers? Are you seeing a speed difference? If you find a site that can take advantage or Reader, post it in the comments!

You can download Safari 5 here.

Safari 5, now available for Mac and PC is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

The iPhone blog is now… TiPb.com!

That’s right, just as Apple keeps expanding their iPhone platform, we’re expanding our coverage to bring you the best of all of it. Let’s face it — Apple is the most integrated consumer electronics company in the world, from chipset to handset to OS to tablet. There’s just no way around it — from now on every year it’s going to be a splash of iPad in spring, all about iPhone in summer, and then iPod touch in fall. And we want to make sure if a great new feature or a hot new story breaks for any one of them, at any time, you know we’ll have it for you right here at TiPb, your #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch blog.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The iPhone blog is now… TiPb.com!

That’s right TiPb ‘verse, for the first time ever I’m hitting CES with the rest of the Smartphone Experts crew — because for the first time ever, Apple’s not at Macworld, Macworld isn’t in January, and iPhone stuff will be at CES!

If you’re going to be there as well, if you’re an App Store developer, an accessory maker, a fellow blogger, an Apple engineer with a secret HD iPhone or tablet-esque device to leak, or — and especially — a fellow TiPb member, ping me and let me know. I’m looking to fit in as much as is inhumanly possible.

All major iPhone and related stories will of course go up right here, and as you know there are a ton of ways to follow TiPb’s feed.

I’ll also be tweeting everything else meta-style from @reneritchie, including whatever behind the scenes shenanigans and competitive insights I can sneak out. (tag-line, nothing will stay in Vegas!)

Also keep an eye out for our editor-in-chief Dieter Bohn (@backlon), Kevin Michaluk (@crackberrykevin), Matt Miller (@palmsolo), Phil Nickinson (@philnickinson) as they cover everything else for CrackBerry.com, PreCentral.net, NokiaExperts.com, AndroidCentral.com, and WMExperts.com, as well as our Round Robin co-hort, Mickey Papillon (@tcpj_mickey) who might just get us back on the mic again.

See ya there, or we’ll bring it to ya here!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb at CES 2010!