Manifold

I didn’t do it!

Wish I could take credit for this one, it’s genius.

Friend of mine named Joel Esler (same exact name, even middle) made a flash based game called Manifold. It’s not me :)

Joel and I met almost 10 years ago now, online, and have kept in touch ever since. We have the same first, middle, and last names. He lives in Australia and is a graphic artist. (And apparently makes really good flash games too!)

So I just wanted to clear that up, it’s not me, it’s him, go support him!

Good job Joel!

Outlook and Mail.app

At the client I am working at, they actually use the Outlook calendar how it is supposed to be used. Scheduling appointments, conference calls, and inviting people to them, using the Accept, Decline..etc buttons within Outlook to actually schedule conference calls.

I am baffled by the use of this technology, since most offices that I’ve worked at don’t use Calendars on their computers as they are supposed to. I have no idea why this is so hard for people to grasp.

Anyway, I have noticed that when people send me an invite in Outlook and I receive it in Mail.app, it basically looks like this:

When: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:30 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Which, is annoying. I want it to look like an iCal icon, allowing me to click on it (or even do what it’s supposed to and automatically import into iCal) and add it into iCal. Well I Googled.

Found these two: OMiC and MailTags, but I didn’t want to install an app. Why should I have to install a third party app!? i don’t want to do that. So I started looking some more, and decided I should poke around the menus. After looking for a bit I found that by hitting the “Command-[“ key combination Mail.app would switch the format of the mail around and I got what I wanted. No third party app.

Why isn’t it ALL that easy?

Manifold

I didn’t do it!

Wish I could take credit for this one, it’s genius.

Friend of mine named Joel Esler (same exact name, even middle) made a flash based game called Manifold. It’s not me :)

Joel and I met almost 10 years ago now, online, and have kept in touch ever since. We have the same first, middle, and last names. He lives in Australia and is a graphic artist. (And apparently makes really good flash games too!)

So I just wanted to clear that up, it’s not me, it’s him, go support him!

Good job Joel!

Outlook and Mail.app

At the client I am working at, they actually use the Outlook calendar how it is supposed to be used. Scheduling appointments, conference calls, and inviting people to them, using the Accept, Decline..etc buttons within Outlook to actually schedule conference calls.

I am baffled by the use of this technology, since most offices that I’ve worked at don’t use Calendars on their computers as they are supposed to. I have no idea why this is so hard for people to grasp.

Anyway, I have noticed that when people send me an invite in Outlook and I receive it in Mail.app, it basically looks like this:

When: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:30 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Which, is annoying. I want it to look like an iCal icon, allowing me to click on it (or even do what it’s supposed to and automatically import into iCal) and add it into iCal. Well I Googled.

Found these two: OMiC and MailTags, but I didn’t want to install an app. Why should I have to install a third party app!? i don’t want to do that. So I started looking some more, and decided I should poke around the menus. After looking for a bit I found that by hitting the “Command-[“ key combination Mail.app would switch the format of the mail around and I got what I wanted. No third party app.

Why isn’t it ALL that easy?

Review of the Snort book

Friend of mine Richard Bejtlich posted his review of the Snort Book that I had a hand in writing. I just wanted to say that I agree with every word he had to say. He did make some nice comments (and some bad comments -- citing the publisher at fault -- which is true) about my chapter, can’t fault him for that!

Thanks Richard for posting the review. I totally agree!

Full Disclosure

In the interest of Full-Disclosure for this blog and everything I’ll let you know where I stand.

