That’s not to say I regret purchasing it. I don’t. It’s a welcome replacement to my old phone for one big reason - bigger buttons. I hated texting on my previous phones. I was all fingers-and-thumbs.

Primarily I was after a new phone - one that was easier to type on, and could access the internet. I’d never really browsed the web on a phone before. It was just too painful, and expensive. As a web developer, I’ve been holding off developing for the mobile web for a long time. However, there is clearly a groundshift taking place. With new handsets and competitive pricing plans being introduced, the mobile web is a medium that can no longer be ignored.

With my previous phone I was a bit of a luddite. I never used the camera as I already have some very nice cameras. I never listened to music or radio on them - I have an iPod. I never sent photos from my phone, as it was expensive, and I gave up trying to browse the web as it was too slow. I hated texting on a keyboard so small. I hated the fact that my address book and calendar did not sync too well with my Mac. But as a mobile phone it worked great.

I was never a Blackberry user. I like to escape from my email once in a while, but I can see the benefits of getting at my mail on the move.

So, I guess my wishlist for my new phone was/is as follows:

• Easier to type messages
• Plays nicely with my Mac’s address book and calendar
• Easier to browse the internet
• Easier to read and write emails
• Easier to keep on top of my to-do list

So how does the iPhone fair?

Typing Messages

Well, typing messages is easier than with my old phone, due to the touch screen keyboard. However, the predictive text is far inferior to that of Sony Ericsson. The iPhone auto-corrects unless you tell it otherwise. This is good to a point - it puts in apostrophes for you, which is a nice touch. However, if you correctly type a word, and an alternative is suggested, it is up to you to reject the suggested word by clicking on a cross next to the word, away from the keyboard. What a pain. It insists on thinking that my wife Nat is a Bat!

What’s worse is that the dictionary is American, and there is no way to choose another (even though it knows I’m in the UK), and there is no way for the dictionary to learn new words.

And the worst part.. you can’t even turn off the predictive texting.

The iPhone manual suggests using both hands to type. Believe me the phone ‘aint that big! What is sorely missing is the ability to rotate the phone and then type on a horizontal keyboard. There are applications that can be downloaded/purchased that now provide this feature, but why wasn’t it there form the outset?

And there’s no cut-and-paste. I immediately found myself missing my old Palm Pilot. It was so easy to write with the stylus; highlight words, cut, copy and paste. Blackberry offers this feature, and it is sorely missing from the iPhone.

Syncing with the address book and calendar

Yep. Pretty happy with this. So long as you sync using iTunes. Don’t bother with the MobileMe Cloud offering. You can’t sync any calendars you subscribe to, including the birthday calendar created form the Mac address book.

Browsing the internet

Great if you’re on a wi-fi network; still pretty slow on 3G. As I don’t live in London, I don’t seem to have access to the free wi-fi Cloud network that comes as part of my plan. So, if I’m not at home or at the office, I’m back on 3G. If I am at home or work, I’d rather use my laptop than the phone for accessing the internet.

3G is painful. Web pages are slow to load, as are emails. Useful for an emergency e.g. full-time footie scores but hardly a pleasurable experience.

To make it more painful, the Safari browser is flakey. It constantly crashes. As noted in a previous post, even the Apple web site causes it to crash. I’m pretty sure it can’t handle the Javascript too well. Until web pages are optimised for the iPhone, this will be a big issue.

Even without the browser crash, I;m not convinced that browsing traditional web pages on a small device is an elegant solution to our desire to have information at out fingertips, whilst on the move. You can pinch, tap and rotate the page, zoom in and out as much as you like, but it is still hard to navigate and to read the content.

My opinion might change. Over time, I’m sure that web developers will re-engineer their sites to provide optimised versions for hand-held devices. So far, I’ve only found one - Amazon - and it really is quite impressive.

However, what it clearly evident at present, is that many companies are choosing to develop iPhone applications rather than re-visit their web sites. If you use Wordpress, LinkedIn, eBay, wikipedia or Facebook you are going to be much more productive using an installed application, rather than a web application.

The one notable exception to this is Google (except for Google maps which come pre-installed). Yes they have an iPhone application, but it’s actually a rather disappointing wrapper around their web applications, which are optimised for the iPhone, but not particularly good. I was a big user of Google Reader, but have since switched to NetNewsWire for my RSS feeds.

Emails

Well, email push is a bit of a con. If you subscribe to MobileMe, you can get a push account. But you can get this for free from Yahoo! or Mail2web. And I don’t want yet another account anyway. Instead my phone polls every hour (can be configured to be more frequent) which is just fine. most of the time I’m at my laptop anyway.

