I got an email from an eBay buyer saying that he had a question for me about an auction, but it's not an auction I'm running. Will I get into trouble with eBay if I don't answer the question? I mean, I don't really understand what's going on?

I've been trying to add some new stamps to my collection by looking on eBay, and while I am amazed at the range and variety of what's available for us philatelists, I'm finding it very tedious to have to be logged in and watching for those last few minutes of the auction to ensure someone else doesn't win at the very last second. Is that just part of buying things on eBay? I also don't understand how auctions work when they're selling more than a single item. Can you enlighten an old man on this newfangled stuff?

I have been using Twhirl as my Twitter client and am pretty happy with it, but I'm baffled by one thing: recently someone sent me an email that included a URL on Twitter that took me to a page that had just a single tweet on it. How did they do that?

Now that I have a shiny new iPhone, I've gone a bit wild adding applications from the iTunes Application Store. So many applications that it's out of control. Now I want to delete some, but each time I delete them on the iPhone then hook the phone up to the computer, they reappear! :-(

I follow your awesome Twitter movie news and trivia channel @FilmBuzz and figured you'd know the answer to this question: How can I find out how much money a movie, like, say, Eragon, made in the theater?

Hi Dave. I'm a follower of your blog..its wonderful that you answer so many questions. I'm in a trouble and hope you will help me. :-)

I have a blog on Blogger. Recently I discovered that whenever I post in my blog a copy of my post is being copied into a website automatically and that I am losing all my traffic. Not only me but also the same problem persists with another blogger...

I'm getting depressed & feeling very sad. What to do?

Hi Dave, love the blog. My question for you is what is the best way to get bloggers to utilize and write about my research. I work for a company called VideoBloom and I do a lot of research on online video that I'm trying to get bloggers to write about. I read your response on how to get bloggers to write about your company, but does that approach change when you have research to offer them? Thanks!

I want to compare a line in a file with zero(0) and if its more than zero i want to print the prior two lines, can u please help me in solving out this... please

What are the best sites to visit to learn about the history of holidays like Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc? For that matter, when did people start celebrating Independence Day? In 1777?

I'm excited to add the many new capabilities and improvements to my beloved Apple iPhone, but have heard that the jump from 1.1.4 to 2.0 completely wipes your phone. Can you show me how to step through this firmware upgrade and reassure me that my contacts, photos, music, etc will all be there on the other side?

I just downloaded the latest version of iTunes, all excited about being able to finally get to the Apple Applications Store and grab some new stuff for my iPhone, but when I restart, it's not there?!

I was visiting a friend's Livejournal blog and to leave a comment I needed an "OpenID". But I have no idea what that is and where one registers for an Open ID. Does it cost money?

I'm excited that the Olympics are coming up and thrilled that NBC is going to have thousands of hours of additional video footage available on its Web site NBC Olympics.com, but highly bummed that I can't watch it on my Mac! Apparently you need Microsoft Silverlight, which is only available on Windows systems?

How much would it cost if someone made me my own grand theft auto: san andreas my style like [ no prostitutes, better looking cars, customize any vehicle, no missions, every thing unlocked for free play, and two player both can run free with out being with eachother every second of two player,plus real police cars such as sheriff and regular squad cars, plus you can steal cruise ships, freight liners and other big ships. plus unlimited ammo,and health,never damaged your vehicle,plus unlimited money and you have to pump your own gas into your own vehicle plz send back and tell me how much it would cost.

I've heard that you are a big film aficionado and I'm wondering, what sites do you read and where do you talk about films? Also, do you ever write movie reviews for your local newspaper, the Daily Camera?

My iPhone is being very weird: when I plug it into my iMac the computer doesn't seem to recognize it any more. How do I fix it so I can be a happy iPhone user again?

I recently enabled a search widget from Lijit on my blog and it works awesomely well, except for one little problem. Apparently some people are searching for weird and unpleasant things on my site and their searches are showing up in the "search cloud" on the Lijit widget. Not good. Not what I want at all. How can I clean that up?

Now that I've learned about Twitter, I want to start monitoring what people are saying about both my company products and those of my competitors. Is there some decent tool to do this? Twitter certainly doesn't have that capability!

I want to get into blogging, but I hear from my friends that it's really hard because after a few weeks you start to suffer from writer's block. I generally like to know what I'm getting into before I dive in, so do I need to be worried? How do you avoid writer's block as an author or blogger?

As a subscriber to Comcast digital cable I gained a goofy little cable box and a big, complicated remote control. I can handle the remote, but would really like to have it control my Sony TV in addition to the cable box. How the heck do I program it?

I have a RAZR with Verizon and keep lusting after the Apple iPhone. Now that they have a new 3G phone coming out, do you think I should terminate my contract a few months early and get one?

After many years of using a PC, I've finally switched to a Mac and am now running Microsoft Windows Vista within the VMware Fusion environment. I have heard from a bunch of people that it's better than Parallels. Anyway, be that as it may, can you tell me how to install the VMware Tools, which apparently I need?

