Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

I think anybody who has posted on either on these sites will know they are unlikely to get any response however we can at least get nuggets of limited info. from people such as you, which give us hope that there is still some life left in the N900 even if Nokia themselves seem happy for it to die a slow death due to lack of support in the form games/apps/full sat nav etc.

Nokia conversations of course announced the following when PR1.2 arrived "First up – new games join the veritable arcade already on offer in Ovi Store. Jurassic 3D Rollercoaster, Zen-bound, Angry Birds (level pack), Sygic, Kroll, Weatherbug, and GoGadget are all available to keep you entertained. Important to note though that Ovi Store will do a full switchover this week Thursday, May 27, so these games and other for-purchase apps will show up then"

Since that time there has been no indication why these new games have never appeared on the Ovi store.

This forum is really the only place N900 owners can vent their frustration in Nokia and feel at least somebody is listening to them, perhaps the fact that these types of posts are increasing, as you say, should be a worry to Nokia themselves as they are showing N900 owners are becoming increasingly frustrated and therefore unlikely to purchase another Nokia device?

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Please let's create a new thread about this "open testing" and let's move these posts there.

See my links above: http://wiki.meego.com/Quality_Assurance_Team + http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Release_Creation

Those willing to test the platform and the open source apps can jump on the train of permanent testing if they wish, like the users that most of the time are using beta/unstable releases in their own laptops.

Nokia proprietary apps will be a different story. We have seen that you can't mix open source and commercial ways of working. Testing in more focused and controlled environments (like Nokia Pilots) might make more sense in this case.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Thanks Quim.

I also posted in the "Maemo Missteps" thread on this and am now echoing to the mailing lists. Hopefully you will be able to address the critical points.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Trust me: Nokia Conversations.

If they announce something that doesn't happen or they announce something you dislike "venting your frustration" there is more productive than doing it here. Even if they don't talk about something you want them to talk about, there is a Suggest a topic link for that.

That is a Nokia official site devoted to have conversations with Nokia customers and anybody else interested. maemo.org is a community site and the Nokia guys around are really more effective and useful when they can do their work or hobby without customers reminding them about the things they know, are not responsible of and don't really feel like talking about. Less on a Friday night.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

But what we really need is some sort of mix of the two. Hard for me to define further at the moment but I'm hopeful your intuition can fill in the gaps. ;)

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Quim what I am personally looking for is simply (well simple to say) a reversal of the default engagement mode. Instead of starting closed and seeing what can be pried open for discussion, start open and make a damned good, solid case for closing it.

I know YOU get that. But having worked there myself, I know that Nokia doesn't quite... yet.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

This thread is about complaints and I was referring mainly to channelling complaints.

If we are talking about "engagement" with "power users, testers, developers and other leaders" then yes maemo.org / meego.com fit the bill much better and this is one of the main reasons why we are all here.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

This is why this site shouldn't be affiliated with Nokia. We customers who are here aren't wanted, really. But we were here before Nokia was here.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

While this is quite understandable, and by no means can we blame you personally for it, it leaves the community talking to the same wall to which we've been speaking for years.

Discussions outside the bunker, in the community, with people like ragnar and vitaly are things of the past, and that's a shame. We understood they couldn't give us inside information, and sometimes they argued points other community members didn't like, but just having them participate in the community, as community members, was positive and invigorating. Even the rare technical pointers and tidbits igor dropped on occasion were wonderful.

We're regressing toward communication levels approximating early-Texrat Maemo times. A sentence or two from Peter on the occasion of a new firmware update and sporadic "Just wait, MeeGo's coming!" messages from you aren't sufficient.

Nokia's gone head down, full speed on MeeGo work, but the next big thing is always what leaves this community standing outside, trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything happening beyond the shuttered windows.

MeeGo is still too much in the shadows, running silent and deep. Nokia dropped Elephanta as too small a step and rushed Fremantle out to hold everyone over during the wait for Harmattan, but these repeated waits for the next big, double-secret thing have worn the community's goodwill thin in a growing number of spots.

Openness, community integration, and increased communication are coming with MeeGo, I know, but they've been promise for some time. And yes, part of the pain of open source development is the public seeing those early, raw ingredients out on the countertop and then suffer the wait for the eventual feast. However, with MeeGo consisting of a string of big, future reveals, and Maemo not clearly showing how much life it has left, there's a large information deficit crying out to be filled.

It's not your place, qgil, I know. Heck, by definition it's not a task for one person, but Nokia needs to open up. Please, redouble your efforts to get the Maemo MeeGo division involved in the community. Thank you.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Okay I apologize-- so many things flying around I blurred the subjects.

