Continuing the now annual tradition we started last year, a group of us enjoyed the early morning air and rain sprinkles to stake out our spot in the iPhone line insanity of last week (granted last year was a bit more intense with much more time in line). Our spots started at 46th in line and that worked out to score us the initial batch of phones we needed to continue our development and testing of iPhone related technologies, especially over 3G. It was great to meet the variety of folks who decided to take the plunge — Apple fans, Windows converts, IT administrators and totally non-tech people who wanted ‘the phone’.

It took about 4 hours for us to get all of the phone issues resolved (25% were perfect at the store, 25% waiting on the iTunes servers and 50% needing surgery in AT&T’s records to fix updated SIM numbers). Once activated we thoroughly put the phones through their paces and downloaded apps galore to test out. The App Store is an amazing software delivery vehicle and the millions of app downloads already are proof that Apple is on to something huge here. Now we just need to continue the upgrades as more phones come available in the weeks ahead.

And as the coffee, sugar and excitement wore off later in the day, off the intrepid line adventures crept to crash a wee bit early for the evening with dreams of the App Store dancing in their heads…