My neighbor Jeff is agonizing over buying an iPhone. He's post an iPhone Lust-O-Meter on his blog. He should enter the iPhone giveaway that my wife has running on her organization's web site.

Here are some other random notes:

• I've spent most of my time in Safari. Browsing web pages is a joy using the zooming and panning. Too bad there's no Flash support. But Javascript, DHTML and AJAX work pretty well. AJAX heavy sites like Flickr work great.
• The virtual keyboard takes A LOT of patience and practice, but is usable.
• Hiptop Nation often crashes Mobile Safari because of all the photos. The browser goes black and drops you back out to the start page of icons.
• Everything about the phone functions--except Visual Voicemail--is mediocre. The speakerphone volume is surprisingly weak given that you can drive the speaker pretty loud when playing music or videos.
• Mail app is bare bones. I discovered it doesn't import attached Vcards. If my company supports connecting to Exchange Server, I'll wonder if I can do stuff like manage Outlook appointments.
• The built-in camera captures good quality images, and performs surprisingly well in low light. I'm still mystified as to why there isn't a decent flash and self-portrait mirror built in.
• The included photo gallery app only displays photos at screen resolution, even though they are captured much higher. The demos that show the finger pinch zooming in are bogus in that the zoom only magnifies the screen rez photo--you can see it get pixely very quickly. Also, the system only attaches the screen rez image when sending a photo as a email attachment. This means there is no way to email the 2mp native images into sites like Flickr. You have to sync with iTunes and post from the desktop.
• The YouTube app was fun for a while, but I found that even at 10,000 videos, I got tired of what was there after an hour or two. You can NOT search full YouTube or see your own YouTube vids.
• It's really nice having a built-in mono speaker for listening to podcasts.
• In the iPod mode, I couldn't find a way to random access an audio track while it was playing. You can do this with videos tho.
• Like many others have said, it's annoying that you need an adapter to use third-party headphones. I have noise cancelling headphones for which I'll need to pack yet another adapter.
• The iPhone hardware build quality is outstanding. Though the screen does accumulate finger grease quickly, being made of glass will keep it scratch free for a long time to come. The steel rim of the screen and metal back bezel are solid and scuff resistent too. I already dropped my iPhone once onto the floor at a bar. Fortunately, the floor was wooden, so no harm at all. I'm currently using a leather folio belt case made by Incase.
• The backlight for the screen is set at "half" brightness at the factory. It looked fine at that setting, much brighter than the Sidekick screen at max. You can pump it up to blindingly bright, presumably for better visibility in bright sunlight.
  
  

One of the best iPhone reviews I've seen to date is on Engadget.

- mike lee - happy 4th - wheaton, md

I got over 10,000 hits to my Flickr stream in the last 24 hours because Make Blog and Boing Boing linked to my close-up photo experiments with the iPhone camera and Radio Shack 3-lens magnifier. This is the same technique I documented here back in January 2005. I'm going to continue to post iPhone related photos in a set on Flickr.

My neighbor Jeff is agonizing over buying an iPhone. He's post an iPhone Lust-O-Meter on his blog. He should enter the leather folio belt case made by Incase.

The backlight for the screen is set at "half" brightness at the factory. It looked fine at that setting, much brighter than the Sidekick screen at max. You can pump it up to blindingly bright, presumably for better visibility in bright sunlight.



One of the best iPhone reviews I've seen to date is on Engadget.

- mike lee - happy 4th - wheaton, md

So Scion has a new ad campaign out featuring demons (or deviants) ripping "Sheeple" apart in every gory way possible. Check their site for a fun and sick game featuring the characters. Lotsa interactive goodies to be found there too. Simple gameplay, but gruesome...

"I thrash in the bed of my style, seeking a comfortable position." -Czeslaw Milosz

Now a 30 min rest period...and a beverage.

Sleebus

It took a National Holiday for me to get a day off but I finally got one. Took the kiddies to the park and then came home and scared Gracie with some fireworks. Happy Fourth of July Nation, Enjoy it. --Nick Cates Sent Via My SK3

Kobayashi was finally beat this year by Joey chestnut at 66 hot dogs! Kobayashi only ate 63, but nobody knew for sure if he was going to be competing, due to "jaw arthritis".

Happy fourth, hN! -sAmI k-

After sleeping in the fridge overnight, the spices have rehydrated and soaked their spicy goodness into the meat. Now into da smoker with ya! I'm smoking with a combination of pecan and mesquite, about a 3:1 ratio. It's a nasty, drizzly day here tho...so much for the pool party. =/

Sleebus

My chum, my pepper, my chippy ~Je®®y Miah...AIM= eekeekeeek

Very interesting...