As a soon to be 1st time Nokia owner (n900) can I clear up a few things with you guys??
If I suggest something that goes against the community or revives an old arguement, then I apologise in advance

I have jumped ship from Windows mobile, because of the lack off apps available and WM has fallen too far behind now - I want my phone to compliment my life, not just for business use.

While I will not buy an iphone - I admit it has raised the bar for every other manufacturer and made people realise what a phone can do, because of its apps

So I ordered a n900

Step 1
look for a support forum - googling n900 forums reveals a few, so Im sorted there..

Step 2
Go to the Nokia site and look for my new phone

http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products...#/main/landing

Bit confusing here - can find the phone but there isn't really that much about it, expected as it is pre-release. The confusion comes over the relationship between Ovi/Maemo which have banners at the bottom of the page. At first I thought that Ovi was Nokia's version of their 'cloud' services for their phones,

http://share.ovi.com/

but there are apps as well such as the maps etc and the store for the n900 has Ovi apps and apps from the community.

http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/applications/

Yet ovi maps seems to be seperate to the rest???

http://www.nokia.co.uk/apps-and-services/ovi-maps/main

Go investigate the 'community' bit

Step 3
Have a look at Maemo
Who are you guys and what is your relationship to Nokia? I know from googling that you are the OS of choice for the n900 - Nokia has put some time in working with you guys. Maeomo 5 - is it a linux distro, or OS purely for the N900?
I can see lots of apps in your download section, but will they all work on my new phone or do I need to wait until they appear in the community section of the ovi store before I can install them?
Im hoping it is the first as suddenly, I do have a decent selection of apps..

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

Are these for my phone??
Will they install to the correct directories - will I have to configure shortcuts?
Is there a link to these from within the phone, or do I use my pc and then copy accross manually?
Why are these here and not on the nokia pages for applications?
This looks alot more promising than the 2 pages at the ovi store, so why are they hidden away?

Why are you two seperate sites? The success of the n900 will come from its apps and functionality, there isn't enough on the Nokia site about Maemo, it doesn't link to these forums, your app downloads should be linked from the nokia site, people should realise how important Maemo.org is to the n900?? It should be plastered all over the nokia n900 area, and you should be linking to the n900 pages on the nokia site...

I have found the community here to be really helpful, but there is that confusion over where I should be going for support or apps - here or over to the Nokia site, as you seem completely seperate entities at the moment.

These forums for support OR

http://www.nokia.co.uk/get-support-and-software

I really hope I have not offended any long time members/developers, if I have then I am very sorry. I am just trying to give you a completely fresh outlook from the point of view of someone who is completely new to the scene (never had a nokia, and a hardened windows mobile user)

Im a network engineer, so I am IT centric, and can work through most things and find it out, but not everyone is, and lets face it, if the n900 does well, then your site is going to get visited by a larger number of people who may not be that IT focussed?

< ducks down behind wall and presses submit>

*puts babyoil in edgedemon's hand*

*lies down*

start here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_basics

Thanks! This is precious fresh feedback. Do you mind sharing the URLs you found on your way. I'm specially interested in the first page under the nokia.com domain you got.

In an ideal world your questions would be answered at http://maemo.org/intro/ but that pages belongs now to the past...

I didn't know about this one myself. A nice gateway to be linked from http://maemo.org/intro , opening the way to other core pages like e.g. http://wiki.maemo.org/Frequently_asked_questions

Then it might be obvious but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo is the result of great work. More food for the intro.

Im at work now, and out drinking tonight, but I will edit the OP with the links tomorrow so you can retrace my journey of discovery

I have thrown a few links in to show how I came to write the post..

As for the wiki - I think it needs to be linked from the home page - its not very prominent or easy to see initially...

Is it useful to you (and something you can potentially do something about) to know how far people have to go to get to specific pages about maemo on Nokia web assets?

That is some really interesting information. Thanks.

I've been here a couple of years, and frankly, I don't understand why Nokia's so shy about maemo.org, either. I wonder if they think it is too "wild and woolly" over here?

I mean, they're spending some not-so-small amount of money on us (thank you very much!) but I get this constant feeling that the business types see maemo.org like this rogue, bastard step-son that is expected to end up with no pants and a lampshade on his head at parties...

In general, I think people coming here find these forums (and the rest of maemo.org) to be helpful and useful. Why is this something that users of the N900 have to stumble upon through Google when they have a question about their new device (and yes, every time I google for answers about anything Maemo-related, answers in these forums come up at the top of the results), rather than through Nokia?

In any case, welcome edgedemon, and I hope you stick around!

Welcome Edgedemon

The Wiki link should definitely be on the top. Appreciate that it is part of community, but it is instinctively something everyone looks for on first arriving at a community site like Maemo.org

Mike C