[photopress:iphone.jpg,full,centered] Oh, sure. Picked up one of the IPHONES. NO, didn’t stand in line. Ordered and delivered in a normal fashion.Look, it’s a phone: they want EVERYONE to have one. The hardware cost is nothing compared to the 2 year service commitment.

And of course in short order there are a number of applications available that make this unit a bit more of a draw.
We’ll give you a full last at the end of this.
So what we were interested in, are the photo capabilities of this unit.
Downloaded an album of, what else, lunch photos. The quality is fine, but the Epson P-5000 blows it out of the water.No surprise there. But this is a bit smaller and has a few more services,right?
Good enough for a quick show? Sure thing. Oh right, you can also send it off to folks from your hand.

Tried to see some of the Photoinduced YouTube videos, but all of the YouTube library is being converted to Itunes friendly format. I hear that it will be December before you can truly search the archives. Fair enough. Of course all of our new videos that will post this week are automatically converted. We’ll get you a heads up on that.

The built in camera is pretty good with an interface that is truly elegant. This finger touch deal IS cool. And like many other PDA’s , easy to take, attach, and send photos. Nice iris blades graphic for the camera, vertical or horizontal viewing, simple to add photo as wallpaper. NO video??? Can’t wait til the next gen when we have a higher megapixel camera and a bigger hard drive. Think January.

The only app we have seen specifically for photogs is iPhlikr, an easily to navigate simplified version of Flikr. Now I had to navigate a bit to get here, but the thumbnails were easy to get to. You still have to log on, but once in you can get around ok.Just OK. I’m sure it will be refined.

Now we know there will lots more coming. Heck ,it’s only been out there 2 weeks.

Some complaints? You cannot delete mail in bulk. One at a time only. And you don’t empty the trash. Wasted space. The receptions at SF airport was great for the phone. Terrible for the internet. Edge Network (alt for wi-fi) is slow for loading, and I wasn’t going to pay for WI-FI access.Waiting for email was a drag, but my blackberry had it all. Had both for a side-by-side comparison in the real world.

Good news though is you use Ichat- here is the site for unlimited Ichat. Add it to your Safari browser.Forget about the expansive Text charges. Power to the people! or the programmers.
And here is a great collection of IPhone apps. Or try this.You will can check out the sites on your computer before you save it onto your IPHONE.

Overall? Not trying to come off on the negative side, actually love the IPHONE for all of the right reasons, but not leaving the blackberry………yet.

Yep, Beam Me Up, Geeky! I guess I joined the army.

(small family plug: my award winning sister April is currently casting Star Trek, so its been on the familial mind. Belated Happy Birthday, Sis!)

And we have a winner for the John Szarkowski bookThe Photographers Eye: Hipolito V. of Washington !
We’ll be doing more giveaways right on the sight this sumer, so stay with us.

Cheers!
Damon Webster