On March 17th, we’re all going to get a “preview” of the next generation of the iPhone operating system.

Tech bloggers have started receiving invitations to an event (we aren’t invited… someday we’ll be cool enough!) to be held on March 17th where Apple will unveil the third generation operating system for the iPhone. Presumably this will also be for the iPod Touch, but no confirmation as of yet on that.

This is being labeled as a “preview” event which indicates the software won’t be available for download yet, but they are also showing off the new version of the software development kit (SDK), so this looks like Apple is trying to prepare all of the application developers for whatever changes there may be to the core of the system.

We will bring you updates as soon as we have them, but people are already expecting things like tethering your iPhone to your computer to use it as a modem, MMS and, the ultimate dream, copy-and-paste functionality.

On a side note, doesn’t seem odd to everyone that Apple always gives you only a few days warning to these events? What if you have to fly in for it? What if you have appointments? Even though we don’t attend in person, we always try to cover the events, and it causes us to have to move things around in our schedule to accommodate them. A little more warning on the part of Apple sure would be appreciated.