Flickr has launched a new iPhone Optimized version of it’s site, and so far, it’s not too shabby. If you’ve been using programs like Exposure to access Flickr on the iPhone, you may very well prefer to use the mobile version now.

You can’t edit, or use the Organizr, but pretty much everything else is available through the site as normal. This is almost like a lighter, sleeker version of Flickr, meant to perform well on your iPhone. Call it Flickr Lite.

Those heavy duty Flickr users out there will have to decide if this is a decent version of Flickr for you or not. I only use it occasionally, but do enjoy it for the ability to quickly load and show off an iPhone photo.

This may just fit the bill. Share your experiences about the iPhone optimzed Flickr on the iPhone.

Dang. 2 minutes compared to 2 hours. Really, that’s all I got to say. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Love comin’ back for the iPhone.

The Let’s Rock event is underway, and so far we know this….

iTunes 8.0 – something called Genius that reminds me a little of Pandora Radio (maybe Jobs had something to do with the upcoming most-likely demise of Pandora!)

HDtv – $2.99 shows available to play in iTunes, or with the AppleTV. Now if only my AppleTV would stream a little quicker, this might be interesting.

Nano – new Nano released that is thinner and funkier than before. Has the accelerometer, voice recording (with mic), and starts at $149 for the 8gb model.

Touch – new Touch announced as well. New thinner design, side volume controls, built in speaker, built in Nike+ (you still need the transmitter)

Headphones – $79 headphones with tweeter and woofer. Look kind of cool…we’ll see how they sound.

New Games – The App store apparently will have Need for Speed, Spore, and a Soccer game…they look decent.

iPhone Firmware 2.1 – supposed to have faster syncing and fixed some bugs. Performance improvement. Available Friday.

I love my iPhone, I really do, but it’s proving to be less than rock solid. In the couple months that I’ve had it, I’ve had to do a complete restore at least 4 or 5 times now. I’m not really doing anything hard core on the device, just normal everyday tasks and phone usage, yet I continue to send it crashing to the ground.

I think I’ve narrowed down my particular problems to Apps, and specifically to something in the installation process. I can almost guarantee a phone lock up of some sort during an OTA app install.

If I do ANYTHING else at all while an app is installing, game over. If I install two apps at the same time OTA style, game over. If a call comes in while installing an app, game over. I will point out that I do have around 50 apps installed on my device, but still have plenty of storage available.

Fortunately I’ve had a fairly recent backup all but one time, and have been able to resume life again after a 2-3 hour restore and backup process. However, I crash and burn at the most inopportune times, like just before a trip out of town for the day. I’ll continue to watch the processes and see if I can narrow down the issue, but hopefully Apple will solve this with an update before long. I’m getting leary of playing Wheel of Crash on the iPhone.

According to ars technica, Apple will indeed be hosting a special event on September 9, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, just down a bit from the Moscone Center. The event will be held Tuesday morning at 10 am Pacific Time, and by all indications will definitely be about iPods. Will there also be new MacBook Pros as many have hoped for and rumored? Time will tell.

What do you think we’ll see next week at the Let’s Rock event?

57. That’s the number of additional apps that are on my iPhone right now, not installed by default. When you have 57 apps on your iPhone, it takes over 2 hours to sync those apps in iTunes. That’s two hours more than I have to sync my phone, and so I’m going to be cutting some loose.

Yes, I realize that I hoarded apps like a Survivor contestant winning the reward challenge to Hot Dog Island when he first sees the bucket of weenies, but I bet I don’t have the most amount of apps installed out there.

At any rate, I’ll be making some decisions and posting which apps are expendable, and which ones will receive salvation and a place on the desktop. More to come.

After calling around to the three Portland area stores I found out that all three had iPhones in stock, and were handing out the ‘golden ticket’ above, to let you know you were going to get a phone–either that day if you wanted to wait, or any other time you came in, and of course, wanted to wait. I snagged a ticket, got in line and proceeded to wait about 45-60 minutes, got prequalified, and then got my iPhone.

An interesting thing happened while I was waiting. I noticed a hip looking, attractive blond gal walk in, ask someone about the line, get a ticket, and them mill around the store a bit. There were still people behind me when I got called up for my phone, so I was surprised to see a few moments later that the ‘lady in pink’ had somehow ended up standing with the guy who was pre-qualifying just a few minutes earlier, iPhone bag in hand, at an activation screen. The same folks waiting were still waiting.

