Three things converged on me yesterday. First, my favorite web professional organization decided to focus next on mobile web design. Second, Steve Jobs in his Macworld keynote said that in its very first quarter (July - Sept 2007), the iPhone zoomed into second place for the market share of U.S. smart phones. Third, a colleague gave me the latest issue of Marketing News (1/15/08) and lo and behold one of the feature articles is, “2008 will be the year of mobile marketing.”

It’s more than just mobile marketing. It’s mobile web. According to what I read, the app that’s most popular on the iPhone is its web browser (Safari). Certainly it’s my favorite. In fact, it’s why I bought one in the first place. The iPhone has broken down that dreadful cell phone garden wall and my bet is Google’s Android is going to break it down even more. They are claiming the World Wide Web in the U.S. for a device other than a PC — and that’s the way the Web was always meant to be — device-independent. (Other countries are way ahead of the U.S. in this arena.)

Add to this that I’ve been drooling over first the iPhone and now Android since they were twinkles in Apple’s and Google’s eyes, and guess where I’m headed. I’ll be getting ready for my next web professionals meeting — starting to code my sites for the mobile web.

I just had to switch the computer my beloved iPhone syncs on. Given that I adore this phone and I yam what I yam, I’m very protective of it. In other words, I read everything I could get my hands on about possible perils of switching. And there was precious little.

As things transpired, with just a little preparation it went seamlessly. And when, with heart in mouth, I actually hooked my phone to the new machine, iTunes recognized it immediately, but defaulted to not syncing anything. My blood pressure began to go down. To actually start the sync, I had to go through the tabs manually to choose what to sync and how.

For others faced with the same situation, here are more details on what I did. (Please note: this is Mac-based advice given in early January 2008.)

1. Back everything up. Of course.
2. Get all of your email accounts working on your new machine. I use Mac Mail, and it works perfectly — even for Vanderbilt Exchange mail (but that’s another story for another day). Also, if you merge your iPhone, at least some (and maybe all of your accounts) will stay in tact.
3. Get your photos set up either in iPhoto or in your folders of choice. This too it will give you a choice of merging.
4. Get your podcasts and music in order. This was the most work, but also turned out to be the most critical. Judging from the interface, you can sync from two machines, and get the music from one and not the other. But if you’re completely moving off the first computer, you’re going have take care of this.
5. Get calendar, contacts and bookmarks on your new machine. In my case, it was taken care of in a heartbeat by having a dot Mac account. (Dot mac and iPhones are a beautiful combo.) If you don’t have one, I imagine you can export and import all that information. It’s also possible that merging will take care of the export/import for you.

That’s all there is to it. Here’s hoping Apple adds info like this to the iPhone manual.