Mountain Lake Park, Md.: I work for a farmer and I want him to get a Palm. The problem is this: He has a Mac and I have a 12-inch Powerbook. The software for dairy and beef farming seems only to work on Windows to sync with the Palm. Do you know of any dairy/beef management software that you can sync from a Palm to a Mac?

A: As God is my witness, I have no idea. If you do, please let me know and I'll share your suggestions in my next newsletter or chat. And if you missed our annual laptop guide, it's all online here.

Digital Radio Answers

Here's an update on my column topic of several weeks ago. Several readers wrote in to say that they've had problems with interference -- digital FM or AM stops them from hearing other stations' analog AM or FM broadcasts.

One wrote: "A number of stations -- most notably, WOR in New York City and WSAI in Cincinnati -- have received permission to experiment with nighttime digital broadcasts. Long-distance reception enthusiasts ("DXers") have noticed severe interference resulting from these tests. For example, at my location, the Toronto station I normally hear on 1540 AM completely vanished during WSAI's digital tests on 1530.

"Of course, the Toronto station could care less about listeners in Tennessee, and WOR isn't going to pass up a chance for greatly improved audio to accommodate a bunch of hobbyists. But for millions of Americans, this secondary long-distance reception may be their only nighttime AM service.

"Myself, for one. I live 30 miles outside Nashville. I receive one reliable nighttime local AM signal (famous Grand Ol' Opry station WSM). All my other nighttime AM choices are potentially susceptible to digital interference. WSB Atlanta (750) potentially clobbered by Detroit on 760. WHAS Louisville (840) with potential interference from Fort Worth, Texas. Four Chicago stations reliably provide nighttime service here; all four could disappear under interference from New York."

I asked iBiquity to reply to that comment. Ibiquity spokesman Gil Chorbajian wrote in an e-mail that testing had confirmed that analog AM broadcasts could suffer as a result of HD Radio AM broadcasts, but this was an acceptable tradeoff for better sound quality in the opinion of the National Association of Broadcasters.

"IBiquity ... carried out additional tests under the oversight of the National Radio Systems Committee (www.nrscstandards.org) and submitted the results for the NAB's review. Based on these test results the NAB voted unanimously to approve HD Radio AM broadcasting at night on January 20, 2004." The association concluded that "the dramatically improved audio quality from [HD Radio] service is well worth the predicted and limited reductions in analog coverage."

Tests have continued since then, and the Federal Communications Commission accepted public comments on the issue up through mid-June, which you can read at the FCC's site.

I suspect that the FCC will come down on the side of HD Radio, and I can't say that this is necessarily wrong. Distant AM reception has always been a bonus feature, not a right. If the cost of not subjecting digital radio to the same agonizing frequency-switchover process as digital TV is losing the ability to hear Chicago's AM stations at night, I think I can accept that.

Plus, in the long run the Internet solves this distance-reception problem quite nicely.

-- Rob Pegoraro (rob@twp.com)