I want to know if there's some way to automate searching the craigslist site with a shell script or similar so that I can keep an eye on it and know when certain rare auction items show up for sale?

A really hardcore Mac geek pal of mine tells me that it's better to install the incremental system releases rather than occasionally apply a multi-increment installer. I don't really understand why, but assuming he's right, is there any way I can tell what I've done?

I got this question via Twitter, rather appropriately:

How do you block someone from following you or even sending you @replies in Twitter?

I'm running a weblog for my company and we have some people from the business community who are adding comments after our blog entries, which is great. Other people who we don't know put in incorrect or off topic remarks and I want to just delete them, but I'm not sure whether that's okay or not. Specifically, isn't it censorship if I delete the remarks people leave on our site?

I'm a big fan of Bluetooth, but not Bluetooth headsets. I know, it's probably a bit goofy, but I can't help think that it's a bad idea to have a wireless electronic device hooked over your ear and beaming random electrical waves into your skull.

Some modern phones have no options - either you use Bluetooth for a headset or you hold the phone itself up to your head - but fortunately the Apple iPhone has a very sophisticated headphone jack that actually lets you plug in a wired headset.

I've become a big fan of Apple's Spaces system which lets me have a bunch of virtual screens on my laptop. This is particularly helpful when I'm playing games and (trying to) working at the same time. Thing is, I really want to have a few apps appear on all my Spaces, not just one. Is that possible?

I downloaded Firefox 3 like many other folk and really like it, but for reasons I don't really understand, when I click on a URL in an email message, it launches Camino, my old browser. How do I make Firefox my default browser?

Just downloaded Firefox 3 and it's awesome and I'm having fun customizing it. My quesiton for today: is there some way to have my "home" button take me to more than one page at a time? That is, I want to have the browser launch with a few tabs already set, for my email, schedule, and favorite news site. Doable?

I just upgraded to Firefox 3.0 on my Mac OS X system, along with millions of other people apparently, and just realized that one feature I've lost is the ability to view PDF files within the Web browser. I don't want to launch Preview or Adobe Reader, I want to view PDF documents I encounter within Firefox. Is there a solution?

I saw on Twitter that you have a Nintendo Wii now. Nice! Maybe you can finally answer a question I've had for a long time: is there some way to adjust the volume on the wireless controllers on the Wii? I play late at night and am always afraid of waking up my kids!

As I write extensively about TV and satellite programming, a couple of people have told me I should sign up for an affiliate program and make some money based on my recommendations. They suggest Commission Junction, but I can't figure out how the site works. Help!

I have been diligently applying all the search engine optimization techniques you talk about, Dave, but I'm still unclear on one key technique: how do I have more people link to me?

I now have two Twitter accounts, one for work and one for my personal updates and friends. Dunno if I'm supposed to do this, but it works for me and my friends. My question: I heard that there's a way in Twhirl to have both account windows open simultaneously. How do I do that?

Can you tell me how to set up custom templates in Microsoft Word? I feel like I'm creating the same documents over and over again and there has to be a better way.

I want to start getting into the habit of inviting people I meet at conferences to join me on Facebook. Is there an easy way to do that?

I'm not just a big fan of Google Calendar, I also have a number of additional organizational calendars I occasionally view too. Sometimes, though, I want to copy events from a shared calendar to my private calendar. Is there any way to do this in Google Calendar?

This is a very niche Mac question, but I'm wondering if there's any way to have the slick Quick Look feature in Mac OS X show me the contents of folders rather than just the folder name?

I've been talking to various people about improving my Web site and they keep talking about SEO. I've figured out that SEO = Search Engine Optimization, but I don't really understand what it means to improve my site on a search engine?

My computer desktop is driving me crazy, Dave! Whatever I do to organize things, I find that I have so many icons and files that I lose track of important documents on a daily basis. Surely there's some way to tame this chaos?

While Microsoft Vista's built-in search mechanism might not be winning fans (see the extensive and quite critical commentary here: How to use Windows Vista search), Mac OS X has a splendid search system built-in to the operating system called Spotlight. But if you're just using it for one or two word keyword searches, you're missing out on a huge amount of its power and capability!

Now that I have built up a pretty good network on LinkedIn, I would like to send out a few quick questions now and then, soliciting feedback and input from the group. How do I do that on LinkedIn?

As part of migrating from an older iMac to my new Macbook Pro (which I love) I went through and axed a ton of unwanted email from Microsoft Entourage. I know that I can copy my mail archive, address book, etc, by moving the contents of Documents:Microsoft User Data:Office 2008 Identities, but my question is whether there's any way to compact, compress or rebuild my archive before I do so?

Dave, we got a new IT manager and he's forcing everyone to migrate from our long-beloved Lotus Notes application to Microsoft Outlook. He also tells me that there's no way to export my address book from Notes and import it into Outlook, but I just can't believe it. Is there a solution?