A friend of mine noticed that Flickr videos were not playing on his new iPhone 3GS. Apparently, Flickr is dealing with a compatibility problem they have with the new iPhone OS 3.0 and have turned off video support for the iPhone until they sort it out. More details are here.

I tried uploading video from the iPhone 3GS to Vimeo, a popular alternative to YouTube for sharing video online. This can be done by emailing the video to a special account that Vimeo creates for you but, at least as of last week, audio wasn’t working. The video, however, did look better than it did on YouTube. I’m told a fix is in the works.

As someone who uses multiple computers, I’m often faced with the task of accessing my files in several different places. Some accomplish this by storing their files on a network-acessible drive, emailing files to themselves, or storing all their files on a USB stick. None of these are ideal solutions.

For a while, I tried using the iDisk feature that’s part of the MobileMe package. This is okay for simply storing a copy of the files, but it’s not really practical to store files on the iDisk and edit them in place. If you access the iDisk directly, the connection is too slow and frequent saves become painful. If you choose the option to sync your iDisk, you’ll often end up with conflicts that you have to resolve.

The best solution I’ve found has is Dropbox. I use this on my Macs, but there are versions for Windows and Linux as well, and you can share files over multiple platforms. The software installs a “Dropbox” folder on your computer, which I basically use as a documents folder. Anything put inside there automatically gets synchronized to the central Dropbox server without you having to do anything – the icon even changes to reflect when I file has been successfully synchronized. You can work on files in your Dropbox directly. Each time you save, the software automatically updates the central server in the background, without slowing down your machine. If a sync gets interrupted, it will resume the next time you’re online. You can access your files from any computer with the software installed and also via the web. I’m told an iPhone app is in the works.

Every revision you make is also saved, so you can restore older versions of files if you need to.

What’s great is that it really works: you just install it and can forget it’s there. It’s light on resources, so it won’t slow your computer to a crawl while it’s updating.

Check it out. You get a 2 GB account for free.

There was a reason I chose not to live in Seattle. What was it again?

With the iPhone 3GS out, some people have been wondering “what about the iPod Touch”? Expect to see it in September. Here’s what I’m betting on:

• Same speed as the 3GS
• Camera
• Oleophobic coating
• 16 and 32 GB – slim chance of something bigger

The smart money is on a camera addition to the nano.

My gym just replaced all the water coolers with these:

Yes, it does indeed have a hot water option. Because, you know, it’s always useful to have hot water when you’re at the gym.

Some have said that the new iPhone 3G S is a relatively minor upgrade over it’s predicessor compared with the relatively large leap the 3G was over the origial iPhone. I’m not sure I agree. While the 3G S doesn’t look much different externally, it is dramatically faster in all aspects of use, so much so that it really feels like a different class of machines. Like the 3G removed the hesitancy of using he iPhone for browsing when wifi was unavailable, I think the 3G S makes me far more likely to use the iPhone for a task I would have previously reserved for a full sized computer.

Case in point: this post was written on a 3G S.

Other impressions:

The screen Has a different texture. Not better or worse, but diferent. It is probably the Fingerprint resistant coating.

The home button is a bit stiffer.

It feels slightly heavier. It’s more noticeable than I expected, but it may be all in my head since I knew it was supposed to weigh more (0.1 oz more).

More testing to come.

In general, it seems faster and all aspects are more refined. It doesn’t have a groundbreaking new usability feature (like Exchange support in 2.0), but it makes many aspects of using the iPhone superior. Search is a big addition, and makes for a fast app launcher.

A lot of what 3.0 offers is really on the developer end: you’ll see new features as app developers take advantage of the new tools.

However, there are several niceties for users as well. In addition to the obvious ones (copy/paste, search, voice memos, faster browsing), here are some that are not so obvious.

Start up iTunes and download it now.

Back when I was…um…watching people line up for the original iPhone on the release day, I saw an elderly lady walk by the line and exclaim, “All this for a phone?”

To this day, I see similar comments, even among the tech literate.

The point, of course, is that it’s not just a phone. The iPhone and similar devices have become real personal computers. They’re not “just a phone”…or maybe our expectation of what a phone is needs to be updated.

A warning to all iPhone users: do not download the game Peggle from the App store. You have been warned.