Typos are an inevitable part of writing, but some (and the subsequent corrections) are better than others. This one, via Popbitch, is the best I’ve seen in a long while:

This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men.

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.

BBC News reports that Gap’s scrapping its new logo a week after introducing it, after thousands of people told them it was utter bollocks. They cunningly binned a well-known, iconic logo and replaced it with generic, dull type that had a blue square behind it. Or did they?

The more I look into this story, the more it reeks of a PR stunt. Scrap a logo, replace it with something that looks like it was knocked up by a junior web designer, wait for the vitriol, get publicity. And then, when the ranting’s at its loudest, say the following:

We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back.

So we’ve made the decision to do just that—we will bring it back across all channels.

Those are the words of Mark Hansen, president of Gap Brand North America, who didn’t go on to say: “Ha! We pulled the wool over your eyes, didn’t we, you stupid idiots.”

Mind you, he did add a rather worrying point that suggested maybe this wasn’t a stunt and that Gap really doesn’t know its arse from its elbow regarding branding. He said Gap “did not go about this in the right way” and “missed the opportunity to engage with the online community”. Er, what? The last thing you want to do is ‘engage with the online community’ regarding your branding, because the online community knows shit. All you’ll get are people moaning about any kind of change, or offering My First Logo™ designed in MS Paint, which they naturally think is also The Best Logo Ever™ and ignoring the fact that a logo and a brand aren’t the same thing.

When it comes to branding, engagement is key, but you talk to your customers about what they think your brand represents; you talk to your staff; you figure out what you’re trying to say. You don’t open it up to the world, creating a brand designed by the largest committee possible, otherwise you end up with something even worse and more watered down than what Gap was using until today.

Sometimes you have a secret you’re bursting to tell everyone about, but you can’t, otherwise an editor will hunt you down and kill you to death, using only a spoon, a slightly sharpened CD jewel case and a surprising amount of ingenuity and imagination.

Today, however, one of the most exciting magazine projects I’ve been party to was finally revealed: Tap! The iPhone and iPad Magazine. From the guys behind MacFormat (which I regularly contribute to), the 132-page iPad-sized mag will arrive for a fiver at the end of November, and it’ll have a suitably chunky games section that I’ll be overseeing. (Tap’s also on Twitter, if you want to follow it: @tapmaguk.)

It’s great to see Future taking the plunge on what’s the most exciting platform that I can remember, and I’m hugely looking forward to being involved.

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.