The following is a live blog from Steve Jobs' keynote from the great hall at Moscone West. It started just after 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) and ended at 11:50 a.m. PT. Apple's press release is now available here; you can watch the event in QuickTime or MPEG-4 here.

The posts that follow are in reverse-chronological order, most recent first.

11:45 a.m. Wrapping it up. Steve Jobs just announced the big news: a price point of $199 for the 8 GB iPhone 3G and $299 for 16 GB iPhone 3G

The 8 GB is available only in black.The 16GB model also comes in white.

Will be rolling out in 22 countries on July 11. The price is max of $199 all around the world. New ad. Plays it twice. Introduces team. Tells the developers to go make some great products. And it's over. 11:50 am PT

11:34: Jobs has just introduced the iPhone 3G and is demoing how much faster it is. People laughing at how long it's taking to download a photo on Edge: 59 seconds vs. 21 seconds for 3G.

36% faster than Nokia.

Comparing to Wi-Fi. 17 seconds on Wi-Fi. (Which Wi-Fi, we wonder?)

3.6 times faster than EDGE on map downloading.

Great battery life he says. 300 hours standby time. 2G talk time 8 to 10 hours. 3G talk time: 5 hours.

Browsing: 5 to 6 hours of hight speed browsing

Video: 7 hours.

Audio: 24 hours.

GPS built in. BIG APPLAUSE.

Also data from cell towers and WiFi and now GPS too. Using GPS can do tracking. Demo driving down Lombard street (recorded earlier), tracking as you move. Little blue dot wiggling down the twisty street.

Third party: you saw the great apps.

More countries; we distribute in 6 countries today. We set goal to 12 or maybe 25. Colors in map in Apple red to the tune of "It's A Small World After All." African countries one by one. This could take awhile. Seventy countries over the next several months. Next time you're in Malta…

More affordable: $199 for iPhone 3G 8 GB.

11:28: Steve Jobs is back. Now I'm going to talk about the iPhone. In a few weeks, the first birthday. Photos of launch. Time magazine cover. "This is the phone that has changed phones forever." What makes us happiest is that users love their iPhones. 90% customer satisfaction. 98% are mobile browsing, from nothing. 94% e-mail. 90% text messaging. 80% using 10 features or more.

We have sold 6 million iPhones so far. Until we ran out a few weeks ago.

Next challenges.

First: 3G network.

Second: Enterprise support

Third: Third-party software

Fourth: More countries.

Five: More affordable.

Today We're introducing the iPhone 3G.

11:22 Schiller demo of MobileMe on an iPhone. Push e-mail. Invitation to lunch. Restaurant. Map. Menu. Save as contact. Pushed to MobileMe. Contact is already on MobileMe. Moves dates. Pushes them through the cloud back and forth to Mac and iPhone. Photos sent through the cloud. Applause. So that's MobileMe. Terrible name, but seems pretty cool. Service available for $99 a year with 20 gigabytes on memory (same price as .Mac, but twice the memory). It replaces .Mac. Available in July. You keep your .mac addresses. (Phew)

11:18 Demo of MobileMe on a Mac. He's very excited that a desktop-like app can work as a Web 2.0 app, as if Google apps didn't exist. Perhaps its faster and more responsive and better integrated, but we won't know until we do it hands on. Embedded Google map built into address book is cool. Move meeting around. Skims really quickly through photos. Resizing is also pretty fast. iDisk works like before, as near as I can tell. One button log out.

11:14: Phil Schiller. Mobile Me. "Exchange for the rest of us." We can all get push e-mail, contacts and calendars right to our devices. Stores your info in the cloud. Can get to it on any device: Mac, PC, iPhone. Keeps everything up to date all the time. E-mail gets pushed to all devices. Meeting change gets uploaded and pushed to all devices. If a contact changes, see it immediately. (What Exchange does already.)

Works with Mail, iCal, Address book. Also works with Microsoft Outlook. Built a suite of Web 2.0 apps to give desktop experience on the web.

Get e-mail experience that feels like desktop Mail. Navigation tools on top left. Contacts. Calendar. Gallery. Send to Mobile Me is a button on iPhone. Send photo to Gallery. Docs as well. Goes to demo.

11:13 Jobs: Something entirely new called MobileMe (the rumors were right about the name). Introduces Phil Schiller.

11:12: Jobs on third way to add apps. Called Ad Hoc. For, say, a professor and his students. Can get certified for up to 100 iPhones. The users download and sync through iTunes. Total three ways to distribute apps: Enterprise, App Store, Ad Hoc.

11:04: Steve Jobs back on the stage. New features: Contact search. Full iWorks document support. Also all of MS Office (added Powerpoint to Word and Excel). Also bulk delete and move. Also save images to library. Added scientific calculator (just turn to landscape mode). Added parental controls. "Some teenagers might not like this, but that's the way it has to be." Added many languages. Two forms of entry for Japanese. Also two for Chinese, one where you draw the character with your finger. You can switch between all the languages on the fly. "Better than having a lot of plastic keys on your keyboard."

