 Stuart McIntyre | Stuart McIntyre 16 May 2008 08:04:37Word is beginning to get out regarding the Lotus techjam - an exciting event scheduled for 28th May in IBM Staines: 
Fellow Techies!
We've just completed a very successful series of Lotusphere Comes to You events here in the UK. There is a very exciting buzz around all things Lotus and the message we heard loud and clear was for a more regular exchange of information.
So whether you are: -
* Nuts about Notes
* Salivating about Sametime
* Quackers about Quickr
* Potty about Portal
* Confident about Composite Applications
* Excited by Expeditor
* Caught by Connections
or simply
* Wowed by Widgets
The event is the : Lotus techJam on Wednesday 28th May (10:00 to 15:30) in Lotus Park, Staines
Come and meet your Lotus support team and benefit from an up-to-the-minute briefing on the latest Lotus developments. Learn what it means to be building a truly flexible collaboration infrastructure.
So, whether you're up-to-speed or just keen to know more, come and share your enthusiasm with others bitten by the same bug, and sign up for the inaugural Lotus techJam
If so, please contact Nick Davis ( nick_davis at uk.ibm.com ) -or- Dave Hay ( david_hay at uk.ibm.com )
Warning :This will be a high-tech with many hands-on demonstrations rather than sales and marketing, event, and suits may well be banned.
We have lined up some fabulous speakers for the day and a very exciting agenda.
The agenda is subject to change but in essence is as follows:
Notes / Domino 8.x Darren Adams, Ray Davies
Sametime Lewis Turek, Andy Walter
Connections Brendan Tutt, Matt Newton, Paula Dantas
Quickr John Wylie, Cali Clarke
UC2 John Crouch, Darren Adams
Portal and Forms Dave Hay, Nick Davis
Knowing many of those speaking at the event, and also having had discussions about the content, I am sure that this will be one session not to be missed. So, if you can make it to the Staines location on 28th May, get in touch with Nick or Dave ASAP - availability is limited, and places are sure to go quickly. See you there! Stuart McIntyre 16 May 2008 08:00:00Two major press releases from IBM this week that tie in with RIM's major Blackberry worldwide conference (Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2008). 1) IBM and RIM Mobilize Web 2.0 Capabilities - New Mobile Web Solution Brings Social Networking, Enterprise Collaboration and Information on Demand to BlackBerry Smartphones "As the world enters the 'Era of the Mobile Web,' mobile devices like BlackBerry are outnumbering TVs, credit cards and PCs, and are becoming increasingly critical to business operations for companies of all sizes globally," said Bob Picciano, GM Lotus Software. "Today's announcement extends the portfolio of IBM's industry-leading social computing and collaboration offerings available to customers as they increasingly rely on their BlackBerry smartphones."
"The organizational and personal benefits of the Lotus collaboration suite together with the mobility and security advantages of the widely-adopted BlackBerry platform provide an unmatched solution for enterprise customers," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at Research In Motion.
IBM and RIM are making the following technologies portable and accessible, anytime and anywhere:
* Portals & Dashboards: IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM dashboard software lets businesses build Web sites and single screen dashboard views that deliver information, applications and processes personalized to the individual BlackBerry smartphone user.
* Social Networking: The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections helps people tap into the collective knowledge of others and find the people and information they need for the task at hand while on the go.
* Messaging and Calendaring: BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino enables access to key email and calendaring functions as well as custom applications built with Lotus Domino.
* Unified Communications: The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Sametime lets people access their full buddy list, send and receive instant messages, view presence information and convert an IM session to a phone call with a simple click.
* Business Intelligence: IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile business intelligence software is the industry's first business intelligence solution designed specifically for the BlackBerry platform. It provides personalized secure business information in the right context to allow people to view and interact with dashboard-style reports to make informed decisions while they are on the move. 2) IBM Expands Managed Wireless Services for BlackBerryIBM (NYSE: IBM) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM) (TSX: RIM) today announced IBM's new hosting capabilities to support the BlackBerry(R) platform. IBM has joined the BlackBerry(R) System Integrator (SI) Alliance Program.
IBM will expand its portfolio of Managed Wireless Services for the BlackBerry platform leveraging its successful services offering that currently hosts more than 100,000 enterprise end users globally. The offering builds upon the strength of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server product line with a far-reaching suite of services that include hosting, consulting, systems integration, and deployment of enterprise applications on the converged platform.
...
