So, it's been a week since I picked up my iPhone and it was right about this time 7 days ago when I received that first text and realized that, somehow, despite iTunes having all kinds of issues activating the phone, that I was now live. So, what's been the impression so far? Is it just a toy, or is it a productivity aid? While there are certainly some toy features, there have been a number of other things that move beyond the toy and into the realm of productive. For example:

SMS - I text a lot. For both my ministry and personal life, this is my most common method of communication. The iPhone, with the exception of pictures sent via text, is awesome, simply because it keeps a running conversation that I can easily scroll through ... which is especially nice if I happen to have some time where I can't text and then need to step back into a conversation.

email - Most of the email I get demands about 30 seconds of response time. With the iPhone, I can take any free moment here or there, and clear out the inbox, leaving only stuff that takes longer to deal with. This has greatly reduced my email time on my lap and desktops.

GPS - This feature rocks. Tell the iPhone to find where you are, tell it where you want to go, and it guides you step-by-step, even allowing you to watch yourself as you move on down the road.

Internet - It's not built for huge amounts of surfing, but when you need to find something quickly and in a setting where you don't have email, you can't beat having the whole web at your fingertips.

OmniFocus - My to-do list is always with me, ready to either add new items or check off old ones ... hard to beat the productivity of that.

On the not as productive but still very helpful front, here's a couple free apps:

Shazam - This is one of the coolest apps out there. If you like listening to the radio, but hate that you don't know who plays that song you love, Shazam is the answer. Just hold your iPhone up to the speakers, let it record a bit, and within seconds you'll have the artist, title, album, YouTube links, and connections to buy the song in iTunes. I tested it out on really old David Crowder and it didn't work, but it worked on just the intro for a song on the new album.

Pandora - The Pandora app rocks as it allows me to play a wide variety of commercial free music that's based on the musical style rather than any one particular artist. Very cool!

So, what's the next piece of life enhancing technology that I'm going to go for? I'm thinking this video that Anita sent provides the answer (assuming they develop a version that works for bottles):

I woke up early this morning and made my way down to the Cherry Creek Mall to get in line at the Apple store so I could by a new iPhone 3G. I arrived at 6a and was the 24th person in line. Not a bad deal to be there two hours early, especially when you consider that, if I showed up later a little later, I would have spent 6 hours at the mall rather than 3.5.

Anyway, the news was there to cover the release and I ended up being interviewed and having my picture taken a few times. While my video bit which focused on the whole Mac community and experience didn't make it onto www.denverpost.com, my picture did a few times. Here's my few minutes of iPhone driven fame (I wonder if I'll be in the paper tomorrow):

The front page of the paper's website:

The lead picture on the iPhone article:

An "in article" picture:

A larger version of the "in article" picture:

I don't know about you, but between my duties at home, with the fshbwl, Genesis, and the eLife, I have a slew of different project areas in my life and I'm constantly trying to keep myself organized and up to date on what needs to be done. Then of course, because I work from home, my office, and my laptop, I need access to my task list from a number of locations. Moreover, I'm not particularly good at mental notes, so, if something is going to make it into my task list, it needs to get there immediately.

So, what's my solution? Remember the Milk. Remember the Milk (RTM) is, at the most basic level, an online task list that allows you to categorize and tag your to-do items, but, the real beauty is the way RTM mashes up with other applications.

For example, when I'm sitting in a meeting and am reminded that there is something I need to do, I can text Twitter with a "d rtm" command and my task will be added to my task list. Or say, when I'm in the car and I recall something that needs to be done. Using my bluetooth I can speed dial Jott, identify it as a message for RTM, and use their voice recognition software to add a task to my list.

Then of course there is the integration with gMail (or a google aps mail account) through a Firefox extension. The result is that my task list sits right next to my inbox and, I can easily add messages that I need to follow up on later to my to do list (which then allows me to tag and archive the message and keep my inbox empty).

As if that wasn't enough, I'm also able to share specific task lists with other RTM users so, Anita and I have some shared items and, if there' something she wants me to get done around the house, she just drops the item in our shared list and I get the hint (sometimes).

Of course, because I'm not always online, RTM also works with Google Gears so, on my laptop, I always have the latest version of my task list and, if I change anything offline, the next time I log on, everything will sync. This will get even better when I get an iPhone and can use the RTM page specifically designed for the iPhone.

RTM is a wonderful tool that I'm sure will only get better over time.

I just discovered Skitch yesterday, and I'm already loving it.

Basically, Skitch is an uber-screenshot application. So, you use Skitch to take a screenshot (or just drop a graphic into the Skitch display), then you can do all kinds of editing to it, upload it for sharing, copy it to your desktop, drop it into your IM client to share with a friend, or any other number of things.

Yesterday it came in handy when I was trying to show Bob something I wanted change on the elemental life site. I took a screenshot with Skitch, dropped it into Adium, and off it went. Then, today I've used it on both of the images I've posted. I uploaded both into my Skitch page, selected the share option, grabbed the image code that was all ready to go, and put it in my entry (I did have to tell it to right align).

Here's a video with a bit more on Skitch:

Because I've had a number of instances where I've pointed out some tech thing to friends lately and it's helped them out, I figured I'd post a number of blogs on some of the "lesser known things" that I use on the tech front. Now, nobody could argue that Firefox is lesser known, but it is essential for a number of the other lesser knowns that I'll be talking about later.

So, why Firefox? As I mentioned when the Mac Air came out, I'm one of those people who is diving in headfirst into the whole Web 2.0 (and maybe even Computing 2.0 or 3.0) approach. One example of this is that, the vast majority of my information, is now kept in the cloud, that is, on a remote server that I can access from any web terminal in the world (I'll post on where in the cloud later).

Because the key to my information is no longer my hard drive, but my Internet browser, having a browser that not only performs well but also has the ability to be tweeked for my personal preferences is of utmost importance.

While Firefox is a memory drain and doesn't run as quickly as Safari (although the soon to be released 3.0 edition is supposed to be a huge jump in these categories), the ease at which it can be modified through extensive plug-ins and scripts (I'll share some of these later) makes it my browser of choice.