Apple 2.0 free software update in early July (groans) and got price down to $9.95 for iPhone touch owners.

App Store. Unveiled in March. All iPhones. Wirelessly download. Automatic notification of update. 10 MB or less can download on cellular, WiFi or through iTunes store. (He never says when the App Store launches.)

Enterprises want another way to distribute apps so they work only on their phones. (Scattered applause from IT guys).

10:59: Scott Forestall summing up after all the demos. One feature request not currently in the SDK. Instant messaging client wants to alert you to a message when the client isn't running. Can't let it to run in the background, firstly because of battery life issues. Second: performance turns sluggish. Samsung uses a task manager. Big laugh at how complicated it looks. (Although we use the same thing on a Mac when it slows down.) Better solution: provide a push notification service to all developers. (Big applause.) Maintains a persistent IP notification through Apple. 3 types: badges (i.e. how many messages waiting), alert sounds, custom text alerts (like a SMS). It scales to many 3rd party services, but only one connection to the phone. Preserves battery life. Maintains performance. All works over the air. WiFi and cellular network. Available in September, but being seeded next month. Applause.

10:57: Last demo (phew): Digital Legends Entertainment. From Spain, just started developing two weeks ago, if you can believe that. A veteran game developer, new to platform. Ported game called Crawl (?) that is a 3-D game with caves, monsters, giants, etc. Expected to be ready by September.

10:54: MIMvista. Another medical app. Is this a theme? Moving through a CT scan and a PET scan combined with two fingers. It's like looking into a body in real time. Zoom with pinch and double tap. Scroll through slices. Change contrast or level. Measurement tool lets you measure, say, size of a tumor. Remove with a shake. (applause). Movie: change color and twirling a body that doctors could review with patient. Look for at launch of App Store. No price given.

10:51: Modality for med students to learn anatomy. Using medical illustrations to create electronic flash cards. Zoom into a heart. Unintended laugh when he says "imagine doing this on any other mobile device." Quotes student who said he learned 5 new brain terms while waiting in line for his latte. Going to K-12. Dozens of apps ble at launch. No price given.

10:48: MLB.com. Official website for Major League Baseball. New app called @bat. All games. Live ones on top. Tie score in Yankee game. Updates all the time. Added real time video highlights. Pretty impressive video, shown "minutes" after it happens on the field. "On Wi-Fi or EDGE." Hmm. No mention of 3G by anyone yet. No price given, but MLB is usually a subscription service.

10:45: Cow Music. Solo developer from British insurance industry who did this in his spare time. Mark Terry. App called Band. Creating music on iPhone. Piano. Drum. 12-bar blues in one interface. Big applause! Bass guitar. Whoops and claps. A few weeks time. No price given.

10:41: Pangea Software. Ported two games from Mac OS X to the iPhone. First: Inigmo (spelling?) Control droplets of water through 50 levels. Force fields, switches, etc. Hundreds of droplets bouncing like ping pong balls. Second: Cro-Mag Rally. Cave man racing game. Demos glaciers. 10 cars and 1 sub to choose from. Took 3 days to get each game up and running, or at least playable. The iPhone is the steering wheel. Turn iPhone left, the car goes left. 5-10 minutes to add in accelerometer steering. $9.99 each at launch.

10:39: Associated Press. Shows an update of the AP Mobile News Network it launched in May. Using new GPS chip, filters news based on your location. Encourage users to send photos from their iPhones directly to the AP (!).

10:36: Next up: TypePad. Largest professional blogging platform. Creates a post, blog the moment with a photo, or blog a photo from yesterday. Browses photo album, picks a photo, scales, chooses pix, chooses which of his several blogs, chooses categories, adds a bit of commentary, and finally, publishes. Free at launch of Apps Store. (Could this be leading to Steve Jobs announcement when it's going to open?)

10:33 Next up: Loopt. Where you are, where your friends are. Little yellow pin shows you where you are, blue shows you where your friends are. Pinching, dragging, tapping. Sees a friend a few blocks away. Can see what she's doing. Her pix, her messages. Messages her to see if she's free. Can give directions in one click. Location plus contact list plus information about local places means you never have to eat lunch alone again. Free when Apps Store launches.

10:30: Next up: eBay. Auctions on the iPhone, now the No. 1 mobile device on eBay. Home page shows what you are winning and losing. Touch on item, bring up details. Enters a bid. $180 for a Canon camera. Back in the lead! Next, a $12 million house in Mexico. Nice photos on golf course. He chickens out. Ebay app available for free when the Apps store goes live.

