Question
I use iTunes to download your weekly podcast, as well as several other public radio podcasts (Car Talk, Wait Wait, etc), using my home desktop. When I’m on the road (as I am the coming week, when we will be driving down Route 1 from SF to LA), I use iTunes on my laptop to download the podcasts. However, the two computers are not synchronized.

If I haven’t used the laptop in several weeks, I find that I am downloading program episodes that I have already heard when using the desktop. Is there some way to synchronize iTunes on the two computers (the only iTunes feature I use is to download podcasts)? Does iTunes, for example, use a data file that I could copy from the desktop to the laptop just prior to leaving on a trip?

The new iPhone G3 has a flush mount headphone jack and that is a good thing. The original iPhone had a resessed headphone jack that made it inconvenient to say the least. I constantly grab a pair of headphones and have to slice off a bit of the plug to allow it to fit into the iPhone. But that only gives me good listening and doesn't provide a microphone.

IMAP is, in my opinion, the way to go for email. It allows you to view your email from any computer and yet keep a master copy of the email messages on a server. Google has IMAP support built into GMail so that you can use your favorite email client to read your GMail email. So, for quite a while now, I have been using IMAP to connect too my 3 email inboxes. And, being on a Mac, I have been using Apple Mail, sometimes called Mail.app to read my mail. But about 2 weeks ago I noticed that I could not use the Mail search to find matches using "Entire Message" as the target of the search. Here is how I fixed that problem.

Recently a listener wrote in:
"Can not figure out where or how, when online, I can select a portion of a
page, select color or grayscale, and select "best, normal, draft," etc.
Even in Word it takes a bunch of steps to do that, but online the "copies
& pages, paper/type/quality" is missing from the list. How do I do this?
Thanks, Jim, using an iMac and OSX."

Here is a clip from The Colbert Report explaining the current state of US telecommunications monopolies.

We seem to regularly receive calls from people having problems or concerns with their computer when connecting it to the Internet. Viruses, hackers, worms, spyware, tojans, and the list goes on. All this craziness to worry about when simply plugging your computer into a cable modem, and then having to wonder if you will be able to login to your own computer the next day. Has my computer been "owned" ("pwn3d" for you uber 3733t [elite] geeks out there)? What can I do to try and protect my computer?

Mike writes in:

Hi I have an old Compaq 7470 PC with a 1999 dated internal hard drive. I was wondering if it was possible to extract the contents (files) of the old hard drive by a simple connection to my laptop. I just thought there
might exist a connection that allows the drive to show up as maybe an external drive ( like a traveldrive ) from an ATA to firewire connection. Maybe my understanding of the process is a bit off however. Thanks for any info.

phpBB3 is the next major release of the phpBB discussion forum software. phpBB is probably one of the most commonly used forums on the Net and this next release has some improvements worth being excited about whether you're a discussion forum administrator or a user on a site that is considering upgrading to phpBB3. Here I will discuss my initial assessment of phpBB3 and highlight some of the key feature enhancements I've noticed.

Well you all know I like talking about Gmail and Firefox, so what better way to start off than a post that combines both!?

Hello Geeks,
I download many things and am always installing and uninstalling whatever
cool new software I can find. Because of this I really need to keep up