"57 channels and nothin' on." -- Bruce Springsteen

		The PG's TechMan Want to send a question to TechMan? Just fire an e-mail to TechMan. Please include your name and a daytime phone number.

One of the few good channels on digital cable was the old TechTV. Owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (who along with co-founder, Bill Gates, has more money than God), TechTV was geeky but amusing and had a host of good onscreen personalities.

Then Allen got tired of losing money and sold it to G4 (whose principal owner is cable giant Comcast), which turned it into a TV computer gaming network that also shows endless reruns of "Star Trek" and its progeny. (I am convinced that G4 stands for "Gee, I've seen that 'Star Trek' episode 4 times.")

If there is anything more boring than WATCHING video games being played on TV, I don't know ... Wait, wait, I almost forgot about televised poker.

Well, it turns out that the old TechTV stars didn't just dissolve into pixels and fade away. They're back with a vengeance as podcasters.

TechTV's flagship show (and my personal favorite) was "The Screen Savers." It was hosted by Leo Laporte, a former radio announcer very knowledgeable about technology and featured rotating co-hosts, including a number of lovely and geeky female cast members guaranteed to appeal to the target audience of teenage boys and young men.

Today Laporte does a veritable smorgasbord of nine tech-themed podcasts. My favorite is "This Week in Tech (TWIT)" with many of the old "Screen Savers" denizens: Patrick Norton, who once tried to popularize kilts for young men, Kevin Rose, John C. Dvorak and Robert Herron among them. They sit around the digital campfire and discuss tech issues with irreverence.

Another good listen is "KFI Tech Guy," a podcast of Laporte's twice-weekly call-in show on the Los Angeles radio station. All of Laporte's podcasts are available for free on Apple's iTunes Music Store or at www.twit.tv.

The "Screen Savers" alumnus making it big right now is Rose, who was featured on the cover of the Aug. 14 issue of Business Week magazine with the headline: "How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months." Rose has an audio and video podcast called DiggNation in which he and a co-host sit around, sometimes drink beer, and talk tech. (The language here is salty.) On the Web site www.digg.com, readers post news stories that are then rated by how many times other readers "digg" them. Both audio and video versions of the podcasts are available at iTunes and www.digg.com for free.

Norton, who enjoyed destroying technology gadgets with a sledgehammer on "The Screen Savers," and Herron talk tech on their free video podcasts at DL.TV and also available on iTunes.

It's nice to know the old "Screen Savers" folks are still kicking. There's even been talk of a reunion.

This week's geekterm: Bar stare -- The look on your face while watching the progress bar creep across your screen during a big download.