Live coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote address is at Gizmodo. As soon as a photo of the new iPhone is available, we'll publish it here.

How sly: Twitter's Biz Stone posted over the weekend that "there's going to be some very interesting breaking news happening on Twitter." By which Stone means that people are going to be using Twitter to report on Steve Jobs's keynote at Apple's WWDC event today. Jobs is expected to announce a new version of the iPhone, but only after boring the bejeezus out of everyone who's not a developer with a lot of inane news about software — not that that will stop Apple transcriptionists from Twittering Jobs's every exhalation.

On Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to announce a relatively minor set of upgrades to the iPhone. Yet the world — and not just the tech world — waits with bated breath for the turtlenecked one to speak. How does Microsoft respond? With a 522-word memo from Microsoft mobile executive Andy Lees to "Our Windows Mobile Partners." Lees might have some good arguments in Microsoft's favor, but he buries them behind phrases like "It’s now my honor and privilege." Apple would just take our 100-word version, below, and turn each bullet point into a Mac vs. PC commercial.

The shipments of whatever Apple intends to unleash on the world June 9 continue unabated. Electronic device manufacturer Quanta, which builds products such as the Apple iMac, has had pallet after pallet of shipments arriving from Taiwan, only to be shuttled onto FedEx and other ground carrier trucks for destinations unknown — at the rate of three or more every twenty minutes. Forbes reporter Brian Caulfield was on the scene yesterday, and says that stacks and stacks of boxes were overflowing into the parking lot.

Microsoft employees have logged 2,605 days of riding their bikes to work, with an average commute of 19 miles in a day, since the start of the year in a contest sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Education Foundation for organizations in the greater Seattle area. That's more than twice as many days and three times as many miles as Amazon.com employees, ranked eleventh behind even the lazy slackers who work in Seattle's municipal government and the academic wankers at the state university. How are Valley companies doing?

With the purchase of a laptop, students can choose to get a free 8GB iPod touch worth $299. First reported by MacRumors, Apple's online store now confirms the deal. Apple, which used to knock down knocks down the price of its wares by as much as 20 percent to students, has also been offering consumer-electronics giveaways instead of in addition. Until recently, the company was giving away iPod Nanos. But you can't get that $299 towards an iPhone.

A tipster reports that Apple admen at TBWA/Chiat/Day built a full-size replica of an Apple Store on the Warner Bros. lot, in total secrecy, over the Memorial Day weekend to film a commercial that will air for Steve Jobs's keynote June 9 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Why build a fake store when Apple has so many real ones it could film in for free? (Shown here, Apple's latest store design.) Shutting down a real store, as Apple did recently in Manhattan, likely draws too much attention. If true, this rumor goes to show the price Steve Jobs is willing to pay to stage a surprise. The tip:

Apple and Google are already quite cozy — but could they be getting even closer over Apple's rumored Me.com Web services? A source close to Google says the company is about to make a big announcement with Apple, likely in conjunction with Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week. It could be nothing more than integration of a new iPhone's GPS features with Google Maps. But our source thinks more is at stake.

Most of Apple's customers have never touched a Mac. By the numbers, Apple has reached far more people with the iPod and iPhone. Yet Steve Jobs's sole venture onto the Web, .Mac, is designed to work with Mac hardware. That could change, now that it's registered the domain Me.com. In 2005, Apple patented a service called "Mobile Me," and last week a programmer noticed it was already using that name in new iPhone software. When the new iPhone is announced — as soon as this week, according to rumors — we may see it linked up not with .Mac, a name meaningless to most iPhone buyers, but with Me.com instead.

