We're taking the last two weeks of the year off, so look for the next email issue of TidBITS on 4 January 2010. But we'll continue posting new articles to our Web site, and TidBITS Talk will also continue apace.

We're celebrating the holidays with a 50-percent-off sale on all our Take Control ebooks. It's a great opportunity to stock up on all sorts of helpful Mac and iPhone titles.

A year after the Windows version of Google's Web browser first appeared, a beta version of Google Chrome for Mac OS X has been released.

Reports of Apple's latest iMacs arriving with cracked screens and faulty displays have been circulating around the Web. Here's a look at the symptoms, suspected causes, and what you can do about it if you're affected.

Apple has added a handful of new Mac Pro and Xserve configurations which offer larger hard drive capacities, faster CPU speeds in the quad-core Mac Pro, and higher memory ceilings in the quad-core Xserve.

Tired of those talking head documentaries about how wonderful the Internet is? Tune in instead to this mashup of uncut documentary footage that has Internet luminaries sounding like utter lunatics.

Look at the TidBITS Watchlist widget in the upper right of our Web site to see how we've tweaked the way we present software updates to be individual items on our Web site while maintaining a collection of them in each email issue of TidBITS.

MacSpeech, Inc. and The Emergent Institute have partnered up to offer one-on-one training - given by people with disabilities - for the MacSpeech Dictate product family.

Some TidBITS readers' antivirus filters flagged TidBITS #1006 as being malicious, but a little research quickly exonerated our email issue, showing that the antivirus filter in question was instead badly designed.

If one display is good, wouldn't two be better? Maybe not, if you're talking about a laptop computer or ebook reading device, but that hasn't stopped various companies and researchers from coming up with a number of different ways of shoehorning a second display into a portable device.

After putting up with basic calendaring limitations that Apple failed to improve in Snow Leopard, Snow Leopard Server, and iPhone OS 3.0, Rich Mogull worries that his devotion to Apple server technologies may be indication of mental disorder.

Notable software releases this week include VMware Fusion 3.0.1, Things 1.2.6, Keyboard Maestro 4.0, BusyCal 1.1, MacBook/MacBook Pro Optical Drive Firmware Updates, Camino 2.0.1, and AirPort Client Update 2009-002.

Our reading was nearly all about mobile devices this week, with pointers to iPhone apps reviewing the events of the decade and allowing AT&T customers to report poor service, plus articles about the Barnes & Noble Nook ebook reader and AT&T's plans to curtail heavy use of the iPhone data plan. Adam talked about iPhone GPS apps with Andy Ihnatko and Chuck Joiner on MacNotables, and Andy also has a hilarious blog post revealing the Dragon Dictation app's prudishness. Finally, we note the fast approaching deadlines for iPhoto print products and explain how recent AirPort base stations have theoretically higher speeds.

Old Mac technology continues to be a focus for TidBITS Talk readers, as this week we discuss ways to use an aging HP scanner under Snow Leopard, installing Rosetta for Eudora, networking an old printer, and erasing a 1 GB SCSI hard disk (we like the hammer idea). Also this week, a look at iPhoto '09, comparing BusyCal and BusySync for synchronizing calendars, and a surprising discount on MobileMe in an Apple retail store.