Garmin is voluntarily recalling about 1.25 million n├╝vi GPS devices, nearly 800,000 of which were sold in the United States. The recall is to address a problem with the battery that could cause the device to overheat and become a fire hazard. Affected units include the n├╝vi 200W, 250W, 260W, and 7xx (where xx is a two-digit number), though apparently not the 255W we reviewed in 2008. Fewer than 10 cases of overheating have been identified, but Garmin will replace the battery and insert a spacer before returning your GPS, free of charge.

Seton Hall University, which is providing free iPads to all fulltime students, has now announced a collaboration with We-Envision.com, creators of the Art Authority for iPad app, under which art history students will use the app as an integral part of classes this semester. Seton Hall's pilot program is aimed at understanding how the iPad can be used to aid, extend, and transform the traditional learning environment, and it will be interesting to see how Art Authority enables the students to go beyond the usual uses of the iPad as a stand-in for a paper textbook.

"Sorry for forgetting your birthday, Grandma!" It turns out that the iOS calendar won't display birthdays of people whose first birthday was more than 77 years ago. This is true only of birthdays in the special Birthdays calendar that's generated automatically from birthday information in Address Book. The only workaround for the moment is to create birthday events in a different calendar, though it's probably not worth much effort, since Apple will undoubtedly fix the bug in the next iOS revision by searching for "77" in the code and replacing it with a larger number. Thanks to reader Carl Pohle for alerting us to this one!

For those who want direct access to their iOS device's filesystem, Macroplant is making their Phone Disk utility available for free through 1 December 2010. Phone Disk lets you mount your device like any other disk and copy files to and from it, without any need for jailbreaking. You can even copy files into app directories by clicking the Phone Disk menu bar icon and choosing the desired app from the Change Connection Root submenu.

It's always a problem when a name ceases to describe a company or program properly (et tu, iTunes?), so the long-standing Mac software company SmileOnMyMac has now shortened its name to just Smile in recognition of the fact that they now develop software for iOS devices as well. We suspect it's also an experiment in subliminal advertising - is it possible to read the word "Smile" without smiling?

The dating site OkCupid does interesting research on their user base, with the latest finding being that better cameras take better photos that make their subjects look more attractive. Not surprising, but it is unexpected that the iPhone is the second-ranked camera phone, and isn't much behind most point-and-shoot cameras (and well ahead of the low-ranked Kodak EasyShare, which will ensure you never get a date). Lastly, although this could be good or bad, depending on whether you're a single 30-something or thinking about what phone to get your teenage daughter, it seems that iPhone users of the site sleep with roughly twice as many people as Android users do. Hmm...

Thanks to iPad stand manufacturer LapWorks for putting together this slideshow of clever homemade iPad stands made from things like the iPad's own packaging, rubber-banded pencils, Legos, Tinkertoys, a bathroom plunger, a cereal box, and even an extremely relaxed cat.

Congratulations to Nitrozac and Snaggy for 10 years of their technology-focused Joy of Tech comic, which has long been a regular stop for all of us here at TidBITS. If you're not reading it, you're missing out on one of the top sources of technology humor, often with a wry emphasis on the world of Apple.

Don't get too paranoid about this, but security researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown than Android graphical passwords can be recovered by photographing the screen of a smartphone and analyzing the smudge patterns. There isn't much likelihood of this attack being used widely, because its utility requires either gaining control of the smartphone or the same password being used elsewhere, and the screen can easily be cleaned. But it's still interesting just where security vulnerabilities will be found.