Michael Castellon

Today Amazon quietly rolled out a feature that lets Kindle owners share Kindle ebooks:

• Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days.

• The borrower does not need to own a Kindle — Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iOS, etc.

• Not all books are lendable.

The biggest catch is that once you lend a book, you can’t read it for the 14-day period, as with a printed copy. 

If there was ever a question that information wants to be free, look no further than the Wikileaks story.

Governments — and especially those of us who work within them — haven’t fully identified the intersection of social connectivity and electronic data management.

The upper levels of government, foreign policy and national security keep secrets. By definition, that’s what many agencies do. As citizens, we must accept this fact. Secrets can keep peace. Secrets win wars. But secrets also can destroy trust, hide criminal acts, and threaten civil liberties.

Apple’s announcement today that it added The Beatles to the iTunes Store overshadows two news items of much greater importance to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

The first is that Google Voice finally squeaked its way through the App Store’s approval process. U.S. users with a Google account now have better mailbox and voicemail functionality than before, with free text messaging, voicemail transcription, call screening and call blocking. The service also offers cheap international calls. Google has tussled with Apple in the past about the Google Voice app, just one battle in an already contentious relationship between the two companies.

Second, an update from Twitter late today now allows push notifications. @ mentions from people you follow now push as a notification to iPhone and iPod Touch users, making Twitter a much more real-time conversation tool.

Apple today pushed the latest OSX update, 10.6.5. I can happily report that the update does not break a Hackintosh install on the Dell Mini 10v.

If you’re currently running a previous edition of 10.6.x or earlier, here’s how to safely upgrade to 10.6.5:

1. Run the latest version of Netbook Installer [direct link to file] set to defaults
2. Restart your machine
3. Install the update through Software Update
4. Restart

You’ll find it helpful to repair disk permissions through disk utility. I also ran a CleanMyMac session.

the 10.6.5 update addresses a number of fixes, according to Apple, including:

• Improves reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers.
• Addresses performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture.
• Addresses stability and performance of graphics applications and games.
• Resolves a delay between print jobs.
• Addresses a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an AirPort Extreme.
• Resolves an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal.
• Addresses an issue in which dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide.
• Resolves an issue in which Wikipedia information may not display correctly in Dictionary.
• Improves performance of MainStage on certain Macs.
• Resolves spacing issues with OpenType fonts.
• Improves reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays.
• Resolves a VoiceOver issue when browsing some websites with Safari 5.
• Improves Bluetooth pairing with Magic Trackpad.
• Resolves performance issues with third-party displays that use InstaPort technology.
• Add SSL support for transferring files with iDisk.
• Resolves an issue when opening 4-up Photo Booth pictures in Preview.
• Addresses keyboard responsiveness issues in the Dock when Spaces is turned on.
• Resolves an issue syncing Address Book with Google.
• Fixes an issue when replying to a Mail message sent by a person whose name contains certain characters such as é or ü.
• Improves performance for users bound to an Active Directory domain.
• Improves reliability of Ethernet connections.
• Systems with a Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) installed can now be put to sleep. For more information, see Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009): Enabling system sleep.
• Improves reliability of fibre channel connections, resolving a potential Xsan volume availability issue.
• Adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras.
• Security improvements; for information about the security content of this update, please visit this article.

Here’s how to further destroy your career as an editor of Cooks Source Magazine after you’ve been confronted for plagiarizing content.

Judith Griggs, the editor of Cooks Source, sent the following e-mail to a blogger who confronted her for republishing a blog post in her magazine:

“Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace.

If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”

Check out more….

Update: Both The Washington Post and BoingBoing have picked up the story.