-- I love Macs and everything Apple. Don’t care what you think, it all works for me. Don’t have any problems admitting it, even if one of my best friends thinks I am a tool because of it. (WuTang)
-- My first OS was DOS, first computer was a Tandy 1000 SX bought from Radio Shack. My OS progression has been:
DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME + NT
Windows XP + 2000
Redhat Linux
Mandrake Linux
Slackware
SuSE
OSX

That’s not all the OS’es I know, that’s just the ones I’ve personally had loaded on my systems.
-- I have an iPhone, iSight, Mac keyboards, docs, Mice..
-- I have a 3G iPod
-- I have a PowerBook G4
-- I have a PowerMac Dual G5 2.0
-- My wife has a MacBook Black
-- I work for Sourcefire, we make Snort, it’s the best company I’ve ever worked for, and I love it. I believe in our products and our philosophy of customer service. I work in the Professional Services department. Which means I am half sales, half technical, and another half jack-of-all-trades. (Which is 3 halves for you doing the math) It’s a great job, I have great management. I travel ALOT and actually, as I said in this post I am off the road for a year to work with one customer.
-- In my spare time I grade GIAC Gold papers for GIAC.org which is affiliated with SANS.
-- In my other spare time I am a handler with the Internet Storm Center. It takes a lot of time, and we get a lot of email.
-- I wrote a chapter of a book. I edited a another chapter, but my edits weren’t included in neither my bio or the other chapter (even though I was paid to do the edits).
-- The book sucked. Even my chapter had errors in it. (TCP Conversations do NOT start with a “FIN” wtf!) The publisher took the rough draft (read: not the final edits) of all the authors and published the rough drafts, this is because the publisher for the book quit in the middle of the process, plus Syngress (the publishing company) was bought out, so I am sure there were some things lost.. There are a couple chapters in the book that are excellent, and it’s worth the purchase. But on a elementary grading scale of the book, I give it a C-.

Anything I forgot? Leave a comment. If you are going to write about me in your blog, leave a comment on my blog pointing to your post!

Stoned.Angelina makes its way back..

Does anyone remember this boot sector virus? Stoned.Angelina? no? It’s only 13 years old.

Apparently a bunch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium (wtf ever that means) was found to be infected with this 13 year old virus.

What happened to that MSFT anti-virus?

The Register has the story. Albeit funny though.

It is “an unfortunate” mistake for the company that put it on there “Bullguard”.

Bullheaded move is more like it.

Update: Apparently this dude over at computerdefense.org didn’t really like my post. First of all, it’s meant to relay information and yet, be funny at the same time.

So, #1 -- This is Bullguard’s fault. If you couldn’t read into that in the above post, well I am sorry.
#2 -- This is not Vista’s fault. Just MSFT being a victim of circumstance. This shouldn’t happen to an Apple computer because they control the manufacturing process of the hardware and the software. MSFT doesn’t. They just make the software, so they are at the hardware manufacturers mercy.
#3 -- I was definitely making fun of Vista’s naming structure. “Vista Home Premium” What does that mean? My question for Microsoft is, why couldn’t there just be ONE version of Vista. OSX does it! Linux does it! (yes they have versions like “Advanced Server” -- or whatever it’s called now..)
#4 -- I was poking fun at MSFT’s anti-virus service.

However, the dude that calls me everything but the kitchen sink over on his blog, says “I’ve actually had AV Vendors tell me that they pull old and out-dated virus signatures…” How is that responsible? So all I have to do if I want to infect computers is to introduce a really old virus? What kind of liability issues does that raise?

Further down in the posts in his blog he says “Now, I’m often accused of being a Microsoft Zealot...” Well, at least he admits it. He’s on the MSFT side of the fence, I am on the Apple/Linux side of the fence. At least now, I know where we all stand.

If you are going to write about me in your blog, leave a comment on my blog pointing to your post!

Waiting in Line (or, how humans are lemmings)

I live near this small town in Delaware named “Middletown”.

At the intersection of 71 and 299, there is a single stop light, 4 way (with turn lanes) stop in the middle of town. Everyday I drive North on Route 1 to get to work and South on Route 1 to come home. The closest exit to where I live is the 299 exit off of Route 1. So, I would be approaching town from the right (headed West). Now, since the overwhelming majority of people that live in Middletown and Townsend work in either Dover or Wilmington, most people use Route 1 or 13 for the commute. (If you use 13, you just don’t want to pay the toll and are a cheapskate).

