Source:Music industry eases tactics in fighting piracy
(Reuters)

Source:Wal-Mart iPhone Sales: Where's the Discount?
(PC World)

Source:Expo: FmPro Migrator updated to add FileMaker 10 support
(Macworld.com)

Source:China approves long-delayed 3G mobile licenses
(AP)

Source:Lenovo IdeaCentre touted as world's slimmest all-in-one PC

Source:Palm plans new phone, new OS debuts at CES

The configuration is the same as for the Most Read module.

Source:Random article links module

And if you think what you want to try and achieve can’t be done without a Core hack, then make sure you educate your users before they install your extension so that they understand what you’re doing. To their credit some people do this well but there are cases where this could be done better! Make sure its not some surprise to them that something has changed without them knowing. And then, once you’ve made it work out what you would have needed within Joomla! to make what you wanted to do work without a hack. Perhaps you just need a plugin trigger in the right place or you need an extra field in a table somewhere that would make your life and others easier. Once you’ve worked out what you need, put it together in a white paper and submit it to the white paper forum for consideration in the next Joomla! release. With 1.6, integrated core ACL will hopefully remove one of the larger areas for Core hacks for that aspect as well as new plugin triggers to help mitigate other issues.

So developers, lets have a nice new years resolution to do our best not to hack the Core or work so that we don’t have to do it any more.

Source:Developers, please don't use hack the Core

Source:Malaysia mulls 'cyber court' to handle Internet crimes
(AFP)

Source:World of Warcraft adds another half million subscribers
(Macworld.com)

Source:Yahoo! bringing Internet to Samsung television sets
(AFP)

Source:Best Buy offers used iPhones at lower price

Source:Miccus Unleashes Digital Music: Launches BluBridge Home Speaker and Wireless Audio Line

Source:UPDATE 1-Microsoft sold 28 mln Xbox 360s by end of 2008

Source:Sixty Percent of All Humanity Owns a Cell Phone
(PC Magazine)

Source:Microsoft Zunes spontaneously dying all over the place
(Macworld.com)

Source:China to start awarding 3G mobile phone licences: state media
(AFP)

Source:Macworld and CES both open this week

Source:Windows 7 Leaked To The Internet

Source:#1 in '08: Hackers crack iPhone 2.0 code

The code is under GPL Licence and is based on Smart Image Resizer 1.4.1 by: Joe Lencioni (http://shiftingpixel.com)

Updated to 1.0 stable version
- Fixed a problem with leading slashes in image path on some servers;
- Intro text is no more cut in the middle of a word, but after the last word;
- Added random ordering of articles.

1.0 RC1 version
- Fixed working when Joomla is installed in a subdirectory;
- Added include and exclude for multiple sections and categories;
- Added introtext crop function (excerpts of articles to a predefined number of characters);

Source:ThumbsUp Latest News with images thumbnails

Lee Cher Yeong (aka dknight) has taken the title for the month December 2008.

As the winner of this month’s Award, Lee will be receiving a brand new Joomla! T-shirt. We would like to take this time to thank him for all of his hard work helping the Joomla! Community, which he will hopefully keep on doing.

Contest Rules and Hall of Fame <– and how to nominate members for next month! Just do it! You got all month…

If you want to congratulate Lee, you can do so in the forum announcement.

Source:Joomla! Member of the Month Award - December 2008