Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

In the german speaking community a famous site dealing with mobile phones in general and especially maemo is http://pocket.at in Austria or, better, http://maemo.pocket.at.
Lately they even launched a Meego area in the XING social platform which is officially supported by Nokia.

This normally would not raise concerns regarding a lack of independence as it is pretty normal to get support from the corresponding manufacturer. If there hadn´t been that incident with a MeeGo poll on the site: http://www.pocket.at/maemo/?p=4299

In that poll editor Helmut Hackl asked to comment whether people would be willing to switch to MeeGo as soon as it is available or prefer a dual boot solution. Which led me to the idea to state that Nokia needs to take action to improve the availability of software.
This resulted in a harsh reaction first (which had been edited to be softened down later on) by the editor and some comments I contradicted with. With the result of a strong reaction again.
I then wrote an even longer comment pointing out the lack of specialised business applications, the chicken-egg problem in software availability Nokias N900 suffers from and referenced the destiny of the Zaurus. It was neither harsh nor insulting nor personal. Somebody else acknowledged this comment in another post and wondered about the strong tone of the editors.
Some minutes later both posts were eliminated- mine and the follow-up. Interesting. More interesting: I am blocked for further commenting. More follow-ups of mine did not make it in the comments section.
The whole debate now looks like a "MeeGo is great" parade and has obviously cleaned up.
This sheds some interesting light on the site which gets even more interesting knowing that the MeeGo forum in the XING network is obviously only filled by a Nokia sales representative and Helmut Hackl. There does not seem to be a way to write own comments.
pocket.at on its main side has the Nokia logo in the sponsoring section and it seems as if their self-understanding of being independent and neutral as stated in their impressums section is no longer existing, I am afraid. Plus criticism affecting the site is not welcome at all.
So for me information coming from this site has to be taken with a pinch of salt. If I revisit them again at all.

However I´d be glad to get a statement from there regarding this issue. The feedback mail address leads to nirvana. Well, the light sheds even more.

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

i think helmuth is member of maemo.org and is gonna comment on this soon?!?

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

I've taken part in that discussion. My post was immediately erased by him. The way he handles the users there is getting really annoying. I also got an IP-Ban. I would understand these reactions, in one case... users post in an inappropriate style or insult someone. None of this was the case. The discussion was on a good way and many of us think in the same way the "rebels" do. I think there is only one solution: use one of the other blogs with independent owners.

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

:confused:

So.. who we are people? because now I've got impression I came to some forum of rebel's or something. Keeping as silent misinformed frustrated wtf? Is something about this place I should know before I attempted?

Edit:
Ok I did a quick research ... so.. what are we sinking about?

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

Hey,

I've read Helmuths blog daily, but after such disappointing actions and censorship, I'll consider, whether I visit this site again.


I think, the number on the left bottom of the page increased rapidely with this discussion:



Wobei "Spam" hier wohl das falsche Wort ist ;-)

I've also taken part in that discussion, but my post is still there... Maybe, because I didn't provoce somebody but explained somebody the situation in MeeGo with Qt and GTK.


nearlyNERD

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

As ofels said... any comments get erased, the feedback isn't a real feedback in case you want to talk about something like this. I'm sure this is not meant to be a whiny thread. And sometimes it's just nice to know you're not alone....

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

This is why bloggers will never be on the same level as journalists (which have their own flaws too).

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

I intended to take up that valid point however I got blocked too quick.

Of course it is valid to say that the frameworks are undergoing porting efforts. However the question remains how many of the existing sparetime projects will follow the MeeGo path on a platform which does not officially support it in preference to Qt. It propably won´t be a one-time "copy app to platform B" activity.
So the number of ported apps under MeeGo will be even less than the number of apps under Maemo.

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

To sum up a few things. My intention is not to whine about how unfair life can be and that my "hillareous" posting has been deleted by the moderator of that site.
In fact I had simply taken some facts I gathered during my personal and professional life and encapsulated it in a personal opinion. So one can agree or disagree with it which is normal life. Nothing personal, abusive or offensive at all.

The issue I have is my disappointment about that site which claims to be independent but propably is not as far as it comes to Nokia and MeeGo. Telling what Apple and Google are doing well with their platforms and what should imho be adopted by Nokia provokes some rather harsh reactions and, in the end, leads to exclusion from the discussion site.
There are several signals which let me doubt their statement of independence- harsh reactions when it comes to Nokia, closed forums in which only Nokia and the editor have write access, big Nokia sponsoring sign on the site, etc.
I would really be interested to hear a statement from the editor regarding this issue.

Re: Pocket.at - sponsored by Nokia
 

Thanks for the info, I already had the impression things are going downhill there, but I somehow missed the details about the mentioned discussion. To make a long story short: One less reader for you, pocket.at