Issue three of the rather spiffy Tap! magazine hits UK newsstands today. It’s another chunky 132-page tome, packed full of reviews, tips and features about the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Yours for a fiver, guv.

This issue, in my role as Contributing Editor, Games, I lead the games section with the excellent World of Goo HD, and we also cover another 30 titles, including Helsing’s Fire HD, Dead Space and Real Racing 2.

Elsewhere in the mag, there are the usual helpings of Matt Gemmell, Ian Betteridge and Caitlin Moran, an in-depth feature on using your iOS devices to watch tele, an interview with an indie company using iOS devices and social media to compete with global brands, and more app and kit reviews than you can shake a stick at.

Issue 2 of the super soaraway Tap! (the iPhone & iPad magazine) is arriving with subscribers and available in shops nowish.

Again, you get 132 pages of personality-infused awesomeness for a fiver, including my chunky games section (slightly chunkier this month, clocking in at 19 pages, written by yours truly and Mr Andy Dyer). Elsewhere: loads of app reviews, a feature where the magazine forced some poor bugger out into the winter cold to test fitness apps (although he deserved it, since he didn’t include RunKeeper Pro in his essentials list, the bounder), how to tune a ukulele, an iPhone battery cases group test, and a fab new columnist in the shape of the wonderful Caitlin Moran.

BUY IT NOW! (Or, you know, when it’s out.)

EXCITING UPDATE: Apparently, the ‘three issues for a fiver’ deal’s up again, although that’ll likely kick in for Tap! issue 3 if you grabbed it now.

You’ve got to love polls versus editors. The two rarely match up, but in Time’s case, the difference is astonishing. Readers were asked who their person of the year was. Julian Assange topped the list with 382,026 votes, about 150,000 ahead of second-placed Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

So, who did Time choose? Not Assange. Not Erdogan. Not third-placed Lady Gaga (146,378) nor Barack Obama (sixth, 27,478 votes), Steve Jobs (seventh, 24,810) or the rather odd ‘The Chilean Miners’ entry (eighth, 29,124). Nope, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg took the prize, despite placing tenth in the poll, amassing only 18,353 votes.

Given the fact that Facebook’s hardly been astonishing this year, and has mostly made the news for various appalling privacy issues, it’s an odd decision; and while editors shouldn’t capitulate to readers, I do wonder whether Time’s editorial team realises how far out of touch it is with the people who read the magazine.

Issue one of Future Publishing’s new iOS magazine, Tap!, is out today in the UK.

Editor Christopher Phin was kind enough to let me run riot on the gaming section, and so there’s a 17-page chunk of irreverent, fun, iOS gaming goodness in the mag.

In addition, there’s plenty to get your teeth into: loads of app, web-app and kit reviews, tutorials, interviews, opinion pieces and features. The entire thing looks great, is handily iPad-sized, and is packed full of fun, passionate copy.

If you’re not in the UK, the mag will soon be on Zinio and also US shelves. For more on when and where, follow @tapmaguk on Twitter.

This month’s MacFormat includes a feature called Top of the class, where I interview Fraser Speirs about his project to supply every pupil in his school with an iPad and how this is affecting teachers and kids alike.

The article provides insight not only into the iPad’s potential as a tool to aid schooling, but also its scope in general as a device for media consumption and creativity.

Speirs:

The iPad beats a PC because it removes that whole layer of ‘we’re doing computers now’, and you end up with ‘we’re doing maths’ or ‘we’re doing music’.

In traditional teaching, you spend time learning how to write a sum properly, how to lay out a jotter, how to lay out text on a page. You must do that before you’re expressing thoughts and ideas. But with an iPad, you open Pages and you can immediately start writing an essay or play.