Ernie Svenson was in town last night. You know him as “Ernie the Attorney.” He lives in New Orleans, been blogging for, it seems, forever, and told me one interesting way that New Orleans is different from San Francisco and I got him to tell us all via a TwitterGram (short 30-second audio MP3 file sent to Twitter).

CNBC is going to be here in a few minutes to interview Patrick about his iPhone, a month later, to see if he still likes it.

Dave Winer writes about his iPhone. You might be surprised by his review because he is pretty brutal about the iPhone.

Me?

I agree with Dave Winer. if you are a hard-core email or even cell phone user the iPhone will probably leave you wanting (I find it frustrating to dig through my thousands of contacts, for instance, but then I’m weird — most people don’t have thousands of people they need to have on their phone so they can call them). I’ve been talking with a bunch of people who switched from Blackberries to iPhones and most, while happy, do wish the iPhone had some better things for email users. One guy, though, told me he’ll never go back to Blackberry, no matter how good the keyboard is. Why? HTML email. He loves getting his newsletters in their full glory.

Me? I’m getting rid of my Nokia N95. I need a couple of weeks more income before I can afford to get an iPhone (believe it or not I don’t have an unlimited “gadget” budget). But the Nokia just continues to piss me off. I realized it the other day when Google Maps wouldn’t come up due to an out-of-memory error and I asked Patrick to hand me his iPhone.

Oh, and I counted the clicks to open up Google Maps on my Nokia N95: 11. How many on the iPhone? One.

I disagree with Dave Winer about the Web. I TOTALLY enjoy reading the Web much more on the iPhone than the Nokia. The Nokia does not thrill, the iPhone does. Am I a simpleton for liking a product that thrills (has nice user interactions?) Yes. Shoot me.

One other thing: I can’t use a device with a QWERTY keyboard. Why? Because I’m an addict. When I had a Blackberry I used it so often my hands started hurting. I lost that device in a cab in New Orleans and my hands stopped hurting. So, I don’t use my mobile device for answering email anymore. I can’t. That’s me.

One guy told me he missed his Blackberry because he couldn’t use the iPhone while he drives. That’s an addict’s behavior. Personally it’s GOOD that the iPhone can’t be used while you drive (although Google Maps are easier to use on the iPhone while driving than on the Nokia N95 because you can get to a map with one click on the iPhone, where the Nokia takes 11, or more).

Which brings us to reviewer bias. Every reviewer sees the world through their own eyes. I sure do and that’s why some of my readers get mad at me “will you shut up about Facebook and iPhone already?”

I’ve been talking to a LOT of normal people and notice that they are far more likely to really enjoy the iPhone. Except for one thing: the price. Most people have never used the Web on their cell phone. Most people have never listened to music on their cell phone. Most people have never used Google Maps on their cell phone. Most people have never answered an email on their cell phone.

It’s the “most people” that Dave Winer (and me) usually forget.

But when I talked with a Google executive he told me that they are seeing FAR HIGHER usage on the iPhone than any other device that Google’s apps and services are on.

Why does a pretty UI and thrilling interactions matter? Because it affords using it. That’s why the iPhone wins and the Nokia doesn’t. And, yes, I realize that I’ll get bagged on by all the Nokia fans who will remind me once more about the GPS, the better camera, the replaceable battery, yadda yadda yadda. You can save your evangelism for another day (I know Nokia is working on making its software much better, so you’ll probably soon get to come back here and tell me all about it then).

One last thing. Dave is right. The biggest hole that Apple has left for its competitors is a really really really lame software developer platform (IE, non-existent, iPhone developers can’t even get data from the accelerometers on the iPhone, which really is lame). Did I say “really” enough times to drive home the point?

Anyway, I’ll let you know when I get my iPhone. It’s going to be soon then. I’ll have to decide what to do with the N95. I’m thinking of giving it away in a contest or selling it and donating the fees from it to charity since it was given to me by PureMobile.

If you have an iPhone: what do you think?

OK, I have some sleep. The waiting-in-line with famous original Mac team members Kool Aid is wearing off.

I want to be snarky. Write a horrible review of the iPhone and tell you how it’s all a bad joke.

