Ryan at gdgt raises the question today if Apple’s “antennagate” distracted us from a bigger problem, “glassgate”:

Whether or not you’ve experienced the iPhone 4’s famed death grip, or even believe it’s a real phenomenon (and based on extensive personal experience I can assure you that it is), the whole Antennagate scandal undoubtedly left a deep scratch on the iPhone’s squeaky-clean sheen.

But there’s another issue brewing behind the scenes that’s sent Apple’s iPhone engineering team back into the bunker for preemptive damage control.

According to my sources both inside and outside Apple, after Antennagate the iPhone engineering team identified another potential design flaw that appears to have sent them into a quiet lockdown, and has them working behind the scenes in what’s been described to me as something of a quiet panic to preempt any further tarnishing the iPhone brand.

Apple has apparently found that non-bumper style cases — specifically those that slide onto the iPhone 4, which are occasionally prone to particulate matter getting caught between the rear of the phone and the case — can cause unexpected scratching that could quickly develop into full-on cracking or even much larger fracturing of the entire rear pane of glass. To put it another way: Apple is afraid you might buy a standard slide-on iPhone case, put it on your phone, and then discover the next time you take it off that the entire back of your device has been shattered by no fault of your own.

It’s clear that with the iPhone 4, Apple compromised on durability for aesthetic reasons.

Google today offered an update on Google TV – its new Internet television platform. And while Apple has been content to keep Apple TV as a “hobby”, Google is intent on making its Internet TV receiver a business.

Today they announced multiple content partners for Google TV:

• Turner Broadcasting has been optimizing some of their most popular websites for viewing on Google TV, including TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
• NBC Universal has collaborated with Google TV to bring CNBC Real-Time, an application that allows you to track stocks and access news feeds while watching financial news.
• HBO will bring access to hundreds of hours of programming to Google TV with HBO GO.
• NBA has built NBA Game Time, an application that lets you follow game scores in real-time and catch up on the latest highlights from your favorite team in HD
• Amazon Video On Demand offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase
• Netflix will offer the ability to instantly watch movies and TV shows.

Other Google TV partners include USA Today, Pandora, Napster & Twitter.

While Apple’s recently announced Apple TV update will make the platform cheap to try and easy to use, Google TV is leapfrogging it and looks like it will be the first company to establish an Internet TV platform that’s open to developers.

While its too early to tell if Google will turn Internet TV into more than a “hobby”, by focusing on creating a developer-friendly platform, it’s moving in the right direction.

What do you think? Are you going to get a Google TV?

Earlier in the year, we suggested that, with the iPad and other iOS devices, Apple is forking the Web:

The iPad isn’t about Web-applications – it’s about Internet-enabled applications.

Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach of the computer Web browser, Apple is creating a platform of dedicated apps that do one thing really well.

In other words – Apple doesn’t want to have the best platform for running a Web browser. It wants to have the best platform for browsing Internet-based content.

The Mobile Internet Is Forked Already

New data backs this idea up.

According to research based on more than 10,000 smartphone users, “native data applications, such as social networking, multimedia and maps, capture already 50% of all mobile data volume.”

Although the web browser is the single most popular data application (54% of data application face time and 50% of data volume), native data applications are increasing their share of face time relative to the web browser:

• These native applications represent all kinds of usage purposes from social networking, maps and productivity to information and utility.
• Facebook’s native application catches monthly 12% of users with high face time of 188 minutes on average per month.
• Twitter, on the other hand, is used even more, averaging 311 minutes a month although it has a smaller monthly user base of only 4% of active smartphone users.

“We clearly see that there is a strong counter-acting trend for the Google- driven push for web-based applications in mobile, this force coming from native applications that people install to smartphones, says Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, founder of Zokem. “As mobile consumption patterns get richer, and people learn to require more and more functionalities, the native applications in most cases provide the best user experience”.

While Apple was the first to push this trend, other platforms, especially Android, could be just as important.

This trend poses new challenges and opportunities for new media developers. As people spend more time on mobile Internet devices, traditional approaches to blogging, podcasting and Internet video are going to be challenged by platform-specific applications.

via rrw

Tascam has introduced a new portable digital audio recorder, the DR-03, that’s costs about $100 and is about the size of a candy bar.

The battery- or USB-powered DR-03 records to microSD media and comes with its own 2 GB card.

