Can someone explain COLLATION in plain English?

After a recent computer crash, I installed a new software package with Apache, PHP and MySQL. I was pleased to see that some of my programs were upgrades. Everything was working fine until I tried to publish some of my database tables online just minutes ago got an unfamiliar error:

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check
the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server
version for the right syntax to use near 'collate
latin1_general_ci NOT NULL default '',
`IDRealm` varc

I looked up "collation" on MySQL's website, but it doesn't yet make sense to me. What's it all about, and - more important - how do I solve this new error MySQL created for me?

Also, I noticed that when I create tables, I no longer
have a choice for InnoDB, so I've been choosing
MyISAM. If I leave it at default, what kind of table
would I get?

Actually, I'm leaning towards MyISAM anyway. I thought
InnoDB were generally considered superior, but when my
computer crashed, I lost most of my InnoDB tables but
none of my MyISAM tables.

Thanks.

In plain (hopefully "not-so-bad" ;) ) english collation is a sorting rule. It tells mysql how strings should be sorted. This isn't the same as charset (codepage, language), because some charsets can have more than one collation. The support of collations was first added in version 4.1, so it seems you have downgraded your local mysql or your "online" mysql is older than 4.1. Try installing the same version on both sides.