All manner of problems after iphone sync!

Hello All

I am hoping somebody will be kind enough to help.

My brother gave me his old perfectly functioning iphone 3 which i got unlocked and have been using very happily for 2 weeks.

This morning I uploaded a few videos that I took last night, all great.... until I noticed that all my messages now had telephone numbers rather than names next to them apart from 2 new contacts which were added last night ie between this mornings sync and yesterday mornings sync.

I then checked the apple address book on my mac and all the contacts have gone as well. The apple address book syncs with google contacts and all them have gone (apart from ones that I had categorised into groups). I do still have them on outlook and I have got a back up hard drive (though wouldnt have aclue how I use this!).

I followed some threads on this forum and ended up resoring the iphone only to find that now it says there is no sim!

Have tried opening and reinserting it but no joy. AAAGGGHHH.

So, no working phone now.

What do you think has happened here? How have I gone from a perfectly functioning phone last night to a uselss one this morning.

Do you think its the phone or the sync process? I cant help but think its the sync process but what do I know?!

What do you think I should do?

Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks

Denise