I see gPodder is written in Python but overkill for a newbie to get to grips with. The problem I think is a lack of a good "getting started" guide.

I personally tried the Hello World sample. Problem is, I can't see what you need to do next to actually create something useful with different pages, buttons, text fields, pulling data from the web, etc.

Perhaps I have thrown myself into the deep end trying to do this when most of what I have done in the past has been cut/paste/edit jobs in PHP and JavaScript. But I really want to learn Python and Linux programming, when I found out about the N900 it seemed the perfect tool to do both those and get a mobile device configured how I want it.

I was frustrated and dismayed at how Windows Mobile halts the CPU when you stick it into standby and am curious how Maemo handles that too.