The invite, published by All Things D and Macrumors was sent to prominent Apple bloggers and journalists.

The timing of the event falls in line with a mandate Apple sent retail employees asking them not to take a vacation for three weeks starting at the end of January. It is unknown if Steve Jobs will join the stage with Verizon president and COO Lowell McAdam

There are other clues pointing towards Apple’s involvement and possibly Steve Jobs’ attendance. Gizmodo, which allegedly has a great relationship with Verizon was not sent an invite.

Here’s what’s key: We’re great friends with Verizon. (Hi guys!) We’ve worked with them for years, and we’ve been to like every event they’ve had over the last three years. We haven’t gotten an invite. Which is weird. We’ve reached out to Verizon to see why, exactly, we weren’t invited, but we’ve gotten no comment yet. (Update: Verizon’s official response is a big ol’ no comment.)

AT&T, however, is offering refurbished iPhones for $99 for an 8GB model, and $199 for a 16GB model. This price drop is in effect until 12/31/08 – so you have some time left if you’d like to get one at the discounted price.

Click here to grab one now.

This situation has led some to speculate (and then pretend it’s a rumor from a super secret “source”) that Apple will be unveiling a 32GB iPhone at Macworld 2009.

The truth is, at this point – we don’t have a realistic clue what – if ANYTHING – Apple will be revealing at their last Macworld. We do know, however, that you can get a great deal on an iPhone right now, if you’re willing to go with a refurbished model…so go get ‘em.

AT&T has FINALLY made Free Wi-Fi for iPhone’s available to users. Twice now the company has almost done this, then changed their minds for whatever reason. Now, however, AT&T is allowing iPhone users free access to its 17,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the United States.

AT&T claims that all iPhone subscribers received a text message alerting them to this new perk — but I didn’t…and no one that I know with an iPhone seems to have gotten one either.

Did you get one?

AT&T has recently reached out to many iPhone owners to find out what you’d like to see on future versions of the iPhone according to MacNN.

For the most part the survey is about your satisfaction with both AT&T and Apple, but it also asks specifically about several features, and whether or not you want them. Those features include text copy and paste, MMS messaging, and Flash and Java support. So – obviously – some one up there is at least LOOKING around to see what people would like to see on their iPhones.

Now let’s just hope enough of the general iPhone user public actually does care about these things. If so, we might get to see some of these things on the device in the (hopefully) near future.

So – if you’re an iPhone user and you get asked to take this survey…take the time to tell them what you think. It might actually pay off down the road.

As much as I love my iPhone, I hate AT&T. I was always a fan of Cingular, and when AT&T bought them – things went down the toilet. If it wasn’t for the iPhone I doubt I would be a customer (though, in all fairness – I might not have a choice – AT&T is the only company that provides decent coverage in my area).

Regardless, if you needed a reason to showcase why they suck – here’s one.

AT&T is dropping their unlimited Media Net $20 a month unlimited data plans for pay-as-you-go users. The reason for this, they claim, is that “no one was using it”. I suppose they mean that there weren’t many people using it – because some of the people who were are already complaining to sites like Gizmodo about this situation.

So what are pay-as-you-go customers supposed to do? Well – they have the choices of 1Mb or 5Mb options…which an iPhone can easily eat up in a single day. If they go this route, and cross their plan data rate, they’ll be charged $450 per gigabyte they go over.

AT&T better hope they NEVER lose their iPhone exclusive status – because this is the kind of thing that will make me switch carriers on principle. If I could move to T-Mobile today without jailbreaking the iPhone – I’d do it. What they’re doing is just bad business.

What do you think?

Well, I had my Internet scheduled to be hooked up on Saturday evening. Between the hours of 5 and 7. Of course, it’s a transfer of service, so the installer knows that we’re moving. This individual, Technician 2878, decided to show up to my house 30 minutes before he was scheduled. Of course, we weren’t home….we were at the other house…loading up stuff to move to the new location. According to the company, he then called my cell phone, and the person that answered said it was a wrong number.

yeah right.

Then, after I called and yelled at the cable company, they proceeded to try and get in touch with him for the rest of the evening…he never once answered his email, pager, or cell phone.

It sounds to me like somebody wanted to kick back a little early on Saturday, so he ditched me. My guess is, after I get out of the cable company’s office this morning, he’s going to regret that decision.

Regardless, I spent the weekend without the Internet on my Mac. That makes it hard to do my job, as I’m sure you can imagine. I usually like to get ahead of the following day, by doing some advanced blogging the night before. That is impossible without an internet connection on my Macbook…or is it?