I do want to say I really appreciate you taking the time to help bridge tmo and my blog and to address the subjects individually. Thanks Quim.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

qgil, the big problem is that there really is no single source for N900/Maemo related information from Nokia/Maemo.
It is spread all over the place with different level of relevance and accuracy. Most of all timely (news) updates are missing.

Some of the stuff is buried somewhere on this forum but they are hard to find.

Nokia Conversations is a bad place because on the rare occasion that N900/Maemo gets mentioned it will be off the front page in couple of days due to the vast number of othe Nokia related news.

Similar issue with Nokia Beta Labs and Ovi Blogs.

So people (users and developers) are scrambling for news from Ari's (Jaaksi) blog or twitter single line tweets. Peter (or somebody else) posts a tweet now and then and then disappears from view.

Rumors in blog sites are pretty much that is left.

It would be much better if there was a single webpage where all the N900/Maemo news by Nokia would be consolidated. Should be easy to setup, good old websites still have their use. Cost in effort would be small.

Have you looked at the news in Maemo Software - Nokia Maemo News ( http://maemo.nokia.com/news/ )
Latest news item is fairly new (May 26), but the one before it was in November 2009 !!! Imagine if you (or the Maemo/N900 team) was using that source for keeping up to date on the N900.

There are also similar problems related to the development software/documentiation (no single source for all the relevant information).

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

I'm only guessing since it's been over a year since I worked there (:( :( :() but I'm betting that group still has not fully gelled. There have also been a lot of moves lately. Heck, Quim is relocating soon.

But your point remains valid, and it intersects with what I just said in the "Missteps" thread and echoed to email: we need a deep, clear Nokia-Community channel and I'll add "single" to bring in your points.

I'll make myself available for hire if that means a need for more staff. :D

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

These guys are swimming in MeeGo-Harmattan since they are the ones in driving seats. They also have probably better things to do than exposing themselves to user ranting. You will see them back when MeeGo Handset UX and/or MeeGo Harmattan come under the light. And you might see them more around meego.com than here.

Only if you measure talk.maemo.org, but the areas of R&D discussion are moving elsewhere. After the Maemo Summit the discussion about the Security Framework or Harmattan UI Framwork happened here in the Harmattan subforum. Today the same Security Framework was discussed by the very own Nokia developers in meego-dev and expect the same about the MeeGo Touch Framework (former Harmattan UI Framework) as soon as the discussion arises around a released Handset UX.


You have a point here and we feel the same pain on the other side of the mirror. Sorry if I'm feeding you up with the mantra ;) but the MeeGo project solves a part of these structural problems by having a public continuous integration process allowing even normal users to follow the hot topics as they happen: portrait mode yes or not? MMS yes or not? Email app like this or like that? Gestures, shortcuts, Vorbis, Cancel button etc etc etc...

This MeeGo open R&D setup combined with the stuff Anssi Vanjoki, Alberto Torres & co are working on will put us in a different plane. The end of the "step x of y", if you wish.

MeeGo Handset UX promised in June. Once this is out MeeGo might have still other "reveals" but not in the UX we are all interested here. We are actually more concerned about pushing everything out rather than keeping goodies for next reveals. Continuous collaboration is the main thing that will bring MeeGo's success.

Today is 11th...

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

John, if we don't code together, we will debug alone!

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

You have a point. Would http://www.womworld.com/nokia/catego.../n900-devices/ be a better starting point? But yes, that is not obvious from http://maemo.nokia.com

I'll comment this in my team.

There is http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...eveloper_Guide and now the Nokia Qt SDK comes with own documentation, and there is http://www.forum.nokia.com/Devices/Maemo/ . But yes, I see what you mean.

The arrival of the Qt SDK and one day the Web Runtime will simplify this a lot, since there will be a clear set of tools and APIs supported and all the documentation will revolve around them.

I think what you are looking for is what will emerge from http://wiki.meego.com/Application_developer_site

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

This is not a coding community Jack, this is a place that you...
that you all made together, so that you could find one another.

The most important part of your life was the time that you
spent with these people. That's why all of us are here.

The truth is, there is no community. There never was.
Just me and my N900 sat in the church and a man called Christian Shepherd opening the door for us to move on.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Not again. If the upcoming MeeGo Nokia handset is indeed the step 5 of 5 and it falls short, what now? What kind of message will it say about Nokia?