The new iPhone that has the panties of Apple fans in a bunch? It's already here. The latest shipment arrived in Oakland on May 6, and was then trucked to a distribution center in nearby Fremont. So if you want to get your hands on one before the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg — if it's not already too late — it might be a better idea to make friends with the International Longshore Workers Union than top Apple flack Katie Cotton. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Nearly a quarter of business school graduates surveyed said the number one company they want to land a job at is, unsurprisingly, Google — what with the pools, hair cuts, massages, legendary cafeteria and valuable stock. Other tech companies included Apple in fourth, Microsoft in twelfth and Amazon in 23rd place. For you managers of the future looking to get an interview with Steve Jobs, the school Apple recruits most heavily at is Stanford, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. [Fortune] (Photo by Sam Pullara)

In the latest installment of "Where in the World is Mark Zuckerberg," one stop on his tour to the subcontinent was to the favored ashram of Larry Brilliant, director of Google's entrepreneurial philanthropy project, Google.org. This would presumably be the one run by Neem Karoli Baba which Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs has also visited. Brilliant has said he also brought Google cofounder Larry Page and eBay cofounder Jeff Skoll there.

Above is a picture of a line of shoppers waiting patiently for non-existent iPhones at New York's 14th Street Apple Store as inventory dwindles ahead of the new, updated version widely guessed to be released in June. Guess they want to be the first of the last in line for soon-to-be outdated hardware. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments, and the winning one will become the new headline on this post. Wednesday's winner, late but worth it: WilliamMarkFelt, for "When you have the world by the balls, you can foist crap like Vista on them."

The celestial jukebox is back, far too late to matter. Napster is now selling a library of 6 million songs, from all four major labels, as MP3 files, a format which lacks copy protection and hence is compatible with any number of devices — most importantly, the iPod. In other words, the state of affairs that existed nine years ago at Napster's original launch, save for the 99-cent fee now charged per download. Egghead Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen notes the irony without explanation. For the slightly less brilliant among us, here it is: The record labels, having killed Napster once, have now rallied behind it, hoping to weaken Apple, a company whose iTunes store is already the dominant music retailer in the U.S.

After a hue and cry from defense contractors who were buying chipmaker PA Semi's core product in bulk, Apple has agreed to continue supplying merchants of death arms manufacturers with the newly acquired company's Pwrficient chips. [News.com]

Rising ad star Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky is the subject of the cover feature in the latest issue of Fast Company. The story focuses on Microsoft's $300 million deal with the agency to, in Fast Company's words, "crush Apple." Bogusky will be fighting an uphill battle on two fronts — one against Microsoft's perpetually clueless marketing drones, and the other against the fact that Apple's products are, you know, better. Microsoft has even had trouble convincing the public largely trapped in the Windows operating system monopoly to buy Vista, and the company's branding is a complete mess. But hey, check out Bogusky's wavy locks, chiseled features, stylish boots and designer jeans!

Liz Gannes, a veteran online video reporter whom I've worked with and is no slouch when it comes to getting almost any newfangled content application to function, couldn't get NBC's relaunched video-on-demand software to work. The offering is powered by a file-sharing download process from Pando, but not much good if users can't even install the software. Isn't there a company that already has a delivery and payment system for 720p video content from the networks — one that NBC used to work with? Meanwhile, to get your 30 Rock fix online, Gannes says stick with Hulu. Just looking at the listed bugs on the download page would be enough to scare off anyone who's confused by file-sharing sites.

California's Supreme Court has overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage. While others will doubtless take this opportunity to argue about whether to call it marriage or not, I'm betting corporate America will just cash in on another wave of gay weddings. A recent study commissioned by PlanetOut found that Apple, Absolut, Bravo, and Levi's are the most gay-friendly brands (PDF). His-and-his MacBook Airs, anyone?

At a birthday party for chipmaker Intel held in Munich, Hannes Schwaderer, CEO of Intel Germany, confirmed that Apple will be using the company's new Atom processor in a future version of the iPhone. Iit won't be the iPhone that we've come to know and love, or the 3G model expected soon, but a new, larger version — possibly a rumored mini-tablet. Less pocketable than an iPhone, less useful than the MacBook Air. Let the Apple Newton jokes commence! Update: Intel has written in to say everyone's wrong! No larger iPhone with or with Intel Inside™.(Photo by Windell Oskay)