Lost contacts iPhone 3G

Contacts synced over the air with a MobileMe account are stored on the server and only cached locally on the iPhone. If you cancel the account, the server is no longer available. The same when turning Contacts off for over the air syncing or when deleting the account from the iPhone.
The contacts should be available in a supported application on your computer also. Contacts with the supported application on your computer, with the MobileMe cloud or online address book, and with your iPhone are kept synchronized. The contacts available in the supported application on your computer are not erased when canceling a MobileMe account. Even if you dont have a MobileMe account, your contacts should be available with an address book application on your computer. iPhone contacts are designed to be synced with a supported application on your computer with or without a MobileMe account.
With Windoze, this can be with Outlook 2003 or 2007 along with syncing calendar events, or with Windows Contacts for syncing contacts only. With a Mac, this can be with the Address Book and iCal.
 MacBook Pro 15" Intel Core 2 Duo/2.53GHz/4GB RAM/500GB HD Mac OS X (10.6.2)  iPod w/Video 30GB,  iPhone 3G 16GB

Thanks for the quick and thorough reply. I took Address Book off my dock so I hadnt put any thought to it. I should be able to save myself some trouble.
Im glad to hear it was MobileMe, as I had suspected, and not something else. Thats kind of a pain, but at least there was a copy of the file somewhere. Thanks again! This is why I love the Mac community.
iMac 21.5" Mac OS X (10.6.2)