Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

This is precisely what I am wondering, myself.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

Thanks for the clarification. Is this spelled out somewhere specifically, or is it an unwritten guide? (honest question, not trying to be snarky)
So, what about the slightly-educated consumer? The guy, like me, who is used to smartphones, installing apps and whatnot, but doesn't necessarily want to 'get his hands dirty' with command line, root, and all that stuff? There's going to be ALOT of those, mostly Symbian converts who are tired of waiting for a blow-me-away experience on that side, and who love Nokia's hardware. These are the people that I intend to focus on in my site, but I am not interested in setting up my own forum, and thus I'm asking where I should direct them to continue the conversation or learn more. Nokia.Maemo.com is slightly sparse when it comes to discussions, but it seems this is more of a developer community.

To be honest, and this is one of the reasons *I* believe the open source community struggles with consumers, most of the folks who buy the N900 and whatever other Maemo 5+ devices will not be interested in developing for it, or filing bug reports. I realize that defeats the entire idealogy behind open source, but that's consumers. My honest question is how will *this* open source community deal with them?

I'm not going to argue this point. I'm a consumer, and haven't the inkling of a developer. I've installed most of the applications currently available in the repositories, including some of the more....developer ones. While all are, without question, rock solid, stable, and all that, they are incredibly sparse when it comes to the interface. Even the awesome poker game - when you first boot it up, you have to know to press the submenu to start a game. Most consumers won't get that far, and yes, I realize how ignorant that makes them.

This is why the iPhone is so popular - the user interface makes it dead simple to use, which draws consumers. In *my* experience with Linux (both here at Maemo and with Ubuntu and a few other flavors on various laptops/netbooks), the community tends to offer a response of 'well, perhaps it's time you got a bit more educated, then.' While that might be a valid response, it's incredibly rude and off-putting to someone who is attempting to get acquainted with a new system, and it's quite unhelpful to the consumer mindset.

I haven't dismissed the community entirely. I still have my N800, and I still use it, checking for new apps once a week or so, and exploring the various new ones. How would a *consumer* or even a prosumer get involved?

From my experience with Maemo, Microb sucks. It is actually one of the reasons that I gave up on Maemo in the first place. For an OS that powers supposed 'INTERNET Tablets', it's awful. The last version of Opera that we had several OS' back was better by quite a bit. When I use the new one, I'll have the opportunity to change my experience. People have opinions, and we're free to express them.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

For "Maemo", please see Maemo Trademark FAQ and Usage Guidelines. The proper usage of "maemo.org" is also briefly touched upon in those documents, but isn't spelled out as clearly.

It looks like something upon which we need to work. Thanks!

There are quite a few of those folks here already. For instance: me. They're welcome here. You're welcome here.

In fact, Tim Samoff, twice voted into the Maemo Community Council, isn't a developer. He's a designer, a power user, and a champion of end user needs.

You do not need to sling code, or want to, to be part of our community.

My experience with MicroB and Opera on the tablets leaves me disagreeing with you completely. But, that's why it's so nice we have a growing number of choices now. MicroB, Tear, Fennec Betas, Digia @web, and links are here now, and there are probably more on the way.

Please, keep visiting. See how things work here. See what things aren't working here. Then, make suggestions; file bugs*; recommend refinements and improvements to the web sites, forums, mailing lists, and everything else; and best of all, feel free to step in where you can and care to, and help make things better.

None of us are good at everything. You're not a programmer, you're a user-focused guy. Well, great! If you see a need and feel a drive, step in and help with user-focus stuff. For a start, please get your writings syndicated on Planet.

We keep bouncing ideas around on how to help programmers, UI/UX designers, and users/testers come together to build great things. Maybe you'll help us pull that together.

Welcome to the community. Thanks in advance for any and all contributions you make, from blog posts to whatever.


* No, not just for the tablet software, but for the websites, forums, etc. too. We've bug reporting tools for all of it, even the bug reporting tool.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

You've been out of the loop for a long time, MicroB has received a lot of updates, but the point is. MicroB as it ships with Diablo is based on the first alpha release of Firefox 3. That alpha included none of the massive rendering, memory usage and Javascript optimizations of even slightly later Firefox 3 releases (early betas, etc.). Now, MicroB in Fremantle is based on a very recent Firefox release, which does include all of these improvements and optimizations. That means MicroB in Fremantle will be more stable, faster and use much less memory than MicroB in Diablo, which is why it's inaccurate and uninformed of you to say it's going to suck when you haven't even used it.

The last version of Opera was marginally faster at page rendering and had lower memory usage. Unfortunately, it was also a very old version of Opera with extremely limited CSS and Javascript support, which makes that "quite a bit better" quite a bit subjective (most of the sites I was using before the MicroB beta came out didn't even render usably).

Not without the support of facts if you're going to try to pretend to be a journalist.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

The Maemo brand wiki page outlines it reasonably well.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

Thanks! That's the page that eluded my search. Still, I don't think it's a quick, detailed, and friendly as the the Maemo Trademark FAQ for those, such as the press, looking for quick "How to I type this up?" answers.

If no one else beats me to it, I'll see about creating something. It won't be this week though.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

It's always great to have definition! :)

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

While working on our Unannounced Unofficial Maemo Site we came up an analogy for target audiences which is the record shop analogy. I think this could apply to Maemo's official and semi-official sites too:

- Maemo.nokia.com is like a massive, brightly lit, clean and slick mainstream record shop which is part of a chain and heavily advertised on television. This is probably the default record shop for most people who buy CDs

- Forum.nokia.com is a musical instruments and recording equipment shop, it's aimed entirely at people who want to make music either professionally or as a hobby.

- Maemo.org (including talk.maemo.org) is the dimly lit, small but extremely well-stocked independent record shop that carries records from lots of bands you've never heard of and rare releases from bands you do know. There's a noticeboard at the back of the shop displaying bands recruiting new members, and teachers offering advice for those just learning to play.The regular customers who hang out in the shop include friendly enthusiasts who want to help newbies get deeper into whatever they enjoy, and also some not-so-friendly snobs who think that people should have a deep prior knowledge of music before they dare set foot in an independent store.

Obviously the brightly-lit record shop is going to be the first port of call for anyone new to buying music, but those who want to create it would go to the instrument shop, and those who just want to dig a little deeper would go to the independent shop. All three have a valid role to play, even if the sizes of their audience vary tremendously.

One point I would draw from this analogy is that it would be a mistake to try and merge any of the three together. They perform their roles best when they are separate.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

I'm the scraggily guy in the corner.

Re: maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN
 

Ricky, sorry, that statement is too broad.

If I want to access amazon.com or youtube.com on my N800 or N810, using microb, then yeah: I'll get the impression that the browser sucks. But then I go to well-designed, lightweight sites and enjoy a MUCH better experience. Turns out it isn't microb at all-- it's hardware bottlenecks on the devices (hopefully corrected on the N900).

So this goes to the point of journalism, which in its best sense avoids sweeping statements unless they're obviously justifiable. In this case, microb turned out to be an incredibly powerful and useful browser that was hamstrung by elements "out of its control".

EDIT: GA corrected me-- performance problems are partially due to inefficient legacy code in microb. So can we say it "half sucks"? :D