14 Things Geeks Can Teach The World

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Every group of friends has that one person to go to for tech advice: what kind of TV to buy, the right HTML tags to pimp out a MySpace page, and so on. Believe me, I would know. But although I consider myself fairly willing to share the tech wealth, my powers pale in comparison with the sage wisdom dispersed in the "Ask a Geek" feature found in each issue of Popular Science. Every month, we feed the practical questions faced by everyday netizens to some of the Web's brightest minds-including Gina Trapani (editor of Lifehacker), Merlin Mann (editor of 43 Folders), Jake Ludington (keeper of the MediaBlab blog) and Annalee Newitz (tech writer extraordinaire, Second Life whiz)-, anything from ridding your computer of spyware to using any song file on your computer as a ringtone.

But that´s only the beginning. Here we present a compendium of the choicest nuggets of nerdy advice-get yourself a geek education by launching the photo gallery.

And if you have any wisdom of your own to share, or perhaps a question for our geeks, we want to hear about it over on the How 2.0 Blog. -John Mahoney

Table of Contents:

1. How Do I Hang My Flat-Screen TV? by Bryan Greenway
2. 
   How (and Why) Should I Encrypt My Data? by Gina Trapani
3. Can I Download Streaming Videos Off the Web? by Jake Ludington
4. Can I Plug In My Prius? by Stephan Wilkinson
5. Can Viruses Attack My Cellphone? by Eugene Kaspersky
6. How Can I Make a Personalized Email Address? by Merlin Mann
7. How Can I Surf the Web Anonymously? by Annalee Newitz
8. How Can I Guard Against Spyware? by Ben Edelman
9. Can I Use My Own Songs as Ringtones? by Gina Trapani
10. What Music Format is Best? by Jonathan Coulton
11. Why Do Batteries Explode? by Nicole Dyer
12. Is the Music Industry Still Suing People? by Fred von Lohmann
13. Can I Wipe My Name off the Web? by Lauren Gelman
14. How Can I Tame My Overflowing Inbox? by Merlin Mann