Most to-do and reminder apps are all about making lists of tasks that you need to complete, and reminding you to tackle them at specified times. Unfortunately, real life doesn’t always follow a schedule, and we often find ourselves skipping or putting off tasks because we couldn’t find the time to do them when we planned to — leaving with a longer to-do list for the next day. Will we ever be able to conquer these all-powerful lists?

The developers at New Delhi, India-based Signals, believe they may be onto some sort of a solution: Instead of adapting your day to the way your time management app is set up, why not have the app adapt to your life? Their new app Shifu does this by reminding you of tasks when you have the time to complete them and are at the right location. From chores to returning calls to wishing friends on their birthday, Shifu can actually help you get stuff done regardless of your ever-changing schedule. I spoke with Prashant Singh, co-founder of Signals, to understand how Shifu works and to see if I could actually get more done with their novel take on to-dos.

Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter.

A Time and Place for Tasks

With traditional to-do lists, whether on paper or on a mobile device, tasks are generally added with a relevant date and time, like so: ‘Call Mike at 5:30 PM’ or ‘Buy snow shovel on Dec 10′. But what if you’re busy at 5:30PM, or nowhere near a hardware store on Dec 10? Those reminders go from helpful to nagging in a jiffy. Shifu’s not so much about when you should get to a task, but more about how long a task will take.

Shifu’s interface prompts you to return calls (left); the Reminders tab (right)

To add a reminder in Shifu, you’ll need to describe the task, and indicate how many minutes it will take to finish. You can additionally specify whether you want to be reminded of it during the day or night, and on weekdays or weekends. Shifu then watches your device and your usage, and reminds you of your task when it finds a free time slot when you might find it convenient to get around to completing it.

You can also input other triggers for your reminders:

• Location – ‘take out the trash’ when you get home, or ‘buy milk’ when you reach the grocery store
• WiFi hotspot – ‘upload new field recordings’ when you’re in range of your studio network
• Phone call – ‘ask about our weekend hike’ when you next speak with Joyce (Shifu will display a pop-up when you make or receive a call from Joyce)

Shifu can also remind you to return missed calls or wish your Facebook friends a happy birthday when it notices you have a few minutes to spare.

Adding reminders by time taken (left); by WiFi hotspot (right)

How Does It Work?

“Shifu estimates your available free time by statistical analysis of your user data. Here’s an example: let’s say you start your daily office commute between 7:30 and 8:00 AM, and reach work sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 AM. While you’re commuting, your phone will register a change in the cellular tower ID, and that clues Shifu in about the fact that you’re on the move. Next, we also look at the kind of things you do during your commute . If your user log shows that you make calls and read emails during your commute, Shifu understands that it’s a good time to remind you of calls that you need to return within that window of time,” says Singh.

In this example, the app also looks at the average duration of calls made while you’re commuting, so it will only remind you about returning calls from people, whose call duration in the past have been less or equal to that average duration. To put our privacy concerns at bay, Singh adds that Shifu doesn’t look at individual data points, but rather only looks at the data collected in aggregate. Similarly, its algorithms only consider the meta data generated by your device activity, and not in any of the actual information entered.

Shifu can remind you of important discussion topics when you make or receive calls

The Interface

I was intrigued by the concept behind Shifu and so, decided to try it out for a few days. The interface isn’t exactly intuitive, but you could get used to it after a while. The main screen displays contacts whose calls you can return, or to whom you can send birthday greetings via Facebook. You’ll also see a circlular dial with a minute counter, which is intended for you to indicate how much free time you have just then: Shifu will show you all the tasks you can complete in that time slot. While I found the call/birthday prompts very useful, I can’t say that I was comfortable searching for tasks based on how much time I had free: it just didn’t feel natural, perhaps because I’m so used to dealing with my tasks as a checklist.

Return a contact’s missed call or send a message (left); Shifu’s active wallpaper (right)

Adding reminders involves picking a trigger (time required, location, WiFi network or phone contact) and entering your task, which is simple enough. Shifu takes a few days to learn your schedule before it gets things right, and soon begins notifying you about tasks when you have time for them. You can choose to receive reminders either via system notifications or on the active wallpaper, which essentially is a gesture-enabled active wallpaper that sits on top of your existing one. I did get a couple of poorly timed reminders, but for the most part received alerts as I expected.

