A Rundown of the Whole PAX Duke Nukem Experience (That Videogame Blog)

An Infographic About Infographics (Urlesque)

PAX Prime Photo Gallery (1Up)

Google Settles in Texas Privacy Suit (Reuters)

Kirby’s Epic Yarn is Still Adorable (Kotaku)

I Got Stabbed At Comic-Con And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt (Neatorama)

Steve Jobs: The New iTunes Icon Does Not Suck, Shut Up (Wired)

(image via Kotaku.)

True to expectation, this afternoon’s Apple announcement has brought major revamps to the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, and iPod Touch lines. What’s new?

Massive Digg-fixing ring found (Alternet)

Steve Jobs turned away from San Francisco pizzeria (AppleInsider)

Why hardcore gamers hate n00bs so much (Escapist)

Sports viral video roundup (SportsGrid)

Wife learns of husband’s secret second wedding on Facebook (AP)

The great hidden operating system games (Technologizer)

Who could beat you up? (CollegeHumor)

Bonus: The first episode of Zach Anner’s new travel show, covering Niagara Falls:

It can’t be more ironic: Today, in order to distribute free bumpers which fix the iPhone 4’s antenna attenuation problem, Apple has released an iPhone application … that you have to download. Using, we assume, your obviously powerful and reliable iPhone connection.

Also, you’ve got to hurry: The bumpers are in limited supply and are expected to run out quickly. Apple has also noted that customers who purchased an iPhone before July 23 must apply for a free case by August 22. Others will need to apply for the bumper “within 30 days of your iPhone 4 purchase.” The entire program ends on September 30, because this “free stuff” notion is just getting ridiculous.

Following the surprise “Antennagate” conference during which Apple announced free bumpers for all iPhone 4 users, we got our first look at the company’s secret Infinite-Loop lab, the multimillion dollar facilities where the iPhone 4’s connectivity issues were tested. We were in awe, and the uproar about smartphone antennae soon faded into obscurity.

We noted then that the antenna lab’s 17 futuristic anechoic chambers would make for an awesome Half-Life map (modders, assemble), but Canada-based Geekosystem reader Max did us one better: He’s discovered that Steve Jobs may have had some dystopic thoughts on his mind when designing the facilities’ interior…

The Taiwanese animation mavens at Apple Daily have evolved beyond simply retelling news stories with quirky Machinima into the realm of high art. Consider their latest short, which covers the iPhone 4 saga.

Not only does it manage to succinctly cover the basics of the controversy, the allegations of worker exploitation by Foxconn, the police raid on Gizmondo Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s suspiciously warehouse-like home, Consumer Reports‘ bombshell review, and Apple’s free bumper offer, all in under two minutes, but it equips Steve Jobs with a Darth Vader helmet and a lightsaber, turns AT&T logos into literal balls-and-chains, and depicts the Reality Distortion field as a literal electric-blue forcefield. In short, the writers for the new Futurama should be a little worried for their jobs right about now.

Video below:

During Apple’s press conference on Friday, Steve Jobs explained that the company had conducted thorough testing of the iPhone 4’s antenna in the company’s secret lab. Following the presser, 11 journalists were invited to tour the once-hidden “Infinite Loop labs,” which Apple has invested $100 million into for antenna design and testing. The tour was notably led by senior Apple engineer Ruben Caballero, who had reportedly warned Jobs about the antenna problem early in the iPhone 4’s development (Jobs called the allegation “total bullshit”).

According to Macworld–who were among the lucky few invitees–an Apple PR representative told them, “The existence of this lab used to be secret. Now it’s not.” Indeed, Apple had presented images of its facilities at the conference, and later posted a page about its state-of-the-art testing environment, the implication being that no other facility would yield results as accurate.

Just as the dust settles from the iPhone 4 press conference, we are greeted with the news that San Mateo Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan has granted an application from San Mateo County D.A.’s office to withdraw the warrant to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home. You’ll recall that in April, Chen claimed to have purchased an iPhone 4 prototype for $5,000 after the smartphone was left at a bar by a poor (ex-)Apple engineer, and controversially had his house raided by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team.

