The best iPhone prediction of what is likely to come out of Apple's WWDC event this morning comes via Engadget:

In a surprise move, Steve Jobs says 'But wait: There's more!' instead of his signature 'Just one more thing,' then proceeds to throw in a Shamwow and two Infinity Razors if you order in the next 30 minutes."

A few quick links as I get ready for a morning of meetings:

• Using the iPhone and Sense Networks to mine data for fun and profit (GigaOm)
• The income-adjusted impact of gasoline prices across the U.S. (NYT)
• The only place you can still get mortgages with no money down? The government (Washington Post)
• Trust and and reputation in the financial blogosphere (Johns Hopkins)
• I'm trying out the FirstRain markets monitoring service, courtesy of the fine folks there, and so far I highly recommend it (FirstRain)

As a semi-related aside, I am so tired of the Lehman and MSFT/YHOO stories that I can barely stand typing these ticker letters. I want both stories to just go away.

Some places with live Apple WWDC coverage this morning. Festivities are already underway with people posting pictures of one another standing in line. Really.

• MacRumorsLive
• Tech Trader Daily
• Engadget
• Crunchgear
• TUAW (and a post-event wrap-up too using CoveritLive)

If you have others you're following, feel free to add them to this post.

[Update] Watching the coverage intermittently, and am crushingly bored. No wonder the market is selling AAPL with a vengeance today.

[Update2] Okay, I do like the 3G iPhone though. Nice features. Crazy-good claimed battery life. GPS. Slimmer. I want one now.

Nice chart from NPD survey research of how consumers are self-reportedly changing their behavior in response to higher gas prices.

A cynic, which I am not (ahem), would point out that the top four changes aren't really much of changes at all (unless they happened more than once); the fifth is a toss-up; the next five items could all be code words for being unemployed; and the final item is one that undeniably has to do with changing because of higher prices.

[via NPD]

In case anyone's in the vicinity of their television tomorrow or Friday, I am on CNBC tomorrow at 10:20 pst talking tech for a short segment. And then I'm on again for an hour on Friday morning, from 8am to 9am pst, guest hosting on The Call.

I have nothing to add to the "Is Steve Jobs sick?" meme -- other than pointing out his gaunt appearance even made Drudge today -- but I'm puzzled at the football field worth of distance between him and Jim Goldman during a CNBC interview today. The resulting camera effect is akin to the sort of trick that turned actor John Rhys-Davies into Gimli the dwarf in the film version of The Lord of the Rings.

[Update] Apparently Jobs is sick -- which may explain the chasm between Goldman and Jobs in the interview. According to a strangely-sourced story in the WSJ, Jobs has been taking antibiotics and is getting better.

According to an early take on the bill-of-materials cost for the new iPhone 3G, its actual cost could be close to half that of the original Apple iPhone. Granted, this won't entirely support margins in the face of price cuts, but it means margins would be better than many think.

Here's Portelligent's take on the topic:

Carey of Portelligent said several factors make the iPhone 3G potentially much cheaper to build than the original iPhone.

"I'd suspect the collective volume, learning and engineering changes to the display would mean that the whole touch screen assembly might be about half the $60 or so we estimated for Gen1 a year ago," Carey said. "In addition, the 8 Gbytes of MLC NAND is today around $20 compared to the $50 that might have been the case in June 2007," he added. Carey estimated Apple may have shaved another $25 off the bill of materials costs based on changes he observed in a teardown of the iPod Touch.

Those changes are only slightly offset by new costs for the iPhone 3G. Carey said the additional cost of an HSDPA chip set are only about $15 plus another $5 for the GPS chip. He also noted that the $100 price increase for a model with 16 Gbytes flash adds to the profit margin because the additional memory chips probably cost Apple only about $20.

Netting out all the changes Apple may have had a gross profit based solely on cost of hardware for the original iPhone of $229 and profits of just $99 for the iPhone 3G. "It's always important to point out that hardware BOM costs do not capture many other important facets of product cost such as development costs, software costs, licenses and marketing," he said.

[via EETimes]