10:27: Forestall is about to bring developers to the stage to demo stuff they've done in 3 months with the SDK. First up: Sega with Super Monkey Ball. All four of the classic Monkeys! (The crowd giggles.) Showing how the tilt control keeps up with the player's moves. Applause when he makes the first goal. Price: $9.99 on the Apps Store. Applause.

10:26: Forestall is quoting from developers who have used the platform and the press, e.g. David Pogue of The New York Times, who hasn't.

10:22: Forestall is done. He's built an application that searches for names within a certain distance in his address book on an iPhone simulator. It's pretty impressive, but as I recall he gave this same demo three months ago. Oh, he's taking it one step further: compiling the code so that it actually runs on an iPhone, although he doesn't show that step.

10:19: Scott Forestall is going into an SDK demo. A lot of very tiny code on the screen. Some of the language is quite evocative. Like the "controller glue" and the "cocoa touch controls."

10:18: As far as I can tell, this was all announced months ago.

10:15. Video over. Next up, the SDK. Brings up Scott Forestall. The APIs. The framework. The kernel. Cocoa Touch. The core services layer. It's all the same stuff the Apple programmers have in house. This means a lot to the developers. This is what they were hoping to get exactly one year ago. Instead Jobs gave them a Web development kit that satisfied no one.

10:11: He's rolling a video of people praising the enterprise features of Apple 2.0. The Army guy gets a big laugh when he says his enterprise is like any other except people shoot at his.

10:10: Steve Jobs is starting with a general overview of Apple 2.0 software. So far, this is all a recap of the stuff he laid out at the SDK announcement.

10:07 A peek at Snow Leopard coming after lunch.

10:06: Record 5,200 attendees. 147 sessions. 85 on the Mac, 62 on the iPhone. 169 hands-on labs, 1,000 engineers on hand.

10:06: Steve Jobs runs up the stairs.

10:01: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Turn off cellphone announcement

9:59: Air thick with anticipation and reality distortion. Almost constant flashes, like a ballpark before a record is about to be broken, as people take pictures of the empty stage.

9:55: A rush of warm bodies as they fill the empty VIP seats with general admission. There are at least two overflow rooms for people who can't get seats in the main hall.

9:41: We're in.The huge room is as cold as a refrigerator. According to one green-shirted usher, it holds slightly more than 2,000 people. According to another, it holds 2,800. The press and general admission section filled up quickly. There are still empty seats in VIP.

9:40: The doors are open.

9:35: Buttonhole Walt Mossberg of The Wall St. Journal. "Do you have one yet?" we ask him.

He cups his ear as if hard of hearing: "What? I can't hear you."

I repeat the question. He repeats the same pantomime. That is code for, "yes I have been given a 3G iPhone for review, but I am under nondisclosure and can't talk about it." Or maybe he's just trying to leave that impression.

9:20: Leaving the comfort of free Apple Wi-Fi and getting in line. Fingers crossed.

9:00: A lot of preening and displays of feathers among the tech press. They have a whole hour with nothing to do but talk to each other. This is probably not a good thing.

8:48: News flash from the outside world: The Apple Store has posted the yellow "We'll be back soon" sign that signals the imminent release of new product.

8:45: A bomb-sniffing dog has arrived. She's a German shepherd and like all bomb-sniffing dogs I've met, she's very well behaved. Her name is Yana.

8:40: On the third floor, where the filthy press are being plied with croissants and fruit juices, there are lots of Wi-Fi antennas and not enough power outlets. I've parked under a column and plugged in. We're live again.

8:22: Apple staffers in green t-shirts gather in a corner like a school of tiny coral fish hiding from the barracuda.

8:20: Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

8:15: Registration painless. Developers march by in phalanxes, munching on sticky buns as they are transported from breakfast on the first floor to the developer holding area on the second.

8:10: We're in. A lot of Japanese journalists with heavy video equipment lined up early.

7:54: VZAccess is misbehaving badly, and we haven't even entered Moscone. This could be tricky.

7:20: The press are being kept at bay until 8:00 a.m. It's probably just as well.

7:15: The doors have opened for registration and Apple staffers are tossing black T-shirts to the faithful as they file in.

7:00 a.m. PT: The doors haven't opened yet and there's already a queue that stretches around the block and out of sight.

Old links, soon to be outdated:

• What's Steve Jobs got up his sleeve?
• A collection of 3G iPhone spy shots
• Videos of previous Steve Jobs keynotes
• How to cash in on the 3G iPhone buzz
• 3G iPhone: Steve Jobs to deliver keynote June 9

The editors at USA Today, we notice, haven't waited for the actual event to put it in the past tense. Their Monday morning, pre-keynote headline: "It's presto, change-o as new iPhone is unveiled"

[Update: The real thing, at right, taken from Apple's website after the keynote. The 8BG model comes only in black; the 16 GB also comes in white.]

