The one thing I hadn’t done with my iPhone was upload pictures when I’m out. I’d been manually uploading them to my laptop first, and adding them to applications later.

There are actually a few platforms I need to do it on – Flickr, Facebook, WordPress, Twitter – and I hadn’t played with photos on any of them, mostly because I hadn’t had time to research how it used up bandwidth.

But I’ve come nowhere near using up mymonthly bandwidth, so it was time to play.

I created a new blog for free, at wordpress.com.

I already had the free WordPress for iPhone application on my phone.

I setup the username and password for my new blog, on my phone.

Took a quick photo of the flowers in my garden.

Went to WordPress on the phone. Logged in. Selected Photo. And the application asked me which photo I’d like to upload. Added a comment. Clicked save.

And voila. A photo and accompanying text uploaded with no hassle to my blog.

Beautiful.

And the blog was free.

It’s a bad first photo, because it was evening and you could barely see the flowers.  But check it out at Flowers Australia.

One of the guys at work said not to use the third-party pack of five, available at the Optus shop across the road.

So I went to see what else they had.

The only other offering, was something called Maclove. A plastic film that also had various decorations, and matching wallpapers you could download from a site.

Given that my temporary film, cut from the package the iPhone ad come with, was wearing out, I chose the Maclove. $10.

Got it home, and for the life of me, couldn’t peel it off.

I hate the risk of breaking things, particularly “hardware”, so I went to see if there was a website. Yes, to show me how to peel a sticky cover off. I just didn’t want to rip the wrong part.

Google showed me maclove.eu.

It sucked. Check out this screenshot:

The Flash dropdowns completely covered the one part of the page I wanted – how to stick it on.

So I peeled off the sticky bit, and held the cover in my hand. The bit with the decorative feature.
Strange, it wasn’t adhesive.
Did I put it on wrong?
What I have would be useless without the hard case (that I bought separately), to hold the film in place.

Am I having a blonde moment?

It had been relatively cool until now. Useful when I couldn’t find the soccer field on Saturday morning, great for my Tetris addiction, trendy SMS conversation display, and such fun to play with, finding new applications to install.

Then on Sunday I installed a bunch of apps I was really looking forwards to. Shazam, to identify music, IM to instant message, and Mbox, to receive my faxes on my iPhone. Plus Sydney traffic reports. Really useful stuff.

Suddenly the majority of third-party applications failed. They would open for a second, and automatically close.

There are two noticeable threads about this disgustingly common problem:
the high profile Chris Pirillo blog
and the Apple support thread iPhone problems.

Possible causes include the latest version of iTunes (I’m on 7.1.1.11), the version of iPhone (I’m now on 2.0.2), interrupting a synch (I swear I didn’t), having multiple iTunes accounts (I’ve only had the one).

Others suggested DRM problems, or applications with customisable settings on the iPhone (eg Facebook, Mbox). So I deleted those applications.

Still no luck. Would have been reaaallly useful to see the traffic reports this morning, after a garbage truck turned over on the Harbour Bridge. After 30 minutes to go 3 blocks, I got off the bus and walked to Neutral Bay. Beat my bus, plus the one before it.

If my iPhone apps were working, I could have learnt Italian, instant messaged people at work. But no, the best I could do was login to hotmail and send an old-fashioned email.

A lot of very unhappy people on the Apple thread. Combined with the lack of video camera on the iPhone, it really turns it into a common object.

I am not recommending iPhones to my family. Wish I hadn’t tied myself to a 2 year contract now. It really stinks.