Almost on command, the Apple store is now down in preparation for the WWDC Keynote announcements. Look for the store to be back up sometime shortly after the keynote (10AM PST), and look for it to be updated with all the new goodies announced during the Keynote.

Big day for Apple. Big day for the next gen iPhone. Stay tuned!

All of the links below are live-blogging from the convention floor. Check ‘em out and let me know which one was best. Kind of lame, I’d rather have live video, but it seems these days the best you can do at these events is to live-blog… I digress… here are the links:

• MacDailyNews
• Engadget
• MacNN
• MacRumors

I followed MacRumors at MacWorld, and they did a great job of live-blogging. I’d recommend them again, but it’s your call

Again, after the keynote is all over, be sure to be on the looking for the video podcast of the keynote available via iTunes sometime early this afternoon.

There are three things that I’m keeping my fingers crossed about… Am sincerely hoping they all get announced at the keynote…The chances are slim, but heck, wouldn’t it be nice?

Obviously first and foremost will be the 3G iPhone announcement. That is almost a certainty. Will be great to see what the new iPhone has packed into it, what options it has, and more…

Next on my list would be the iPhone App Store. That has to be coming soon. Would make sense to launch this to coincide with the new iPhone.

Last on my list would be the launch of the iPhone internationally. Will there be announcements of the iPhone going green in Canada, Italy, Greece, and Australia to name a few? Rumors were that Apple was coordinating a massive international launch of the iPhone all around or on the same date. That would be great, and I can speak for other Canadians when I say ‘About GD Time!’

Of course, there have been so many more rumors including new iPhones coming in multiple colors, video conferencing via iChat on the iPhone, a slimmer and lighter iPhone, and a whole lot more… I’m sure you’ve read or heard all of the rumors by now.

So much to speculate on, I’m just happy this will be coming to an end next week. I’m hoping that the keynote delivers more than we are expecting… But we’ll have to wait and see.

What do you think? What is the WWDC Keynote going to deliver? …and will it be a bang or a bust!?

Discuss this in the Forums >

Rumors have been going back and forth this past week about upcoming changes to the .Mac service. One rumor in particular is the potential renaming of the service. It seems that the leading candidate for the .Mac rename is now ‘MobileMe’, with Me.com being the home domain for the service.

Why? Well it seems that the domain name has been registered to the MarkMonitor domain service. MarkMonitor is a leader in enterprise brand protection. Apple and a whole bunch of other Fortune 100 companies have leaned on this service for brand protection in the past. So, with that said, it could be Apple is now sitting on the domain, getting ready for the rename… Or this is just complete hogwash, and some other company has registered the domain and is going to use it for something else.

Interestingly enough, MarkMonitor purchased MacBookAir.net, MacBookAir.org, MacBookAir.us, MacBookAir.info and MacBookAir.biz earlier this year on behalf of Apple.

If you try and hit up www.me.com, you’ll notice a redirect page that guides you to www.snappville.com, a social networking website that used to be called me.com until it changed its name in December of last year. Could it be Apple bought out the domain name and asked them to relocate to a new domain name? And with a ‘grace’ period since last December, a redirect page was put up at Me.com for the time being? Could be. Really hard to know the real answer.

Even more interesting are these 2 points:

1. Apple filed a patent for the MobileMe name back in 2006.
2. The term ‘MobileMe’ has been found in numerious iPhoneSDK files.

Who knows the truth. Lets just wait till the WWDC as I’m sure news on this, the new iPhone and a whole lot more will come to light. Sometimes it’s just fun to speculate isn’t it!?

[via MacRumors]

However, new rumors are surfacing that there could be a 10-day wait until the new iPhone is released to the public. This would make some sense… especially when you consider that AT&T wireless requested that employees avoid vacations after June 15th. With this rumored 10-day wait, that would give AT&T employees a few days to train and get up to speed on the new device. AT&T wireless is also planning on beginning extra summer hiring on June 16th.

iPhoneFreak has posted a timeline that makes a lot of sense:

• June 9th – WWDC Keynote by Steve Jobs – Announces 3G iPhone and other Apple news
• June 15th – Employees at AT&T advised not to miss work for a while (begin iPhone training)
• June 16th – Temporary employees begin training for less complex crowd control (give the regular sales team a day’s head start
• June 18th – Stores open their doors for a flood of multi-touching maniacs

Make of this what you will… bottom line is we will have the 3G iPhone in our mac-happy hands by mid to late June by these recent reports.

[via i4u.com]