Using Shifu

While Shifu is great at helping us cut down on excuses to procrastinate on tasks, I can’t yet say that I would use this a lot — but that’s just me. As a freelance writer who can work from most anywhere, I really need more planning assistance from my to-do list than updates at opportune moments. I generally begin my day by looking at and filling out my to-do list and calendar, and schedule tasks in order of priority. I prefer being able to consult my list and check things off till I’m done for the day.

Plus, I prefer a detailed to-do list: as a devout Wunderlist user, I’ve grown fond of the app’s ability to handle multiple lists, reminders, subtasks, notes and even files. For example, I use it to jot down story ideas for blogs, attaching text snippets and links for research as I go. That’s not what Shifu is built for, and those looking for help planning their day may not benefit very much from this approach. However, for those who have trouble dealing with difficult schedules, this might be the answer they’ve been looking for.

The Road Ahead for Shifu

While Shifu is already available in the Play Store with its core functionality working as promised, the app still has a long way to go. I encountered a few bugs, including a map that refused to accept any location input other than my current whereabouts, display issues on the ‘Add Reminder’ screen, and text that didn’t read correctly across the app. I’d love to see more features too, such as interacting with reminders from the notification panel, support for multiple lists and a planner-style display of tasks. It’d be great to see the user experience simplified and refined further, so as to allow even novice smartphone users to get the hang of this app.

Execution aside, what’s intruiging about Shifu is its Google Now-like learning and recognition of your habits. It’s exciting to see an app pick up on a user’s behavior and deliver relevant, timely content — it feels like your phone finally has begun to understand how to engage you and help make your life easier.

Singh is excited about the future of Shifu. “We’ve only begun scratching the surface of what is possible with this concept — we have some exciting features in mind for the app, but our current focus is to ensure that Shifu reaches as many users as possible so we can utilize their feedback to sketch out our roadmap. At some point, we’d like to extend Shifu to other platforms as well. We’re also trying to raise a round of angel investment and have applied to a few US-based startup incubator programs to take things forward,” concludes Singh.

Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter&Google+

Lot of exciting technologies came up at the dawn of the Web 2.0 era. Some succeeded early and have turned into dominant platforms today. On the other hand, some failed all too miserably despite being equally awesome. Podcasting is one such tech trend that never quite reached the masses (although you will hear arguments to the contrary).

YouTube and other video sharing sites grabbed the audience early on and audio publishing never really had a chance. Today, audio publishing is targeted mostly at geeks, influentials and power users, but that doesn’t stop entrepreneurs from launching cool stuff involving audio every now and then. Snackr dishes out news in tiny, bite-sized audio clips. Sounds interesting, right?

User Interface

Snackr has a well defined user interface divided into three sections. At the top, we have the news categories and a horizontal swipe is used to switch between them.

An energetic graphic equalizer occupies the middle section of the app. It’s mostly for eye candy and tapping on it plays or pauses a news clip. It took me a few minutes to figure out the play/pause functionality, and it would be great if it was labeled properly.

Graphic Equalizer and The News Source

To see the source of the news currently playing, swipe horizontally and the logo of the outlet from where the news is sourced along with a brief description are shown. Finally, at the far end of the screen sits the clip selector. You can select and play individual news items from here.

The News

The voice that reads out the news has a British accent, but isn’t very hard to follow. Clearly, an algorithm is hard at work in the background to make the app work and in most cases, Snackr does a fabulous job of maintaining a professional news-reader-like experience. However, at times some words skip ahead a bit too fast and aren’t very clear. The diction goes for a toss every now and then, making your head spin and it isn’t obvious what exactly is the subject under discussion.

Snackr narrates stories that aren’t written without any emotion flawlessly. But, it gets weird when the app tries to read blog posts that are meant to be sarcastic in the same flat tone. Every news clip begins with the name of the original source and it takes less than half a minute to sum up. There is no rambling or fluff and the news is always to the point.

Fans of longform might not like how short the news clip are and they might be better off with NPR or podcasts. In any case, it might take some time to actually get used to this ultra short news format. Still cannot find enough time to spare to listen to those 30 seconds of clips one after another? Then try the 5-Min Snack feature instead. In this section, you can listen to the top new items that matter condensed into a 5 minute nugget. Its like the digital version of spoon feeding!

