internet kaspersky security: Iphone 3 G White

Geeze its about time I updated my Blog-it was last updated February.
Launch day was July 10 and I took the plunge and got a White 16gb Iphone 3 G.

Yes I saw all the hype and probably got sucked in a bit but boy am I glad I did.
I wasnt terribly happy with the Nokia N 95. Sure it probably has more features, better camera MMS and others but I dont think it beats the Iphone for ease of use and the WOW factor.

I always look for a Yahoo group concerning a device that I use to see what what others are experiencing.
I did on this occassion and signed up as a member of apple-iphone@yahoogroups.com.
It is quitre a busy group and the initial posts I came across were people upgrading to Firmware 2 on there previous Iphones and Ipods.

There nwas also a lot of issues with the new service Mobileme which is replacing the old .mac service. As an upshot Apple are now offerring users a 2 month tirial of this service. More about this later.

The initialisation of the phone was easy and after I walked out of the shop my old sim card was disabled so I went home to activate the new phone. Not a problem. ( I was given a new sim card with my old number transferred) Changed from a You Choose 20 plan to one of the new Iphone plans. Talk 120, txt 600 and 250mb data.

Set up Itunes 7.7 which was required. I am using a Windows PC and managed to transfer a lot of my songs collection onto the device. So far so good.
Tried to Sync outlook with the device. Contacts went across ok but no Calendar items. Fiddled a bit with preferences. Looked at the forums reset sync options. Hello worked from Deskltop and not from laptop which is where I had all my latest calendar items ??? very frustrating sorting this bit out.
How about a work around I wondered.
Set up Mobileme-its free for 2 months.

http://www.mobileme.com/

The concept of this is that you have all your information-ie contacts, calendar, files, photos. You sync between various PC's and mobile devices into the "Cloud" and the data moves around over the air thereby keeping everything up to date. The iphone supports this-basically a Push data system.

After some twidling I finally managed to get this working so now all my data is in sync with the laptop and the Iphone and any changes I make is live on the mobileme website within minutes and vice a versa.

Impressions of the vfarious apps:
I like the threading of the SMS-just like you are having a conversation
The email is a brease and easy to set up and use and now I have the poush email up and running its even better. Albeit at cost. The Mobileme service is going to cost around $155 a year to use.
Thye camera is OK and a shame it doesnt have more Mega pixels and there is no MMS. But theyu can go out in emails easily enough. There are plenty of apps available that are sort of integrated to some social networking sites like Facebook, flikr and the photos you take are also geotaged as well which adds to the social nbetworking possibilities.
The Map function is quite usefull although seing im a Geocacher I already own a functional GPS unit and would not use this feature a lot.
Theree is a You tube Interface but I have found that it takes a while for the viudeos to load-on my wifi network so prob even slower if I was using the 3 G network. Use this moccassionally.

World Clock usefull. Stocks alsop usefull -I have set up NZ stuff just for interest. The weather app isnt the most detailed and I await for a local NZ app made by a guy at http://www.orsome.co.nz. He has produces a top seller app in trhe app store called My Trades which allowes you to follow your trades on Trademe. He has also got an app that followes the NZ TV Channels called tvGuide and gets rave reviews.

Obviously the Itunes store is a great feature and as yet I havnt purchased any music. Have listened to samples from the store though and have been tempted. What Ill do is go through my music library-consolidate all my folders and see what ive got 1st.

Ok what apps have I installed and comments.
My favourite so far is Palringo which is a Multi Chat programme like Trillian which I use on my PC. It enables you to run Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk and there own network plus they have groups. There is an Iphone group and now a NZiphone group on palringo.
This was a freee app.
I have installed netnewswire a news reader,m 2 mahjong games one I paid for, Express another aggregated data capture app, Labrynth game-free, speechcloud-enables voice command for your contacts, Shazam a music recofnition programe that identifies songs-not accurate all the time but links in with Itunes store which is quite cleaver; 105 Classics a Internet music channel, exposure a flickr related product; Ifob which uses the GPS function of the iphone to work out whoi is nearby-bit freaky but has its possibilities. Who is that nice chick across the rd ??!!
Epocrates a drug information app-good but the druf names are americanised so a bit hard to search for information. Last MoPhoTo and another flickr app.

The Safari web browser is very nice and the screen is very nice and resizing with your finger is easy to makes pages easy to read. I have found some local sites that are designed to run on your Iphone -Kiwibank,vodafone, NZHerald etc.

So far my impression has been very good. Some frustrations re the sync issues.
It does chew through Battery power though. Suppose things will settle down after the novelty wears oiff a bit.
I have found also that I am not using as much data as I expected. I signed up on the 10th July and today still got over 180 mb;s left to use.
So all in all a pretty good experience and Im glad I made the swith.
Feel free to makle some comments and ask my advice as I think I have learnt a lot during this process.
I was a bit reluctant to post a blog about the Iphone as there appeared to be a bit of anti sentiment around on GZ but after chatting to some of the "blokes" in the IRC channel I was encouraged to put my post in so thanks for the support Scott and a few others.