Today, thousands of slavering Apple fanboys and fangirls will rush the doors at their nearest gleaming glass cube Apple store and gladly throw down gobs of cash for the first generation iPhone. The only thing keeping me from being one of them is reality.

That phone is damned sexy, there’s no question. But, like the first generation iPods, it won’t be without issue. There are already discussions going on about battery problems, memory issues and the fact that, though you can surf the “real” web with it, it only attaches to one of AT&T’s slowest cellphone networks, making it rather like being forced to only drive your Ferrari on the 405 freeway during rush hour.

It’s going to improve, just like the iPod did. They’ll eventually figure out a way to fit the chip  necessary to use the faster network into the little device and, what with battery technology improving constantly and fuel cells seemingly only a couple of years away from commercial production, the power consumption problems will be mitigated. I expect that, by this time next year, the next gen iPhones will be about as revolutionary to mobile technology as the iPod was to music.

This is huge for the Web industry. For years, we’ve tried to figure out ways to efficiently bring content to cell phones, PDAs, etc. and have not yet perfected it. Trying to cram that much information down that narrow a pipe onto that small a screen has been a hairy endeavor. The iPhone, with it’s crisp, touch-sensitive display mitigates a number of these problems. The fact that it includes a web browser that, according to all of the marketing material, allows one to efficiently and easily navigate a normal sized web page means, as the number of iPhone users increases, the more hits we’ll be seeing in our logs from mobile Safari.

I’ve long said that, where “Web 2.0″ has been about creating interfaces that simplify complex technical tasks that the non-technical public can easily grasp, “Web 3.0″ will be about the ubiquity of access offered by devices like SmartPhones and such. Just as it seemed to take a decade before anyone really figured out how to make it easy for a non-technical artist to start a personal website in the form of a blog or share their pictures using a site like Flickr, it seems that it hasn’t been until now that someone’s taken the hassle out of surfing the web on the go. I haven’t actually played with the iPhone myself and the public has only gotten its hands on the device as of maybe a half an hour ago, but every demo I’ve seen and review I’ve read indicates to me that Apple finally got this to work.

The iPhone marks the dawn of Web 3.0, and it behooves anyone running a site that appeals to folks on the go (event information sites, news sites, mapping sites, etc.) to start thinking about redesigning their web properties to make the best use of this medium. We’re looking at another window of opportunity to take advantage of a hot technology that, to my eyes, has not had its potential realized by enough people. The sites that ingratiate themselves to these early adopters will be the ones to rake in the big bucks when the rest of us hop on board the mobile web bandwagon. I hope some of you are paying attention. I know I am.