Now that we’ve successfully giving away over a thousand dollars in iTunes Gift Cards and an iPhone 3G, it’s time for us to take a breather. Thing is, the way we take a breather here at TiPb is to start up another way for you to get what you want for your iPhone. Here’s the deal:
Head on over to our new “iPhone App Lightning Reviews” forum and, you know, post a review of an iPhone app. It can be native or web, legit or jailbroken. Be sure to include some screenshots as attachments — on iPhone 2.0, you can just hold down the home and powerbutton briefly and the screenshot will get saved to your camera album. Keep it around 500ish words, be fair, and try not to all review the same apps — though reviews after major updates are always a good idea. Give it a rating out of 5 stars and a couple pros and cons at the end too, for those crazy skimmers.
…Why would you do all that? Every so often the TiPb staff will be picking our favorites and promoting them to the front page. We’ll thank you by giving back to you. More after the break!
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The response to our iPhone 3G givaway has been tremendous. We love all the new action in our forums and we fully expect it to continue after this week — which is to say that The iPhone Blog adores you and will continue to treat you right, stay tuned for future contests in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the time has come to announce the winner of our contest as chosen randomly via random.org. It’s iLoveiPhones! Check your inbox for an email from me and we’ll set you up with the $400 Gift Card we promised so you can be all set for Friday. Happy? Happy! Joy? Joy!
The air of contest finality is thick and we’re going to make it thicker still: this is our final Wait-a-Thon post: comment here for your last chance to win a $100 iTunes gift card. We’ll be sending out the final gift cards tonight (yes, it’s still tough what with Apple’s limit to the # we can buy in a month, but we figured out a workaround).
So congratulate iLoveiPhones (a username so good it’s gotta be kismet) and let us know: once the iPhone 3G is really and truly out, what sort of stuff do you want TiPb to cover in the coming weeks and months? Are apps king? Shall we pit the iPhone 3G against every other darn smartphone out there, one by one? Should we continue to bring you tips and tricks? What’ll it be?
Update: Looks like we made somebody’s day. 
I’m never gonna forget this day. Thanks so much to everyone here at the iPhone forum and the staff at the iPhone Blog. Couldn’t have done it without you guys. Being someone who’s never won anything, this is quite a day!
In our forums, dhp1080 asked an important question: since the iPhone 3G comes out on the 11th and whoever wins is surely going to be the sort to go out and buy one that day, doesn’t it make more sense to hold the drawing for the winner of our iPhone 3G giveaway a bit earlier?
Yes, yes it does.
So we’ll be holding our drawing for the iPhone 3G givewaway the morning of Wednesday, July 9th. Since Apple capitulated to the standard operating procedure for activating phones, we can’t just pick one up and send it to ya. So instead we’re going to do the following: overnight a gift card to an Apple Store (or AT&T store, if necessary) for 400 smackers. That will cover most of the necessary bases: people eligible for upgrade that want the 16gig device, people ineligible for upgrades, etc.
All of which means you have six days left to get yourself up to 20 (non-garbage) posts in our forums in order to qualify for the drawing. Get your full contest details here. Meanwhile, this also means that this week and the next are the last weeks for the iPhone 2.0 Wait-a-Thon giveaways as well.
We will wait-a-thon this post too. We already asked you what your plans were for July 11th. Now we want to know: Are you Exchanged-up at work? If so, will your IT Overlords put your iPhone on the network? If you’re not, will you be going push with Mobile Me? Will you forego push altogether?
As Rene mentioned over the weekend, the iPhone 2G has just turned one year old, we here at TiPb look to the future, though, and the future looks great. Great enough that we’re still planning on giving away an iPhone 3G to one lucky winner who’s made at least 20 posts in our iPhone Forums. Grab the full contest details here. Even better - when you visit the forums from your iPhone you should see a big ol’ “iPhone Version” that lets you interact with the forums via an iPhone interface. Don’t like it? The option to switch back is on the bottom of the iPhone version. What are you waiting for? Go on and register, post, and possibly win!
Also notable, you can now get your iPhone Blog six ways from Sunday. Ok, just two ways. You can now just punch in http://tipb.com into your browser to be brought to our main page. Easy, no? We’re not bringing out an iPhone version of the blog proper just yet — when we find / develop a verison that’s both fast and usable enough you’ll be the first to know.
Meanwhile, there’s only a couple weeks left now in the iPhone Wait-a-Thon, wherein we give away an iTunes Gift card worth $100 to somebody who’s commented on a Wait-a-Thon-tagged post (like, you know, this one). Details and rules here. Congrats to our latest winners, Tom, Mark, and Rafael. Your Gift Cards forthcoming just as soon as we convince Apple we’re not trying to defraud them by buying too many gift cards.
So with just a couple weeks left, we gotta ask: What’s your game plan for July 11th?. Rumor has it the launch will happen at 8 in the morning, so will you be camping out the night before? Sitting at home and pretending your iPhone 2G hasn’t been replaced with newer, faster, better, more? Answer in the comments for a chance to win!
Everybody here at the iPhone Blog is very, very excited about the iPhone SDK Roadmap. We can’t wait for native apps, for more functionality, for games, for Apple to go after BlackBerrys. We can’t wait - seriously - it’s going to kill us waiting until “Late June” for all this good stuff. We’ve called in a team of psychiatrists, it’s not looking good.
We bet you feel the same way.
So to help ease the pain we’re instituting the iPhone Blog App Wait-a-Thon! Starting next week and then every week until Apple releases the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, we are going to give away a $100 iTunes Gift Certificate to a lucky reader.
You may not be getting your native apps now, but at least your can download some emo music to drown your sorrows, or a Pixar movie to cheer you up, or the first three seasons of LOST1 to help remind you that it’s not that bad.
Here’s how it will work: Sometime during the week, two to three of our blog postings, articles, or reviews will have “Wait-a-Thon” after the title, that’s your cue to comment on that entry. Comment on that entry and you’ll be automatically entered in that week’s drawing. (Just one entry per post counts, max three per week).
The latest Wait-a-Thon post is always available here. Just take a look over next to the Wait-a-Thon contest graphic!
Full details after the break!
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