Reprinted from TidBITS#806/21-Nov-05 with permission. Copyright (C) 2005, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ MailBITS/21-Nov-05 ------------------ **Next Issue 05-Dec-05** -- It's been a tough month here, with Jeff Carlson recovering from a broken collarbone and decamping for a four-week trip to South Africa, Geoff's knee losing a brawl with his bass amp, Tonya having numerous inconclusive tests and doctor appointments as we attempt to figure out why she's having trouble breathing, and a slew of Take Control books queued up for release. So we're eagerly anticipating a brief break for a Thanksgiving celebration with friends and family before we head into the action-packed holiday season. Look for our next issue 05-Dec-05! [ACE] **Submit Your Holiday 2005 Gift Ideas** -- Although the Christmas decorations appeared in some stores here even before Halloween, the time has finally come to start planning for our annual gift issue, overflowing as it does every year with suggestions from our readers. It's scheduled for publication in the second week in December, so please tell us what gifts you've put on your holiday wish list, along with those items you're planning to present to your loved ones this year. As always, we're collecting ideas in TidBITS Talk, so send your suggestions to or submit them in the TidBITS Talk Web forum, and please use plain text format, not 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. If possible, try to suggest products that haven't appeared in previous gift issues; we may drop repetitive suggestions from the issue itself. To refresh your memory on what readers have suggested previously, check out the last three gift issues before writing in. Thanks in advance! [ACE] **SpamSieve 2.4 Released** -- Michael Tsai has updated his popular and powerful spam detection utility SpamSieve to version 2.4 (see "Tools We Use: SpamSieve" in TidBITS-667_ for a full review). The update features tweaks to the Bayesian email analysis engine for improved accuracy, phishing detection, filing of spam into different mailboxes in Apple Mail based on spam scores, support for new Habeas headers, and a variety of other minor changes. New copies of SpamSieve 2.4 cost $25 (save $5 with the coupon in "Take Control of What's New in Entourage 2004" or the soon-to-be- updated "Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail"), but the update is free to registered users. It's a 3.1 MB download. [ACE] **Firmware Update Solves Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz Freezes** -- Last week, a reader wrote in asking if we knew anything more about the freezing problems he was having with his single processor Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz. Almost simultaneously, Apple released a firmware update for that machine that promises to address a number of freezes, enabling us to write back and tell him that we'd looked into the problem, contacted Apple, and that they had dropped everything to release a firmware update for us. Every now and then you just have to take credit for utter coincidences! There are separate updates for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.3; they're about 1 MB in size. [ACE] **DealBITS Drawing: Sunatori.com Pen Winners** -- Congratulations to Gloria White of rockingham.k12.va.us and Stefan Keydel of mac.com, whose entries were chosen randomly from 694 valid entries in last week's DealBITS drawing and who each will be receiving a Sunatori.com Pen from HyperInfo Canada, worth $20. If you weren't among our winners, you can still save 50 percent on a Sunatori.com Pen through 25-Dec-05 by using the first link below. This offer is open to all TidBITS readers. Keep an eye out for future DealBITS drawings! [ACE] .