With only a couple of days to go before Steve Jobs' June 9 keynote — and with millions of 3G iPhones reportedly shipped and ready to sell — it's a miracle that nobody outside a small circle of loyal employees, NDA-bound suppliers and (we presume) a few hand-picked reporters has set eyes on one.

Or maybe we have. Since early April, the Apple rumor mill has been steadily grinding out specs and spy photos purporting to represent the new iPhone. Most are surely red herrings or Photoshop creations. But what if one of them is real?

Just in case, here's a collection of the images that have come across my desk over the past few months. If you've seen more — or better — send me the links, and I'll pop them in. [Subscribers: click here to see what I'm talking about.]

April 3: U.S. iPodObserver.com. This one with a shiny black plastic back looked promising for a couple weeks…

April 17: U.S. winandmac.com. A shot of one of the many iPhone cases available for sale in Hong Kong.

April 30: U.S. iLounge. Third-party manufacturers have already started building products using the specs in the diagram below, according to iLounge. "Photographs matching these details are apparently authentic," says iLounge's Jeremy Horwitz, "ones that do not, are not."

May 5: China, WeiPhone.com. This is the first of several white 3G iPhone spy shots. Note the similarity of the second image to the iLounge specs above.

May 19: U.S. Mobilewhack.com. These crisp, professionally produced images are white and rounded, but lack some of the details that have become conventional wisdom, like the Apple logo and the distinctive base.

May 26: Greece, iphonehellas.gr. These shots, formatted to resemble an Apple ad, bear little resemblance to any of the others, but they do pick up the iLounge color scheme.

May 27: The Netherlands, iPhoneclub.nl. Another white iPhone entry, this one from the Netherlands.

June 1: U.S. iPhone Atlas. This matte-black version was allegedly obtained last week during the filming of a 3G iPhone commercial at Apple's Fifth Ave store in New York City, but Arnold Kim of MacRumors points out that it's actually a custom iPhone that's been knocking around since last December. See here.

June 2: U.S. Cult of Mac. Not a spy shot, but rather Leander Kahney's way of showing what an iPhone that's 22% thinner looks like.

June 6: U.S. CrunchGear. Taken from what looks like an Apple or AT&T promotional brochure, this collection of images has the ring of truth. Either that or the fakes are getting more sophisticated.

Those are the spy shots I've seen. Take them all with a grain of salt and note that none has yet been pulled off the Web by Apple (AAPL) legal.

June 9: U.S. Apple.com. The real thing. It goes on sale on Wednesday, July 11, for $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB).

[Images reposted by kind permission of the Mac Observer, iLounge, MobileWhack, iphonehellas, iPhoneclub, CrunchGear and Engadget.]

The World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) that opens Monday morning in San Francisco would be a relatively obscure technical gathering of programmers and IT administrators – with sessions on "Advances in OpenGL" and "What's New in Objective-C" – were it not for one thing.

Steve Jobs.

The keynote address that Apple's CEO is scheduled to give starting at 10 am Pacific Time (1 pm ET) is perhaps the second most closely watched event in high tech – after the opening speech Jobs gives every January at Macworld.

In the audience at Moscone West's main hall will be – in addition to thousands of developers (WWDC sold out for the first time this year) – hundreds of reporters, photographers, TV crews, venture capitalists, CEOs and maybe even a few celebrities from Hollywood and the music world.

What's Jobs going to talk about? To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are known knowns and known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we think we know he's going to say, and things we know we don't know. Here's a rundown:

3G iPhone. Except for a few short sellers on Wall Street, everybody who follows Apple assumes that Jobs will introduce a new iPhone that can send and receive data at so-called third-generation speeds. (In fact, so widespread is this belief that if Jobs doesn't show up with the thing on Monday, Apple's (AAPL) shares will get hammered before he leaves the stage.) Almost everything else about iPhone 2.0 are matters of little hard information and intense speculation. Is it thicker or thinner than version 1.0? Will it have a built-in GPS chip so it always knows where it's at? Will its price be subsidized by AT&T and the overseas carriers? Will it go on sale next week or sometime later? If these questions weren't still in play, there would be almost nothing to talk about next week.

The SDK. We know Jobs is going to spend some time discussing the so-called software development kit for the iPhone. We know because that's one of the two main themes of the conference (symbolized by the bizarre image of two Golden Gate Bridges that decorated the e-mail invitation). The other theme is the Macintosh operating system; presumably the two are merging somewhere in Marin County, judging by the doctored photograph. The SDK will finally give third party developers access to the platform Apple has managed to build, as Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg notes, without them. There's a flood of new software for the iPhone and iPod touch ready for release soon as Apple gives the word – including programs that will allow IT departments, should they be so inclined, to integrate the iPhone into their enterprises the way Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry is today.