For example, if the MeeGo handset will use the current form of Evolution as we see in MeeGo 1.0 (which is unusable and quite primitive for me btw) it will be as if we're back to OS2006. It's not worthy of an ultimate "5 of 5" product if you ask me.

Does Nokia really have to announce something in June? It makes me nervous.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

The fact you have responed to my post shows that posters are likely to get more of a responce here than on any of the other Nokia sites. I feel posters come to this site as they feel their voicies are being being heard by somebody connected with Nokia, posting elsewhere seems a pointless task.

By the way I am not somebody who does normally "vent fustration" on this website but I was just trying to explain how people at being let down by Nokia's refusal to communicate with their customers.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

That's a fair point. Many of us are frustrated by sheer numbers of people coming here solely to unload, but then, they'll get engagement here. A listening ear, even if coupled with an argumentive mouth, is better than a stone wall of silence...

The true solution is to improve Nokia's reverse logistics. I spent a year in that part of the company and although I won't go into detail out of respect for former colleagues I will say that there's room for process improvement.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Uhhuh.. well that makes the information even more spread out, another Nokia site :)
I don't think that I have actually seen that site in N900/Maemo context, ever. Also it seems more like a marketing/portal site than a real (first hand) information/news page.

N900/Maemo news site could have a simple list of news updates directly from Nokia. Everything that you would want the users/developers know about N900 on one place. Simple format so that the more stuff would be visible on the main page and simple/clean navigation. Just keep it up to date and fresh.

Site should also have a status banner/column (newest update/PR info, server issues) and alerts about current "issues" (for example. Ovi Store status, MyNokia SMS) visible always.

And there is dev stuff on the QT site as well.

OK, that would be great.

Thanks for the reply and info, Quim.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

You raise good points myrjola.

The rule of thumb for good content/information management is "write once - read many". One source, multiple reporting venues (determined by context). In this day of web services there's no technical hurdles to properly organizing and orchestrating the flow of official messages...

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

[offtopic]
These kinds of threads are one reason I like this place. Guy with one mission starts thread and it turns out to be really good conversation.[/offtopic]

I have been fairly little time here so I do not know or see whole picture yet but currently to me it seems following:
- Nokia is trying to be open, trying to probably understand community.
- You can find Ari Jaaksi's & co. powerpoint slides and video presentations where they speak about open source and community and once in a while MARKET themselves using community "Look we have established this and this"
- Nokia has helped to establish this website and provides some paycheck to handful of maemo.org website administrators (right?)

BUT still, for some reason, I (we?) feel bit lonely here. It´s like mother/father is looking down to us and looking how experiment is going on. We are living in environment where it seems to be single output but very little disorganized feedback from outside.

And currently we are seeing "Meego" flag waving on another island and they are building bridge from there to here and yelling "Look NOW you can collaborate from bottom to up". And some people are just too fed up.

I do not blame them. Look at this site. It´s still under construction with huge amount of little projects in wiki and startups. Now we are in the middle of wait and see and some people just don't care anymore.

Fuel of this community is enthusiasm of highly capable developers and freedom of this platform. Also real contact with end users and collaboration seems to been also one key element here. We (and Nokia) should feed this and I´m not sure what is currently happening or maybe i´m just too slow (Having Academic degree and having trouble understanding what is happening makes me feel hmmm..rather stupid :D)? Nokia and people here have established this community and made huge amount of work so i would expect that Nokia has at least some business nose and understand the amount know-how and enthusiasm that has been growing steadily here. Textrat blog was wonderful and exactly that kind of nicely put criticism is one reason i voted him. If really Nokia thinks that QT and Meego just make everything good just by snapping fingers then imo they have made mistake.

It just doesn't work so that Nokia tries to listen customers and community and takes best ideas parts of it and implement them in x months/years. They need to give feedback constantly and fast to fuel that enthusiasm: "We are currently working this brainstorm, bug, feature and look what we have now done x y z". Pointed feedback back to users from Nokia could be seen as marketing tool. It really makes people at least think that their ideas and feedback are not going to endless pit. Just broadly show "Look users asked this and WE freaking made it in one MONTH" With huge flash banner :D even if its little thing.

But then again. This is quite small user base/community so in Nokia´s business point of view it probably doesn't matter so much. But thinking it that way makes me sad and it think that someone doesn't yet really get it.

(sorry for rather messy output that has probably some holes in it but i tried to paint overall picture about what I feel/see here)

ps.
About your pr 1.1 community/devel test experiment. It´s really good that you are now doing it right with meego because Nokians probably understand that quality of extras is bind to Nokias own imago and currently we are seeing some problems with pr 1.2 and widgets from extras(also from Ovi) and IMO some of these problems could have been find/blocked by giving developers fw to test maemo with THEIR own programs (ain´t that whole point of developers release?)