Features:

• Stereo condenser microphone design
• Up to 24-bit, 48 kHz WAV recording or MP3 recording modes
• Records to microSD media
• Auto-recording function starts when input exceeds a reference level
• Limiter, low-cut filter, and auto gain control for input
• Variable Speed Audition changes the playback speed without changing the pitch
• Loop playback mode
• USB 2.0 connection for file transfer
• 1/8″ stereo microphone / line input
• 1/8″ stereo headphone output
• 96 x 96 backlit LCD display
• Powered by two AAA batteries or USB bus power
• Built-in speaker
• Built-in desktop stand
• Includes a 2 GB microSD card and AAA batteries

The DR-03 is available now with a retail price of about $100.

Remember when Apple was the king of tools for creating your own media and it was hyping podcasting and user-generated media?

When Steve Jobs bragged about the company hitting milestones with its iTunes podcast directory? When it added podcasting support to Mac OS X? And when podcasting was a selling point for Garageband?

It looks like the thrill is gone, baby.

At Apple’s Sept 1st iPod refresh event, Jobs rubbed a lot of new media geeks the wrong way when he called new media content the “amateur hour”.

People want “Hollywood movies and TV shows,”Jobs said at the event, adding that “they don’t want amateur hour.”

The Zune has been the whipping boy of new media since the portable media player’s introduction, because Microsoft made the mistake of taking a iPod wannabee and throwing a bunch of marketing money at it.

The Zune has improved a lot, since then, but it still hasn’t made an impression with buyers. This is largely because Microsoft botched the brand introduction of the Zune, establishing the brand as the biggest tech failure of the last decade.

Now Microsoft has finally done something intelligent with their Zune marketing: they’re putting them on international United Airlines flights:

United Airlines has just given the media player a new lease on life thanks to a partnership that will place Zune HDs into the hands of patrons. Reportedly, United will host around 500 Zune players on extra-long flights between the U.S. and Australia and Hong Kong.

The deal will provide those Zune players with pre-loaded content that can’t be found anywhere else (think pre-release movies), but details beyond that have yet to be made public.

This isn’t a huge deal for Microsoft – but it’s a smart one.

Take a bored, captive audience and give them Zunes loaded with content and you’re going to get a lot of people giving the Zune an open mind.

The iTunes Ping social music network was easily the most interesting announcement out of Apple’s special music even, last week.

But after using it for even a short while, most people are unimpressed or puzzled – with Fortune  asking “Can Ping Be Saved?” and PC World calling it “Not so hot”.

Here are three reasons Apple’s Ping will make you say “WTF?”:

Apple left the musicians out. There aren’t any musician artist profiles to follow in the Ping music social network.

All we could find was these 14 musician profiles:

1. Lady Gaga
2. Yo-Yo Ma
3. Katy Perry
4. U2
5. Jack Johnson
6. Linkin Park
7. Shakira
8. Coldplay
9. Mark Ronson
10. Taylor Swift
11. Dave Mathews Band
12. Diddy
13. Linkin Park
14. U2

And, yes, Apple lists U2 and Linkin Park twice to pad the list.

No Jay-Z, no David Guetta, no Vampire Weekend, no Sade, no Black Eyed Peas, no John Mayer, no Alicia Keys……

Worse, Apple won’t let you create an Artist page for your band or your podcast or even stuff that you’re already selling in iTunes.

WTF?

YouTube has introduced a new YouTube Movies section, which offers about 400 free full-length films.

If you’re looking for YouTube to offer an alternative to Netflix or Blockbuster, this ain’t it.

On the other hand, if you want to take a trip back to the 70’s drive-in grindhouse, you have hit the motherlode!

Wired today declared that the Web is dead, backing it up with this chart that shows the history of the proportion of total Internet bandwidth taken up by various types of traffic.

According to Wired’s Chris Anderson – the proportion of Internet traffic taken up by Web requests is getting smaller – so “the Web is dead”.

It seems that Wired, in its quest to come up with outrageous linkbait, decided that the percentage of traffic carried over the Internet is the determiner of the viability of the Web and other forms of Internet traffic.

Apple will replace its Apple TV hobby with a new member of the iOS family, Apple iTV, according to an Engadget report.

Apple iTV will be priced starting at $99 and will be similar in size and specs to the iPhone 4 (A4 CPU, 16GB of flash storage). It is expected to support a new iTunes streaming video service.

According to Engadget’s latest info, Apple iTV will be limited to 720p video.

This is the barest of rumors – but relaunching Apple TV as a member of the iOS family is a no-brainer.

Here’s why.