Vojtech has just arrived into London from the Czech Republic. He’s a PR specialist and was instrumental in helping us out during MIR’s visit to the country.

He’s a San Francisco veteran and, actually speaks better English than many Californians.

Vojtech’s arrived in London to head up the tech section at his PR firm. His first task after arriving in the city?

Get an iPhone 3GS. Obviously.

For that, though, you need a credit / debit card with a chip/pin function. HSBC is currently rushing him one so at the moment, Vojtech’s sitting on his hands.

But he couldn’t have an iPhone 3GS if he wanted one. They were out of stock when he enquired. The nice lady at Carphone Warehouse said she’d call when they were in stock.

She did call back — this afternoon — to say that there were a whopping 800 in stock all over London.

Nice.

Vojtech called back an hour later.

They were out of stock. Already.

Bad luck Vojtech. I think you’re right though — definitely get a 3GS instead of the 3G version.

You can follow Vojtech’s London travails at www.nextstoplondon.net and follow him on @vojtech. If you meet him, tell him hi from me.

It looks like there’s a continual quiet revolution going on with iPhone 3G –> 3GS upgrades.

I’m still stuck on my 3G version, I haven’t had time to pop into a Carphone or an o2 store. How about you?

Are you one of the million who upgraded to the iPhone 3GS over the weekend?

What a performance by Apple!

On Friday in San Francisco, I popped over to VSC Communications to check out Michael’s new iPhone 3GS. He was absolutely ecstatic with it.

I mean *ecstatic*.

Me, well I looked at it… there’s no visual difference, of course. So I wasn’t entirely blown away. I just thought it was nice.

I really, REALLY liked the camera. Indeed I think I could potentially see myself dumping a secondary ‘high quality camera phone’ in favour of the iPhone 3GS camera.

But I wasn’t as blown-away as Michael clearly was.

Until, that is, I picked up my own iPhone 3G later in the evening and recognised the difference.

The iPhone 3G is SLOW. Really SLOW compared to the 3GS. The speed definitely, definitely helps.

The more I am using my iPhone 3G, the animation and performance delays (that never worried me before) are beginning to seriously annoy me.

I shall be on the phone to o2 shortly.

Bet this one becomes the highest trafficked MIR post since I announced (for April Fool) that Google was buying Vodafone, right?

This is, depending on where you work, not very safe for work. Although you can use this valid excuse: Ewan from Mobile Industry Review (3.0, I’ll have you know) made me click.

That’s because it’s relevant to the business of mobile and mobile content.

Don’t scroll down yet. There are pictures.

iPorn formally launched last week on the first day of the Apple WWDC event on Monday.

I was busy doing proper work when this was all going on. I should, of course, have been documenting the iPorn team’s launch in super HD for your business benefit.

iPorn offers thousands of iPod Touch and iPhone formatted videos for the pleasure of the viewing public. Type it into your iPhone browser and you’ll be entertained for hours. For business purposes, only, of course. It’s a product of

Let’s get to some documentary evidence of the day.

Picture this. You’re virtually foaming at the mouth for news about the new iPhone. You’re queuing up outside the Moscone Conference Center. It’s a bit chilly.

Then a horse drawn carriage appears.

Let’s have a pic of that:

All well and good, right?

Note the ‘iPorn’ posters there in the background. I don’t think the horse is that impressed.

[ Insert various why-the-long-face horse jokes etc ]

All well’n good:

Imagine the minds of the hundreds of iPhone and Apple geeks, previously foaming at the mouth at the prospect of iPhone news, when the following ladies disembark from the coach:

What to do?

iPhone news or semi naked women?

Some couldn’t be swayed.

But this chap was certainly impressed enough to take a bit of time out to answer questions from the ladies:

This chap was all too ready to check out the camera function on his iPhone 3G. A high resolution Nokia handset would have taken a better picture.

There was no shortage of willing participants to join in the fun from the queue:

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant gorilla marketing.

AdultVest, the Hedge Fund that acquired iPorn last year, had this to say today:

On June 8, as thousands of people lined up around the Moscone West building in San Francisco waiting to enter on the opening day of Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference, five Bikini-clad iPorn girls paraded in and out of a horse-drawn carriage throwing mini footballs and t-shirts promoting the launch of the iPorn mobile web application for the iPhone. The non-tech promotion was a hit with the tech-centric crowd consisting primarily of male developers who were waiting to hear Apple’s keynote address and the announcement of the newest version of its popular iPhone, dubbed 3GS.