I asked the person helping me if she knew how that lady hopped the line, and she said “I have no idea. It might be a business thing.” I asked another person on my wait out, and she kind of shrugged it off too. But I’m still curious to know if she either a) somehow managed to talk the whole line into letting her skip to the front, or b) had some special business pass at Apple to let her skip the line, or c) simply wooed the Apple dude into letting her skip the line.

Anyone know of an actual Golden Ticket that lets you skip to the front of the line?

When I was just a kid, one of my siblings asked for a Cabbage Patch doll for a gift. I remember my dad running around like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All The Way, trying to find that ugly little thing, and probably aging 5 years in process. I’m catching glimpses of that fiasco every time I call the local AT&T shops and Apple Stores asking about iPhone availability.

I think I’ve finally given in, and let our AT&T business rep order one for me. Expected delivery time: up to 21 days. All because I was camping out, instead of camping out. I honestly would not have expected the 3G iPhone to be a bigger, and quicker seller than the first gen version — many people I knew were planning on NOT upgrading, but apparently many were, and many first time buyers stepped up.

Perhaps the rep will come through with a surprise, otherwise, in about three weeks I’ll do an unboxing….ugh.

According to Macworld, we may be in the iPhone void for up to another entire month. “I bet we’ll see these problems for another two to four weeks,” said Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., referring to his estimate of the lead time necessary for Apple to increase orders from its suppliers and restock the depleted iPhone inventory. “Early demand has been more than they expected [because] they knocked it out of the park on the first weekend.”

We can attest to the supply and demand in our area. All local AT&T stores have been out of stock all week and are now saying they are only taking orders for delivery in 7-10 business days. After a call to three local Apple stores in the Portland area, one said they had ‘everything in stock,’ so we made a beeline to pick up a couple. Turns out they sold out of the white 16gb model before we could get our hands on one. They did however have the elusive black 16gb model, which is apparently the hot seller. Again from the Macworld article:

“The hardest-to-find iPhone 3G remained the $299 black 16GB model, which is available Thursday in only 18 stores, or 9.6 percent of the outlets. Supplies of the $199 8GB iPhone 3G plummeted in the last 24 hours, according to Apple’s inventory tool: 24 stores reported it as available Thursday (12.8 percent of the 188 in the U.S.) compared to 42 stores that said it was in stock Wednesday (22.3 percent).”

How long will the void actually last? Hard to say. Are you still in an iPhone void?

There are a LOT of free apps in the iTunes App Store — enough to keep a fella busy downloading and trying tons of new stuff each day! All in all, the App Store is a welcome addition to the iPhone life, even if syncing all those apps is a drawn out process each time you hook up.

Complaining aside, here’s the pick for Favorite Free iPhone App of the Day: Shazam!

Shazam bills themself as the ‘amazing music discovery engine,’ and I would say after just a few minutes of monkeying around with the app, that I concur. It is pretty amazing. According to the website, here are the key features and functionality of the application:

Already an industry standard, Shazam fully integrates with and complements the iPhone’s native environment, allowing you to seamlessly discover, buy and share tunes simply by holding your iPhone to music for just a few seconds.

• Tag music: identify music anywhere – whether it’s on the radio, TV, in a movie or in a store.
• Build your own soundtrack: see the list grow every time music is tagged.
• Get the music: go straight to iTunes to preview and buy.
• Music Videos: see related videos of the track on YouTube.
• Capture the moment: personalise the tag by taking a photo and adding it to ‘My Tags’.
• Share the moment: send track details to friends via email.

The Shazam application enables you to tap into a vast database of nearly 5 million tracks giving instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the tune that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately – or simply add it to your playlist.

In initial run through, we were able to play and successfully track songs from Faith Hill, The Eagles, Norah Jones, The Go Go’s and even Tennessee Ernie Ford. Shazam provided links to iTunes tracks available for purchase, and videos on YouTube.

I don’t even want to know how the engine works, I just want to have this magic application continue to provide many more moments of amazement and wonder! Get it FREE, at the iTunes App Store.