Our week begins with the release of Ableton Live 8, and the realization that we all need some Live in our lives, then it's on to an excellent video interive with NIN 's Trent Reznor, who really does appear to be a very switched on guy, after oggling all his analog gear, we turn our attention to the ridiculous prices that certain synths are getting on eBay and elsewhere, theres an opportunity to play our new Howard Scarr composed Tumbleweed moment as we fail to uncover anything about the new EMU Longboard and Shortboard new synths, we raise a glass to Charlie Steinberg who just got a MIPA Lifetime Achievement Award, then the inevitable inclusion of another iPhone music app - the iSyn from AudioMIDI.com and Virsyn - we also ponder the enormous market for software now that the Apple App store approaches the 1 Billion downloads to getting on for 30 million devices. Finally we offer suggestions on how to tackle the situation when you are asked "what do you think of my music/gig?".