Had your iPhone 3G courier-delivered to you this morning? We’re curious to hear the experiences of others, because our review model hasn’t arrived and, according to O2, probably won’t now until – well, O2 doesn't know when.

Indeed, despite forcing us to jump through all sorts of hoops this week, O2 was been unable to give us any explanation at as to why the iPhone 3G we’d ordered at 8.15am on Monday 7 July isn’t now going to be delivered today, as promised.

The O2 adviser we spoke to said that our order had "been processed" but, as the company had run out of stock, he didn’t think our order could be fulfilled. Frankly, he sounded a tad confused himself and recommended we give it another "day or two to see if our computer system is just being slow to update".

But if O2’s computer system is being slow to update then its credit-card-processing facility is plenty quick off the mark. More after the cut.

Ninety minutes after entering the Regent Street Apple Store at 8.00am this morning, the first person in the queue for the iPhone 3G still hadn’t managed to buy one. Apparently, the O2 activation server crashed shortly after the doors opened at iPhone stockists around the country, which means no one in the UK was able to buy an iPhone 3G.

The activation delays follow problems earlier in the week with O2's 'server meltdown' as customers tried to pre-order the iPhone 3G online ,and its subsequent requests to some customers for emailed scans of passports for 'identity checks'.

We spoke to people number #2 and #3 in the London Apple Store queue as they left the store after waiting for ninety minutes for their iPhones – after the cut.

The was a healthy queue of people outside Apple’s Regent Street store in London this morning before the doors opened at 8.00am, along with a healthy number of journalists and camera crews. Mobile Computer was there and we spoke to the first person in the queue for the iPhone 3G.

We were expecting to hear that the #1 iPhone 3G fan had been there for at least 24 hours, but it turns out that he simply bought his place on eBay the night before for an “undisclosed sum” (but for less than the price of an iPhone 3G”, and turned up at 6.00am this morning to take his place.

The seller, apparently, intended to donate the auction proceeds to charity, so it was all for a good cause. Shame he didn’t hold out for more money, though… You can see our short interview with the first person in the iPhone 3G queue, along with footage of the 8.00am door opening, after the cut.

Anyone who's tried using Apple's shiny new MobileMe may have noticed things aren't exactly going smoothly. All was meant to be in place by the early hours of Thursday but as we roll into Friday Apple is admitting that things are, "taking longer than expected".

It's been posting regular updates, and apologies, on its System Status page to keep users informed.

Latest advice is that iDisk, Sync, iChat, Back to My Mac, and all published pages including Galleries and iWeb sites are up and running. Web Apps still isn't working but is promised, "as soon as possible".

As for those having trouble with Mail, Apple advises to, "use the desktop email application on your Mac, PC, iPhone or iPod touch." Not quite the Blackberry killing experience we were hoping for.

[MobileMe]

We're at London's Apple Store on Regent Street this morning, watching the queue grow and grow. When we turned up, there wasn’t much a queue at all. But, it’s over an hour now since the first customer entered the shop to buy his iPhone 3G, and he still hasn’t emerged.

Rumours from inside the palace of all things Apple suggest that the iPhone activation gateway has "gone down". As a result, it's taking much longer to process customers than expected. That probably explains why we're standing around out here like journalistic lemons.

We will of course post updates as and when we get them, including the promised unboxing video and first-impressions review – assuming our own iPhone 3G purchase is delivered today.

[Apple Store]

Remember those Cellnet virtual surfer ads that heralded the 'WAP' age? It seems it finally could be upon us. Now rebranded as the 'mobile web' (wireless application protocol not catchy enough for you?) a new survey has found a 'critical mass' are now using it.

Analysts, Nielsen Mobile, found people in the UK were the second biggest users of Internet services on their mobiles - with 13% of us calling ourselves 'active' users. Topping the table, though, was the US with 16% - surprising given its usual lag behind Europe and the Far East in mobile tech but possibly attributable to the popularity of the Blackberry and of course the iPhone.

The survey found that 82% of iPhone owners got online with their phones, "making them five times as likely to do so as the average mobile consumer". Here in the UK the Nokia N95 was the most popular for accessing the web.

So what benefits will reaching this 'critical mass' bring us? More ads, apparently. Nielsen concludes: "We believe mobile Internet has reached a critical mass as an advertising medium in the US... This provides scalable marketing potential with demographic breadth." Pop ups on our phones? We can't wait.

[BBC]

We suspect that this will be the last big announcement before the actual iPhone 3G launch tomorrow – the 2.0 firmware is live.

The iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw file can only be downloaded via this direct link to Apple’s server at the moment, though it will obviously show up in iTunes at some point today or tomorrow.

We've successfully installed the 2.0 firmware on an iPhone that was running the jailbroken 1.1.4 firmware. As long as you back up your iPhone before the upgrade (which is automatic with an iTunes sync), you won't lost anything on the iPhone and the process even preserves Safari shortcuts on the Home screen. The upgrade does remove any applications that were installed on a jailbroken iPhone, of course.

You can see a video of the new firmware in action after the cut. 

Asus kindly dropped of yet another Eee PC earlier today – the Eee PC 1000-BK002. As we’ve already reported, this is a 10in screen netbook with an Intel Atom processor, but it’s essentially a scaled-up version of the Eee PC 901 and you’ll see the close resemblance with the two side-by-side.

Watch the video after the cut.

OK, we admit it, even we’re getting a little excited by the stream of iPhone 3G news that’s breaking today. Following the launch of the iPhone 3G-ready iTunes 7.7 and the iTunes App Store earlier today, the latest is a photo from Carphone Warehouse showing some iPhone 3G stock being delivered. Not the biggest news of the day, but still a little bit exciting, no?

We’ll be charitable and assume that a) that isn’t Carphone Warehouse’s only stock allocation and b) there are more than 40 iPhone 3G boxes on that pallet…

Apple released iTunes 7.7 earlier today and just after we wrote a piece explaining that, no, it doesn't include the iTunes applications store, Apple goes ahead and launches the iTunes application store!

The application store lists 546 applications at the moment, including games, ebooks and a mix of utilities (including both mobile Facebook, MySpace and Twitter apps). There's also a free eBook reader called eReader, courtesy of FictionWise. There are 137 free applications at the time of writing, but prices range up £17.99. Some apps are rather ambitiously priced too, particularly when you consider that they can be downloaded for free on a jailbroken iPhone.