iPhone 2.0 software

Haven't been brave enough yet to install the new iPhone software? Well, I can only speak for myself, but my upgrade went fine. It took a while for the phone to do its upgrading thang, but when it was done - and after I updated my Mac's software as well - all kinds of neat new settings were available. And, I can finally work with our company's Exchange server! I haven't decided yet if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Some people have been having problems with syncing via the new MobileMe service (formerly mac.com), to the point where Apple sent an apology and gave every subscriber a free month.

The "Push" thing for email is a bit overrated, at least from my perspective, because I don't want constant, periodic alerts that I have mail. I already know I have new email in my inbox every few minutes. It's more a question of deciding if and when I want to read it, or not. So the old fashioned pull approach works fine.

It is nice, though, to not have to tether to get calendar and address book updates synced with the iPhone.

I took a trip via iTunes to the iPhone application store, and snagged some of the freebies. There's a Yellow Pages program that's pretty cool, and it appears to be national in scope. At least I think it is - searches found companies in the Denver, PA area with no problem.

I also tried "SmugShots," which is kinda cool. Install SmugShots, give it your SmugMug account login, and now when you take a picture with your iPhone, you can send it directly to your SmugMug Web page for others to see.

I can already see the "24" high-stakes espionage applications for this: the cold blooded terrorist killers are stalking a boy who found the trigger for the nuke they want to detonate. He's lurking in the dark in a vacant electrical power plant, whispering on the phone to Jack Bauer, who asks "Son, what does it look like? Can you describe it? Dammit!"

So (blatant product-placement criticism be damned), the boy whips out his iPhone, snaps the photo, and tells Jack to check his "3DoorsDownFan4ever.smugmug.com" page. Jack finds the photo of the trigger and "opens some sockets" to pass the data on to HQ.

Anyways, hopefully the terrified boy who got mixed up in this nefarious international plot has a new 3G iphone, because otherwise that bad guy might find him and smash his phone and his face before the transmission completes. I have the original iPhone, and the upload was slooooow. I could probably draw a picture of the detonation trigger faster.

I can definitely see why the 3G version could be such an enormous, humongous win for Apple. There are already shortages and it's sold in the millions. It's all about the cloud, baby!

(As in "cloud computing" - Sorry, my geekiness got away from me for a second...).