Over at Technologizer, I’ve contributed a post about my experiment watching YouTube on my TV through Tivo HD. I had lots of fun with the experiment and I found that there is a place for YouTube in my TV watching schedule.  It’s nothing like real scripted TV from Hollywood, but it’s a great way to share media with friends, or browse a popular video without having to get up to your PC or laptop.

The third option, of course, is to use my iPhone. But that’s not what I reach for when I want to watch YouTube. I guess, it all depends on where I am and what screen is closest. Now that the iPhone 3.0 update will include YouTube log-in, we can all ensure to keep our YouTube acconts synched. I really hate that I can’t sign in right now and I have separate YouTube bookmarks on my iPhone.

Anyway, I’ll be contributing regularly to Harry McCracken’s Technologizer blog in the future. Look forward to seeing everyone there.

After fighting off the urge for a lone time, I finally got an iPhone about a month ago. And so far, it’s been a great adventure. I’ve been trying out new apps, playing with everything and annoying everyone because I can’t keep my hands off it. The first few days I had it, I even considered sleeping with it under my pillow.

Anyway, I decided to come up with my reasons why I switched from my old Sprint Mogul phone, to the iPhone. Here it goes:

1. The iPhone is Cool. Ok, that’s not really a reason. But when I called Sprint to ask them about early termination fees, they (naturally) tried to convince me to stay with them. However, the customer retention specialist told me: “Why do you want to get the iPhone? Because you want to be cool?” Uh, thanks Sprint. That’s one big reason why I made the switch. I don’t want a snarky customer service rep making fun of me–it’ll only lose you customers. When I told this story to the Apple store sales person selling me the iPhone, he seemed very shocked and amused.
2. A Great User Interface. Compared to the iPhone, my last phone was seriously clunky. For starters, the HTC Windows Mobile-based phone  I used had about 15 different buttons, in additional to a slide-out keyboard. The iPhone just has one main button, and uses just on-screen multi-touch navigation. After trying out both, I definitely prefer a simpler, easy to use interface that was designed well, over a complex interface with a Windows interface. Even the tiny on-screen iPhone keyboard doesn’t annoy me too much anymore.
3. I Wanted Another iPod. The time for a one-iPod family is over. Every family member needs their own. For a long time, me and my wife have shared an iPod classic (160GB), but it was clear early on that we needed separate ones. Our musical tastes are vastly different, and managing playlists was getting too cumbersome. So using my iPhone as my portable musical device seemed like a great way to avoid buying a second iPod and handing off the old iPod for my wife. I don’t mind the smaller hard drive on the iPhone, since I haven’t managed to fill it up yet after about a month of adding more music, podcasts, pictures and applications.
4. YouTube Support. I love having instant access to practically any video on my phone. I can quickly look up a music video, a news clip or just waste time YouTube surfing. Yes, the streaming is a bit slower than my PC, but it’s good enough if I’m on 3G. My biggest complaint is that the YouTube application that comes with the iPhone doesn’t allow me to sign in or see my favorites. I have to use the Safari browser to sign in with YouTbue, which is pretty annoying.
5. Applications. This is something that was a pleasant surprise. I had no idea how much fun iPhone applications could be. My current favorite is Ocarina, a flute like instrument that you have blow into the iPhone mic to play. It’s also a social application, because other iPhone users can favorite my songs or I can tune into other songs that people are playing around the world. It’s a great must-have application that could not exist without all the features included in the iPhone. Other favorites are some games I’ve downloaded (MotoChaser, Spore, BiiBallLite and Scramboni) and applications like Shazam, Facebook, and Google.
6. All-in-One Phone. I love having everything I need in one device. Yes, I wish I could record video. And I wish the iPhone camera took better quality pictures. But overall, the iPhone experience has been an eye opener because it does so much. My last phone, the HTC Mogul from Sprint, required me to download too many third party applications just to get the phone to work how I liked. The iPhone comes with everything and the applications only make the iPhone better.
7. Uh, It’s For Work!. I love new technology and trying out new devices or applications. So when the iPhone first came out last year, I resisted buying one because a) I was locked into my original cell provider, 2) it was expensive, 3) it was too new and untested and 4) it was pretty expensive. However, I’ve clearly overcome all of these obstacles and decided that’s it’s much more important to have an iPhone and learn everything about it.

Oh and did I mention that it’s cool? Oh OK, good.