Hello, I'm having a similar problem on my N900. When I create .desktop files in the /home/user/.local/share/applications/hildon directory they don't appear in my app list anywhere. That is, they are not in the task launcher or the list of shortcuts to add to the desktop. I've run the cat command and the file contents display correctly. When I instead put them in /usr/share/applications/hildon then they do appear and can be added to my desktop but they don't do anything, even though "debbie gnumeric" does work in the terminal. Can anyone help? I've described the problem more in this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40223
[Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Encoding=UTF-8 Name=gnumeric Icon=ooo-calc Exec=debbie gnumeric Type=Application