Anyway. Everyday, when I get off the exit headed towards Middletown, there is a line... A LONG LINE of people waiting at the light at 299/71. Like, a mile long... Now, as you can see from the above map, Middletown was built with the logical “Block” concept where the roads are in squares surrounding the main intersection. One way streets and everything. Aside from Lake street, which is not really the best street, the rest of the streets are normal small town neighborhood streets. Why oh Why do all these people wait at the light like 1984 zombies waiting for the light to change? Why doesn’t anyone go down the side blocks? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier? Or, perhaps, spend the 2 miles it takes to learn the shortcuts to avoid the intersection in the middle of town all-together and save alot less stress.

It makes me sad to make the turn to avoid the intersection, like I do everyday, and see the long line of people waiting... So sad.

Waiting in Line (or, how humans are lemmings)

I live near this small town in Delaware named “Middletown”.

At the intersection of 71 and 299, there is a single stop light, 4 way (with turn lanes) stop in the middle of town. Everyday I drive North on Route 1 to get to work and South on Route 1 to come home. The closest exit to where I live is the 299 exit off of Route 1. So, I would be approaching town from the right (headed West). Now, since the overwhelming majority of people that live in Middletown and Townsend work in either Dover or Wilmington, most people use Route 1 or 13 for the commute. (If you use 13, you just don’t want to pay the toll and are a cheapskate).

Anyway. Everyday, when I get off the exit headed towards Middletown, there is a line... A LONG LINE of people waiting at the light at 299/71. Like, a mile long... Now, as you can see from the above map, Middletown was built with the logical “Block” concept where the roads are in squares surrounding the main intersection. One way streets and everything. Aside from Lake street, which is not really the best street, the rest of the streets are normal small town neighborhood streets. Why oh Why do all these people wait at the light like 1984 zombies waiting for the light to change? Why doesn’t anyone go down the side blocks? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier? Or, perhaps, spend the 2 miles it takes to learn the shortcuts to avoid the intersection in the middle of town all-together and save alot less stress.

It makes me sad to make the turn to avoid the intersection, like I do everyday, and see the long line of people waiting... So sad.

New Apple Keyboard review

Okay, so I went to the Apple store the other day (the Christiana Mall one is about 2 miles from work), just to see if I liked the new Apple Keyboard that they released at the same time as the new iMac.

Surprisingly, I did like it. I was impressed. I think I like it better than my old white Mac keyboard because the keys don’t travel as far. It’s more like a laptop keyboard (which I prefer), and the keys don’t depress as far as a regular keyboard does, but it has a nice ‘tactile’ feedback.

So, now it sits @ home. I really like it.

In fact, while using it the first day, I mentioned to my wife ‘hey, I think I type faster on this thing’. Of course, she rolled her eyes at me, but I had to test it.

I went to www.typingtest.com where you can take a non-scientific measurement of your typing speed, and with my Powerbook keyboard I can crank out 92 WPM (tested twice), with the new Mac Keyboard I can crank out 90 WPM, but with my old white mac keyboard, for some reason (maybe mental block), I can only get about 84 WPM.

So, like I said, non-scientific. But very interesting. To each his own, but I like it.

New Apple Keyboard review

Okay, so I went to the Apple store the other day (the Christiana Mall one is about 2 miles from work), just to see if I liked the new Apple Keyboard that they released at the same time as the new iMac.

Surprisingly, I did like it. I was impressed. I think I like it better than my old white Mac keyboard because the keys don’t travel as far. It’s more like a laptop keyboard (which I prefer), and the keys don’t depress as far as a regular keyboard does, but it has a nice ‘tactile’ feedback.

So, now it sits @ home. I really like it.

In fact, while using it the first day, I mentioned to my wife ‘hey, I think I type faster on this thing’. Of course, she rolled her eyes at me, but I had to test it.

I went to www.typingtest.com where you can take a non-scientific measurement of your typing speed, and with my Powerbook keyboard I can crank out 92 WPM (tested twice), with the new Mac Keyboard I can crank out 90 WPM, but with my old white mac keyboard, for some reason (maybe mental block), I can only get about 84 WPM.

