Reprinted from TidBITS#807/05-Dec-05 with permission. Copyright (C) 2005, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ MailBITS/05-Dec-05 ------------------ **Last Call for Holiday 2005 Gift Ideas** -- Submissions for our holiday gift issue have been a little light this year, particularly in the hardware and game categories, so if you've been holding off, drop us a note with your suggestions by 07-Dec-05. As always, we're collecting ideas in TidBITS Talk, so send suggestions to or submit them in the TidBITS Talk Web forum, and please use plain text format rather than HTML. We've already started threads for specific categories. Please suggest only one product or idea per message, give the reason why you're recommending it, make sure to include a URL or other necessary contact information, and please recommend only others' products. Thanks! [ACE] **Security Update 2005-009 Released** -- Apple has released Security Update 2005-009, preventing a diverse collection of possible exploits in both the desktop and server versions of Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Mac OS X 10.4.3. The most notable changes are to Safari, in which Apple improved handling of credit card security codes, eliminated a bug in the JavaScript engine's PCRE (regular expression) library, ensured that files with overly long names won't be downloaded into unexpected locations, caused JavaScript- generated dialogs to identify the site that created them, and fixed a heap overflow that could enable arbitrary code execution in WebKit-based applications. Other components of Mac OS X seeing fixes include Apache2, apache_mod_ssl, CoreFoundation, CoreTypes, curl, iodbcadmintool, OpenSSL, passwordserver, QuickDraw Manager, ServerMigration, sudo, and syslog. Security Update 2005-009 is available via Software Update and as a standalone download for each version of Mac OS X; sizes range from 6 MB to 33 MB. [ACE] **One for the Mac, Nineteen for Windows** -- U.S. Mac owners have one less option to pay the taxman. For a few years, H&R Block developed TaxCut for Mac OS X, paralleling their fairly good online site for tax preparation and filing. However, there will be no TaxCut 2005 (that's tax year, not release year). With the growth in tax-preparation Web sites that provide instant feedback, don't require downloaded updates, and offer all kinds of upsell ("Have an accountant review your return for $75, and we'll ship you a cheese sandwich for $15!"), standalone Mac OS X tax software appears to be a losing game. That said, Intuit's TurboTax remains an option for Mac users (Intuit also offers Windows and online versions). Their 2005 tax year version for federal filing is available now; state tax add-ons will appear starting next month. For years, I worked with an accountant because of some complicated payout issues and other matters. I switched to TaxCut because I like the Web site and although the standalone version had some shortcomings, it seemed like the right choice. Now that I'm being forced to switch away from TaxCut, I'll be curious to see how easy it is to move my Quicken data into TurboTax. [GF] **Bare Bones Updates Text Editors** -- Bare Bones Software has updated both of their text editors, the powerful BBEdit and the freeware TextWrangler. Both programs, which share the same text engine, benefit from a variety of bug fixes and the capability to turn off the Script menu. BBEdit 8.2.4 is a free update and is a 15.2 MB download; TextWrangler 2.1.1 is a 9 MB download. [ACE] **Gentium Goes Open Source** -- Gentium is a lovely and free Unicode font designed by Victor Gualtney (at the University of Reading, in England) and now distributed by SIL International, a far-seeing organization that has long played an important and generous role in linguistic computing and related causes. Gentium contains a full range of characters for the Latin alphabet with all variants and diacritical marks, as well as Greek (Ancient and Modern) and phonetic symbols, making it a splendid choice for those wishing to represent Latin-based writing systems and transliterations, as well as for classicists and others. The news is that SIL has switched to a new "Open Font License" structure, making it possible for users to modify Gentium and to contribute to its further development. Those interested in languages, fonts, and the open source movement will find this to be a significant and commendable development. [MAN] **EyeTV 1.8.4 Offers One-Step Export to iPod Video** -- If the limited selection of TV shows available on the iTunes Music Store is preventing you from watching video on your new iPod, check out the latest version of EyeTV from Elgato Systems. EyeTV works with video hardware to enable you to watch and record TV on your Mac, edit out unwanted content, and (in conjunction with Roxio's Toast) burn recorded shows to CD or DVD. The latest update, version 1.8.4, adds the capability to export shows to one of two formats for video iPods: QuickTime H.264 or MPEG-4, the latter of which Elgato claims encodes five times faster and offers higher resolution output. The updates is free to registered users of EyeTV, which costs $80 on its own, or comes in a dizzying array of bundles from Elgato (due in large part to international television standards; only four products are appropriate for U.S. Mac users). [ACE] .