Creating an Account

Signing Up with Facebook Account

You don’t have to create an account to enjoy Snackr, but creating one does offer a lot of goodies and it all happens really quick if you link your Facebook account.

Channel Settings and Sources

The Facebook account integration isn’t just to add a social layer. Snackr reads out a daily greeting which is derived from the activities in your Facebook account. Upcoming birthdays and daily weather reports are announced too. Good thinking!

Categories and News Sources

With an account, it’s also possible for you to create custom news channels. There is a comprehensive listing of categories and under each category, few of the top news outlets can be found. Unfortunately, the developers seem to have dropped the ball when it came to designing the Settings screen as it is annoying to scroll up and down a tiny box.

History and Favorites

We are inundated with new items every passing hour and it often gets difficult to keep track of items we really enjoyed or of importance to us. Tag the news clips you like by tapping on the Star button and you can find all the clips you have bookmarked under Favorites.

Favorites and History

Another perk of the favorites option is that you can read the original article in its entirety from the app or open it up in Safari. Why this useful option isn’t available elsewhere in the app is a mystery. You can email the link from the sharing options if you like, however. While at the favorites screen, you can also check out the entire log of all the clips you have listened so far in chronological order.

With the sheer range of Twitter clients out there on the App Store, choosing a Twitter client for your iPhone can be a long-winded process. Your choice of Twitter client really depends though, on what kind of Twitter user you are, and whether you use Twitter to simply keep up to date with the world or to keep the world up to date with your happenings.

No matter where you fit into the equation, there’s an iPhone Twitter client out there for you. After the jump, we take a detailed look at the pros and cons of the eight best Twitter clients in the App Store at the moment.

Twitter for iPhone

The official Twitter client received a big update a short while back to version 4.3, which brought along an improvement to existing push notifications and expanded tweets. Alongside that, you’ve got your standard Twitter arsenal such as re tweeting, link shortening and picture uploads.

The official Twitter client for iPhone

Your mentions and follows are organised in the Connect screen (just like in the web version), and the Discover tab shows tweets by people who share your interests, recommended people to follow and trends.

Advantages: Simple to use and easy on the eye.
Disadvantages: Its features may be a little lacking for advanced users. Not many customization possibilities.

Price: Free

Tweet bot for Twitter

Tweet bot for Twitter is currently my Twitter client of choice and has plenty of cool features that easily make it a strong contender for the best client out there on the App Store. Apart from the many customisation possibilities, you've also got features such as i Cloud timeline sync (useful for multiple devices), smart gestures (swiping right on a tweet will bring up a more detailed view, for example) and mute filters, so you can block users from your timeline without having to unfollow them.

Tweetbot for iPhone (an iPad version is also available)

Tweet bot also features support for many third-party services, such as Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, Cloud App and Droplr, and you can customise your interface as well (the last two tabs in the screenshot above can be altered to your liking).

Advantages: Jam-packed with features and customisation possibilities. Suitable for almost every kind of Twitter user, from the beginner to the more advanced.
Disadvantages: The interface can be a little complicated to get used to at first.

Price: $2.99

HootSuite

Hoot Suite is a popular web-based Twitter client, and the iPhone version really does try to retain some of the features you get in the online version. You sign in with your Hoot Suite account (if you haven’t already got one of these the app will let you set one up) and you can manage not only your Twitter account, but also your Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn — all from one app.

HootSuite for iOS

Two of my favorite features about Hoot Suite are the ability to schedule tweets (just like in the web version) and built-in link tracking (as long as you use their own ow.ly shortening service). Because the app uses your Hoot Suite account, any drafts or scheduled tweets are automatically synced with the i OS version, ensuring no duplication.

Advantages: Plenty of features, especially for a free Twitter client.
Disadvantages: Swiping across the columns can get a bit inconvenient at times. The interface is slightly clumsy and may overwhelm some people.

Price: Free

Echofon for Twitter

Echofon is a simple, clean Twitter app that syncs across all your devices (there is an iPad, Mac and Firefox version) so you’ll never read the same tweet twice. The app supports multiple Twitter accounts and you can mute users from your timeline without having to unfollow them, just like in Tweetbot.

Echofon for iPhone

The app also supports viewing pictures uploaded by the people you’re following directly in your timeline and threaded conversations, making it easier to stay on track with them. The free version has adverts — to remove them you’ll have to buy the full version, Echofon Pro, either as a standalone app or via in-app purchase for $4.99.

