Woah! In the last week we’ve seen a plethora (a PLETHORA!!) of online activity around the iPhone release, which occurs Saturday morning (our time) in the US. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting tidbits.
1. Apple released its official guided tour this week, complete with faux turtle-necked Steve Jobs.

2. This slovenly chap was (unfortunately for Apple) the first in line for an iPhone (four days before release), and further reports suggest that professional queue-sitters have been employed for up to $1000. Around the blogosphere, the Apple detractors are still out in force, some calling the iPhone the “greatest failure of all time”…

3. Which is vehemently contradicted by the actual reviews, available now that the review embargo has been lifted. My favourite is the hilarious “My iPhone Diary” by New York Times columnist David Pogue. New features uncovered like the fake GPS and real time traffic reports right on the Google map suggest we’re only scratching the surface as to what kind of new features we’ll see in this breakthrough device.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, provides a more austere review, yet interestingly vindicates the controversial virtual keyboard: “Three days in I wanted to throw it out the window, five days in I was typing faster than my Treo QWERTY keyboard.” However Walt also provides that the greatest drawback at this point seems to be that it is only available on one carrier (AT&T, the USA’s largest).

4. The competition responds with the Nokia E65. However, I get the feeling Nokia is to iPhone what PC is to Mac, and right now there would be frantic activity in both the marketing and development labs of said competition. By contrast, Apple are probably readying their “Hi, I’m an iPhone, and I’m a Nokia” ads.

5. What about the plans? US mobile phone plans are somewhat different to Australian plans (they’re mainly based on bundled minutes), however here is a really great breakdown of the TCO (total cost of ownership) for the iPhone.

Interestingly, there are myriad plans, which is somewhat at odds with the Apple simplicity ethos, but perhaps the most interesting story in all of this is how other carriers will be brought on as it has a bearing on what networks the iPhone will support in the medium term, and of course how the Australian market will in turn be serviced.

– Ben Prendergast

When I was a kid I was called the Little Scientist. I suppose I just liked tinkering with things, making them that little bit better/faster or just more appropriate for my requirements.

More than a handful of broken Christmas presents can attest to this (hi Mum, and belated apologies).

Progressing through my teen years my friends arrived at a similar moniker, “Cousin Midas” (a reference to the famed golden-touch king, however I was the bizarro cousin who’s inferior touch just rendered things inoperable).

They say that one’s core personality traits are formed by the age of eight, and indeed this obsession with tinkering continues to this day.

My businesses, marketing initiatives, products, music, car, fish tank, toddlers (!), are all subjected to my eternal Little Scientist. While I break far fewer things these days (the stakes are clearly higher, lest I render a toddler mute … or worse), any entrepreneur will attest that strong business growth is often the product of short-term audacious changes that can be tested and indeed kept should they produce favourable results.

‘But wait!’ I hear you say, ‘this is a tech blog! Get out of here with your existentialist-quasi-entrepreneurial rant!’ [ed: he's conversing with himself again!]. However, the rules equally apply to the technology you apply in your business. The tools and systems you use are just as susceptible to improvement as any other part of your business.

Example? Every business receives frequently asked questions around a particular customer requirement. Conventional wisdom is to create a FAQ page on your website, but why not try a YouTube instructional video, a CEO blog, a Google AdWords campaign, website wiki, product forum?

Each of these options will create interesting side-effects: they might endear you to your customers, increase sales by attracting more customers with the same issue, or just simply reduce the net support costs around that issue.

The beauty is that these are low-cost options, and if they don’t work in the short term you can pull them down! Technology can be such an enabler for creating new efficiencies in any organisation.

If your tech department, website developer, online marketing agency aren’t pushing these kinds of ideas, then I’d say you’re better off finding a Little Scientist.

– Ben Prendergast

And so it was on Tuesday that Jobs descended from Mt Cupertino and delivered to the faithful the much coveted iPhone.

A product somewhat smaller than Moses’s tablets of 4000 years before, but nevertheless a device poised to deliver a similar impact, at least in technological terms. But what’s all the fuss about?

In a nutshell, the iPhone promises to do for mobile telephones what the iPod has done for music. That is, to deliver a simplified yet rich user experience, combining for the first time a phone, contacts, calendar, email, real internet browsing and, in a unique twist, a promising partnership with Google.

Check out this ad, and the entire platform makes sense.

As an entrepreneur, business technologist, and design sympathiser, I can’t help but feel excited by a deliciously sexy device that delivers real-time access to the internet, and otherwise creates a platform where I have all the benefits of my home Mac when I’m on the road.

However, is this anything new? I think so, in execution at least, and here is a short list of the everyday features that people are going to love about the iPhone.

• It’s the most logical phone on the planet. Easily find a contact in an email, contacts list, website, and call them.
• Late for an appointment? Can’t find an address? Need directions? Google Maps are now in your pocket.
• Web-based services are hugely popular and here the divide is crossed into handheld territory en-masse for the first time. MySpace, Salesforce, Twitter, productivity tools, newspapers, SmartCompany, Crikey! Great for my own benefit or when working with clients.
• Music & Movies. Browse the iTunes store anywhere and download music/movies for the road.
• Cheap phone calls? I use Skype religiously, and one can only imagine that delivering VOIP/WiFi functions for iPhone is just on the horizon.

Our short technological history is littered with examples of products that were seemingly “under featured” yet ultimately succeeded because they got the mix of usability and functionality right, and then evolved to meet new requirements. Like the iPod before it, I suspect the iPhone will part the waters for Apple Corp and deliver yet another fantastic growth story.

What do you think?

– Ben Prendergast