This episode is presented by eBay.

Rob, everyone loves a deal and a bargain from time to time, don't they? Absolutely, mate. And you know where you can grab a great deal? Talk to me. Where? The eBay app. Yes, you are correct. You didn't need to talk to me. I already knew it. I love eBay. When you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. there's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else.

Then when you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. There's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else. Then when you're selling, it's so simple and most

importantly, free. It's free, Rob. When it's this easy to sell for free and there's great deals

on things you love. You can't help but say when it's eBay. It excludes vehicles and business

sellers.

Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American, hosted on May 10th, 2010.

I'm Steve Murski. And I've just returned from MacMania, a week-long series of lectures about Apple products that took place aboard a cruise ship that sailed from New York

City to Bermuda and back.

One of the lecturers was the ubiquitous David Pogue, author of the many missing manuals

and tech columnist for the New York Times.

We talked on May 8th in my cabin on the Holland America ship, the Veen Dam, somewhere in the Atlantic.

For anybody who is unfamiliar with you, they can't possibly be listening to this podcast.

They wouldn't have the technology.

But tell us how many missing manuals have there been already?

And how do you write a missing manual?

One would think you'd have to be one of the creators of the piece of equipment or the software to write the manual.

So how do you get in there and back engineer things?

Yeah, you would think.

So I started the series in 1999, and now there are something like 130 titles.

I didn't write all of them.

A few years ago, I sold the whole thing to the company that was doing the publishing to O'Reilly because they wanted to step up the number of them. A few years ago, I sold the whole thing to the company that was doing the publishing

...