During a clip of Winehouse’s music video for her song “You Know I’m No Good,” the on-screen title instead read “You Know I’m Dead.” Awkward to say the least, and somewhat dubious since it wasn’t even a typo off by a letter or two!

(h/t TVNewser)

On HLN’s Dr. Drew Monday, Drew Pinsky took issue with officers from the London Metropolitan Police, who have urged the public–and the media–to avoid speculating on what may have caused the premature death of Amy Winehouse. In a news conference Monday, an officer from the Met said no autopsy results have been reached, and therefore it would “be inappropriate to speculate.” Pinsky says no, it’s not inappropriate. “27-year-olds don’t just die,” Pinsky argued. “She had a fatal disease…and if she ends up having pneumonia, heart disease, her heart stopped or infection…this is all secondary to addiction, that’s the primary disease.”

Pinsky, an addiction specialist, devoted his HLN program to a discussion of addiction and how it likely played into Winehouse’s death–whether she died of an overdose or not.

Watch it here, from HLN:

This morning, the British account @TweetBox360 sent out this message:

Soon after, tons of Twitter users were registering their outrage, calling the tweet “callous” and “thoughtless.” It was quite a big reaction considering the Microsoft account has less than 2,000 followers in the first place. Shortly after, Microsoft was forced to apologize (although, as of this writing, they have not deleted the initial tweet):

Really though, was what they did that over the line?

In fact, the Tweet was an example of a fairly common practice. Presumably since the days of the Victrola, record stores have always made the works of recently departed artists readily accessible. Would anyone have thought it that odd if they walked in to see a special Nirvana section in a store circa April ’94? Sure this may seem callous, but it also represents an undeniable fact of life; when someone talented dies, fans both new and old want to commemorate their life by listening to (and therefore purchasing) their work. It’s always been the case and, judging by album sales the past few days, it’s the case now. Microsoft is just giving the people what they want. And they’re not even the only ones doing it.

As Mashable’s Sarah Kessler points out, Microsoft’s competitor Apple is greeting fans with this image on the front page of their iTunes Store:

It shouldn’t take you too many guesses to figure out what happens when you click that lovely picture of Ms. Winehouse. No, it does not take you to a memorial page where fans can share their fondest memories.

Both Apple and Microsoft seem to think that the best way to “remember” the gifted singer would be to give them money. So why hasn’t there been an uproar over that image? Personally, I think the problem lies at the feet of Twitter itself. Both companies were looking to make a profit (no matter what those apology Tweets say), but Microsoft went about it in a venue that allows easy comment. iTunes users may have found the image tasteless, but they couldn’t register their complaint with the click of a Retweet button. And then Microsoft only made it worse with the apology Tweets by tacitly admitting what they did was wrong.

Yeah, it might have been a little bit wrong. But it’s a wrong that’s existed since the beginning of commerce. Sadly, if they had just put a little more effort into hiding their intentions, no one would have noticed.

(h/t Drudge)

The news has also been reported by the Daily Mail, and several online sources, though no news about what caused her death has come in. The police report (h/t Anthony De Rosa) of her death describes it as “unexplained” with no further details. The Telegraph suggests it may have been a combination of drugs and alcohol:

They say that they received a call at 4.05pm calling for help for a woman in Camden. Paramedics were called to the scene, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The death is “unexplained” but not thought to be suspicious, according to police. Sources have told the Sunday Mirror that an overdose of drink and drugs is the suspected cause of death.

The Guardian has since published an obituary of the singer-songwriter.

Watch the report from CNN below:

Let me ask you, what kind of person do you think Scarlett Johansson is?

You have probably never met her, and I definitely have not, yet we both seemingly feel like we could describe her personality with reasonable accuracy.

This is peculiar.

It’s not shocking to learn that humans enjoy making personality judgments based upon scant evidence. But with celebrities it seems exceptionally dubious, since we actually know literally nothing about them first-hand. Lohan, Aniston, Springsteen, Cruise — why do all these people seem to have well-formed personas? How much of it is real and how much is manufactured? What are the sources we use to scrape together these mysterious portraits?

There are a few known mythological origins. Maybe that profile in Rolling Stone had some lasting influence, and perhaps those eight minutes on Leno left an impression. But these sources, mediated and filtered and manicured, seem exceptionally unreliable. So what else is there?

Oh yeah, we have their work. Scarlett gave a lasting impression in Lost in Translation, so perhaps we know a little more about her because of how she gobbles sushi with Bill Murray. But wait — she was acting. Can we really conclude anything about her personality from these flickering screen moments?

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time considering this question: why do we think we know people who we’ll never actually know?

Here’s my best guess: we trust gossip.

Before mass media, gossip was merely personal information shared about a mutual acquaintance. In other words, pre-modern gossip was the original conversational marketing: valued information shared by reputable sources.

With the onset of broadcasting, publishing, and eventually the internet, the intimacy of gossip bred with the entertainment industry, birthing the hybrid offspring known was celebrity gossip. Of all the animals in the media zoo, celebrity gossip emerged as the most chimerical creature. Every day, hundreds of weird little stories pop up on sites with names like Hollywood Tuna and Egotastic and Celebrity Puke. Sometimes they make outrageous claims (Amy Winehouse just ate a drunk baby!), and other times the narratives are ostentatiously mundane (Tara Reid just ate a taco!). Through these morsels of checkout lane anti-matter, we form lasting opinions about celebrities.

That finally brings us to today’s launch of GossipCop.com, a site that I did the strategy/design/development on. The premise is simple: investigate the accuracy of the daily anecdotes, the rampant rumors, and the cubicle grist known as celebrity gossip. Think of it as TMZ meets Smoking Gun. Or maybe Perez Hilton meets Columbia Journalism Review. Whatever — the prevailing idea is that even seemingly unknowable information can be investigated in today’s info-rich economy.

My three favorite features on the site:

+ Truth Meter. Every post investigates a piece of celebrity gossip and provides a rating, from 0 to 10, based upon the likelihood of the story.

+ Paparazzi Patrol. Rather than churn out more celebrity video, Gossip Cop looks at the underside of the celebrity gossip business. By turning the camera back on the paparazzi, the site reveals the gossip creators for what they are. (This feature was originally dubbed “Papsmeared,” a name I really loved but which was ultimately dropped.)

+ Twit Happens. With its direct interaction and unfiltered access, Twitter could end up being the greatest invention in celebrity journalism since the camera. It is quickly become the ultimate device for determining how impressions are made, rumors are debunked, and celebrity battles are fought. This hand-picked list contains the best tweets of the day.

Truthfully, I’m not much of a celebrity news consumer. But I hope this site adds a new angle into the salacious, rumor-driven celebrity culture.

And maybe I can finally get to know Scarlett.

Rex Sorgatz is a writer, designer, and media consultant based in New York. His consulting agency, Kinda Sorta Media, launches new sites for media and commerce companies. He is a contributing editor at Wired and his work has appeared in New York and NPR. He blogs his internet life in real time at Fimoculous.com, where this post was first published.