I was gonna put this in its own thread, but I think the suggestions work here.

I've had an N800 since January and I firmly believe the N8xx platform is the handheld platform that has the most raw power and potential of any device out there. That said, it makes me very sad that all I can do with it is:

1. open documents locally on it.
2. keep a to-do list exclusively in it.
3. surf the web in range of WiFi when I can't get to a regular computer.

The key thing I desparately want this device to do is synchronize anything and everything and grant offline capabilities to web applications wherever possible. New developments in SyncEvolution look like the underpinnings are there, but it has to be stupid-easy to install, configure and use and all elements of the chain need to be open source to encourage innovation and adoption.

If a sync engine will run on a server to keep the information up to date, and my desktop and tablet sync to it, that's great.

(Given all the power this thing has, it also needs to make software update and maintenance easier to troubleshoot. I need to know how many broken repositories are in the updater. I need to know who is conflicting with who. I need to know who to talk to when a particular repository is broken or offline or misbehaving. I need to be able to see all of these things in an easy-to-use interface so I can take action instead of worry and fear new software and capabilities.)

I want all the great PIM things I used to have on PalmOS, and they need to be ready for the 21st century web. They need to talk to google or yahoo or wherever APIs are available. They need to let me do email, calendaring, and contacts management offline. They need to let me hit a big, red, candylike sync button and see what it's syncing with who. That sync should go across any interface: USB, Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMax, whatever the OS will allow.

There's so much power here. There's so much it could do to become the mobile super computing device. It's all software, and until it starts to deliver without needing seven pages of forum descriptions to configure any one of these features it's going to stay a tiny, far-too-underutilized niche product.

Seriously, it's OK if Nokia wants to sell these things with none of that installed. It's critical, though, that there is an easy to use, organized, N8xx-screen-sized browser-based application marketplace that ordinary people can search, navigate, understand in plain English (or their own favorite language) what they're looking at and how it will work with their device if they choose to install it. Sorry, the maemo site doesn't do that for me.

And it's also OK if all of these software engines are multiplatform and great for those netbooks we're seeing too. More users means more developers notice, more developers means better code for everyone. If the sync engine is solid and multiplatform and the local apps are specific to the platform that's great too. Just don't try and sell me on an awful, non-native front end or, even worse, text mode configuration page because it came from full-sized Linux laptops. Think about giving it to your tech-tolerating spouse to set up and ask yourself if you can explain it in just a few easy steps.

Look, I just want to be able to sell friends on getting my tablet. Right now it's almost all dead weight when it's offline.

I want to go to my somewhat tech-savvy friends who want a device and think a laptop or Netbook are too big, or think a mobile phone screen is too small, or don't want to buy a data plan and say "buy this N800" or "buy this N810", walk them to their WiFi access point, type in the marketplace URL for them, give them the 5 or 10 things they need to do email, calendaring, to-do's, and so on, get the file sync running on their computer, and then leave them with the most powerful and liberating mobile companions they could ever get.

The suggestions on an offline Facebook reader and commenter app sounds great. They have Facebook for blackberries for online access so making one for Maemo and caching its output could be done, but probably only by them. Having one for each social site is fine by me, though. You're not going to stay on one forever you know.

So what woke me from sadly gazing at my underutilized N800? Two things.

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.co...ecosystem.html
and
http://mobilesuccess.infinitysw.com/...beating-apple/

Michael Mace has serious chops, and I know others have quoted him.

I also know there will be a handful of people saying "but but it can do these, just do this!" and throwing links at me. If they're easy to do, great, and it's a testament to the fragmentation of this platform that I read this site's front page constantly and never know about them. And please don't tell me to build it myself because there are far more talented programmers out there than me with far more time than me and far fewer kids than me that can do this far better than I ever could.

If you make the base platform a killer platform, people will notice, developers will notice, and you never know it just might start getting traction in the world of iPhones, Android phones, Windows Mobile phones, and even Palm phones.

Ok there I said it. Thanks for reading. I'm surprised you stuck around this long. Oh and I want a pony, too. :-D