So, like I said, non-scientific. But very interesting. To each his own, but I like it.

A year log endeavor

For those of you that haven’t heard, I’m off the road for the next year. One of our clients has bought a year’s worth of my services to be at their office helping them configure their IDS’s, and generally help out their Incident Analysis team. Apparently this company (who I am not mentioning) had an Incident analysis team, but it had been downsized, several different managers...etc.. Therefore, they have hired me for a year in order to help them implement our product, and work in their team, since I have a bit of experience in Computer Response Teams, having worked for one for 4 years.

I’ll be able to get back to posting information and analysis again.

A year log endeavor

For those of you that haven’t heard, I’m off the road for the next year. One of our clients has bought a year’s worth of my services to be at their office helping them configure their IDS’s, and generally help out their Incident Analysis team. Apparently this company (who I am not mentioning) had an Incident analysis team, but it had been downsized, several different managers...etc.. Therefore, they have hired me for a year in order to help them implement our product, and work in their team, since I have a bit of experience in Computer Response Teams, having worked for one for 4 years.

I’ll be able to get back to posting information and analysis again.

iWeb fun

I haven’t put anything up in awhile because apparently, iWeb had a problem. Alot of people have attributed it to the fact that Apple has had a lot more users of .mac since they updated iLife, and the webdav syncing timing has been off, and therefore you have not been able to publish anything on iWeb in awhile.

Annoying.

Anyway. I talked to Apple about how to fix the problem, and they asked me to submit my Domain file, which, Apple’s upload interface only allows you to upload a max of 50 Mb.

This website is over 250 Mb’s. Good luck Apple!

Well, I just tried to republish and it worked, so we’ll see if it stays fixed.

iWeb fun

I haven’t put anything up in awhile because apparently, iWeb had a problem. Alot of people have attributed it to the fact that Apple has had a lot more users of .mac since they updated iLife, and the webdav syncing timing has been off, and therefore you have not been able to publish anything on iWeb in awhile.

Annoying.

Anyway. I talked to Apple about how to fix the problem, and they asked me to submit my Domain file, which, Apple’s upload interface only allows you to upload a max of 50 Mb.

This website is over 250 Mb’s. Good luck Apple!

Well, I just tried to republish and it worked, so we’ll see if it stays fixed.

Mobile Photos

I’ve had a iWeb Gallery for a bit now, but iWeb has been on the fritz a bit.

http://gallery.mac.com/joel.esler#100051

Mobile Photos

I’ve had a iWeb Gallery for a bit now, but iWeb has been on the fritz a bit.

http://gallery.mac.com/joel.esler#100051

New Apple fun

iMac’s, iLife 08, iWork 08, Airport Extreme, Mac Mini updates...

They almost updated everything in the product line. Nice.

So I picked up iLife and iWork 08’s, because I was at an Apple Store anyway because my battery on my powerbook died. (suckkin)

iLife looks nice, I like the new iWeb features. Almost all of the Icons are different, and they actually allow for “Web Widgets” now, which allows you to put actual html into the iWeb design, which is nice. iPhoto got a refresh as well, kinda looks like iTunes, really, and you can organize your pictures by ‘events’. Which are auto created based upon picture import batch, from what I can tell. Double clicking on a picture ‘zooms’ it in, kinda, App -opening - iPhone style. Very nice. The icon changed slightly for iPhoto as well I think. More refined. I haven’t messed with Garageband, (and don’t). iMovie won’t install on the powerbook. I don’t use it on here anyway.

iWork is nice as well, I especially like the Numbers program (the Mac replacement for Excel). The interface is a hella lot nicer. Pages and Keynote got a really nice refresher as well. Pages looks like an actual word processor now with the font bar (center, right, left, justification..etc.) actually in the interface, as opposed to in the ‘inspector’ bar like they should be. Keynote also got some actions on stuff like ‘actions’. The ability to move words within a slide, make them transparent and nice things like that. Alot of it is ‘have to see to understand’. But overall some very nice refinements that I have been looking for from the two suites for some time.