Advantages: Simple, clean interface with plenty of features.
Disadvantages: Annoying adverts in the free version. The Pro version is a tad expensive for a simple Twitter client.

Price: Free

UberSocial

UberSocial has already found its fame on other platforms, such as on Blackberry and Android, and the iPhone version has been around for a couple of years now. The interface borrows heavily from both these versions, and the app supports all the usual Twitter functions as well as muting certain users, viewing rich media such as pictures and videos straight from your timeline, and multiple accounts.

UberSocial for iPhone

The app also allows you to cross-post your tweets to Facebook, and you can customise the interface to your liking (including themes, which often cost extra). Like Echofon, the app contains adverts, but you can remove these by purchasing the Pro version via an in-app purchase, which costs $4.99.

Advantages: Very customisable Twitter client. Useful if you’ve been using UberSocial on either Android or Blackberry.
Disadvantages: The interface is very busy and difficult to use. Pro version extremely overpriced.

Price: Free (Pro version: $4.99)

Tweet Caster

TweetCaster calls itself “the #1 Twitter client for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch” and has a couple of features that aren’t to be found in other clients, such as Search Party, which lets you narrow down your search to more precise results, and SmartLists, so you can organise all the tweets on your Timeline into a more manageable view.

TweetCaster (the free version) for iPhone

Tweet Caster is, in my opinion, a love or hate thing. I personally don’t get on with it very well, however I’m sure there are some people that swear by it. Download the free version to find out for yourself.

Advantages: A couple of unique features that can make your life on Twitter a lot easier.
Disadvantages: The free version has adverts and the Pro version comes at a price ($4.99).

Price: Free (Pro version $4.99)

Twitterific

Twitterific won Macworld‘s “Twitter Client of the Year” for 2010, and it’s easy to see why. It’s extremely simple to use, and the interface is really nice and easy on the eye, especially with one of my favourite fonts, Helvetica Neue Light. You can sync your timeline position across your devices (the app is also available for the iPad and Mac) with Tweet Marker, and there is built-in Instapaper, Pocket (formerly Read It Later) and Readability support.

Twitterific for iPhone

An upgrade to the Premium version brings not only ad-free browsing but also tweet translation and multiple accounts. If you can live with the adverts, then the free version may well be an absolute snatch though for such a beautiful Twitter client, I would say that $4.99 isn’t that much of an outlay.

Advantages: Really nice interface and plenty of features.
Disadvantages: Customisation possibilities are a little limited in places.

Price: Free (Pro version $4.99)

Twittelator

Twittelator is the final app in our roundup and it boasts over 150 features, including Facebook integration, built-in support for recording and tweeting video, and an integrated web browser, meaning that you don’t have to leave the app to view links. The app comes in 4 (!) versions — the normal Free and Pro versions and a new Neue (shown on the right in the screenshot below), which boasts a completely redesigned (and, may I say, absolutely gorgeous) interface and a couple of extra features.

The standard version of Twittelator (left) vs the Neue version (right)

The Neue version is much quicker and sleeker to use and features more customisation than the standard version, along with a more improved tweet view and tighter integration with iOS. Both apps are free for the standard version (which comes with adverts of course), but the Pro version for both is only $2.99, a real bargain.

Advantages: The interface in the Neue edition is easily one of the best I’ve seen on the iPhone. Plenty of features and customisation options.
Disadvantages: Some customers have complained about the poor customer service.

Price: Free (Pro version $2.99)

Final Thoughts

I hope this article helps you choose a Twitter client for your iPhone. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below, especially if I’ve missed an important one!

And of course, don’t hesitate to share it with your friends if you think it’ll solve their iPhone Twitter woes!

Some iPhone Secrets

There are lots of things that you can do with your iPhone, sure, but we’re willing to be that there are a few more that you either don’t know about or haven’t used before, particularly with all of the additions in i OS 5. Did you know you can put in typing shortcuts similar to Text Ex pander? Or that you can make custom vibrations for each person? If you didn't — or just want to brush up on your i OS trivia — hit the jump and find 40 top secret, ultra-cool tips for the iPhone.

Camera & Pictures

Want to get the most out of the iPhone’s camera and photos? Follow along as we guide you show you some well known (and not so well known) features of i OS 5 and the iPhone.