Thanks to AT&T and the Edge network, I was able to dig through the weekend news stories and find a few gems. I was also able to search through YouTube and find a new commercial that I’d never seen before. All things that you have seen, or will see, throughout the day here on the site.

Edge does not run “slow” in my area. It can take 20 seconds for a webpage to fully load, which can seem excruciatingly long at times, but it is heads and shoulders above the old dial-up days when I used to wait all afternoon (or sometimes days) to watch movie trailers (Episode 1, anyone?).

YouTube video load in seconds, and web pages are up and running very quickly. My email only takes seconds to check, and – overall – I have no complaints about Edge. I see the constant complaints about the service from all the people in the San Francisco area who do this tech reporting thing for a living, and I have to wonder if we’re even using the same service. I wonder if the Edge network in that area is older, so it’s not as fast…I don’t know what the problem is…all I know is that, for me, Edge is a great alternative to Wi-Fi, and I have no trouble using it.

I’m happy with Edge. Are you?

I have to say I am officially beyond sold. I’m going to be moving from a crappy two year old flip phone with only the basic data plan and txting, to the iPhone with the (mostly..still no flash..argh) “real Internet” and my bill is going to go up $5 bucks a month.

Here’s how my standard bill plays out now:

$39.99 (for 450 minutes) + $9.99 (for 5mb of basic Internet) + $4.99 (200 txt messages a month) = $54.97

So, the same plan for the iPhone, but with UNLIMITED Internet and email is only going to cost me $59.99

You can break it down all the way up the scale, adding $20 to move up to 900 minutes and so on, and what it breaks down to is your unlimited Internet and email is actually costing around $15 bucks a month, and your 200 text messages about $5.

That’s a helluva deal. Very competitive, in my opinion.

What do you think? Did this put it over the top for you, or are you unhappy?

According to Boy Genius and a “highly placed source” AT&T is going to offer what they are calling (at least internally) the “iPlan” which will cost around $34.99-$44.99 and feature unlimited data, and either 2000 text messages, or unlimited text messages.

I will be surprised if they do not feature unlimited txt messages. My current Cingular plan has unlimited text message on it for $5 a month per phone.

This is not yet official, and hasn’t been confirmed by AT&T, but if it proves to be true, it will be on par with the AT&T Black Berry plans.

I just got off the phone with an AT&T rep confirming information about the launch next week. He explained a few things to me about AT&T’s data/smart phone plans that I didn’t know, and also stated that he expects the plans to be their standard data plans starting at $34.95 and climbing all the way up to $99.99 a month.

AT&T offers what they call a “smart phone plan” for internet useage…but it doesn’t actually work with most of what we would consider “smart phones”. For example, you can’t use it with a Palm Treo or a Blackjack. The “smart phone” plan is $19.95 a month, and only works with phones that have limited access to the Internet. PDA-like phones have to go the Data Plan route.

The Data Plans include:

PDA Personal 20 Mb for $34.95 a month

Personal Max w/ 1500 Messages for $44.95 a month

PDA Personal Max with 1500 Messages w/UNLIMITED M2M Messaging for $49.95 a month

Data Connect (Unlimited) for $79.95 a month

Data Connect (Unlimited) w/ Wi-Fi for $99.95 a month

You can read about the Date Plans on AT&Ts official site.

Now AT&T Reps have already gone on the record as saying the plans for the iPhone will be “nothing exotic”, so I think the dreams of heavily discounted data plans for iPhone customers are just that…dreams.

Regardless of how well the device works, or how revolutionary it may or may not be (and I tend to fall on the “may” side of that argument), the rates that AT&T charge, and whether or not the phone will have Wi-Fi access without a data plan are two factors that are going to make or break this phone.

From everything we’ve seen of the iPhone so far, the device looks like a home run, but AT&T’s role in this, cost wise, has yet to really be revealed. If the information I got today is correct, and these standard rates are going to apply…do you still want an iPhone?

If the Wi-Fi is inactive without an AT&T Data plan (which has been rumored, but not confirmed) do you still want an iPhone?

There is no new info on the page, or any indication on Cingular’s monthly fees for the iPhone…just the same picture we’ve seen since launch and a place to input your email to be “one of the first to know when the iPhone is Available”.

If you want to give Cingular your email address click here.  If you’d rather NOT give Cingular your email address…don’t worry, I already signed up…and I’ll keep you in the loop.  Just subscribe to our RSS feed, and as soon as they send an announcement out, we’ll write about it here.