Although my mail server has a spam filter, iPhone email has no way of setting up rules to move Spam to the appropriate (IMAP) folder, which is annoying. I now realise how good my Mac Mail application is as a second level spam catcher.

As mentioned, cut-and-paste would be great, as would a horizontal keyboard. The iPhone is great for reading emails, but if possible I wait to send replies form my Mac.

Text Messages

Aside from the annoying auto-complete, it’s pretty good. I’m much quicker at typing than with my old phone. The touch keyboard lacks any form of feedback - something that the Blackberry Storm now offers, so you have to really watch what you type.

What is really disappointing is that I can’t attach a photo to a text message, though I can attach one to an email. Why this is not possible is beyond me. i would have assumed this to a standard feature.

I would also expect, as standard, to be able to forward a contact to someone by text message. But once again, this feature is lacking. And,as copy-and-paste is missing, it’s quite laborious to go into my address book, write down the details, go into my text application and type them in.

Text messages are grouped into threads, which is nice - you get to see your conversation with the other party. But deleting messages is a pain. Each thread needs to be deleted individually.

Camera

Nothing special. no zoom. No flash. Not particularly high res. Useful if you need a photo of the car that shunted you at the traffic lights, for your insurance claim; but not the sort of camera you’d use to take shots of the family.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth support is limited. Very limited. You can attach your earpiece, and I guess speakers, but you can’t listen to you iPod through it, only your phone calls.

My earpiece only pairs with the phone if I turn on the phone before the earpiece.

My biggest gripe, is that turning Bluetooth on and off takes a ridiculous number of clicks. Select Settings, then General, then Bluetooth, then On/Off. There is no way way to create shortcut keys on the phone, and this is a pain to do at the beginning and end of each car journey.

The Styling

Yes, the iPhone looks beautiful, sexy, to die for, whatever. But, when all’s said and done, at the end of the day, it’s a phone/pda/computer. Highly polished, shiny, black surfaces and glass screens are hardly practical. The only place you get to see how sexy the phone is, is in the store. Once you get it out of the store, the first thing you do is buy a bullet-proof protective case and screen guard. There’s a nice little bit of cash being earned in selling these accessories. I can’t blame Apple for the design. There is a reason that the iPhone will likely sell better than the android - not because it is a better device, but because it looks cooler. But it would be nice if, for a change, Apple designed a product that not only looks cool, but is also practical.

Summary

The iPhone has been greatly received, and for very good reasons. I think it is a great product, and I’m glad I bought it.

What has surprised, and disappointed me, is that there are a number of features that are now taken for granted with mobile phones, yet are lacking on the iPhone - a dictionary that learns, the ability to tun off the auto-completion, sending photos and addresses by text message.

Many of these shortcomings are available by jailbreaking the phone, something I am reticent to do, and to be honest, haven’t got the time nor inclination. I’m sure, over time, Apple will address many of my gripes, and probably charge for the privilege.

If you’re thinking of buying an iPhone, I’d definitely recommend it - just make sure you know what you’re not getting.

BSkyB have confirmed that the content on offer will include the Sport channels, which in my opinion, are the only reason anyone would pay for their service.

So, this means, that Premiership football will be available to watch without an expensive Sky subscription, which is great news.

Of course, it remains to be seen what the subscription costs will be. Will it be pay-per-view? If so, how much would you be willing to pay for a football game?

Undoubtedly, the BSkyB media player will not be available for Apple Mac (as everyone except the BBC seems to have opted for Microsoft DRM technology). Still, I can live with that. Watching the game online will hopefully be much cheaper than a full Sky ‘box’ subscription, or a visit to the pub.

Chances that apple will sanction Opera for the iphone ?

Blogging is most definitely alive. What has changed are the blog authors. When I first discovered the blogsphere I lived in Australia, and loved learning what the BritPack - a group of British web designers - were up to. A day did not pass without Andy Clark, Andy Budd, John Hicks, Jeremy Keith or Richard Rutter sharing some insightful thoughts on their blog. These days, you’d be hard pushed to receive one update a week between them.

It’s not that they’ve run out of things to say. Many have moved on to micro-blogging through Twitter and the like. I think Twitter is good, but it’s no substitute for a blog entry. I like the fact that a blog entry gets archived and discovered at a later date. To me, blogs are a great resource, where others provide tips on how to get things done Whether it be with HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP or Java, the blogsphere is a great resource; a great community. It’s a shame that the web community blogs less often. It’s a loss to the community.