1. Use Your + Volume Button as a Shutter on Your iPhone…

Taking a picture by holding your iPhone with just one hand is an easy way to get out of focus images. Fix it by holding your iPhone with two hands horizontally, and then push down the + button usually reserved for raising the volume. Now you've got a stable picture!

2. … and Your Headphones, Too

The same trick above works for the volume button on your headphones, too. This comes in particularly handy if you have a Glif or similar tripod mount for your iPhone. If you couldn't already guess, this works for Bluetooth headphones as well.

3. Add a New Photo Album

If you find that your photo album selection lacks a little pizzaz, feel free to add more using this simple trick. Go to the Photos app, click Edit in the top right corner and then click the Add button that shows up in the upper left side of the screen. Now just title the album whatever you want and you’re golden.

4. Quick Look for Pictures You Just Took

Want to look at the most recent image you shot? Open up the camera app and slide the screen from left to right. It’ll show the last picture taken, and you’ll be good to go.

5. Take a Picture With a Double Tap

Stuck on the lock screen but want to take a picture? Double click the home button and look just to the right of your Unlock slider where you’ll find a little camera icon. Touch it, and away you go to taking pictures.

6. Edit Your Photos

Man, those red eyes in that shot look horrible, right? If only you had some kind of way to tweak your shots so that they looked perfect. Turns out you do, all baked into iOS. Just hit Edit on any image, and you’ll be presented with your tools along the bottom row. They’re not super extensive, but it’ll get the job done in a pinch.

Text & Email Functions

Everyone has to type things out on their iPhone, whether it’s text messages or just responding back to an email. Why not make your life a little bit easier? Here are a few tips that will help you out when you’re working behind the keyboard.

7. Text Expansion

Do you find yourself typing the same thing a million times a day? Go to Settings > General > Keyboard and look for Shortcuts after you scroll down just a bit. Then just enter the phrase and appropriate shortcut, and the next time you type that shortcut the phrase will appear. This is particularly handy for things like BARB or your email address.

8. Go Emoji

If you love using emoticons, add the Emoji keyboard to your setup. Just go to Settings > General > Keyboard, then add the Emoji keyboard. This also works if you want to use keyboard in other languages.

9. Use Extra Characters

Want to make sure the accent mark in Montréal is correct? Just hold down the letter you need to accent, and all of the extra characters will appear. Just pick what you need and go from there.

10. Turn On Caps Lock

If you’re really mad and want someone to get the point, or you just like typing in all caps, turn on caps lock by double tapping the shift key. Now you can type with fury!

11. Look Up a Word in the Dictionary

Stumped on what that word in your favorite novel in iBooks means? Wondering why your friend used such a complex word in a text? Look it up using the iOS dictionary. Just hold down on the word that’s got you befuddled, and then touch Define. Now you know the answer and can respond appropriately.

12. Flag an Email

If you’re one of those people who flags every email that comes through, make your OCD happy with iOS 5′s new flag an email feature. To do so, go to your Inbox, hit Edit then select the email(s) you want to flag. Select the Mark tag in the bottom right corner and then select Flag, and you’re good to go.

13. RT F Emails

For those that prefer their email fancy, RTF is now available. Just highlight the word or words you want to accentuate per your usual steps, then select the arrow and then the BIU button to pick between bold, italics or underline.

14. Read Receipts in i Message

IOS 5 brought us iMessage, and with it the ability to get receipts when other people read your messages. It’s an opt-in deal though, so to turn it on, go to Settings > Messages and turn on Send Read Receipts.

Siri Only

Siri changed the way we communicate with our iPhones, and is one of the big features for the iPhone 4S. If you’ve got one, here are a few tweaks that should help you out along the way.

15. Tweet With Siri

Wouldn’t it be great if Siri allowed you to dictate your tweets? Turns out you can, but it’s a bit of a workaround. First, read up on sending your tweets via SMS, which is available on Twitter’s site. Once that’s all squared away, just add Twitter as a contact in your Contacts, and then treat the service just like it was any other person that you want to send a message. (By the way, if Siri cramps up on you because you used the word Twitter, change it to something different that you’ll remember and it’ll be fine.) You can do this with Facebook too, The Next Web has a great writeup.

