the developer of gpodder for desktop was so kind to give me some answers:

in short, the newest build for desktop linux has tons of new features and enhancements, but there is little or no communication between the desktop team and the maemo port maintainer (mika). Thomas is rewriting the core code a the moment, with the aim to make it easier to understand (and port, eventually).

I also came across this interesting article:
http://pymaemo.garage.maemo.org/docu...emo_howto.html
..almost makes we want to try this for myself, but with zero linux and code development experience, I don´t really know where to start (IDE..???), I am in the same situation as adammelancon...-)