Gah. I’m so behind the rest of the world. There’s been antennaegate and then there was Ryan Block’s not-at-all-link-bait glassgate that the rest of the tech industry parroted in its typical unthinking manner, without, you know, thinking it might be a good idea to check some of the supposed facts.

I need my own ‘gate’ to become famous (and then, presumably, hated and ridiculed a few hours later, but that’s the price of fame—just ask Jedward), but I don’t even own an iPhone 4 (not that lacking something you’re writing about is a problem for quite a few tech hacks these days).

Any ideas? I was thinking about actually-it-seems-that-the-iphone-4-works-quite-well-gate, but I don’t think that’ll draw in the traffic.

Microsoft’s taking an interesting stance with Windows Phone 7, almost positioning it as a means of dealing with your digital commitments faster, in order to get back to real life.

From a differentiation standpoint, it’s an interesting position to take. Digital gadgets are hugely disruptive technology, and a lot of people increasingly suffer from ‘info guilt’ regarding unread information, be it email, Twitter and Facebook updates, RSS feeds or articles waiting in Instapaper.

Microsoft’s emphasis on glance-oriented tiles seemingly promotes efficiency, and the interface is quite elegant, but Thibaut Sailly nails why the reality doesn’t entirely match the aim (or at least the aim of the initial advertising):

It’s a big push notifications agregrator right in your face as soon as you get your phone out of your pocket. Not really what’s advertised.

That said, what Windows Phone 7 does provide is the at-a-glance notifications that iOS lacks. This is an area Apple needs to do some serious thinking about, because it was already lagging behind Android in terms of notifications, and now Microsoft’s offering a superior solution as well.

With BBC director general Mark Thompson taking the fight to Sky (Digital Spy), arguing against News Corp’s intended takeover of Sky, debates are again erupting about the nature of the BBC itself. Again, people who happily spend £70+ per month on Sky are bitching about the rip-off licence fee, so let’s, briefly, imagine an EXCITING PRESS RELEASE from NewTVCo.

NewTVCo has a stupid name, but it’s just announced an audacious attack on the UK TV market. It’s going to provide four mainstream TV stations that will be ad-free, and unlike Sky it’s going to spend a huge wodge of cash commissioning local shows, rather than dipping into a diminishing pool of decent (or even half-decent) US shows. It’s going to provide —by default—major sporting events, top-quality drama, children’s programming, reasonably impartial news, sci-fi, comedy, and more. In addition to this, it’ll roll out an inevitable rolling news channel and a couple of stations to glue wee kids to the screen.

But there’s more! In a pincer movement, NewTVCo also has radio ambitions, and is to provide over half-a-dozen ad-free stations. Some will be mainstream, one will concentrate on indie music, another will be more highbrow. Everyone will be catered for (ad-free, remember) and a bunch of local stations will also be set-up to provide local news coverage.

But there’s still more! Online’s important, and so NewTVCo is going to turn NewTVCo.co.uk into a first-rate website. Again, it’s going to be ad-free, and it’ll provide some of the best news coverage around, along with background and communities for popular shows.

Of course, this won’t all come for free, but it’s going to be staggeringly cheap: £145.50 per year, to be precise, or about 40p per day. (By comparison, News Corp’s Times website charges £2 per week to access thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk.)

Sounds good, right? You’d bite someone’s arm off for that kind of a deal, yeah? Well, then stop bloody well bitching about the BBC, because it’s already doing all of the above.

Police have arrested the operator of Mulve. Mulve is an app designed to help users download music, via a 10-million-strong database. According to the linked article, the smackdown largely came courtesy of the RIAA.

The thing is, Mulve was just a search engine, albeit one for a very specific purpose. If we get to the point where enabling access to naughty downloads makes operators liable, that’s a pretty worrying prospect—and you can bet the likes of Google and Bing (often the easiest, fastest way to source such download) won’t ever be affected.

The moral of the story appears to be: don’t specialise, stupid, or become so big that the RIAA won’t risk attacking you.

Two articles from me on the fragrant TechRadar website, detailing the very best games (according to me, at least) for the iPhone and iPod touch:

• 20 best free iPhone games on the planet
• 20 best iPhone games – paid apps

The paid-games piece was particularly interesting to write, given that I had a shortlist of over 60 games that I had to brutally and mercilessly hack down. Needless to say that some of those games will make ‘the list’ when these articles are expanded over the coming months.