The iphone has revolutionized mobile phone technology not only in the United States but also in the world. Now with the 3G available in 57 countries and coming soon to 23 countries, the iphone is increasingly becoming a mobile phone of international acclaim.  The benefits and advantages of the phone are available for your reading pleasure on the Apple website.

But the iphone is more than just a phone. It is a tool for effectively and efficiently managing the complex demands that span every facet of our hectic lives. It’s a way of life. That’s right, a culture – the iculture.

At ArcStone, we have embraced the iculture and bask in its glory on a daily basis. Almost half of the employees have iphones and they constantly rave about them.

Nick Longtin, a connoisseur of Indian cuisine once commented, “I love Tandori chicken. I bet you can even Tandori a shoe and it would taste great.” The idea Mr. Longtin is espousing here is that anything (edible or not) preceded by Tandori gives it major credibility. This same analogy carries over to the letter “i.” Placing i in front of mundane words like phone and culture give these words a whole new meaning. To illustrate this concept, let’s delve deeper into the linguistic significance of the letter i.

I  is the ninth letter of the greek alphabet, called iota. As we all know, the word iota in modern English is a noun meaning the smallest amount or part imaginable. It stands to reason that the idea behind the iphone was to enable users to achieve maximum efficiency with the smallest amount of effort.  It is no surprise that then that it combines three products in one: a phone, an ipod and a breakthrough internet device.

In the fast paced society and culture we live in, where time is of the essence, we expect everything microwaved and ready for consumption or use with minimal effort. The iphone helps to achieve this delicate balance between speed and accuracy which results in huge time savings.

The next time you hear the words iphone, iway or iculture remember that it’s an invitation to live life by design and not from crisis to crisis.

Well, it’s June 9th. We can expect the announcement 10 am PST (noon here in Minnesota). Will the new iPhone go on sale today? Tomorrow? This week?

Will it be cheaper than ever?

Will I buy it in white, black, or red?

Will it be thinner, sleeker, more beveled?

Will it have solar panels?

Will Twitter crack under the strain of the anticipation and excitement?

You can check WWDC 2008 live blogging coverage over at CNET for news as it comes in…

I helped a friend move some furniture this weekend. Up at 7:00 am! Earliest I’ve been up on a Saturday in several months.

Reed DeLapp spotted quite the photo opportunity near the IKEA furniture pick-up, and his iPhone came to the rescue. The quality of iPhone and Treo photos is quite impressive. I don’t think I would even attempt a photo like this with my Motorola Razr, and when these photo opps com along, it’s nice to be prepared (ask Nick Longtin if you’re not convinced).

Check out this tool!

There have been a lot of rumors about Google releasing a mobile phone. Well folks – they’re not gonna do it, they’re just going to give away the software for you to create your own phone. I’m calling mine the _Phone.

Available as of yesterday, programmers can download Google’s SDK for Android. Android is Google’s open source mobile phone operating system. This is probably a very good strategic move for Google – remove obstacles for accessing its applications, making it very, very easy to work within Google’s burgeoning framework of applications from Google Docs to Google Maps….

Anyway – I’ll let Sergey tell you all about it.

Many have suggested, and I agree, the iPhone is bad for web developers. Travel back in time with me to 1997. Microsoft releases a relatively competitive browser, for free, that can render standards based websites well.

With the help of Microsoft’s excellent marketing, the new browser quickly became a hot platform to develop for. However, some features developers were utilizing were specific to IE, and broke compatibility with other browsers.

Today a similar situation is brewing with Safari 3 and the iPhone. Although the iPhone is supposed to render standard sites well, many iPhone-only sites are popping up.

Thus, the suffering of web developers everywhere continues…

It’s now official, Apple will be releasing a SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It will be dropping in February, I assume to coincide with Valentines day, as this announcement amounts to a love letter from Steve to Apple fanboys everywhere.

There has already been some interesting software developed without Apple’s blessing or official SDK. However, with the support of Apple, developers will no doubt produce better applications, and be able to access some of the iPhone’s advanced hardware. Also, users needn’t fear turning their phone into a $400 paper weight just so they can play Tetris.

Not every Mom and Pop shop will get their wares into the phone though. In order to keep out the wrong element, Apple is planning on implementing digital signatures for third party software. Although this is standard practice in the handset industry, I am curious to see Apple’s spin on it.

My wife and I have been using Microsoft Money since 1997 to manage our personal finances. Overall it has been good – but over the last couple years the system has started to break down for us.

We have found that we both need access to the account information so we can discuss it, track it, and maintain the accounts (you know, all those things you’re supposed to do with $$ as a couple, right?). Microsoft Money, Quicken and other software systems are problematic because we have to install them and access them on one machine or else do two installs and swap files, etc. We’ve found using Money that it was hard for us both to engage because one of us invariably had to do most of the entry (Lisa in our case).

So we went looking for a web based personal financial system. Our journey has led us to Mint, Wesabe, and Mvelopes and have now come out with a clear winner – ClearCheckBook.com.

It is simple, easy to use, works with my iPhone and best of all is free. We got all our accounts loaded within 20 minutes on Saturday. If you’re looking for a register to track personal expenses – this is a really good tool that I can recommend.

So, full of anxiety but pumped about iTunes on the iPhone, I ran the iPhone update 1.1.1. I was anxious because I had hacked my phone to allow me to install third party applications. It worked fine, but it removed all my previously installed stuff.

I’m not going to hack it again. I realized, as it was reloading (and I was nervously waiting) that I didn’t use hardly any of the crap I had installed. Yeah, some of the stuff is neat in premise… but just not as useful as I had hoped. Peer to peer GPS? It’s nice, but it doesn’t work. Etch a sketch? Also very cool… but after the “oohh that’s neat” feeling of drawing on an iPhone with your finger, it loses its luster too. Even “useful” apps like terminal and Python saw no use. The things I use on the iPhone are the things that Apple sold me. Safari, Mail, Phone, iPod. That’s what I use. That’s why I have an iPhone. I wish there were more things I could do with it–REAL GPS for instance would be cool, but won’t happen. Document editing, though, would be even better.

I’m just happy not to own a new iBrick.

Over the weekend, I did a couple of things with big enterprisey companies which have big enterprisey applications for consumers to, er, use. I purchased a computer from the online Dell outlet, sought support from Microsoft, slogged through insurance forms on State Farm’s site, and, oh right–paid my iPhone bill. Warning: I rarely sound so whiny as when I’m criticizing the interfaces of companies who should know better. (more…)