All the other reviews you’ve seen are from journalists who received Verizon iPhones from either Verizon or Apple and didn’t have to pay for them. I had no such loaner, so had to do the honorable thing: I bought one and used it for a week now. It cost me about $250 because I already ahd a Verizon account. Here’s my report.

PROS FOR VERIZON

1. No dropped calls. My AT&T phone had six drops in same time, at same places I’ve used the Verizon at.

2. A wider coverage area in SF area. I’ve been several places where AT&T just refuses to work, like on Devil’s Slide, or in some places in downtown San Francisco (on second street, for instance) but Verizon hasn’t failed yet.

3. Demonstratably clearer voice quality, even when an AT&T phone is used on other side. This is amazing, too. The voice quality is just much better with EVERY call. Not a single call has sounded worse (I asked lots of my friends to call back on my Verizon number). This is so drastic a difference that I’ve now switched my voice to Verizon permanently.

4. Data worked more places. It was interesting, but lots of places in SF I can’t use data. I don’t know if it’s an overload problem, or a signal problem, or what not. But when I hit one of those spots, like near second street and mission, I pulled out my Verizon phone and it had a great data signal and worked fine.

5. Wifi hotspot out of the box. This rocks, because now my kids can use the iPads in the back seat of the car. Yeah, I know, all you Android users and Palm users have had that for months, if not years, but glad to see iPhone users are finally getting that capability. That said, Verizon is charging something like $40 a month more for that. Yikes.

AT&T PROS

1. You can use Voice and Data at same time on AT&T. This is definitely something that bugs me, but it hasn’t bugged me as much as I expected. For one, most of the time when I use voice I’m at home and have access to wifi, so this problem doesn’t happen there (when I’m driving I rarely use voice and data together, which is most of the time when I use voice). But it is a problem and you’ll have to decide for yourself which is more important, great voice quality and no dropped calls or the ability to use voice and data together.

2. International usage. I’ll be in Amsterdam in six weeks, and AT&T works there, but I don’t think the Verizon phone will.

3. Data speed. Yes, overall, AT&T is faster, but usually that doesn’t matter for me. Why? I could only tell in some spots when I had strong AT&T signals.

So, which one wins?

Well, for me, Verizon does. Why? Because it more consistently worked with both data and voice. But with the caveat that you stay in the US and that you don’t care about using voice and data at the same time.

Luckily, I have both an AT&T and a Verizon phone, so I have the best of both worlds, but that’s a luxury very few of you can afford. Personally I hate AT&T and how they have treated most of us iPhone users the past three years. The quality of service just hasn’t been close to what it needs to be for the charges they are getting.

Good luck!

UPDATE: A good place for more info is on Quora’s Verizon iPhone topic page.

SlideShare is an innovative service that lets you embed your PowerPoint slides into its web service.

Today they are launching “ZipCasts” which let you make a public presentation. It is a simple meeting service. You click on “ZipCast” in Slideshare and you can share presentations in real time.

Neat thing? No download needed. It’s free, but there is a paid version to give you more features and to get rid of ads. Works completely in browser.

Very easy to do, but one thing I wish is that it let you record these video presentations (it can’t do that yet). Anyway, neat new feature. In my video I shot the other day the exec team talks about this and the technology behind it.

I’m getting complaints about a new kind of app purchase on Apple devices: kids hitting “buy.”

GigaOM and other press have already covered this with regards to purchases (parents are seeing big bills from kids who bought stuff in app, or even from app store since that remains active 15 minutes after a parent puts a password in), but Apple really needs to do more. Why? My kids, who are one and three years old are already very adept at getting around.

Already my sons have:

1. Deleted all my apps.
2. Deleted all my photos.
3. Downloaded new apps (turns out if they get the phone right after I’ve installed new updates, or new apps, they don’t need to put my password in).
4. Sent a tweet.
5. Called a friend.
6. Sent a video (it actually was pretty good, of me sleeping).

In some of these instances it took less than a minute. Kids are VERY fast at playing with these devices and it only takes you turning your head for a minute or two for lots of bad things to happen to your mobile devices (I’ve since locked my iPhone with a code so my kid can’t pick up my iPhone and start playing around).

And don’t give me the hooey about watching my kids closer. These are their favorite toys and contain their favorite games and entertainment. We even turn on Thomas the Tank Engine on Netflix for them to watch.

Yeah, there are some parental locks already, but it’s clear that we need both education of parents (I’ve gotten religious about backups) but also we need the parental control features to be easier to find.

I just tried to turn them on for the first time. When I go to the Settings on my iPhone I don’t see “parental controls.” Someone who doesn’t know might not even know they are there, under “Settings/General/Restrictions.” You can turn off the ability to Delete Apps and In-App Purchases, for instance, but the wording is confusing.

First of all, if you want to keep your kids from doing In-App Purchases, you have to turn “off” restrictions and it isn’t clear exactly what this does (there isn’t help for each item to explain what the consequences are).

Many parents will discover this feature on their iPhones and iPads too late. Probably only after something really bad has happened. You also can’t keep kids from deleting all your photos and videos, for instance. Since that’s already happened to me I bet it’s happened to other parents as well.

Anyway, if you have young kids and iPhones or iPads, be warned. Your kids probably will figure out how to delete apps or make in-game purchases before you do!

One of the hotter companies to move to the Valley lately is MindFlash. They moved from Southern California because they started getting tons of interest from big companies up in Silicon Valley, not to mention they wanted access to the talent, PR, and money pool that floats around Palo Alto (they are just down the street from Facebook and HP).

Why are the companies beating a path to MindFlash’s office? Because they make corporate training a lot easier than other companies. Here I discuss this business with CEO Donna Wells.

When Curtiss Pope, CEO of Aislefinder, first pitched me a web service that lets me know what aisle the diapers are on at my local Safeway I asked myself “why do I need that?” But then I remembered all the time I wasted walking around looking for something weird, like Taragon, or tomato paste or something like that. Here he shows me how it works and we brainstorm about what else this data could be used for.

One nice thing is he didn’t try to build a bunch of apps for each mobile phone. Since the service is pretty simple it only needs to be done as a web service. Nice to see that new companies aren’t feeling pressured to build a mobile app just for apps sake.

Now that SXSW is coming you can bet that lots of people are running panels, parties, and other events, and want to know who are the influencers on how people hear about events. That’s what Awe.sm’s VIPli.st does. In this video you’ll learn how VIPli.st tracks how news of events spreads. These kinds of services will be useful for businesses to judge the ROI of their social media campaigns, and reward influencers for spreading news of their events. By the way, I never take payments from event companies to get on my own Plancast calendar at http://plancast.com/scobleizer.