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The iPod has not been a gateway to history. That's changing in part because of an 86-year-old man with a story to tell, a professor of criminal justice with a class to teach, and a team of broadcasters with a desire to use podcasting to bridge generations.

KVSC, the radio station at St. Cloud State University, has just finished producing a series of podcasts based on the book, The Unbroken Chain, the story of Henry Oertelt of St. Paul. The idea started with professor Barry Schreiber, who wanted Oertelt's story told, after he heard it during one of Oertelt's public presentations.

Schreiber approached Jo McMullen-Boyer, the station manager of KVSC, and their idea of history by podcast was born.

What are the possibilities for incorporating podcasts into education?

I talked with Oertelt, Schreiber, and McMullen-Boyer.

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Syracuse University psychology professor Joshua Smyth recently divided 100 students into four groups. One got tokens to play at a local arcade, a second group played Gauntlet: Dark Legacy on a PS2, a third played Diablo II on a PC, and the fourth played Dark Age of Camelot, the only game that involves online interaction with someone else.

The last group played more than twice as much as the next most avid group. They also reported lower overall health, mostly because they lost sleep. But there were also favorable advantages. They had more fun, and made more friends.

FMI: MMORPG blog

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The latest Pew Internet and American Life Project survey says teenager and parental technological profiles are similar. True, teens are more likely to say the Internet and related technology has made their own lives easier, but both teens and parents are online at about the same rate, over 90 percent.

Oh, and mom and dad know what you're up to on Facebook and MySpace, the survey suggests.

I talked with Amanda Lenhart, the senior research specialist for the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

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In the last few years, candidates' online sites and e-mails have become a significant tool for their dash for campaign cash. Markus Jakobbson, the associate director of Indiana University's Center for Cybersecurity Research, says the potential for phishers to use e-mails that look like they come from candidates, is immense.

Theoretically, anyone can set up a Web site to look like an official site for a candidate or cause, all just to mine your bank or credit card account information. He's set up securitycartoon.com to spread the word.

His white paper, "The Threat of Political Phishing," was co-written with Christopher Soghoian.

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Last January, Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist from Kansas State University, uploaded a short video to YouTube called "Web 2.0, the Machine is Using Us." The video documents how the Web is changing how we communicate and how fast.

It quickly became the most viewed video on YouTube, watched by over 3 million people.

Wesch is an evangelist for media literacy. He teaches teachers how to use the Web, because, he says, students are good at being entertained by technology, but they're not particularly good at using it to mine, identify, and sort valuable information.

I talked to him recently after he gave a presentation at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. There, he also showed a new film, A Vision of Students Today. You can also learn more on the blog Digital Ethnography.

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Recent FBI statistics show violent crimes increased from 2005 to 2006. The non-partisan Urban Institute says it's no coincidence that iPod ownership rose at the same time.

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From time to time, we like to present primers on technology terms you hear in the news. Today, we look at a kind of Internet mischief known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Guest: Nick Ianelli, a member of the technical staff the CERT Coordination Center, a federally-funded computer security organization.

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The Select a Candidate site from Minnesota Public Radio doesn't tell citizens who to vote for - but it does help them find the candidates aligned with their own views on the issues.

Guest: Select a Candidate creator Bob Collins

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Should you side with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? How about neither?

Competing electronics companies and Hollywood studios are pushing consumers to buy next-generation DVD players that offer a better picture and more storage. Problem is, the two flavors of higher-definition DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, are incompatible.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata is so fed up with the Blue-Ray versus HD-DVD format war that he says consumers should opt out of the whole mess.

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Remember 1999, when froth over the Internet had been whipped into a stiff peak? When companies with no real products raised millions through IPOs and spent like crazy on lavish office parties and free gourmet food for employees? Remember Pets.com and Webvan?

Some observers argue that Silicon Valley, which seems to be cranking out a new Internet company every day, is beginning to look rather bubble-ish again.

Guest: Kevin Delaney, Wall Street Journal

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Lorrie Faith Cranor says experts have done a poor job teaching Internet users how to defend themselves against the kind of Internet fraud knows as phishing.

Cranor, associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed a simple online game, Anti-Phishing Phil, that teaches players how to tell a good Web site address from a fraudulent one

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A new study shows some Roomba owners become emotionally attached to the robotic vacuums, even when they underperform.

"They're more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it," said Beki Grinter, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's College of Computing.

Grinter decided to study the devices after she saw online pictures of people dressing up their Roombas, the disc-shaped, self-directed vacuums made by iRobot Corp.

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The student newspaper at Princeton University reports that 40 percent of students and faculty at the New Jersey Ivy League school now use Apple Macintosh computers, compared to just 10 percent four years ago.

Macs are apparently THE hot computers on campuses across the country.

Guest: Julio Ojeda-Zapata, St. Paul Pioneer Press

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One of Maria Klawe's missions as president of the prestigious math, science and engineering school, Harvey Mudd College, is to boost the number of young women entering the field of computer science.

Klawe, former dean of engineering at Princeton University and past president of the Association for Computing Machinery, is on a bit of a recruiting mission, making the case that for women, the information technology job market is wide open and salaries are high.

Klawe will deliver a keynote address at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing next week in Orlando.

For a transcript of this interview and to submit comments, visit wavLegnth.