Hi,

I'm considering buying a tablet for my wife. I think the advantage to the tablet is the active software development community, but I'm concerned about how fun it would be for someone who is not a hacker to take advantage of this. (See my thread here for more info).

I've been thinking about ways to address this problem, and considering that I don't even own a tablet I understand that I may be out of line here. (I'm just trying to help)

One of my thoughts is to implement dependency-checking on maemo.org. Looking through these forums, missing dependencies appears to be the most common problem by far. How hard would it be to automate dependency checking for apps on maemo.org?

It would also be nice if the usability of the download section of maemo.org was improved. I was thinking along the lines of a single-page, sortable view of all available software, "expert" reviews, etc. To get some inspiration, I looked at download.com, a site I've used many times in the past.

That's when I realized that there is a mobile section to Download.com! They have apps for Psion, Symbian, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, even the iPhone. But not Maemo. Why not? It would provide more visibility for Maemo and relieve some of the server strain on maemo.org. Is the tablet market just too small? (On an ironic note, the N810 is advertised on download.com's mobile section.)

Basically what I'm looking for in this thread is a brainstorming session for how 3rd-party software for the tablets might be made more accessible to people who aren't techies. I understand that we can't get rid of the bugs, but things like better distribution and dependency-checking seem like they might be achievable.