16. Get Siri by Holding Your iPhone Up To Your Ear

Not everyone knows about this one, but there’s another way to call up Siri that doesn’t require holding down the home button. Go to Settings > General > Siri, and then select Raise to Speak. Now the light sensor on the iPhone will detect when you’ve got the phone up to your ear, and Siri will pick up. It’s a handy way to use Siri in public without looking like a jerk.

Web

One of the best things about the iPhone when it first came out was that it provided a really good web experience, where viewers could see full pages, not just mobile-optimized garbage. If you want to get the most out of your web browsing experience, here’s a few tips to make things go a little smoother.

17. Private Browsing

Want to make sure that your information isn’t getting sent out to the Internet via Safari? There’s a quick way to fix that: Go to Settings > Safari and then click the tab for Private Browsing. Now all of your activity on the web is top secret, so proceed at your own discretion.

18. Make a Reading List

If you don’t use services like Read It Later or Instapaper, but still want to read a webpage without advertisements, just check out Reader, built into Safari. Just click on the little Reader button next to the URL and your article will come up stripped of all distractions and in easy-to-read text.

19. Tap to the Top

Doesn’t it suck to scroll through a long webpage and then flip back up to show the Address bar again? Just tap the top of the screen by the clock and Safari will zip back up and reveal the address bar, no problem.

20. Saving Images

If you found an image on a website that you want to save for yourself like a wallpaper or icon, just hold down your finger on the picture for a second or two. A menu will slide in from the bottom of the screen giving you the option to Save Image or Copy it to the clipboard. Once it’s saved it’s in your Photo Library, ready for whatever you want.

Settings

There’s a lot you can do in iOS just by playing around with a few settings. Don’t believe us? Let’s show you, then.

21. Update Your OS

One of the nice benefits in iOS 5 is over the air updates, and if you want to find out if you’re eligible, it’s as easy as cracking open the Settings app. Go to Settings > General > Software Update and you can find out if you’re in the clear, or needing to update.

22. Adjust Your Notifications

You’ve probably already played around with your notifications, but there are tons of different ways to manipulate your apps and how they alert you, making it just about perfect to make each app function properly. To get there, it’s Settings > Notifications, and there you can adjust what’s in the Notification Center, and then get even more specific and tell the OS how you want each app to notify you. Everything is clearly described, so you know what you’re getting into beforehand.

23. Custom Vibrations

One often forgotten customization available in iOS 5 is setting your own custom vibrations. To do that, first go to Settings > General > Accessibility and turn on Custom Vibrations under Hearing. Then, go to Settings > Sounds. Scroll to the bottom, and there’s Vibration Patterns. Tap it, and now you can make your own custom vibration on the bottom of the screen. Just tap on the glass the pattern you want, holding down your finger for longer notes. Then you can assign these vibrations to a contact, or use them system wide.

24. Set Your Camera Flash For Alerts

That LED in the back of your iPhone isn’t handy for just taking pictures in the dark, it can also be used for a notifying beacon, similar to the LED on most BlackBerry phones. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and turn on the slider for LED Flash for Alerts, and the next time something comes in, the LED will flash accordingly.

25. Customize Your Alert Sounds

Who wants their iPhone to sound like everyone else’s? Not us, so we customize our alert tones using this simple trick. Go to Settings > Sounds, and now everything from your Calendar notifications to Ringtones can be customized, just pick what you want and there you go.

26. Automatic Downloads

If you have multiple iOS devices, or you purchase things on your computer as well, one option for keeping things in sync is to allow Automatic Downloads of your Music, Apps and Books. To get there, go to Settings > Store and check off whichever of the three you want. Now all of your stuff will work in harmony. How very zen.

27. Fun With Air Play

If you have an iPhone 4S, iOS 5 brought mirroring to the table, making it possible for you to display your iPhone’s display on your AppleTV. To do so, double tap the home button to bring up the multitasking bar, then swipe to the right twice. Tap the AirPlay button and select what AppleTV you want to deliver to, then check off Mirroring. Now what’s on your iPhone will be on your AppleTV at the same time.

28. Change Your Default Alert Times

If you use your Calendar app, then you know that there are default alerts built into the system, but did you know how to change them? Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendar > Default Alert Times (which is close to the bottom) and adjust your times accordingly.

29. Change Your iCloud Storage Size

If you find yourself always bumping into the size limit on your iCloud account, you can up the storage levels right on your iPhone. Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Buy More Storage and select what level you want to use. You can also downgrade sizing if you think you have too much, too.