.Mac. Even Jobs agrees that Apple's $99-a-year suite of Internet services (Mail, Backup, iSync, iDisk, etc.) needs an overhaul, if only to match the online applications that Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) now offer for free. By tracking crumbs of information scattered in recent Apple software releases, some observers believe Jobs is set to replace .Mac with something called Mobile Me, or just plain .Me. Probably the single most effective thing Apple could do improve .Mac would be to emulate Google and give it away.

Another iPhone. Speculation that Jobs would introduce a so-called iPhone nano – a smaller iPhone at a more affordable price – has faded; the smart money has pushed this back to next January. However, as American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu points out, there are good reasons to suspect that Apple will keep the first generation iPhone around, if only to have something to sell in those parts of Latin America – and parts of North America, for that matter – where where 3G coverage is spotty or nonexistent.

New MacBooks. Two weeks ago, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster put the odds of Apple introducing redesigned Mac portables next week at 60%. The other odds he gave – 80% by the end of summer – now seem more like it.

New Touchscreen device. Wu in report to clients this week said he's learned that work on larger, 4-inch and 7-inch multitouch devices has "gone beyond the prototype stage" at Apple. He goes out on a limb and gives 50-50 odds that one will be introduced at WWDC next week.

Those are the key themes, but there's plenty more to speculate about. If you want to dig deeper – in a suitably interactive way – come to WWDC with a copy of the 2008 edition of John Siracusa's Keynote Bingo card, pasted below the fold. The rules are laid out in detail at Ars Technica here, but they're pretty straightforward: put a token over a square if Jobs mentions the topic or says the word or introduces the speaker during the keynote. Cover five squares in an a row, and you get to stand up and shout Bingo!

Nobody's won the game yet. This could be the year.

[Moscone West photo courtesy of MacNN.]

More

It's classic Microsoft.

On Thursday, two business days before Apple's (AAPL) World Wide Developers Conference, Redmond sent a shot across Cupertino's bow with a letter to Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile partners — with copies to the press.

It's already been noted that the letter quietly moves Microsoft's goal post — from its 2008 target of "more than 20 million Windows Mobile licenses" in February to "nearly 20 million" today. (see here)

But what struck me was how relentlessly the document tries to slip the shiv between Steve Jobs' ribs. It contains only one direct reference to the iPhone, a 3G version of which is expected Monday and will likely set off a flood of headlines as new applications roll out and Apple's deals with international carriers kick in. Clearly Microsoft is trying to get its jabs in while it can — and, in the process, has set what may be a modern record for passive-aggressive disses per graph. I count 36 in all, but I may have missed a few.

Judge for yourself. I've pasted a copy of the letter, with numbers and bold emphasis added, below:

- – - – -

Letter from Andy Lees

To Our Windows Mobile Partners:

Earlier this year, I joined an amazing group of people and partners like you who work every day towards a vision of putting a ‘smartphone in every pocket.’ To reach this vision, together we’ve created an (1) open platform that provides freedom — the (2) freedom for people across the globe to get the type of handset they want (3) on the network they want, the (4) flexibility for our hardware and mobile operator partners to build on the platform, and the (5) opportunity for developers to create applications on our platform for virtually any need.

It’s now my honor and privilege to announce a milestone that our partnership has accomplished. This fiscal year we will sell (6) nearly 20 million Windows Mobile smartphone licenses, making Windows Mobile one of the most widely used smartphone software platforms in the world. We also sold more in the previous four quarters than RIM, and (7) in the last quarter our year-over-year unit growth alone was greater than sales of Apple’s iPhone.

To our (8) 50 handset makers building phones with our software, thank you. With your help, we give Windows Mobile customers (9) nearly 150 different phone choices — from phones with (10) full keyboards to brilliant touch screens to (11) convenient flip phones — with (12) rich email, picture and music experiences. You've delivered Windows Mobile phones with features like (13) GPS, (14) 3+ megapixel cameras, and (15) voice activation — features that (16) other operating systems have been slow to deliver.

To our (17) 160 mobile operator partners around the world providing voice and data service for our mutual customers, thank you. Because of you, Windows Mobile customers can send (18) instant messages to their families or (19) update their calendars in countries from (20) Brazil to (21) Belgium, (22) India to (23) Italy. We're proud that we've been able to work with you to deliver more than (24) 40 different phones that run at 3G speeds, at (25) prices that meet a range of customer needs — something (26) not all smartphones can claim. We believe the power of smartphones should not be constrained by (27) price, (28) geography, or any (29) other boundary.

To all our developer partners who continue to innovate and bring new experiences to people and businesses every day, thank you. It is because of you that our Windows Mobile customers have the (30) richest application catalog to choose from — (31) over 18,000 applications to help pursue their hobbies, navigate life and work more efficiently. We're happy to offer some of these applications through the Windows Mobile Owners Circle and provide you the (32) flexibility to deliver them to your customers in whatever way makes sense.

