It’s been a busy week at HowStuffWorks.com. On top of the normal schedule of podcasting, live shows, blog posts and articles, we’ve also experienced the joy of upgrading the software on our computers. Immediately following that came the traditional 45-minute where-the-heck-did-they-put-copy-and-paste ritual. Then there was a building-wide fire drill that disrupted us for an hour or so. Oh, and there’s the guest appearances.

On Tuesday, Randall Bennett invited me on TechVi to discuss the new line of Apple products that hit stores this week. Yesterday, Chris and I sat down for a phone interview with Chuck from Galactic Watercooler. We talked about Carl Sagan, Cosmos, the Voyager program and science fiction. The episode should be up later this weekend — definitely check it out. They run a fun show and have had some really interesting guests on in the past.

On top of all that, we also published two new episodes of TechStuff! You remember TechStuff — it’s the show with electrolytes (it’s what plants crave). This week, our shows focused on two related topics: touch-screen technology and the Zune personal media player.

Touch screens are popping up everywhere. From ATMs to smartphones, they are leading the way in the field of user interfaces. Chris and I talk about the two major types of touch screens found in personal electronics: resistive and capacitive screens. We explain the system used by the Microsoft Surface. And I go off on a tangent as I postulate what might happen should touch screens ever develop sentience.

Wednesday’s show focused on the Microsoft Zune personal media player. A few readers have pointed out that I made a mistake in the show. I talk about the Zune Pass, a music subscription service. For about $15 a month, you can download an unlimited number of approved songs from the Zune Marketplace. I explained that if you let your subscription lapse, you lose all the music you downloaded through Zune Pass. That’s mostly true, but I left out an important part of the subscription — Microsoft allows you to download 10 songs per month that you get to keep forever. When your subscription lapses, you’ll still have access to those songs. You’ll still lose the other songs that you downloaded through the service. My thanks go out to the listeners who wrote in to set us straight.

That wraps up another exciting week in the world of TechStuff. Remember that podcast episodes publish on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays you can tune in here at the blogs at 1:00 p.m. Eastern to see Chris and me in action on TechStuff Live.

And of course you can learn more about the topics we discuss at our amazing Web site, HowStuffWorks.com:

How do touch-screen monitors know where you’re touching?
How does the Zune compare to iPod?
How Podcasting Works