They didn’t have the new iMac’s out at the store when I was there yet, but I might have to go back there tomorrow and see it in person and give you a report on how it’s working. I am especially interested in how the keyboard is.

Airport extreme got Gigabit ports. nice.

Looks like the Mac mini got new processors too.

.Mac looks like it got an update as well with ‘Photo Galleries’. The iPhone also got a magic update timed to appear today apparently. See here for more details. Nice.
Maybe to eliminate my flickr account? We’ll see.

Also.. uh.. 10GB of storage? Um. That wasn’t there before! That’s alot more storage than before. The data transfer rates also went from 5Gb to 10Gb. (For the bottom accounts) Frickin sweet.

AHH!! I just noticed that .Mac will accept registrations from private domain names too. So you can point your CNAME ‘www’ at web.mac.com and then when people go to your web address it automagically goes to web.mac.com. Nice. Redirection.

Okay, so I just ran over and created a Web Gallery named ‘Moving’.

New Apple fun

iMac’s, iLife 08, iWork 08, Airport Extreme, Mac Mini updates...

They almost updated everything in the product line. Nice.

So I picked up iLife and iWork 08’s, because I was at an Apple Store anyway because my battery on my powerbook died. (suckkin)

iLife looks nice, I like the new iWeb features. Almost all of the Icons are different, and they actually allow for “Web Widgets” now, which allows you to put actual html into the iWeb design, which is nice. iPhoto got a refresh as well, kinda looks like iTunes, really, and you can organize your pictures by ‘events’. Which are auto created based upon picture import batch, from what I can tell. Double clicking on a picture ‘zooms’ it in, kinda, App -opening - iPhone style. Very nice. The icon changed slightly for iPhoto as well I think. More refined. I haven’t messed with Garageband, (and don’t). iMovie won’t install on the powerbook. I don’t use it on here anyway.

iWork is nice as well, I especially like the Numbers program (the Mac replacement for Excel). The interface is a hella lot nicer. Pages and Keynote got a really nice refresher as well. Pages looks like an actual word processor now with the font bar (center, right, left, justification..etc.) actually in the interface, as opposed to in the ‘inspector’ bar like they should be. Keynote also got some actions on stuff like ‘actions’. The ability to move words within a slide, make them transparent and nice things like that. Alot of it is ‘have to see to understand’. But overall some very nice refinements that I have been looking for from the two suites for some time.

They didn’t have the new iMac’s out at the store when I was there yet, but I might have to go back there tomorrow and see it in person and give you a report on how it’s working. I am especially interested in how the keyboard is.

Airport extreme got Gigabit ports. nice.

Looks like the Mac mini got new processors too.

.Mac looks like it got an update as well with ‘Photo Galleries’. The iPhone also got a magic update timed to appear today apparently. See here for more details. Nice.
Maybe to eliminate my flickr account? We’ll see.

Also.. uh.. 10GB of storage? Um. That wasn’t there before! That’s alot more storage than before. The data transfer rates also went from 5Gb to 10Gb. (For the bottom accounts) Frickin sweet.

AHH!! I just noticed that .Mac will accept registrations from private domain names too. So you can point your CNAME ‘www’ at web.mac.com and then when people go to your web address it automagically goes to web.mac.com. Nice. Redirection.

Okay, so I just ran over and created a Web Gallery named ‘Moving’.

Joel’s iPhone review

Okay, I’ve had all weekend to play with the phone, and here we go, I’ll go app by app, experience by experience.

At first I was caught in the wave of people whose activation wasn’t going through. From the time I submitted my activation on iTunes, to the time it went through was about 19 hours. 19 EXCRUCIATING hours. Let me tell you, sitting here wanting to play with my phone, and it not working is a pain the butt. But eventually, it started working, synced up, and everything is hunky dory now. Turns out there was a ‘hold’ on my activation by AT&T. Whatever the hell that means. But after a couple tech-support calls, it works now, and I am a happy camper.