Today, more and more (33) competitors are jumping into the smartphone market or announcing (34) upgrades, with (35) features we delivered to customers years ago. Overall, we all benefit from the increased attention on everything that a smartphone can do and the difference it can make in people’s lives. But ultimately, it is your commitment to Windows Mobile that’s helped shape our success. Our shared desire to help people do more with their phone (36) the way they choose, and our ongoing focus to deliver experiences that delight our mutual customers forms the foundation of our continued success together.

I look forward to continuing this adventure with you.

Andy Lees

Sr. Vice President

Mobile Communications Business

Microsoft Corporation

- – -

As the Fake Steve Jobs puts it, quoting the Fake Katie Cotton, "this kind of stuff just makes the Borg look desperate."

How big is the buzz around Apple's (AAPL) forthcoming iPhone?

Here's one way to gauge it: track keyword searches using Google's cool Trends tool, available here. With this free widget you can enter one or a series of search terms and instantly get a sense of how often they are invoked over time.

For example, a simple request for the graph of searches on Google (GOOG) for "3g iphone" over the past 12 months yields the fever chart below (subscribers click here):

Note the gradual rise in interest as Steve Jobs' June 9 keynote approaches, which is not surprising. What is surprising is the fall-off in "News reference volume" in the bottom graph, a decline that seems genuine and not an artifact of Google's data collection methodology. (There is no similar fall-off in, for example, Barack Obama searches.) This suggests that, although interest continues to grow among the Google-searching public, the tech press may have developed a case of 3G fatigue.

Google Trends also shows you where these searches are coming from. Here's that data for the chart above:

Check out the size of that Hong Kong bar! How is it that an island with less than 1/40 the population of the United States generates three times as many hits? [Correction: Google is showing something more like searches per capita; see here. Still, there seems to be a lot of interest in the 3G iPhone in Hong Kong.] Let's zero in on Hong Kong's 3G iPhone searches:

This shows a sharp rise in searches that began in the middle of May, even before last week's announcement that Hutchison Telecommunications would be bringing the iPhone to Hong Kong and Macau.

Here's one final chart to put things in perspective. It maps 3G iPhone searches against RIM's (RIMM) BlackBerry and simple iPhone searches, without 3G.

Note that despite the recent uptick in searches for 3G iPhone, they don't rise to the level of BlackBerry searches. Moreover, neither can come close to the buzz for the original iPhone, especially when the device was launched last June.

There's lots of data to be gleaned by tracking Google Trends. If you find something particularly noteworthy or surprising, take a snapshot and post it in the comment stream.

If you're looking to make a quick killing on Apple in advance of a big iPhone announcement next Monday, you may already be too late.

That's the implication of a chart published by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster in a note to clients Wednesday. Munster analyzed the movement of Apple share prices just before and just after nearly a dozen Apple milestone events dating back to 2004. What he found was that Apple shares, on average, …

• fell 0.7% the day of the event
• rose 0.4% from the day before to the week after the event
• rose 4.2% from one week before to one week after

In other words, if you wanted to play the odds around next week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, you should have bought Apple (AAPL) two days ago.

A closer look at Munster's chart, pasted below, reinforces that lesson. The three biggest gains — of 15.1%, 13.3% and 15.9%, respectively — were realized by investors who bought a week before the introduction of the iMac G5, the Intel iMac, and the unveiling of the original iPhone. The biggest losers were those who bought Apple the day before last January's Macworld hoping to cash in on the MacBook Air. A week later, the value of their investment had fallen nearly 13%.

Here's that chart (e-mail subscribers, click here):

There are other factors to consider, of course, like the current stock price, the broader market, and the nature of the announcements coming next week.

The investors who trade stock tips on The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board have been batting this topic around over the last couple of days. (See Trading around WWDC.) They note that Apple's stock price, which has been on a roller-coaster ride, is trading perilously close to its 2007 high, which increases the downside risk and might discourage new investments. They worry also that the 3G iPhone may not have enough bells and whistles to impress the Street, or that traders will have difficulty grasping the significance of the SDK (software developers kit). Further complicating matters is the fact that options expire on Friday June 20; trading in advance of expiration could take the wind out of any post-WWDC rally.

"Without talking options," writes Eric Landstrom, a regular on the board, in summary, "there are three ways to trade WWDC.

1) The long-term investor non-trader, fat and happy average share price of $82 bucks a share who is looking for another opportunity to scale further in. For these people you are looking for a sell off right before or several days after WWDC if any opportunity presents itself at all.

2) The over-crowded who-knew-everybody-else-was-thinking-the-same-thing- fast-money-Jim-Cramer-watching-trader will sell a portion of their position right before WWDC and hope to buy on a dip after WWDC.

