Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

put a "boot camp" section (very basic tutorials, newbie comments and such)

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

Can be a sub-category of "How To"... The topic is interesting... :D

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

i'm thinking in something more "outside in the wild", like "how to explaint that n800 is NOT a cellphone" and something more light and funny

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

Mi 5 cents as former journalist and creator of several online magazines, all of them closed now...

Creating a new online magazine is something really cool. Thanks to the publishing tools available nowadays getting started is quite easy, and if the topic is interesting is not that difficult to find contributors willing to give a hand working on the layout and posting stories.

But that's not the difficult part.

In most cases such initiatives have a very hard time going beyond the first months, and most of them close before accomplishing a first year, with plenty of energies and excitement just burnt out. Two years later they have left no trace.

Nowadays there is even a higher degree of complexity since the own concept of periodical news and even "news" is in crisis. If you check your preferred online sources, I bet most of them are a continuous flow. Feeds and microblogging are making this flow even more continuous having different sources of more and more fragmented stories: a link to a webpage or a video, to a mailing list or forum post, to a simple 140 character tweet.

So... why not investing these energies improving maemo.org/news instead? It's all about publishing stories, putting the microblog thing in place and feeding the most interesting Maemo sources and updates, isn't it?

I know this is much more boring and demanding that starting something new from scratch. It will require more patience from the starters since they will need to agree things with the admins and the current "establishment". However, I firmly believe such energies will be better invested, they will have a direct impact in readers interested in Maemo and all the hard work will be clearly reflected in a better maemo.org in few months, and after several years.

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

I saw my name floated earlier in this thread by sjgadsby (thank you, btw!!!), and now I think I'll pipe in. I liked the idea of a magazine, but there is no way that I could contribute to something like that on a regular basis - and that is due to my own time commitments, not due to a lack of interest or lack of willingness to help out others. I wanted to do some user/community spotlights in my blog, and the best way to share that with maemo.org users was to have the blog aggregated. I think I have accomplished what I wanted to do on that front.

Alot of what is hoped to be accomplished with the subject magazine is in bits and pieces already throughout the maemo.org landscape - it's scattered though. Perhaps we could add in a 'dashboard'-like functionality to the maemo.org front page, fully customizable by the user to give them the 'live' magazine that they wish for.

I'll raise a Brainstorm idea on this subject when I get the chance (no time right at the moment).

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

OK-I drafted a Brainstorm Idea to foster input surrounding improvements to maemo.org/news. Enjoy!

Re: I have a dream - aka Maemo Magazine
 

Well i love and hate the idea of such a magazine.

The thing i hate about it: all stuff mentioned is dedicated to the
developer scene, so why not aiming at a wider target readership
by implementing much "easier" content !?

The thing i love about it: i would read it! Because i am interested
in it. The enduser that NOKIA is targeting at certainly won`t.
But count me in as regular reader!

Ok and as another reason is, that i allready develop a monthly
ezine that you can get here: http://epo.endorphinum.de

So my tips for you would be:
Stick to the size of 800x480 so that you can distribute it to
much more people and devices!
Offer it as PDF so that if people do not want to read it on their
device, they can print it out and read it in bed.