Unlocking/Locking -- works by touching the top button, works great.

Home screen -- Exactly how it looks in all the commercials, exactly like the picture I have above, it functions as it should.

Text messaging (SMS) -- Works just fine, formats the chat like iChat, like you have seen. The Keyboard, which I will probably discuss several times this entry, is a bit interesting. As Apple says, “you start typing with one finger to get used to how it operates”, but actually, it’s getting used to you. It’s learning the names and proper nouns and things like that you will be typing. After a couple days of use, you can type with your thumbs. I am at this stage, I can type pretty fast, but I am not up to the speed that I was on while on my blackberry. Apple says you have to learn to trust the auto-correcting feature, and once you do, you work faster. I can see this. Maybe i’ll make another blog entry in a couple days reporting on how fast I am.

Calendar -- It works nicely, has the bubble look for calendar entries much like iCal. The only thing that is lacking in iCal is “Todo’s”. It’s not in a separate application or anything, but it’s kinda helpful to have those. I WANT MY TODO’S APPLE!!

Photos -- It’s a photo browsing app, you can flick from picture to picture from left to right, right to left, use the pinch to enlarge and decrease. Works great, no complaints here. I used the Photos feature to make a picture of my daughter sitting up on the floor my wallpaper. I like the feature of being able to email a photo right from the application, it kind of “minimizes” the photo, then puts it in an email for you to send. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I remember watching the effect on one of the Apple videos.

Camera -- It actually takes some descent photos. Considering it’s 2 megapixel camera, you have to kind of forgive it for any shaking or bad lighting. However, considering the camera on my last phone was a 1.3 megapixel, i can see that. Here’s a picture I took with my camera yesterday.



















Youtube -- Not a ‘useful’ feature, but definitely cool to pass the time with if you are bored.

Stocks widget -- I have all my stocks on there, it syncs quickly via Edge or Wifi.

Google Maps -- NICE. The integration with Google Maps is beautiful, Jobs said it was the best Google Maps client ever, and I tend to agree. It’s better then Google’s own implementation, and a hella lot better then the one I had on my blackberry.

Weather -- This is a handy feature, I can have several of them open at the same time, and i can flick left and right to be able to access the weather in whatever areas I set. I set them by hitting the edit button, too easy. Updates quickly via Edge or Wifi.

Clock -- The clock allows me to track the time in several time zones (it syncs via the cell tower), and has Cupertino built in as the default. Also has an Alarm, Stopwatch, and a countdown timer on it as well. The countdown timer has the most satisfying interface, which resembles a DaVinci cryptex
you flick your finger up and down to adjust the time.

Calculator -- It’s a simple +, -, *, /, calculator. Nothing special and nothing scientific.

Notes -- Simple Note pad, the font is sort of informal and rather ‘note-ish’. Kind of satisfying, the only problem is, when it syncs with iTunes it does NOT sync with ‘Stickies’ (The note application), so Notes are not synced anywhere I can see on OSX. One can surmise then that the notes will be synced with the Notes in OSX Leopard’s Mail.app application.

