It's been a great week in Toronto, but all too brief. The meetup on Tuesday, a talk with the seminarians at UofT's Wycliffe College on Wednesday, TWiM on Thursday, then home on Friday. Oh and 15 Call for Help eposides in there somewhere, too. I'm breathless.

We miss Amber so much on Call for Help, but I did get to catch up with her, and record three(!) Inside the Net episodes, at the meetup. The first of those, a look at Nakama, a new moblogging site, will go up October 10.

We're still searching for a Canadian replacement for Amber on Call for Help, but while we do we're very fortunate indeed to have the poised and talented (and lovely) Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv filling in for her. Amber's last episode and Cali's first should be airing soon on G4techTV Canada and the HOW-TO Network in Australia. No truth to the rumor that we're changing the show name to "Cali for Help."

Meanwhile Amber's new show, City News International debuts Tuesday, October 10 on Citytv Canada-wide. She'll be on every night. She tells me her US and Aussie fans can catch her pieces on the net every day - I'll post a link as soon as I get one. Her live daily net culture segments on CP24 are also available on the live stream every weekday between 3:30 and 4p Eastern. Internet Exploder is required to watch that.

Check out her new blog/vlog Popnology. That's also going to be the name of her new show on CP24. Great name! You'll be able to subscribe to Popnology on iTunes soon, too.

I think flowers are in order, if not a Gemini award!

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I just received the sad news via MacMerc that the host of the Wizards of Technology and The Spoilers podcasts, Digital Bill Douthett, passed away yesterday.

Digital Bill was a great guy. An early podcaster who was always ready to spread a smile . I considered him a good friend. We'll miss him very much.

Ric Yaeger at MacMerc has setup a fund to help cover the funeral expenses.

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Thanks to Nik who is taking my campaign to rename "podcasts" to "netcast" right to the source: iTunes. Nik explains how to modify iTunes so it says "Netcasts" instead of the hated "Podcasts."

He warns that you can screw up your iTunes, but it's really pretty straightforward. You're just replacing the localized strings - a feature Apple has designed into all its programs for easy translation. The screen shot at left comes from iTunes 7.0.1.

Thanks, Nik!

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Here we go again!

We have such a stellar bunch of people coming up for Call for Help next week we really thought we should do a meetup.

Tuesday, October 3, we'll be recording Inside the Net live from the downstairs dining room at No Regrets in Liberty Village, T.O. The festivities and no-host food and drink start at 6:30p. Come by to meet:

• Amber MacArthur
• Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell of GeekBrief.tv
• Merlin Mann of 43 Folders (I think he's coming up just to buy the new Sloan record)
  
• The Podcast Person of the Year (me!)

and I bet we can talk some other Call for Helpers into stopping by.

RSVP at Upcoming.org - you'll find directions and maps there, too. See you there!

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There's a nice interview with me about TWiT taking advertising in this week's Advertising Age magazine.

Thanks to the author, Abbey Klaassen for making me sound coherent!

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• 70 percent market share, 60 million shipped. Accessories include ipod toilet paper holder. Joke?
• 70 percent of cars in US offer iPod connectvity.
• IPod shoe has sold 450.000 units in 90 days.

• Screen 60% brighter
• Battery 75% longer: 6.5 hours on the 80GB model
• New headphones ... Still ear buds though - we'll see if they sound better
• Now gapless song playback available on iPod
• Alphabetic searches - that's a nice feature
• Games will now be sold for all 5th generation and later iPods, including Bejeweled, Cubis, Mah Jong, Mini Golf, Zuma, Tetris, Pac-Man, and Texas Hold 'em. Support from EA and others. $4.99 each. They look (and sound) pretty good
• New lower prices; $249 for the 30GB model, $349 for 80GB
• Shipping today

• Aluminium and thinner - looks like a tiny iPod mini
• Colors include blue, pink, green, silver, and black. 24 hour battery life, gapless playback, new headphones
• Price/capacity: $149/2GB, $199/4, $249/8GB (8GB in black only)
• New smaller charger for all iPods (extra)

• 10 million Shuffles sold
• 2nd generation. It's the picayno! About the size of a quarter. Aluminium. Clip built-in. This IS the SNL skit!
• Mini dock with USB 2
• 1GB world's smallest MP3 player. $79. Ships in October.

• 88% market share. 1.5 billion songs sold.
• #5 music store after Walmart. Best Buy, Target, and Amazon. And on track to pass Amazon early next year.
• New views: Standard List, Album, and cover flow. Cover flow is like flipping through CDs, playlists, and videos.
• Album cover art for all albums will be available free even if you rip your own as long as you have an iTunes account.
• 45 million TV shows purchased. 220 shows available from over 40 networks. Adding NFL highlights.
• New video resolution 640 x 480 for all videos!
• Built-in iPod management including firmware updates and configuration.
• IPod will be able to move purchases to other computers authorized to same account.

• Adding movies to iTune store
• Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone. Miramax only
• 75 films at launch
• Released same day as DVD release
• $12.99 for pre-order and first day sale. $14.99 afterward
• $9.99 for catalog films
• All video downloads are 640x480. "Near DVD quality" You can start watching as it downloads. Same usage rights as TV. International sales next year.

• Wireless interconnect between computer and TV. Looks like a half height Mac mini. Code name iTV
• Built in power supply. WiFi. USB 2. Ethernet. HDMI. Component. Stereo analog and TOS link digital audio
• No internal storage. It's essentially a WiFi/network interface to audio and video.
• Enhanced Front Row interface to iTunes. Podcast support. MacBreak should look very nice on this. He's showing Rocketboom.
• Works with iTunes Macs or PCs. iPhoto on Mac.
• $299 Available Q1 2007

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OK - you wanted another one. Here's an amazing position from 1925. The Mexican Grandmaster Carlos Torre-Repetto is white. He's playing one of the all time great chess players, and long time World Champion, Emmanuel Lasker. In this position Torre finds a brilliant sacrifice which leads to an attack known forever as "The Windmill." Find the move and you'll know why...

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Susan Polgar, former Women's World Champion, recommended this book in her class on the last Geek Cruise. She oughta know. She and her two sisters are all chess Grandmasters thanks to her father's teaching methods. He was a fairly weak player at the time, but he was able to turn them into great chess players by drilling them with thousands of chess positions like those in this book.

He believed, and an article in last month's Scientific American confirms, that the key to expertise in any field is "effortful study," pushing yourself to go slightly beyond your comfort zone. It's not, as I always thought, a question of playing a lot of games. Studying the positions in a book like this is much more efficient. Experts guess that it takes 10 years  of such study, and a grasp of 50,000-100,000 chess positions to make a Grandmaster. This book is a good starting point. 300 key positions. Polgar recommended going through it at least twice. I'm about a third of the way through and loving it - each position is a minature work of art.

As an added bonus, it has perhaps the most stunningly bad cover in the history of chess books.

Here's a neat position from the book. The game is Antoshin-Rabar 1964 and white has a killer move. Can you find it? It's quite beautiful.

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