Whilst individual bloggers have departed, the big-boys have moved in. My blogreader receives daily updates from all the news sites, whether it be the BBC, The Guardian, The Register or TechCrunch. This isn’t really blogging; it’s syndicated news - which is initially what RSS was created for. News sites are however changing. They have now fully embraced blogging, whether it be a journo entry, or a host of comments by readers.

Of course, blogs have also been hijacked by the PR and marketing world. PR 2.0 is all about social interaction, and weblogs are great food for Google to swallow and regurgitate.

The thing is, my friends who are not in the tech industry, haven’t a clue about weblogs and RSS feeds and blogreaders. It passed them by. They know about Facebook. They don’t read or write blogs; they don’t listen to podcasts, and they don’t have a clue what Twitter is about. If blogging has died, they won’t miss it one bit.

But blogging is most definitely not dead. The bloggers have changed. Perhaps the audience has changed too. I find myself following the media on my blogreader, and the individuals on Twitter.

Perhaps even the blog medium is beginning to change. Not only do people share thoughts by blogposts, they now share video by YouTube. And yesterday, I discovered a great new concept put out by Jeremy Keith - HuffDuffer - it’s a podcast of audio files. Subscribe through iTunes and find out what other’s are listening to. Here’s a link to my huffduff.

Long live the blog, the micro-blog, the video-blog and the audio-blog.

This is all fine and dandy until your customer requests that all links to external sites open in a new browser window. This is not an unreasonable request.

The answer is to add an an event to such links using Javascript. As a fan of jQuery, this could not be easier.

Step 1. Add a rel attribute to all external links/anchors

e.g. href="externalsite.com" rel="external"

Step 2. Include the following jQuery script

If adding the target attribute seems like a hack, then the following should achieve the same goal

$('a[rel=external]‘).click(function(){window.open(this.href); return false});

This may all seem a bit obvious, but I’m sure there’s someone out there looking for an elegant fix like this.

Well, since then I have been contacted 3 times by people trying to sell me insurance.. not due to my blog entry; but simply because I have opted to by the phone, but not the insurance.

First off, I received a phone call from Carphone Warehouse. I told them I was already covered. Still, the next day Carphone Warehouse managed to send me a text offering me insurance, along with a number to reply to if I want to unsubscribe from future spam.

Yesterday, I received a phone call on my new phone. This seemed odd, as my phone number doesn’t port over until today. I should have guessed. Someone from o2 offering me insurance. I asked when this harrassment would stop and the sales assistant got all defensive. After much probing, I discovered that she wasn’t calling from o2, but from another company. Apparently o2 are happy to give out your phone number without your consent. Thank you o2.

I was already with o2 through Carphone Warehouse so it should have been a simple upgrade, and so I went to visit my local store. Problem is, the insurance is a rip off at £35 a quarter. And you do need insurance, as the contract obliges you to replace your phone if it’s nicked and then continue with your contract.

Over the road at the o2 store, insurance was only £7.50.month. However, after much discussion, it transpired that I’d need to give one month’s notice at Carphone Warehouse, and then register as a new customer at o2. What a hassle.

I went home somewhat frustrated, and turned to Google. I soon discovered several other policies at less than £5/month, plus other blogs about the iphone insurance rip-off.

Tonight, I checked with my household insurer (Direct Line), and I’m already covered. The phone’s not even active, yet by lunch time today, a friendly sales assistant from Carphone Warehouse phoned me to check if I wanted insurance.

We’ve also now realised that GastroGrrl won’t need to insure her phone either (offered at £6/month by Orange). She’s alread saved £190 by not upgrading through Carphone Warehouse, and going drect to the Orange web site.

So, shop around, check your existing household policies, and don’t be pressured into taking a phone company policy.

It’s nice to get involved in sales pitches and speak to customers directly, unlike when I was a contractor. It’s great to work with a creative, and to be able to bounce ideas around. And it’s really nice to get positive feedback from customers and clients.

Stan seem pretty happy with the way things are going too. Howie is now officially, the new man at stan.

And that’s not all. There are numerous channels to choose from. I’m currently watching the women’s football semi-final (Germany are beating Brazil 10).

And below the Flash video (which can be played full screen) is a text commentary. no need to refresh the page: a funky bit of AJAX reveals updated text every 2 minutes.

Glad to see our license fee is going to good use. Not sure about my work productivity this week though

Ooh. Brazil have just equalised. Time to go