The big tech story of last week was the release of the Amazon Kindle 2 ebook reader. Its got a better resolution screen with 16 gray levels instead of 4, a smaller 'next page' button to prevent accidental page turning, a cleaned-up look and is thinner overall. And, yes, it is still not available outside the US. So my big complaint about the original Kindle stands.

I'll take a break from complaining to do a small public service announcement. If you ponied up for a 2009 Ford Ranger 2 wheel drive, you may want get it back to dealer. Over 11 000 are being recalled for improperly manufactured front wheel spindles. Engineer-to-English translation: you could be driving down the highway minding your own business when the front wheels break off and go rolling away without you. There are a fairly large number of vehicle recalls in a typical year, but this is pretty big.

And finally, a group of online scammers defrauded the state of Utah to the tune of $2.5 million dollars. It seemed the scam revolved around obtaining a vendor number from the state (which are used to identify contracters providing maintenance, garbage collection, etc), waiting for the account to get passed to a different administrator, and then sending in a bogus invoice and hoping the new guy never noticed. Oops.