New & Noteworthy: Retail store news; AirPort 2.0 review; iBooks; ipodhacks.com; Exabyte merger; more

Apple retail stores set to open soon The new store inFashion Valley in San Diego, California is set to open this Friday at 8:00 am. Three others appear on the verge (maybe this weekend -- we do not know for certain). Valley Fair in Santa Clara, California, The Falls in Miami, Florida, Walden Galleria in Buffalo, New York. With these stores, the total reaches 22, making Apple's goal of opening 25 stores by the end of the year a realistic possibility.

Apple's improvements to wireless networking may tempt you aboard From the Seattle Times: "Apple's access point is called the AirPort Base Station; many manufacturers make similar equipment, often sold for $50 to $100 less, that works just fine with Macs. But Apple's revision adds some oomph that pushes its base station back into consideration." More.

Apple delivers lots of bite for your holiday bucks From the Lexington Herald-Leader: "Check out the shiny new lineup of Macintosh iBooks. If someone on your gift list isn't wedded to PCs and wants a stylish, dependable, easy-to-use computer, a mainstream Mac just might be the ticket. The best bargain Mac at the moment is the compact iBook laptop, which underwent a dramatic makeover in May and saw additional improvements last month." More.

New iPod Web site iPodHacks.com The name says it all.

Exabyte, Ecrix merge From MacCentral: "The merger of Exabyte, which specializes in network backup systems, and Ecrix, which makes Mac compatible tape storage solutions, is now complete." More.

What Evil Lurks in the Hearts (and Hard Drives) of Men? From the New York Times: "Doc Savage had ultraviolet goggles. The Shadow had 'the power to cloud men's minds.' Chris and David Kalb had a Recoton CD-to-cassette converter [and a Macintosh Powerbook 2400]." More.

To Forestall a 'Digital Pearl Harbor,' U.S. Looks to System Separate From Internet From the New York Times: "The Bush administration is considering the creation of a secure new government communications network separate from the Internet that would be less vulnerable to attack and efforts to disrupt critical federal activities." More.