I want to tell you how the keyboard sucks. I want to tell you all about how the camera sucks. How it sucks for not coming with any video games. How the activation process was too difficult. How horrible it is that there isn’t a replaceable battery. That the device is already getting tons of finger prints and smudges on it. That the fonts on the browser are too small to read on many Web sites. That it wasn’t worth the time waiting in line (although you could have walked right into the Palo Alto store last night and picked one up).

Oh, this snarky review would continue to discuss what a tragedy it is that it doesn’t have 3G. That it doesn’t have Flash, or the .NET Framework, or the Java runtimes on it. That it’s not available to people in most of the world.

But then I start playing with the device and I find I overlook all these faults. My Nokia N95 doesn’t have any of these faults but it just isn’t as easy to use. Nor as fun. And the screen! Whenever I look back at my Nokia I feel like I’m using Windows 3.11 on a 640×480 screen again after I’ve gotten Windows 95 and am running it at 1024×768.

This phone is far from perfect. It has lots of weaknesses that Apple’s competitors can exploit. The snarky reviewer inside me can point them all out to you on this morning after if you’d like. But it really doesn’t matter. This phone drags you back to it even if you’re kicking and screaming and noticing the flaws.

But the other companies are only going to be able to keep Apple from taking massive market share if they dramatically push their phones forward.

Seriously there’s one customer who REALLY should think about not buying an iPhone: someone who uses a thumb keyboard phone like a Blackberry. The keyboard is frustrating to use if you are a heavy Blackberry user. That’s the one case where the iPhone’s other benefits will have a tough time counteracting those flaws.

For ME that’s not a big deal (I will never own a device with a thumb keyboard again because back in the 1990s when I owned a Blackberry I was such an addict to using it that I got repetitive stress problems and my hands started hurting. That pain went away when I lost that Blackberry in a cab in New Orleans back in 2000).

My #1 frustration this morning with the iPhone? Fonts. Dave Winer’s right. I want to change the default view on the Web browser to always be zoomed in.

So, what’s your “morning after” review?

I’ll have Patrick give his morning after review after he gets up. The poor kid was pushed to his breaking point. He was so tired that he didn’t even want to stick around to meet Steve Jobs. If you know Patrick you’d know that’s how you can really tell he was tired since meeting Steve Jobs is one of his life goals. Back later.

We’ve got more John Edwards videos (one of him talking to bloggers in Iowa, among other things — I interview a few of the bloggers first who were invited in to talk with him — another of him talking with bloggers in New Hampshire, both are useful in seeing how a candidate is using bloggers to help get the word out). These two videos are good for those who want to study how a campaign is using bloggers to start conversations on the Internet. In the Iowa video you’ll see geek Jake Ludington, who helps out on Chris Pirillo’s’ Lockergnome site.

My favorite guy I met on the trip last week was Larry Knight. His house was destroyed in Katrina in New Orleans. In the video of him I shot you can see how high the water got. What you can’t see on the video is his great attitude. He has no money, but he’s rebuilding his house anyway with help from his friends. Anytime I’m feeling down, I’ll just replay this video and remember meeting Larry.

You thought I forgot the geeky stuff too, didn’t ya? Too much politics? Well, here you’ll meet two of my favorite tech bloggers, Don Dodge and Alfred Thompson, both work at Microsoft. We have a fun talk about New Hampshire politics and a little bit of geeky stuff too.

If you really want to avoid politics all together, then watch the videos I got of Me.dium. This is a really cool app that lets you share your Web surfing with your friends. It sounds lame, but watch the demo of Me.dium and you’ll get a sense that this is an app that we haven’t seen before. Impressed me, anyway. I have an interview with Me.dium’s founders and get more behind the scenes of what they are trying to do. This is an app you’ll see more of this year, I predict it’ll be a pretty hot one.

UPDATE: Chuck Olsen posts his video reporting on the reporters done for Rocketboom (he interviews me).

Oh, and that’s the last of the John Edwards stuff. Thanks for putting up with the political stuff. Do you have any other questions about what I experienced on John Edwards’ trip last week? Leave them in the comments here and I’ll try to answer them.