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

As you imagine we are doing our best to bring the best. But in any case what I meant is that the consolidation of MeeGo as high-end platform for Nokia combined with the continuous public development of the MeeGo platvorm implies no more "steps" with silence in between, which was the Stephan's point I was answering.

Er... I don't see any relation between MeeGo-Harmattan (Qt based in its entirety and devoted to a handset form factor with the MeeGo 1.0 Netbook UX (GTK+ based and focused on... netbooks). Besides, MeeGo-Harmattan marries with the MeeGo 1.1 release, developed already now in the repos (waiting for the Handset UX to come soon) and with a stable released planned for Q4.

And even then MeeGo-Harmattan may or may not include reference apps from the MeeGo Handset UX.

Who is saying that? I'm just reminding that the MeeGo project @ meego.com announced the arrival of the MeeGo Handset UX during June.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

... and even picking about the example about Evolution in MeeGo 1.0 Netboox UX, the difference now is:

- You can install the weekly 1.1 unstable images and see if there is progress that is good for you.

- You can file bugs and there are no NDAs or confidentiality between you and the developers.

- You can send patches against evolution and fight to get them accepted, OSS business as usual.

- You can get involved in the Evolution project, discuss with the developers via mail or IRC, aim to become a maintainer in MeeGo or upstream.

- Or you can challenge the MeeGo architects wih a mail alternative as part of the architecture process.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Depends on the answers you are looking for. If they relate to business/closed then trust me: you will know first through a Nokia official channel instead of post 76 in a Talk thread.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

I've got another question, not strictly related to the subject.

Is (will be) there a possiblity in MeeGo to change one's UX to another one?
For example, if the handset UX turns out to be not likeable by some people, will they have the ability to use eg. the tablet UX (presented here)?

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Yes, I did realize that you were just talking about the UX and not an actual product release. But then again, if Nokia is pressing on releasing the rumored N9 by Q4, sure it will have the nice Qt UI and all the bells and whistles, but I still think there is not enough time for Nokia to work out the main core features to make it up to par with the competition.

Don't get me wrong. While I sound quite negative, what I actually want to see is for Nokia to come out on top when a '5 of 5' product is announced, and for bloggers and end-users to just not shred it out of its glory due to some lacking/unfinished basic features.

Here's the thing. Personally, as someone who tries/has tried the majority of the smartphone platforms, one measure I use is how complete and integrated the email client is. This is why I keep bringing up the email app since the 770. I don't think I'm alone to say that email is the most used app on a mobile device. If a mobile device does not support push (IMAP IDLE) or it can't efficiently handle thousands of emails in folders, when others can, I just scratch my head. To compete now, an email app/client should now support multiple push accounts at a minimum, and a consolidated view.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Venemo, questions about MeeGo fit much better in meego.com

Reggie, I can't predict the future. :) But if you are worried about the email client then have a look to the foundations Qt offers for it: the Messaging library that is part of Qt Mobility and the Qt Messaging Framework (QMF). They are being developed (openly, by the way) even before the N900 sales start.

About the UI (now called MeeGo Touch Framework) it had a first code drop in the Maemo Summit also before the N900 sales start and is developed openly in Gitorious since the MeeGo launch in February.

I'm not saying anything with these dates, only stressing that even if the MeeGo Handset UX is going public this month, this doesn't mean that the serious work is starting now.

But well, as usual the time of the truth is when new devices are launched (first solid judgement) and when they start selling (the real truth). Before announcements you can judge as well, but as you know you are in the terrain of speculation. Which is a ground I tend to avoid.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Reading through this thread is a lot of talk going on but i dont see anything regarding the future of the N900 as far as Nokia is concerned, amid all the conversations going on it seems the future of our device is now in the hands of developers within this community with nothing from Nokia.
It would be very informative to everyone to know where we stand from here on regarding the N900 in simple terms.
I think i am safe to say the current situation is Nokia losing rather than gaining customers because of simple lack of support for the N900 and it's future.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

I'd wager one of the reasons developers are not reading TMO is the fact that this issue gets mentioned over & over & over again, no matter what thread, leading to very bad S/N ratio.

Re: Complaints about Nokia, its practices, and its products in the community forums
 

Regarding IMAP IDLE, you may be able to enable it by editing the source code. It was coded in, but eventually disabled for power management reasons.