30. Tweet It

Twitter is now integrated into iOS 5, so if you ever feel the need to send that pic of Grandma drinking a bit too much wine off to the Internet, now’s your chance. First, setup your Twitter account by downloading the official Twitter app, then go to Settings > Twitter and enter your username and password (if you have more than one Twitter account, no worries, it’s all supported). Now whenever you take a picture, you’ve got the option to send it to Twitter without ever opening the official app.

31. Dissect Your Storage

We’ve got lots of apps that all vie for space on our iPhone’s flash drive, but what if you could find out who was using what? Go to Settings > General > Usage and there’s a list of all of your apps, and how much space they’re taking up. This way, if you find yourself low on space you can delete the offending apps entirely, or just preen them down using the app itself.

The Stuff That Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else

There are lots of other good tips floating around in iOS, but not all of them are big enough to denote their own category. That’s why we've created this one; it’s a general grab bag for whatever other secrets don’t fit somewhere else. Get it? Good. Here you go.

32. Get Week View By Turning Over Your iPhone

It’s new in iOS 5, and it’s fancy. If you want to check a rolling week view of your calendar, just turn it over to a horizontal orientation. Then you can scroll up and down to see hours, or left and right to move through weeks. It’s pretty handy to have when you just want to see what’s coming up in your week.

33. Get Hourly Weather Reports

This one is easy. Pull up the Weather app to get your weekly weather report. Tap anywhere in the week and the current day will expand to reveal the hourly forecast for the rest of the day. It doesn’t work days in advance, but then again, neither does the local weather guy.

34. See Street View in Maps

Pull up Maps and search for something — anything — and you can usually see a little orange dude that shows up on the left side of the destination. Touch that and you go to street view where you can rotate 360 degrees. But what if you don’t have a search destination or just want to see a random area on street view? Just drop a pin. Usually that orange dude will show up again and you can scope out the area before you head down.

35. Take a Screenshot

All these pictures up above? They were all taken using this little trick. Press the home button and the lock button simultaneously and the screen will flash white. As an added bonus, if you have Photo Stream via iCloud, all those images go right into your stream (which is great if your business is posting screenshots like ours is).

36. Location Based Reminders

One of the big selling points with Siri was integration into the new Reminders app, but there’s some cool GPS features built in, too. Make a reminder, and then select to remind you At a Location. You’ll be presented with your current location and the options When I Leave or When I Arrive, or you can just make a custom spot up of your choosing. Just know that this can eat up your battery life because the GPS will be on all the time.

37. Add Twitter Handles to your Contacts

There are two ways to handle this one (see what we did there?). If you start at Settings > Twitter, you can click on Update Contacts and all of your current contacts in your address book will be trolled and connected to their appropriate Twitter accounts. If you want to do it manually (or Twitter can’t find it for you), then go into the contact, hit Edit and then Add Field. Scroll down and you’ll get to Twitter, and then you can manually enter the info.

38. Perform a Hard Reset

Sometimes nothing seems to work on your iPhone, and apps are giving you problems. The answer is a hard reset, which shuts the iPhone off completely — even mid task — and then restarts it. To do this, hold down the lock and home buttons simultaneously for at least 5 seconds, or until the Apple logo appears. When it boots back up, it should be good to go.

39. Give Your Contacts Nicknames

We’ve all got friends that we call by their nicknames, whether it’s KJ, Little T or Jackstands, and sometimes we can’t remember their actual name. To fix that, you can add their nickname into Contacts pretty easily. Go to the contact, hit Edit, then Add Field. Right there at the bottom of the first box is Nickname. Once you get back to the main Edit screen, just add in their nickname and now Siri will recognize it, as will Voice Command.

40. Customize Your Music Controls

There’s only so much room on an iPhone screen, and that’s problematic with the Music app. Some people prefer to search by Artist, others by Playlists, and some don’t even listen to music and just focus on Audiobooks and Podcasts. To customize your Music app, just open it up, hit More then Edit. You’ll see a whole grouping of icons, and then you can drag them to their new location on the bottom of the screen. Fancy.

Got Any Other Good Tips?

If we forgot one here, or didn’t include one of your favorites, feel free to leave us a comment below! The more secret tips we can amass here, the better it is for all iPhone users, right?