Thanks, the update worked, however with some post-update oddities:

org-hide-leading stars t hides the stars -- but only if I manually switch
from the Emacs default color theme to my favorite one
(color-theme-renegade). If I leave (color-theme-renegade) in my init, on
boot-up, org-mode does not hide the stars.

This never used to happen.

Secondly, now I have a bunch of information in my modeline that I had
customized out -- the names of headlines and sub-headlines at point.

While a nice feature, I prefer my modeline only to read what I had before
(the git branch I am on).

2013/2/19 Bastien <bzg@altern.org>
Hi John,

42 147 <aeuster@gmail.com> writes:

> The @ replacement is also a sensible idea -- can either of you send
> me the source code for this? Or how would I update my org-mode to
> include it?

If you want to use Org development branch, simply clone and build:

~$ git clone git://orgmode.org/org-mode.git
~$ cd org-mode
~$ make

Then make sure you set the correct `load-path'.

See http://orgmode.org/org.html#Installation for details.

The change Suvayu sent is now in master.

> Not exactly well-versed in Emacs,

You'll soon get hooked, dont worry :)

--
 Bastien