"We find that our enterprise clients increasingly need to extend wireless data capabilities beyond e-mail, and to leverage their enterprise investment on wireless device platforms," said Gary Cohen, IBM's General Manager, Global Communications Sector. "IBM's services will facilitate the deployment and ongoing management of enterprise applications on the BlackBerry platform. We are uniquely positioned to enable our enterprise customers to do so on a large scale. As the world's leading IT services provider we are very pleased to be offering these services and to be working with RIM, an outstanding innovative leader in the wireless data marketplace." Whilst much of the "news" here is not new, it is good to see IBM cementing its commitment to the Blackberry platform and to mobile devices in general. The Traveler technology included in ND8.0.1 was interesting, and sparked off many debates regarding the relative merits and importance attached to Blackberry, WinMobile, Symbian and iPhone. Personally, I would think that Blackberry/RIM is still the most important device out there in terms of business mobile use, so agree with IBM's commitment there. However, I do wish we were seeing as much visible focus and investment on the iPhone as I have no doubt that this will be the predominant mobile application platform of 2-5 years time. Stuart McIntyre 14 May 2008 12:56:20Perhaps they're getting the message now? From a "Microsoft Business Insights Newsletter" (emphasis mine): Still on the fence about Windows Vista?
With a year of a maturing ecosystem and continuous updates through Windows Update, many IT Pros have concluded the time is right to get going on their Windows Vista adoption.
Understand how Windows Vista SP1 changes the adoption equation for Windows Vista, get resources to help and take another look at the advantages of updating your desktop infrastructure in this article.
Read the article > So perhaps after a year (well, actually 17 months), IT folks might actually be considering adoption of Vista? I think that the opposite might actually be true, that after a year, IT pros are less likely to consider adoption than they were when it was released... Stuart McIntyre 14 May 2008 08:45:36Just a quick query... Has anyone else seen issues pasting images into DominoBlog posts on the Mac? At either 7.0.2 or 8.5 beta, where on Windows a pasted image would get converted and appear successfully on the blog, on the Mac I just get the following:   I can use a work around of putting 'img src=' HTML into the appropriate field, but that seems like a bit of a hack to me. Anyone else had similar issues? Stuart McIntyre 13 May 2008 16:22:26Two Lotus Mashup-related webcasts in the next couple of weeks: May 19th at 11am EDT / 4pm UK
"Drive New Business with IBM Mashup Center"
Enterprise mashups allow organizations to reduce their application backlog, increase their agility, and solve business problems faster by supporting self-service assembly of new applications that address daily business challenges. To allow our customers to capitalize on the promise of mashups, we have recently announced IBM Mashup Center - an end-to-end mashup platform, supporting line of business assembly of simple, flexible, and dynamic web applications – with the management, security, and governance capabilities IT requires. In this session, we will provide an overview of IBM Mashup Center and discuss how you can use this offering to drive new business.
To register go here:
https://www-926.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwokrst7egke7&lang=en
May 30th at 11am EDT / 4pm UK
“Mash it up – How to quickly create dynamic mashups and widgets’
In this session, we will provide a technical deep dive on IBM Mashup Center, highlighting how to quickly create and share new web applications. Through interactive demos, we will cover how to create new feeds that unlock existing information sources, transform or remix feeds, create dynamic widgets, assemble widgets on-the-glass into new applications, and then share or catalog these applications and components.
To register go here:
https://www-926.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwokrst7egkt3&lang=en Stuart McIntyre 13 May 2008 11:28:03Church + YouTube = GodTube!  GodTube.com is a dynamic community of people who are looking to connect, share, and belong. In its simplest form, GodTube is a video-driven social network where users can explore their faith and the tenets of Christianity.
Our millions of users come back time and time again to find inspiration, ask questions, interact, chat, share, upload Christian videos, worship and more. Some of the content is fun, some of it is serious, and all of it is safe for the whole family. GodTube showcases religious content from many of the world's leading Christian ministries and socially responsible faith-based organizations, including Spanish language and other international Christian ministries. What's more, they have recently received $30m funding from hedge fund GLG for further development and marketing. The Telegraph reports: Leading hedge fund GLG has invested $30m in a Christian version of YouTube as part of a $150m fundraising.
The godtube website
GLG, which is headquartered in London but listed on the New York Stock Exchange, injected the money in to GodTube, which claims to be one of the fastest growing Christian online video sharing and social networking sites.
The investment is understood to be part of the company's first major fundraising round since the site launched last summer.