The captive audience, who waited over 2 hours on a chilly Monday morning before they could gain admittance to the venue, gave a very warm welcome to the iPorn Girls, taking pictures and posting them across the Internet. The launch caught the attention of the major media and Internet outlets covering the event and soon the iPorn story began to spread across America and beyond.

Registration on the iPorn mobile site has surpassed 36,000 members and is growing daily while its broadband website is drawing hundreds of thousands of unique visits a day.

So consider yourself informed.

(All photos from the iPorn NSFW image gallery)

If I’m brave enough, and they’re up for it, I’ll take the camera down to the iPorn headquarters for a Mobile Developer TV episode soon.

What’s so exciting about a new iPhone?

On the face of it: A veritable riot of possibilities.

I could sense the excitement of the community. This morning at 10am San Francisco time, the stage was set for at least 60 odd minutes of what promised to be a roller-coster ride of pure joy.

Only, it wasn’t.

And it never is.

Did you say 20 megapixel DVD quality camera? No?

A 500GB iPhone 4G, you say? No?

No. Not at all. It’s steady as she goes.

We saw a few interesting iterations and additions — but mostly, the iPhone 3GS is simply bringing the platform up to speed. Now it does Bluetooth, more or less properly. Now you can do MMS without having to buy Ed Lea’s excellent application. Now you can, GASP, cut-n-paste. Now you can… prepare yourselves… TETHER.

Yes, you too can tether your iPhone 3GS (”The S stands for speed?”) to your laptop.

And it’s got Exchange. More or less properly.

The auto-focus camera might help some users avoid carrying their camera or supplementary Sony Ericsson.

But the fact the device form factor isn’t changing at all — the fact that it’ll be really, really difficult to tell if you’re using an ‘S’ or a normal iPhone 3G as you waltz down the street, that speaks volumes.

This is an interim release. Finally the promise of 3.0 is unleashed on the salivating developers eager to get hold of the micropayment functionality. Finally hardware accessory vendors can really get their teeth stuck into the platform — and, yes, finally, developers can wallpaper over one of the iPhone’s most annoying features: No background application support. No you’ll get a mildly bollocks-looking message appear on your device prompting you to stop what you’re doing, lose everything and open one of the applications that is demanding your attention.

Those hunting for the shock and awe of Apple from yesteryear were left feeling hard done by.

In fairness, it’s not every day that you can stand up at a conference and say you’re about to change the mobile industry — before showing off a wickedly cool first generation iPhone.

We’re there, we’re done — iPhone has already had the desired effect. The behemoths have awoken. Nokia, Motorola, Google — even Palm — they’re all taking lessons from Apple’s successes and implementing them with various degrees of success.

What’s clear is that Apple is continuing to gather momentum nicely, particularly now that it’s harnessed the might of hundreds of thousands of application developers to it’s cause.

The iPhone is still the shining light in the mobile industry. It’s still showing the way, irrespective of the odd flaw. And it’s only going to increase.

How long have the other players got before Apple begins to grow it’s beachhead into a larger and larger share of the smartphone market?

The $99 price-point for new customers of AT&T (for the 8GB 2nd generation iPhone) is likely to draw more and more attention and continue to shift the devices in their low millions across this coming year.

How long before you can pick up an iPhone 3G 8GB for $49? Or free on a 2-year contract? Or free on a 12-month contract?

I’ve always maintained that if you offered an iPhone to a normob at a reasonable and competitive price, they’d snap it up. For your normob, the iPhone represents both a brilliant unification of requirements (walkman, camera, mobile, web browser, games machine) limited only by it’s cost.

Case in point: The taxi driver who took me to the Moscone Center this morning showed me his new Blackberry on T-Mobile. He loves it. Not the device but ‘it’ — the ’service’. The fact he gets ‘unlimited’ for $50. He’s taken a look at the iPhone. Most certainly. He covets the device — he likes the possibilities it offers. But he just can’t get his mind over the device cost and then the rather annoying price plan limitations that AT&T imposes (e.g. only a few hundred minutes and texts). He’s watching the marketplace like a hawk. If the iPhone hits $99 and matches his T-Mobile price plan, he’ll buy. (Of course AT&T are doing their level best, obviously, to avoid this.)

I wonder just how many of those price-sensitive customers there are out there in America and beyond?

We shall see.

For now, good work Apple. Keep the innovation moving.

I’ll upgrade to the 3GS just as soon as I can, anyway.

You will, too, won’t you?