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I know I’m so so so late to this game – I have clung on to my Blackberry forever because I feared poor AT&T coverage. I feared that my fingers were too fat to successfully type on the touchscreen from trying it on my wife’s first generation iPhone. Not sure how many more fears I had, but I finally made the switch to the unbelievably intuitive and beautiful creation known as the iPhone. Other than the obvious advantages of an incredible mobile web experience, mature iPhone app ecosystem, more intuitive texting, more readable email, I wanted to focus on the mobile video feature that makes it so easy to shoot video and upload it to YouTube.  So nice.  Here is a video that I took on day 2 of owning my new iPhone:

If you have an iPhone, please share with us a haiku about why you like it so much. Here’s mine:

iPhone, radiating
beauty, video camera
in my pocket alas

Haiku Monday is back like a hurricaine, like a Super Bowl ad that had you laughing and crying in the same 30-second spot.  I was in the backcountry skiing at Mt. Hood this past Saturday and my skiing buddy informed me that he just made the switch from his Blackberry (avid evangelist for 9+ years) to an iPhone a month ago.  Here’s a very technical guy who travels domestically and internationally a whole lot and has a love affair with Blackberry – he survives on his mobile device.  If he made the switch to an iPhone and several others in my office have made the switch, then what’s going to happen to RIM (Blackberry manufacturer).  Well, they’ve got the most powerful man on Earth publicly admitting his addiction to his Blackberry and most lawmakers haven’t switched.  The best thing to do to settle this debate is begin a haiku dialogue.  So, let it begin:

I still love email
on my Blackberry, but the
web + apps on iPhone are crazy sexy

The above haiku did not follow the haiku rules, I apologize.  Don’t use that as an example for your own haiku, but you must express yourself in the comments below.

I’ve always thought AMEX had amazing customer service, but now I’m a customer evangelist. Susan, President of American Express OPEN (Small Business division), made an empassioned speech at the Inc. 500 Conference in Chicago and had all of the Inc. 500 CEOs reach under their chairs and get the iPhone holder for all of us to claim our free iPhones at the AMEX booth after her speech.

Several other entrepreneurs and I were trying to guess who foot the bill for 500 iPhones (retail value of $400 each x 500 = $200,000). AMEX, Apple, and AT&T were the 3 partners on it with AMEX being the clear leader in sponsoring the Inc. 500 Conference. Regardless, the gift was pure business / marketing genius. I’ve told dozens of business leaders back in Portland that this gift was one of the highlights of the event, and then I’ve shown off how amazing the iPhone truly is.

Until I had a chance to play around with an iPhone, I thought it was just a glorified Blackberry. But, now I realize how wrong my perceptions were. The iPhone is truly innovative and intuitive in how interactive and high-quality the photo albums are, movies are beautiful on it, and of course music is amazing on it. I probably won’t use it as a phone until someone cracks the code for using it with Verizon service, but I love my iPhone and I love American Express.

My buddy, Paul Anthony, sent me this YouTube video of his client buying a licensed song through his company’s website. As Paul mentions, it’s the first time anyone has ever licensed a song for business purposes on an iPhone. I like everything about the video, but it got me thinking just how pervasive the buzz and media hype has gotten around this thing. What’s next – iPhone usage in the bathroom? How far will it go?

Full disclosure: I don’t have an iPhone, so I’m purely commenting on what I’ve read.