3) The I'm-smarter-than-the-cattle-trader is looking to buy the dip #2 traders create and sell into the iHype following WWDC amazing announcements and buy back in a week after iHype subsides."

Got that?

Of course, it Steve Jobs doesn't unveil a new iPhone on June 9, all bets are off.

When did the tech press become obsessed with the vacation schedules of retail employees?

I can answer that.

It started last spring, with the leak of an AT&T Mobility internal memo asking store staffers not to schedule vacations between mid-June and mid-July — four weeks that neatly bracketed what turned out to be the June 29, 2007 launch of the original iPhone.

The same thing happened again last month; this year, AT&T (T) employees have been asked to stick around for the four weeks starting June 15 and ending July 12 — roughly corresponding to the expected launch date of iPhone 2.0. See here.

So what are we to make of the report from AppleInsider that Apple (AAPL) retail staffers in some regions have been informed that back-to-back vacation days during that period are forbidden, as are multiple weekend absences, from the third week of July to the second week of August?

According to AppleInsider, the vacation blackout has to do with a bigger-than-ever back-to-school promotion, the details of which are expected to be revealed to Apple's higher-ed partners Monday at 2:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. PT).

And what about vacations in June, when the 3G iPhone is supposed to arrive? Perhaps Apple Store employees don't need to be told that if they aren't on hand for the first big weekend, they needn't bother coming in Monday.

[Update: Reader T-Shirt from Richardson, Texas, in the suburbs of Dallas (where there are three Apple Stores) has it on "very good" authority that Apple retail employees have the same vacation black-out dates as do the AT&T wireless employees.]

[Update 2: I kicked this around a bit more and as near as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be anything to either of these rumors. Go ahead and take that vacation, Mr. T-Shirt.]

With only a week couple days to go before Steve Jobs' June 9 keynote — and with millions of 3G iPhones reportedly shipped and ready to sell — it's a miracle that nobody outside a small circle of loyal employees, NDA-bound suppliers and (we presume) a few hand-picked reporters has set eyes on one.

Or maybe we have. Since early April, the Apple rumor mill has been steadily grinding out specs and spy photos purporting to represent the new iPhone. Most are surely red herrings or Photoshop creations. But what if one of them is real?

Just in case, here's a collection of the images that have come across my desk over the past few months. If you've seen more — or better — send me the links, and I'll pop them in. [Subscribers: click here to see what I'm talking about.]

April 3: U.S. iPodObserver.com. This one with a shiny black plastic back looked promising for a couple weeks…

April 17: U.S. winandmac.com. A shot of one of the many iPhone cases available for sale in Hong Kong.

April 30: U.S. iLounge. Third-party manufacturers have already started building products using the specs in the diagram below, according to iLounge. "Photographs matching these details are apparently authentic," says iLounge's Jeremy Horwitz, "ones that do not, are not."

May 5: China, WeiPhone.com. This is the first of several white 3G iPhone spy shots. Note the similarity of the second image to the iLounge specs above.

May 19: U.S. Mobilewhack.com. These crisp, professionally produced images are white and rounded, but lack some of the details that have become conventional wisdom, like the Apple logo and the distinctive base.

May 26: Greece, iphonehellas.gr. These shots, formatted to resemble an Apple ad, bear little resemblance to any of the others, but they do pick up the iLounge color scheme.

May 27: The Netherlands, iPhoneclub.nl. Another white iPhone entry, this one from the Netherlands.

June 1: U.S. iPhone Atlas. This matte-black version was allegedly obtained last week during the filming of a 3G iPhone commercial at Apple's Fifth Ave store in New York City, but Arnold Kim of MacRumors points out that it's actually a custom iPhone that's been knocking around since last December. See here.

June 2: U.S. Cult of Mac. Not a spy shot, but rather Leander Kahney's way of showing what an iPhone that's 22% thinner looks like.

June 6: U.S. CrunchGear. Taken from what looks like an Apple or AT&T promotional brochure, this collection of images has, at last, the ring of truth.

Those are the spy shots I've seen. Take them all with a grain of salt and note that none has been pulled off the Web by Apple (AAPL) legal.

We'll update the page with a photo of the real thing, when it arrives.

[Images reposted by kind permission of the Mac Observer, iLounge, MobileWhack, iphonehellas, iPhoneclub, CrunchGear and Engadget.]

There's a price to pay for the wireless networks we take for granted.

On May 16, Jonathan Guilford, 25, of Fort Payne, Alabama, was working on an AT&T UMTS (3G) project in Haubstadt, Ind., when he fell to his death from a 200-foot tower, according to a report in Wireless Estimator, an online newsletter that covers the communications construction industry.

Falls from high towers are not unheard of in this business. But for more than four months — between Dec. 5 and April 11 — the industry was fatality free.