The main takeaway from Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference: Free bumpers for all. After more than 15 minutes of media-bashing, comparisons to other smartphones, and general defensiveness, Steve Jobs announced that through September 30th, all iPhone 4 customers are eligible for free bumpers from Apple. If you’ve already bought a bumper, you can get a full refund. You can also get a free third-party case on Apple’s dime, although Apple will not be refunding third-party bumpers already bought.

Watch the video of Apple’s announcement below:

As John Gruber said earlier this week, we’ve entered new territory: Apple’s followup iPhone 4 announcement marks the first time that Apple has held a press conference for any reason other than to announce a new product.

What does Apple have in store for us? A full-blown iPhone 4 recall seems unlikely — a “person familiar with the company’s plans” told Bloomberg it wasn’t going to happen — but will they give free bumpers or gift cards to customers, as has been speculated in some quarters? We’ll see. We’re not actually live in Cupertino, but we’re following the news as it happens: You can check out our meta-liveblog below, along with Leo Laporte’s streaming live coverage of the event, including pictures and live audio.

The Walt Disney Co. opened the first of its 300 planned revamped Disney Stores this week at The Shops at Montebello complex in Montebello, California. As first announced in October of last year, Disney planned to overhaul its retail chain with the help of Steve Jobs and his team behind the Apple store. The company sought to turn their stores into interactive community playgrounds, even considering re-branding the Disney Store as “Imagination Park.”

What did Steve do? According to the NYT, he provided Disney execs with “access to proprietary information” about the Apple stores’ development and operation and an up-close tour of Apple’s research operation in Cupertino, California? Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products, said: “Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message.”

So how was that reflected in the newly opened 4,800-plus square foot Montebello store?

Soon after the iPhone 4 hit stores nationwide, many customers discovered that if they held the phone in a standard left-handed fashion, their number of bars of connectivity would drop from five to one or zero due to the placement of the phone’s antenna. Despite Apple’s claims otherwise, this seemed like a fairly large engineering screwup. Coincidentally, Apple recently started selling a rubber bumper for the iPhone 4 which corrected the problem. It seemed reasonable enough to ask that Apple give these bumpers for free to customers who had bought a phone with such a clear design limitation — Gizmodo is spearheading a petition asking them to give away the bumpers — but a recently leaked Apple memo seems to advise AppleCare representatives to take a firm stance against free bumpers, even while advising customers that bumpers could improve performance.

Britain’s second largest newspaper, the Daily Mail, began their article on the supposed recall of the iPhone 4 (screenshot here, since the original has been pulled) in this way:

The much vaunted new iPhone 4 may be recalled, Apple boss Steve Jobs revealed last night.

Posting a message on the social networking site Twitter, the tycoon said: “We may have to recall the new iPhone.  This I did not expect.”

There was just one problem: the tycoon didn’t actually say it.

If the Apocalypse comes, we’re screwed — I’ve already accepted this. But if AT&T can’t even get their act together for iPhone 4 pre-ordering, god knows what will happen when the poop really hits the fan. People in New York City are waiting in lines outside of AT&T stores because the upgrade ordering systems have collapsed. So what exactly is happening?

After refusing to stream video of Steve Jobs‘ hotly anticipated WWDC 2010 keynote speech, at which he officially unveiled the iPhone 4, Apple put the video up on their website, where you not only need QuickTime to watch it, but the video has been slow and buffery on-and-off throughout the day. If that didn’t work for you, you could catch it in snippets on YouTube, but unless you wanted to watch that same iPhone 4 ad over and over or slog through some site’s painstaking liveblog, you were out of luck for the complete experience.

Fortunately, they’ve since given us another option: The full two-hour keynote is now available in YouTube in one uninterrupted video. You can check it out after the jump.