As confusing as dbus is, and without any decent wiki pages dedicated to the topic, I thought perhaps we could begin to compile links to relevant pages here...which might end up in a decent wiki page. Here's my few cents:

http://maemo.org/maemo_training_mate...us_System.html

https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/pr...ls/dbus-send.1

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/003jan05/features/dbus/

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...0-trunk;#40114

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...velopers/42197

There's a lot that could be accomplished with dbus if better documentation existed, at least for my skill level. Tools are available to ease use:

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/conler/

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/gnokiidbus/

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/phonelink-dbus/

http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...ipts-settings/

..anything anyone else can contribute??

What I'd really love to know is how to get a 'list of services' a specific app has...ie what it will actually respond to. I'm totally in the dark and have no idea where to start. Anyone willing to give a little advice?

That, I believe, is called "dbus-introspection". D-Feet is pretty good but it doesn't work fully on the N8x0 (dbus-python is quite old). I'm a proponent of "dbus-monitor" as it allows me to see in real-time what signal/method_call is being called when I do something.

You can use dbus-inspector (app written in Python) to inspect the whole D-Bus system. You need to use dbus-inspector version using python2.5, which as I remeber could be found in Gentoo (or its community forum). Or I can attach it later here.
UPD: found on tablet successfully.

A lot of fannagling to get D-Feet to run, I'd guess. Just getting at the output without the GUI would be nice. 'dbus introspection' is a handy search term, turned up tons more for me to read

Woo, check this thing out: mickeydbus it's called. Pretty slick, no GUI, try --help