A reader found that connecting his iPod touch to his Mac caused iPhoto to launch and show the iPod touch's Settings app. Adam explains what happened and how to stop the annoying launches.

ShowStoppers isn't exactly related to CES, but many of the CES exhibitors showed up at this media event, showing off neat products ranging from a GSM-to-VoIP call router to a 3D printer, along with a service that will ensure Jeff Porten never again gets a second date.

During the press days at CES, before the exhibition floor opens, some of the most interesting bits of technology are shown to members of the media, like our own Jeff Porten. Read on to learn about laser projectors, minuscule computers, iPhone-controlled hovercrafts, and yes, a blender.

A federal appeals court has ruled in Apple's favor regarding a class-action lawsuit that claimed iPods could cause serious hearing damage.

For all our readers who use an iPhone or iPod touch, check out our new TidBITS News app! It provides access to the full text of all recent TidBITS articles, complete with graphics, embedded movies, and, when available, audio versions.

Apple's late-January booking of a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco has ignited yet another round of furious Apple tablet speculation. With all the theories, assumptions, and stories kicking around, it's easy to feel completely lost on the subject. To help you wrap your head around the buzz, Gizmodo has compiled a summary of all the Apple tablet rumors to date... or you could just wait until Apple's announcement to see what happens.

New York Times columnist David Pogue is holding Verizon Wireless's toes to the fire regarding the carrier's dubious pricing schemes. The profit centers in question include doubling early cancellation fees for smartphones and charging users $2 a pop for hitting those hard-to-miss arrow buttons on the keypad. Despite the involvement of the FCC, which formally asked Verizon for answers, Verizon continues to deny culpability. In other words, the grass isn't always greener in other cellular carrier pastures.

Scrambling to come up with last-minute presents for those lingering on your gift list? If you and your recipient are Facebook users, consider an iTunes Store gift card. You can now purchase virtual iTunes gift cards through Facebook, without needing iTunes at all. To purchase one, you must become a fan of iTunes on Facebook, then click the iTunes Gifts tab to follow customization and purchase instructions. The certificates come in $5 (which isn't available normally via iTunes itself), $10, $15, and $25 values.

TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman spent weeks driving aimlessly for Macworld, where his overall look at GPS navigation for the iPhone appears, along with reviews of nine apps and the TomTom car kit.

As the first decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close, We-Envision.com has created an unusual iPhone app that provides a visual overview of 75 key world events from the last ten years. Bush v. Gore, the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the French student protests of 2006 and Burmese monk protests of 2007, Barack Obama's election, and many others are presented via full-screen photos from news sites, organized by date or subject, and bolstered by Wikipedia-derived details.

In this most recent MacNotables podcast, Adam and Andy Ihnatko talked with host Chuck Joiner about the demise of the CrunchPad tablet briefly before focusing on iPhone GPS apps and what they do right and wrong. (Don't miss the outtakes!)

The inimitable Andy Ihnatko writes on his Celestial Waste of Bandwith blog about testing Dragon Dictation, the free iPhone version of Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software. Andy accidentally discovers that Dragon Dictation censors naughty words, which practically forces him to read it George Carlin's famous "Seven Words" routine, with predictably amusing results. Why censor? Perhaps to get it through the App Store approval process?

TechCrunch covers the unveiling of Square, a new mobile phone payment service created by one of the co-founders of Twitter. A small device that plugs into a mobile phone's headset/microphone jack lets you swipe credit cards, with the information being transferred first to the Square software and then to the Square service for processing. Square could be popular with farmers market vendors or anyone who needs to take payments and has an iPhone or Android-based smartphone. But would you really want to keep handing your iPhone to customers for signatures?

Although Apple doesn't allow iPhone apps to communicate with one another, as software on the Mac can, watch for apps to start gaining additional functionality by integrating licensed code from other developers. Robyn Weisman talks to SmileOnMyMac and Occipital about how their text-expansion and barcode-scanning SDKs are being integrated into various iPhone apps.

Rogue Amoeba has released an update to Airfoil Speakers Touch, the iPhone app whose update Apple delayed by 100 days because of an objection to the use of "Apple-owned graphic symbols" (despite the fact that the symbols, provided by a public function in Mac OS X, were fulfilling their intended use). After much hoopla, it appears that Apple has changed its mind, and the functionality Rogue Amoeba had to omit in version 1.0.1 has been restored in 1.0.2. Once again, it appears that negative press was necessary to push Apple into acting in a reasonable fashion, which is a shame.