The company’s Web site is once again accepting iPhone orders from potential customers living in Manhattan. I was just able to initiate two orders for the iPhone 3GS using New York city zip codes (click on image below to enlarge)–one in midtown (10016), the other in East Harlem (10029).

This not 24 hours after company representatives claimed that AT&T (T) wasn’t selling iPhones online to New Yorkers because of “online fraudulent activity” or because AT&T “periodically chooses to modify [its] promotions and distribution channels” or some combination of the two.

That AT&T reversed course so quickly and without comment suggests this entire incident may have been one of those middle-of-the-org-chart missteps that went unnoticed by upper management until it blew up in the media.

What’s perhaps most astonishing about the episode is how willing people were to buy into the idea, put forth by Consumerist, that AT&T had actually stopped selling the iPhone online in Manhattan because of data congestion issues. That such an idea is even plausible to people is truly a sad comment on the quality of AT&T’s network in the city.

I’ve asked AT&T for comment and will update here if the company can break away from the periodic modification of its promotions and distribution channels long enough to give me one.

Live in New York City? Want to buy an iPhone? Don’t try ordering one from AT&T’s Web site: The wireless carrier, at least for now, won’t sell New Yorkers a new phone online, citing “increased fraudulent activity.”

But residents of Manhattan and the city’s other four boroughs can buy an iPhone directly from AT&T (T) stores. And the city’s five Apple (AAPL) stores will sell you one, too.

So what gives?

An initial report from Consumerist.com, quoting an AT&T online service rep, suggested that the carrier shut down online sales because “New York was not ready for the iPhone” and that the city doesn’t “have enough towers to handle the phone.”

That answer might strike a chord with New York iPhone owners who gripe about the carrier’s capacity. But it strains credulity: Would AT&T really try to resolve its iPhone problem by hampering iPhone sales–and not tell anyone in advance? And if so, why not choke off online sales in San Francisco and the Bay Area, where heavy iPhone use also strains the carrier?

New story: Since the Consumerist story appeared Sunday afternoon, AT&T service reps have been telling New Yorkers like me that it won’t sell us the phone online because of fraud problems.

What does that mean? Sean, the pleasant AT&T rep I talked to tonight, told me he could sell me a refurbished, 8-gigabyte 3G iPhone online or over the phone. But if I wanted a new iPhone, he said, I’d have to go to a retail store.

Why? “There’s actually been a problem in that area with fraud for the iPhone. It’s kind of a high-risk area.” Sean then reassured me that he was “not saying there’s bad neighborhoods anywhere. That’s not what that means.” But he couldn’t offer any more details.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, in an online chat with a service rep, got a similar answer. As John points out, this answer also doesn’t make a lot of sense. If New York really is beset by a plague of scammers, why is AT&T selling other expensive smartphones, like Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry line, over the Web? (Click text below to enlarge.)

There are other things that don’t line up here: The AT&T PR rep I talked to tonight knew nothing about this. And shutting off online sales of the company’s most high-profile phone to the biggest city in America seems like the kind of thing a corporate spokesman would have an inkling about.

Likewise, AT&T’s Google (GOOG) ad campaign sends New Yorkers searching for iPhones directly to this page, which doesn’t mention that you can’t actually buy an iPhone online. If you click on the “Buy Now” and give the site a New York zip code, you get the following nonsensical message: “We’re sorry, there are no Packages & Deals available at this time. Please check back later.”

My hunch: This is a decision that didn’t get run all the way up the chain of command. And it’s one that’s going to get reversed sooner than later. I’ll update when I hear back from AT&T.

UPDATE: This won’t clear anything up: “We periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels,” says AT&T PR guy Fletcher Cook, via email.

Safe to say that the mood of last week–with its anticipation of change–is a distant memory. A different kind of anticipation permeated the tech and online media industries, one more reminiscent of April 2001. There was news all around of layoffs, pending layoffs, bankruptcies and stock dives.

To wit:

Digital Daily offered up a body count of companies in the tech sector that have been beaten into whimpering submission. Nortel (NT), once a telecom high-flyer, lost $3.4 billion in Q3. The company announced plans to lay off five percent of its workforce–including some high-ranking executives–eliminating 2,500 positions. Other high-ranking execs are taking part in the econalypse too, notably Kevin Kettler, Dell’s (DELL) chief technology officer. A week after the computer maker began offering workers voluntary separation plans, Kettler decided to take the company up on it. No word on how many followed suit. Other victims of the gloomy economy are Circuit City (CC), which declared bankruptcy this week, and Intel (INTC), which faced “sharply lower revenue.”

Media Memo presented a handy index of actual online advertising sales results (courtesy of Jupiter Media) and noted that the ad slowdown has hit Google (GOOG), too. Nick Denton, Gawker Media publisher, folded Valleywag into Gawker.com, the flagship blog of the media empire and, in an ironically appropriate move, put Consumerist up for sale. Denton, doom-mongerer of the econalypse, would surely appreciate the following layoff roll call: Condé Net and Time Inc., not once, but twice. No, wait. Three times.

BoomTown was on a Yahoo (YHOO) roll this week, writing about the company’s upcoming layoffs and its stock plunge. Just to squash rumors: Jerry Yang will not be laid off. Social media, mainly Twitter, became a hot topic this week in terms of its effect on the PR industry, and BoomTown had something to say about it. Also noted was the good humor of Mobuzz video, which made a plea to its users to donate five euros apiece to keep it afloat. And in case you were wondering what makes BoomTown impatient, the main two things this week were Microsoft’s (MSFT) continuing failure to find a head for its digital business and Yahoo/AOL’s failure to make anything happen in the ongoing yawn-fest of a nonacquisition.

In Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg gave the lowdown on Wi-Fi for your car, and in Mossberg’s Mailbox discussed disabling Wi-Fi on a laptop. In The Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret reviewed the Flip MinoHD, the latest addition to the Flip family, and its first foray into hi-def.