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As the debate rages over who can access the white spaces between licensed digital television spectrum, the Federal Communications Commission itself has emerged as a hot ticket. Everyone from the NFL to Lollapalooza is clamoring to have its events be used as a staging ground by the agency for the testing of devices aimed at utilizing portions of the DTV spectrum for wireless Internet access. The FCC has said it will test interference of the white space devices in 10 geographic locations or buildings in the DC area; it’s looking for other venues as well.

At issue is the ability of these proposed white space devices to operate in the spectrum, which will become available after the conversion to digital TV signals next year. Companies such as Google, Motorola, Microsoft and Intel all would like to see that spectrum used for wireless broadband access. However users of wireless microphones — everyone from recording stars to preachers at megachurches — are against that plan as they’re worried about interference on their wireless mics. The National Association of Broadcasters is opposing the efforts as well, arguing that such devices could interfere with the transmission of DTV channels.

The FCC is expected to make a decision about them later this year. Depending on the summer concert lineup, it may want to hold off doing its field tests until Madonna’s latest tour starts in October or until Led Zeppelin reunites — might as well enjoy the music along the way.

Last July, at the time of the launch of the new iPhone, we asked the question, where are the iPhone games? Looks like we have an answer: they are coming, and in a big way. Of course, you can already buy Tetris and grab Tap Tap Revenge, the No. 1 free app, for, well, free, but the big commercial games are going to be hitting the iTunes App store soon, according to news coming out of the E3 game conference down in LA.

As BusinessWeek points out, Apple made a big splashdown at E3 without even clocking in a presence. That reminds me of its looming presence at the CES trade show every year without setting a foot in Las Vegas. Electronic Arts executives said they’re going to be making Spore, Tiger Woods & Need For Speed for the iPhone platform. SEGA America president Simon Jeffery pointed out that iPhone was as powerful as the Dreamcast player. SEGA has released Sega Super Monkey Ball and plans on releasing more games.

We aren’t surprised, and we have consistently said that iPhone could cause a major tremor in the mobile gaming market. According to data collected by Cellufun, AOL’s designated mobile game portal, “iPhone gamers are generating four times the number of page views” or about “an average of 21 minutes of game play and 65 page views per iPhone player session, compared to 11 minutes and 15 page views for sessions on other phones.” Wagner had predicted that the Nintendo DS and iPhone are most certainly on a collision course, and looks like he is right on track. I think iPhone is going to eat into handheld console revenues, at the same time reignite interest in mobile games.

Bonus Link: Our pick of iPhone’s Most Wanted Games.

Yesterday evening, at a beachside dinner organized by our investors, True Ventures, I sat at a table full of relatively young entrepreneurs (I’m pretty sure I raised the average age by a few years.) Most of us had iPhones — both old and new — and most were Twitter users.

So it should come as no surprise that we all had an opinion about Twitterrfic, an iPhone client for Twitter. To sum up everyone’s thoughts in one word: horrific. Scrolling through messages should come naturally; it doesn’t. And the UI manages to leave you feeling about as satisfied as a cup of noodles warmed with hot tap water.

But we won’t have to use it anymore, for Twinkle by Gogo Apps, previously a jailbreak app, has just hit the iTunes Apps Store. Its UI is remarkably intuitive and easy to use. As John Gruber writes, “It’s an interesting contrast with Twitterrific — even ignoring cosmetic differences, the two apps take significantly different UI approaches.” I think that’s an understatement.

The best aspect of the service is the ability to find a person using Twinkler near you using the LBS feature of the iPhone — though currently it doesn’t seems to be working. This could turn Twinkle-Twitter into a social experience, a simpler and easier version of other complicated LBS-based, friend finder applications.

I like how one can quickly look at all direct messages in a separate window. In fact, there are numerous little things that I find appealing about this app. For instance, it takes just two clicks to start following someone on the feed. Sending private messages is easy and looking up profiles is even easier. What I don’t like: Not having the ability to quickly see replies.

My Rating on this iPhone app: 4 out of 5.

The launch of the iPhone 3G can be summed up in one word, and it starts with a “c.” Instead I will go with comedy of errors. Activation delays, long lines, online issues, application roll-out issues — it has been a train wreck that makes Brittany Britney Spears’ saga seem like a quaint Victorian-era romance novel. Today is a perfect example.

Earlier today, fellow bloggers, big and small, got into a tizzy when someone got hold of a document saying that AT&T Wi-Fi for iPhone users had arrived. Hallelujah, for who doesn’t want free Wi-Fi to connect their iPhones and iTouch players? Unfortunately, everyone got too excited over nothing - the Wi-Fi is still not available, and the “document” was a mistake. Here is an email from one of their spokespeople in response to my question about the veracity of the news:

We have not made any announcement regarding free Wi-Fi and iPhone. The webpage was posted in error and is being removed. Wi-Fi is a real differentiator for AT&T and it is our intention to make it available to as many customers as possible, but we have no announcement at this time.

Funnily enough, this is not the first time we have seen the rumors break out about AT&T Wi-Fi on the iPhone. Then there was a brief release that quickly got abused, thanks to some system flaws. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Someday the network will be live, and we won’t even care.

SK Telecom, the South Korean carrier who till now has frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get a toehold in the U.S. market, was rumored to be looking to spend a few billion to buy Sprint, in partnership with some private equity firms, according to news reports based on a CNBC claim. That rumor caused some furious activity in the shares of those two companies.

Now there are rumors that SK Telecom and Spring were looking to partner on technology. The whole thing is just too curious, and the company spokespeople for both of them are staying mum.

Sprint has about 52.8 million customers, but is having a tough time holding onto them. The company recently merged its WiMAX effort, Xohm, with Clearwire to form a new company that attracted $3.2 billion in financing from Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner and others.

SK Telecom owns 17 percent of MVNO Virgin Mobile, which recently acquired Helio at a throw-away price. SK has sunk a lot of money into Helio. Both Helio and Virgin use Sprint’s network.

And on a related note, Helio’s store in Palo Alto shut down today, after setting what must have been a new record for being devoid of customers but still opening its doors every day. Rumor has it that employees at Palo Alto startups would make bets on whether or not any customers could be spotted in the Helio store. I guess the only ones who didn’t get the memo about people not caring about Helio stores was the management.

Yesterday afternoon, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini seemed a little hazy on the future home for Intel’s Atom processor during the chip maker’s quarterly earnings call — a fact I don’t find all that surprising since the netbooks or mobile Internet devices the chips are designed for exist only in a marketer’s imagination and failed product implementations.

Otellini was excited about Atom, calling demand for the chip” robust,” but analysts pressed Otellini about Atom’s end market and whether the chip would cannibalize Intel’s low-end Celeron processor. The Celeron ranges from speeds of 2.13 GHz to 3.6 GHz, and is faster than Atom’s 1.8 GHz or 1.6 GHz. Otellini’s responses were less than a ringing endorsement of the chip. “[Atom] is less than a third of the performance of our Centrino (high-end mobile processor),” said Otellini. “You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use.”

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