Settings --This was a section that I was curious about, so I’ll try and cover it in some detail:
1) Airplane Mode, simple slide left or right to turn off all wireless features. Nice.
2) Wi-fi -- You can turn wi-fi on or off, select the access point, and turn the “Ask to join networks” on or off. Now, from what i can tell, iPhone won’t just join some random access point. You have to tell it to do so, but once you do, it will remember that access point for future use. Nice. That way you can just walk into Panera, it grabs and IP and is ready for use.
3) Usage -- All kinds of metrics, usage, standby time, call time, lifetime call time, edge network data sent/received.
4) Sounds -- Vibrate on or off in silent mode, vibrate on or off in ring mode, ring volume, ringtone, and tones for voicemail, text message, mail, sent mail, calendar alerts, lock sounds, and keyboard clicking (which i turned off because it’s rather annoying when typing).
5) Brightness -- You can set it, or let it auto-adjust (on by default).
6) Wallpapers -- You can select from a built in wallpaper, or you can select your own.
7) General --
a) About -- what network you are on, how many songs, videos, photos, total capacity, available capacity, version (1.0), serial number, model number, wifi mac address, bluetooth mac address, imei and iccid numbers, and modem firmware. Finally a legal scroll page which includes the GPL license, and the licenses for bsd along with a shit-ton of other legal stuff from Google, Apple, and your mother.
b) Date and Time -- 24 hour time, set automatically, time zone support, and the ability to select a time zone (by city/state).
c) Auto-Lock -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or never minutes.
d) Passcode lock -- (that you would have to type in after you lock/unlock the phone)
e) Network -- VPN and Wi-Fi. VPN supports L2TP and PPTP, as well as proxies.
f) Bluetooth -- ON or OFF, and what devices you are paired to. Apparently supports handsets only.
g) Keyboard -- Auto-Caps, or Enable Caps Lock
h) Reset -- Resets the device (also done by Holding down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button)

8) Mail -- Allows you to do a bunch of things with mail, setup the accounts, auto-checks, how many recent messages to show, minimum font size and the like.
9) Phone -- Call Forwarding and Call Waiting are found here, as well as the ability to block your phone number.
10) Safari -- Cookies, Cache, etc..
11) iPod -- AudioBook speed, EQ, volume limit
12) Photos -- Repeat, shuffle, and other stuff for slideshows

Phone -- Favorites work well, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Visual Voicemail all work excellent like they do in the commercials. The Rubber-banding effect in contacts (well in ANYTHING) really, is nice. It’s like the iPhone is allowing you to scroll off the end, and prove to you yes, there really is nothing there, then brings you back to reality.
Call Quality -- Excellent, the speakerphone isn’t very loud, and I haven’t tested the hold or the conferencing features yet, but generally works great.
Bluetooth headset -- I haven’t tried it with a regular headset yet, but it works great with my car.

Mail -- Again, has a button to sync. (I use IMAP) Works great. Sometimes swiping your finger across an email to delete it is a bit awkward, (doesn’t work everytime, but I think it’s my fault). The Keyboard, as I said before, takes a bit to get used to, but once it’s learning your typing style, it works great. I can now type at full speed wit my thumbs on it. I’ve read some stuff recently about the in-ability to push email to the iPhone. Not true. Yahoo can push email to an iPhone, and I am sure Gmail, and .mac will get it. Blackberry enterprise can’t push but that’s RIM’s fault. ;)

Safari -- Now, I have heard alot of bitching about how slow the Edge network is. In my experience, it’s actually not that bad. It’s not as fast as the wifi, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as slow as dialup either. I can deal with it. It’s actually faster IMO then my blackberry. My blackberry was painfully slow at webpages. It DOES support Javascript and RSS feeds. Unlike what these tools are saying out there in the press.

iPod -- Enuff said. a visual ipod. It kicks ass.

Things I wish the iPhone had --
Todo’s, already said it.
Removeable battery, even though by the time this one dies it’ll be time to buy a new phone, still though, i wish I could get a new battery, or an extra one for it.
A separate IM application -- I overcame this by setting AOLIM to forward my messages to my mobile when I am not near IM client. Works through SMS, and works just fine. Still though, I would like to have a separate iChat application.

Other than that, I love this thing. It ROCKS. If you are one of the non-believers or one of the people that thinks it’s all hype, then fine, don’t buy one. No skin off my back, I know it kicks serious booty. But I do suggest that you if you are reading an article that just says that the iPhone sucks, check their facts. Email me at the link below and I’ll debunk or approve, I don’t mind. Go to an AT&T store or an Apple store and play with it. You’ll be convinced.

But for those of you are that are looking to reduce the amount of devices and cables they have to carry, and are looking for something to really make their life more organized and simpler, then there you go. Get it.