AOL finally releases an updated version of AIM. It was in a public beta test for a few weeks. It's nothing special; move along.

Veteran New York Times technology reporter John Markoff, long one of the paper's main Apple watchers, is changing beats to cover the intersection of computation and science, as well as the social implications of technology and so-called cybersecurity and cyberwarfare. It's terrifying that the risks of computer security exploits to individuals, companies, and even countries are great enough to warrant such mainstream coverage.

Frequent TidBITS contributor Derek K. Miller has been writing an engaging Camera Works series on his Penmachine blog that explains the important things to know about digital photography, such as crop factor on lenses built for digital cameras, how a rolling shutter works, and more.

Iomega is clearing out one of their desktop hard drive models: the Mac mini footprint MiniMax in its 640 GB configuration with a built-in 3-port USB 2.0 hub for $80 ($100 with an extended warranty). Most of the other MiniMax capacities also have a FireWire hub, which may explain the clearance prices. I bought two.

Frequent App Store visitors will notice that Apple has recently reorganized things a bit. The main change is the addition of Top Free App and Top Paid App lists for every available category in the store.

To hear more about the 2008 TidBITS Gift Guide - why certain products made it, why others didn't, and more - click through to listen to Adam and Shawn King on this week's Your Mac Life Show. Also bandied about: the upcoming Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

You can now avoid an in-store visit at an Apple or AT&T Store to buy an iPhone 3G - so long as you're adding a line to an existing account or are a new AT&T customer. You can purchase an iPhone online and activate it at home. For those with existing phones (a first-generation iPhone or otherwise) who want to convert service, you have to visit a store still.

Listen: I don't go to novelist, comedian, actor, and director Stephen Fry's house and perform spot-on period interpretations of Oscar Wilde, nor, I might add, do I bombard him with screen adaptations of the works of Evelyn Waugh. So why, I must ask, does Mr. Fry persist in being all the things that he is so marvelous at - and a bloody interesting writer on things technological, too?

The T-Mobile G1 running the Android OS can't keep applications from downloading data even when a user has turned off the data roaming option, useful for avoiding heavy charges when traveling outside one's home country. Individual applications can override this setting without warning; you're only informed of this when a program is downloaded from the Android Market. Engadget has more.

Veteran Mac expert Rick LePage reviews the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 at his site Printerville. If you're a photographer who prints his or her own photos (rather than sending them to a print service), the 3800 is an impressive inkjet printer. Equally impressive these days is a site like Printerville that takes the time to thoroughly review these types of expensive niche products that professionals rely on to make their livings.

Watch TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman talk to the folks at AshMUG (Ashland, Oregon, Mac Users Group) at 7 pm Pacific. The event is streamed live. The main meeting starts at 6 pm Pacific.

John Chaffee of BusyMac has posted a detailed comparison of how Google's official CalDAV support for syncing events with iCal compares with his company's BusySync utility. BusySync isn't free, but as with so many things, you get what you pay for.

John Gruber reviews Deep Green, a chess program for the iPhone and iPod touch that started life a decade ago on the Newton. The new version was rewritten from scratch by its developer, Joachim Bondo, but Gruber writes it has "the same attention to detail, graphics, simplicity, and fun that marked the Newton version."

iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry (Twitterrific and Frenzic) works through the math of why it's a problem that developers need to lower prices to get favorable placement in the App Store. One possible solution: trial versions.

Employees at Walmart have slipped the news to reporters that the economy-dominating chain of stores will sell the iPhone. Earlier rumors suggested Walmart might have a less-expensive model containing only 4 GB of memory. Sales might start before Christmas.