Jerusalem

The tower of David.
The Cardo.
The Western Wall.
The old and crooked streets between.
The Armenian ceramics.
The Christian quarter.

Not the Islamic quarter.

Lilenblum at night

The 7 piece band jam session.
The birthday part, no chaser please.

The talk of MBA's and foreign lands, no chaser please.

The kibbutz and other potemkins. No chaser, really.

Just Murphy's.

The sadness in Tel Aviv

I walked along the Mediterranean beach on fine sand.
The water, warm, the sky bright and clear.
Old Russian toursists slathered in sun block.

Two men with machine guns walk along the beach.

iPhone second impressions

After about a week of continuous use the following are some of my thoughts:

Slow interface

• In comparison to the BlackBerry getting the contact list to display takes ages. Supposedly iPhone 1.0 didnt suffer from this, I only have the 3G version so cant comment. From a phone users perspective I say that is the single most important feature of a phone period.

• Switching applications is slow, hitting the home button is actually disruptive to the flow of your hands over the device when using the touch screen. Having a "super" gesture that closes an application would be great in this case.

• Search functionality across all items on the iPhone is a big missing feature, once you get past the first few days of eye candy, this becomes sorely missed.

• The email client is still very limited. For Exchange support, setting up a meeting is none existent (or so hard to find I haven't found it). Again the search functionality or Outlook style sort by different elements is a big usability topic. Thankfully the web browser supports OWA you can use that to setup a meeting if needed.

• Random crashes of web browser and/or other applications. I think this is usually the case when the iPod is playing a tune, but the end result is that on every sync I get prompted to send diagnostic information to Apple.

On a more positive note the web browsing experience is very good and the browser is capable (crashing with Google Reader is a grief though). Also some of the applications are very slick. Checkout Labyrinth for example.

Live in California once, iPhone updates, Caltrain

Commuting on the Caltrain is a much more civilized experience than the cattle wagons that arrive and depart from London Waterloo. Though there isnt a station on the Caltrain line that could be considered as iconic as Waterloo. Being able to take your bike on board regardless of rush hour is cool.

Updating an iPhone with system software is a painfully slow experience. Not exactly a good first experience. That and the fact you have to register payment details with iTunes at the time of activation - sux.