I’m happy to admit that I’m in the tank for the iPhone.  Its not a perfect device, but it is a magnificently close enough to perfect that I don’t really care.  

In no specific order, however, are the three most delicious things I’ve experienced (perhaps you have your own).

1. live video streaming: To this, of course, I am referring to Qik.  Perhaps there are other applications that do this for the iPhone, and perhaps, you can use this on other devices.  But being able to shoot video on the fly — and stream it to a webserver — is almost magical.   Much like with the camera on the iPhone, once you get into the habit of using it, you find yourself shooting almost anything.  And with a young child, this is, actually a very good thing.  My family has a long history of capturing things on film / video (perhaps it is bred into our Asian DNA), and I never regret the stuff I do capture of my son, with my parents, with my wife, or even with his friends doing every day things.  With video, I’m capturing small details and nuances as he’s growing up, and it is so easy.  You whip out the iPhone. You press a button.  And away you go.

*caveat: you have to jailbreak your phone to use Qik —  I don’t know how long its coming to the apps store soon. 

2. The earbuds:  I didn’t realize this at the time, but the earbuds that come with the iPhone not only function as a receiving device for your phone (duh), or, are clickable so that you can stop music at any time(double duh), but are ALSO clickable so that you can *advance* a song, or *go back* a song.  By double-clicking the little doo-hicky, you can advance, and by triple-clicking, you go back.  What’s amazing, is that by incorporating these actions into this small device that’s on the line to your ears, it makes the actual device small.  Its not this giant thumb-sized thing you have to look at with three separate buttons.  Its this sleek little thing that you can just click without looking at it.  When you’re walking around on the subway, holding a huge bag of medical stuff in a heavy jacket, its nice to just click the damn thing rather than fumbling around for a control. 

3. a tethering device:  easily the most sublime thing about my experience that I know is not quite unique to the iPhone — and yet, in Canada, there are only a few devices that work with the 3G network.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I did jailbreak my iPhone with the aim to use a service called PDA Net, which is a piece of software available for the Treo as well, although for the iPhone its free.  I got it working with minimum fuss, so let me reassure my American / AT&T using friends: if / when your data plan supports using your iPhone as a tethering device so that you can use it as a wireless modem for your laptop to surf the web … it is almost magical.  The downside is that it drains the iPhone’s battery, which is to be expected.  But as my laptop has a negigible battery I’m usually next to a power socket anyway.   Bottom line: setting it up AND using it is a breeze.  You literally just press a button and you’re off to the races.  I get about 3Mbps down and 300kbps up, which is imminently usable for light browsing, video watching, and blogging.  I’m so happy Rogers (the local wireless company that I have the iPhone with) allows tethering as part of their data plan.  Quite frankly I was having a hard time using 6 gigs anyway, and it allows — as you can imagine — to surf anywhere you get a 3G connection, freeing you from Wi-Fi nodess.

BONUS: Yes, Box.net got some coverage about cloud access via the iPhone, but what’s also cool is using dropbox via your iPhone.  Its now open to the public, and they’ve done a great job creating an optimized iPhone interface via the web.  You can browse all your files, and in a pinch, download them for viewing, watching, or listening.  Smooth.

Now, two of the three things require you to jailbreak your iPhone.  Boo.  Happily this is a pretty painless procedure.  Also, they’re not specifically unique to the iPhone as well.  Fine.  But on the iPhone I am happy to report that they’re easy to set up, and otherwise transformative in the way that you use this device, and the way you interact with new media … and well, life.

Well, I hope their public relations folk are well rested, because they may need to use their spinning techniques on the tech-loving public once more.

Why, you may ask?

Well, as pointed out by an astute Rogers customer, John Forsythe, Rogers is actively hi-jacking unused domain names, as a “clever” means of scooping up type-in traffic for monetization purposes. Specifically, they’re re-directing unused domain names to their own pages, with Yahoo advertising on the top.

Mr. Forsythe blythely points out that this even extends to subdomains that don’t exist on real domains that do. For example, there’s the ironic example of the non-existant subdomain of Google (example.google.com) which redirects to a page with Yahoo advertising.

Yes — wtf indeed.

Even if this doesn’t raise your ire, if you own a blog or website of any kind, you can see how it might, in fact, cause that rising sensation of bile in your throat, because Rogers (in Canada, anyway) is monetizing subdomain traffic from *YOUR* domain as well.

As John recalls, this isn’t the first time this kind of type-squatting chicanery has ever taken place; VeriSign had tried something like this in 2003, and as a result had a huge bulge in its traffic numbers, with its own site VeriSign.com becoming the 20th most visited (and then reaching the 10 ten) site on the Internets. Yes, the numbers were provided by Alexa, but it still gives some scope of the kind of traffic bumpage these kind of shennanigans can provide.

Eventually VeriSign and ICANN settled things, but it carries on for quite a few cable companies in the States; Rogers, I believe is the first Canadian one to adopt these kinds of practices.

This issue is a hotly contested one, and having exceeded the limits of what I actually know about the topic (extremely minute) in the first paragraph, I’ll kick it back to an interesting discussion at BroadBand Reports.

Post Script: In spite of the unashamedly attention-grabbing headline, unlike the iPhone which has mass commercial appeal, and in spite of the fact there are real issues around the concept of ‘neutrality’, I think its doubtful that this topic will ever raise enough ire to get to the mainstream press.

// via: reddit

Most of it being negative, thanks to Rogers’ bald-faced, shamelessly blatant attempt at profiteering, that is, as one glance at their voice and data plans suggest.

I have nothing further to add, actually, other than to say that at times like this, I begin to wish and hope with all my might that companies that happily provide so little and ask for so much, get their delicious comeuppance.

Not just the usual “demand is soft, interest is down, Rogers stock takes a brief dip and everyone moves on”.

No, I mean some sort of catastrophic, humiliating, trip on that step you didn’t see in front of a world-wide audiene, public pie-in-your face, step in a cow-pattie at your wedding kind of comeuppance.

I mean, I don’t think it will actually happen come July 11th, but hey — a man can only hope.

{although some more recent news suggests that perhaps Apple might snub Rogers after all}