Cross eyePhone

Convergence they said..... it's going to be the next big thing. All the gadgets you ever wanted will all be in one box, they told me. This is known as technological convergence. They said.

So I looked up 'convergence' on Google, and among others, I found this definition: 'Convergence is the simultaneous inward movement of both eyes toward each other, usually in an effort to maintain single binocular vision when viewing an object'. So, going cross-eyed is convergence.

Well, my eye-phone has kept me a little cross-i'd for a while. It's a small object of desire whose prime function is to make everyone in close proximity bright green with envy. Some of my colleagues have actually told me they are jealous. Not many people have one yet, it seems. The biggest put-off factor of the iPhone is that it is still relatively expensive at £269, and air-time charges, besides being confined to one provider (O2), can also be quite expensive. You are locked into a minimum 18 month contract too. Well, I suppose telecom providers need to find some way of making money, now that we will all soon be enjoying free phone calls and access to the Internet at home (I was offered free broadband today by TalkTalk, so it must be happening exactly as Stephen Heppell predicted!)

But the iPhone looks and feels like it should - small, sleek and compact, and with so many functions on it (see the picture above) that you can't possibly get bored with it. I have so far done everything with it I wanted to (come on guys - take it seriously please). I have accessed my e-mails and the Web from strange and remote places, I have taken reasonable photographs which I will no doubt bore my Flickr fraternity with in the next few weeks, and I have made and received chrystal clear calls to friend, family and the tax office. I have stored over 1500 of my favourite music tracks onto it and it shows no signs of filling up. My best achievement to date has been to moblog - something I have wanted to do since I was knee high to a JCB digger.

The iPhone has its limitations - it's still stuck at 2G stage, which I am assured by my 80 year old Dad is absolutely fine. It is also noticeably slow in loading up web pages, but this is more than made up for with the superb touch screen technology that allows me to stack pages, album covers and photographs up and roll them across the screen, in a much better fashion that Microsoft's Vista can. So you can understand why I'm a fan of 'convergence' - whatever it is.