It is an interesting move for GLG, as the venture capital-style nature of this investment is something more associated with a private equity house rather than a hedge fund. There is definitely a market for all kinds of online video, and for this type of content, so I hope GodTube continues to prosper... Stuart McIntyre 13 May 2008 07:16:20The Notes 8.5 beta on the Mac has the following lovely new dialog (which I can't find a way to disable):  It also suffers with the same feature/bug that Notes 8.0.1 on Windoze has, losing all memory of its integrated Sametime configuration every time you switch IDs, and certainly not supporting the option of staying logged into Sametime through the switch. Now, it's clear to me that IBM/Lotus is trying to deprecate the use of ID switching in the Notes client, and pushing folks toward multi-user installs instead. I can see why this might be desirable with the job-sharing secretary type scenario where ID switching was the only option on Win98 and earlier, but I can't imagine there are too many of these situations left out there. However, that leaves the many thousands of developers/admins that cannot install the multi-user client (it isn't an option if you need Admin or Designer), who are also the folks who typically have to access multiple Domino domains or Organisations with multiple different IDs. So, my question... What is the replacement for multiple locations and ID switching for us Notes "power users" who are deploying, managing, supporting and developing Notes applications and installations for multiple organisations? If I'm wrong and we are to be able to continue using ID switching, please please please can it be properly supported, including integrated Sametime? Stuart McIntyre 8 May 2008 10:31:04 Watch Bruce Morse (VP Unified Communications Software, IBM) deliver his keynote session from LCTY Wembley (held 1st April). Then listen to our Collaboration Matters podcast when Neil Burston and I review the event, and see if you agree with our views ;-) Stuart McIntyre 30 April 2008 15:29:42A reminder of one of the two "other" conferences taking place w/c 2nd June 2008: 
Lotus are running a European Technical Conference on the 2nd / 3rd of June in Amsterdam. This is a new once a year event that presents the best possible opportunity for skill development, networking and building awareness of the latest and most up to date product and solution information from Lotus. The conference costs EUR 999 but an early bird EUR 100 discount applies if registering before 3rd May.
Come to Amsterdam to learn how Team collaboration software helps you share content, collaborate and work faster on-line withyour teams --inside or outside your company's firewall. Portal software provides a composite application or business mash-upframework and the advanced tooling needed to build flexible, SOA-based solutions. Lotus Technical Conferences can help system administrators, developers and IT leaders learn how.
The program will lead you in details through 2 tracks :
Messaging & Collaboration track
Collaboration software started with messaging. While e-mail remains an important tool, new Lotus software now offers so much more.
Team Collaboration software helps yo share content, collaborate and work faster on-line with your teams
The Messaging & Collaboration track provides system administrators, developers and IT leaders with the information,solutions and experts needed to meet these challenges. You will learn about theses topics: - My Widgets and Live text in Notes 8
- Going mobile with Notes Traveler
- Notes Designer Web 2.0 support
- Building composite applications
- Best practices and features that help you migrate to Notes/Domino 8
- Lotus Symphony: deploy, manage, integrate open productivity tools
- Quickr Content Integrator
- Sametime 8 UC2: features, choices, integration and extensions
- REST services to integrate with Quickr and Connections
- Assembling situational applications with Lotus Mashups
- Creating and deploying Lotus Forms without IT
Portal track
Portals can provide a window to the future of your business.
Content management, personalization, integration and security require complex solutions.
The Portal track provides system administrators, developers and IT leaders with the information, solutions and experts needed to solve these complex problems.
You will to learn about these topics: - Integrating Microsoft and .Net applications in IBM WebSphere Portal Server
- Integrating your IBM Lotus applications in IBM WebSphere Portal Server
- Developing portlets with Open Source frameworks
- Leveraging your existing web applications in IBM WebSphere Portal Server
- Using IBM Portlet Factory 6.1
- Integrating your SAP environment in IBM WebSphere Portal Server
- Integrating your Oracle environment in IBM WebSphere Portal Server
- Upgrading IBM WebSphere Portal Server
Enroll today for this IBM Lotus Technical conference and grab the opportunity to learn directly from product experts.
Take advantage of networking opportunities that provide fresh ideas and insights into solutions that can work for you. I myself won't be there - the extra time away from paid work (on top of ILUG2008, 4-6 June) and the cost of this conference is simply too much for my business to bear. The timing is a great shame in that regard! However, I do hope that the Technical Conference is a success, as it would be awesome to have a mid-year "mini-Lotusphere" in Europe on an ongoing basis... Stuart McIntyre 30 April 2008 07:17:40 We are really seeing a surge in interest around migration of desktops to Linux, and IBM is doing some great work on pushing Lotus solutions as the natural choice for collaboration and productivity tools on that platform. Some good examples of this have been the recent " Lotus on Redhat" promotion, the VDEL OpenReferent solution and the longer-standing SUSE Open Collaboration Client product. With regard to the SUSE option, developerWorks have produced four really useful whitepapers covering the migration process:
IBM open collaboration client solution: An introduction IBM open collaboration client solution: Organizational planning and user segmentation for desktop migration IBM open collaboration client solution: Technical planning requirements for desktop migration And now the latest one:
IBM open collaboration client solution: Migrating applications to the Linux desktop Have you wanted to port your infrastructure and business line applications to a Linux desktop environment, but been deterred by the need to access critical Microsoft Windows or legacy applications? Finding a way to support these critical business line applications is crucial when considering the move to Linux. This article highlights the various tools that let you access these applications from Linux desktops. In the paper the authors cover tools such as Diamond Edge, Mainsoft, Win4Lin Pro and Ericom software - all really useful if you are going to be looking to migrate a suite of enterprise applications (and their users) across to the open platform... | |
