I would disagree with you very strongly about IRC, Java, and the immediate accessibility of both. (The curt answer would be, if IRC is so easy, why is there such a market demand for web chat?) As long as itT doesn't help the average user get to the chat from within the browser, the vast majority will not bother to take the extra steps to join in. In addition, would you actually want the hundreds of guests that hit the site to be piped into #maemo? Of course not, you'd want them to go into a new channel, like #maemo-help or #maemo-newowners -- the IRC experts know how to log into multiple rooms, so no problem.

This is the fundamental problem of this kind of device. As this device begins to move into the mass-market, non-hobbyist space, it's going to attract users who don't know about IRC, who don't know what a repository is, and who are generally less computer-savvy than those already on this forum. And when novices and experts collide, it ends up becoming a culture war. Case in point: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=13481

Most users on the web treat forums like chat. So why not just give them chat? Why not add features to the site that draw away unwanted forum activity into systems that can handle them better? To wait for people to suddenly learn how to use forums properly is like a postman waiting for the mail to stop coming. There will always be more novices than experts coming in, and the curve will only increase as the tablets gain popularity. The only other option is to go private, and put up a barrier to registration.

As for Jaiku, I would like to point out that I hate that it's there. It's another post-comment structure that detracts from the site forums, and furthermore, ever since Google bought Jaiku they've turned off new-user registration, so re: my point on how to help suffice brand new IT owners who have easy questions, offering a system that they can't participate in does absolutely nothing to help them.