Then in April, as Wireless Estimator president Craig Lekutis notes with alarm, five workers fell to their death from mobile phone towers in the space of 12 days. Guilford's death in May was the sixth this year.

Accidents like this often come in spurts, says Lekutis, an industry veteran with 27 years experience. There were 10 fatal falls from elevated structures of all kinds (including TV, electrical and water towers) in 2007, and a record 18 in 2006. But this year's concentrated run of cell tower accidents, he says, was extraordinary.

The toll, as recorded by Wireless Estimator:

• April 12: A 34-year-old cell tower technician from Oklahoma man died after falling 150 feet from monopole antenna in Wake Forest, NC. It was the nation's first death in 2008 of a communications worker falling from an elevated structure.
• April 14: A tower worker employed by Cornerstone Tower of Grand Island, Neb., fell to his death in Moorcroft, WY.
• April 15: A 38-year-old technician finished tightening the bolts on a guyed wireless tower in San Antonio, TX, "sort of lean[ed] back a little," according to witnesses, and fell 225 feet to his death.
• April 17: North Carolina suffered its second cell tower fatality in a week when a 46-year-old Chesapeake, VA, man fell from a communications antenna in Frisco, NC.
• April 23: A Griffin, GA, man died from extensive head and chest injuries after falling 100 feet from a communications tower near Natchez, MS. He was reportedly hanging boom gates to a Cell South antenna when he fell.
• May 16: Guilford was rappelling down a load line attached to a 200 foot monopole when he stopped abruptly 140 feet up and bounced as if on a bungee cord, disengaging the carabiner that was secured to the tower. (link)

At least three of the six accidents, Lekutis says, citing industry documents, occurred on AT&T projects.

On May 21, AT&T (T) issued a press release describing its $20 billion roll-out of a nationwide 3G network. It promised to have 275 of the markets it serves in the U.S. 3G-ready by the end of June, and to finish the remaining 75 by the end of the year (see here). AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. A new, 3G version of that device is widely expected to be released in June.

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. "That is a software upgrade," says William Marks. "You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers."

Marks acknowledges that AT&T is continuing to bring 3G networking to new markets in the U.S., work that involves building new towers and installing new antennas. But he says that this is part of the company's broader 3G roll-out, and unrelated to any events in June.

On April 21, after the first two deaths on its projects, AT&T called for a construction stand down and issued an order to subcontractors that read, in part:

"AT&T … requires you to hold, at a minimum, a half-day safety refresher training course this week with all of your construction employees and subcontractors providing services for AT&T. Upon completion of the safety refresher training this week, AT&T expects that you will reinforce this training with additional random safety checks at the construction sites to ensure that appropriate safety measures are being used."

AT&T's Marks prefers to describe the order as a "refresher course," rather than stand down. "We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority," he says.

[Photo courtesy of Wireless Estimator.]

Here's an intriguing report from ImportGenius, a search engine that gathers "competitive intelligence" by monitoring U.S. Customs records of ocean containers entering American ports.

Searching for shipments to Apple, Inc. (AAPL), employees at the Scottsdale, Ariz., company reported on Friday that they've spotted a "major spike" since mid March in ocean containers marked with a mysterious new label: "electric computers"

“They have never before reported this product on their customs declarations,” says ImportGenius managing director Ryan Peterson, who notes that there has been no corresponding falloff during this period of shipments labeled "desktop computers" or any of the other labels Apple usually uses.

"The fact that they are importing millions of units, combined with dwindling stocks of the first generation of iPhones," persuades Peterson that these "electric computers" are, in fact, the 3G iPhones Apple is expected to release in a matter of weeks.

He makes a strong case, citing records of a total of 188 ocean containers shipped to Apple from two trusted Asian suppliers, Hon Hai Precision Corp. and Quanta Computer.

For example, on March 19 Apple took delivery from Quanta of 20 containers of merchandise, described on the Bills of Lading as “electric computers."

"The initial shipments were followed," according to ImportGenius.com, "on March 27, April 28, May 6 and May 17 with an additional 44 containers—each containing an estimated 40,000 units of the new phone. The sixteen containers imported by Apple Inc. itself—as opposed to the Quanta subsidiary—were delivered on March 19 and 27 to the Jonestown, Pa. facilities of Ingram Micro, Apple’s U.S. distribution partner."

You can read the rest of the report here. It's quite impressive in its specificity. It notes, for example, that "Bill of Lading # HLCUSHA0803FTFR8, arrived at the port of New York on the Vessel NYK Delphinus on May 17th." That shipment contained 504 cartons, weighing 7140 kg, of the vaguely described “electric computer."

"Knowledge is power," declares ImportGenius' promotional material. "Whether you are looking to keep tabs on your competitors with Supply Spy, identify suppliers with ImportScan our easy to use online software makes it easy. You get access to records on nearly every container that entered the United States from 2006 to the present."

Who knew?