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We first featured the San Francisco-based sketch comedy group Kasper Hauser in 2005, pointing to their witty take-off of Craigslist. We then re-visited the troupe last year, after the launch of their parody of "Skymall," that catalog-in-the-sky airlines like to tuck behind the emergency landing procedures in the seat pocket in front of you. Obviously, this is one group that's funny both online and off. When we emailed the fabulous foursome, they told us what it's like to haggle with a Nigerian email scammer, how imitating Ira Glass can be spooky, and how it feels to be one of iTunes' best podcasts of 2006...

So why the name "Kasper Hauser"?

In the early 90s, James found an old New Yorker magazine in a dumpster. It had a story about feral children (The Karpfen Bear Girl, The Justadel Snow Hen, the goat boy, etc...) and Kasper Hauser was one of the cases. He was the boy who wandered into the town of Nuremberg in 1828. When it came time to name our sketch troupe, we kept coming back to the name Kasper Hauser. It's nice and pretentious, and he was a wild kid with bad manners, just like us.

How much more exposure have you gained by putting your stuff on the Web? Do you have any "Web-only" fans that you know about?

Tons. We get emails all the time from fans who've discovered us through the podcast or the website. The Internet has given us a much broader reach than playing onstage for 50, 100... or 4 people at a time. Thank you, Internet. Although dial-up is driving us crazy. Read the full profile...

Things can get pretty hairy if you're The Mustache Rangers—especially while exploring space in a weekly comedy adventure. This podcast show has all the trappings of an old-time radio sci-fi broadcast. But listen more closely and you'll discover there's a lot less action going on up there than you'd have thought. For instance, in the debut episode, the handlebar brigade receives a message from Central Command, but like an irony-steeped, improvisational Abbott & Costello, they spend an inordinate amount of time arguing over the best way to open the envelope. As for the second episode of their "serial interpod netcast" endeavors, we're not quite sure what's happening, but poking may be involved. And we believe we heard one of the moustachioed troopers mention "pajama-jammy-jam" at one point. Sure, there's less gravity in space, but does that mean there's more humor? You decide.

If you can't quite pony up the big bucks to attend the super-brainy, ultra-cool TED conference, you can still wander freely through its blog—and, now, take a seat for its prestigious speaker series. The annual gathering covers all things futuristic and creative in the realms of technology, entertainment, and design (hence the "TED" acronym). For the first time ever, the conference has invited "the world at large" to listen in on its luminous talks. Catch the weekly releases, in audio or video format, of such movers and shakers as Vice President Al Gore, creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, or playwright Julia Sweeney. New York Times' tech columnist David Pogue performs his own versions of Broadway show tunes. (On Bill Gates: "I write the code that makes the whole world run!") And South Bronx "green collar" activist Majora Carter delivers a stirring address that fully deserves the standing ovation it receives.