Watching the ladies skate on NBC? Join us for a live chat beginning at 9 p.m. EST

Looks like there will be a good night of skating, with Alissa, Rachael and Caroline sure to make things competitive in the long program, which begins at 9 p.m. EST on NBC. If you want to share your views in realtime, saunter on over to the Lifeskate Network, where we will have a live chat beginning at 9 p.m. EST. I'll be there, with one eye on the TV and one eye on the laptop.

You can access the chat page here or if you want to check out some of the great conversations that fans have been having the past few days (and add your own comments), click here. Just a reminder that you have to sign up with Ning networks if you're not already registered (it's free and takes 1 minute) in order to participate.

Voice your opinions about U.S. Nationals

Figure skating fans are an opinionated bunch, and the crush of activity around U.S. Nationals and Worlds only serves to intensify the conversations. As part of our expanded hourly coverage of the results from Cleveland, we have launched the Lifeskate Network this week to give fans a place to sound off and chat with one another in real time about Nationals, post messages on forums, and create their own skating pages. Based on technology from Ning.com, which is used by more than 10 million people worldwide, the Lifeskate Network provides the most advanced figure skating forums on the web. The Network is brand new, so drop by and say hi.

Technical difficulties

As New York City prepares to get hit with our first snowstorm of the year, it appears that the bad weather has extended to cyberspace. We're having video problems this morning that are causing some of our video segments not to play properly. Our crack team is diligently working on the issue and we hope to have things back to working order within a few hours. Our video archives page, however, appears to be working OK, so if there's a piece you'd like to see, you can view it there. Thanks for your patience!