Collaboration Matters!

Superhuman!

Stuart McIntyre — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 11:06:27 +0100

"I am, I am... Superman, and I can do anything... Superhuman software"

You all remember the great R5 ads, right? That multi-million dollar campaign back in 1999/2000 that we all regard as the heyday of Lotus marketing? (If you don't, check the ad here.)

Well, what did I come across as a full page ad in the Telegraph yesterday?

Any ideas? I'll give you a clue, it's a technology company... Click through to find out.

Come on Blackberry, think up an original tag line ;-)

Ooooh, I want one...

Stuart McIntyre — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 06:21:33 +0100

Two desirable items that hit my feed reader today, that I just want need so much ;-)

1. The new Blackberry "Thunder"

That's right folks an anonymous tipster has sent us shots of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Thunder. The Thunder also known as BlackBerry 9500 will feature a huge 360x480 touch display and will apparently run on OS 4.7. This device will be a great multimedia player and could bring CDMA carriers true iPhone competition. The Thunder will run a carrier music store which similar to the iPhone's iTunes store and will allow users to purchase songs from their device. The display on the Thunder most likely will be a glass surface similar to the iPhone.

I so want an iPhone 3G, but can't have one for a couple of reasons - first, cos' I really couldn't give up my Blackberry for email purposes, and secondly, I wouldn't touch O2 (the chosen iPhone carrier here in the UK) with a very long barge pole. This might just provide a very nice alternative - at least if Blackberry sort out their Mac syncing issues.

2. The "YellowCube"

Decided to test the waters with our new product. As we found the Lotus Foundation Micro2 server not really practical for my clients, we decided to up the ante.

What if that micro2 was a little bigger, and had 2 drives, 4gb of RAM or more and a really fast processor?
You could load Lotus Foundations, Linux, Windows or whatever else you want on it too!
And it was preloaded with Domino with Sametime or Quickr or ...
What if you could pick it up and take it ANYWHERE, ANYTIME?
And what if it came in Yellow?

Now, this is a great idea, Keith, and one that I can see being very very popular. Nice one!

Collaboration Matters Podcast Episode 3 - Lotus Connections 2.0

Stuart McIntyre — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 08:28:24 +0100

Heidi Votaw and Suzanne Minassian join Neil Burston and I to talk about the newly released Lotus Connections 2.0 social software solution. During this episode you will learn about:

What is Connections? Why is it important?
What's new in the 2.0 release?
How successful is Connections as a product?
Who has deployed it, and what benefits did they gain?
What did happen in the Enterprise2.0 shootout with Microsoft?
What's next for Lotus Connections?

This podcast is 22.6mb and runs for 49 minutes at 64kps. Enjoy!

Collaboration Matters Podcast - Episode 3 - Lotus Connections 2.0

(for iTunes: http://feeds.feedburner.com/collaborationmatterspodcast )

Waiting for the next big thing...

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:53:29 +0100

Courtesy of GeekandPoke

Twellow, hello...

Stuart McIntyre — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:23:51 +0100

I'm sure most of you will be aware that I'm a bit of a Twitter nut these days, and am always on the lookout for good new folks to follow. Most of the time I find them via other contacts' replies, or else using some of the recommendation engines that are out there, but there is definitely a place for a new tool or two.

So say hello to Twellow ;-)

This is a Twitter directory - type in the name of a contact to find out more about them (e.g. the Brillmeister):

or else browse by category to find others you aren't aware of:

Whilst there are definitely a few rough edges to be smoothed, this is definitely one I'll add to my 'twoolbox' :-P

Arithmetic, Population, and Energy - you should watch this...

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:35:55 +0100

Another great Twitter find, this time from @vruz:

The Most Important Speech EVER - by Prof. Emeritus Dr. Albert A. Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy.

It starts slow and conventional, but it takes off in the 2nd segment. If you only have time to watch one single segment, skip to Segment #4

Segment 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Segment 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb3JI8F9LQQ

Segment 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vÏyOw9IgtjY

Segment 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQd-VGYX3-E

Segment 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHuwgxrTKPo

Segment 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU

Segment 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyseLQVpJEI

Segment 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoiiVnQadwE

STOP DOING whatever you are doing and WATCH.
I MEAN IT

I don't normally listen when folks tell me "you MUST watch this!", especially on YouTube, but this is well worth spending at least 10 minutes of your time to watch.

Lots of new Lotus announcements today...

Stuart McIntyre — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:48:04 +0100

Including the following:

IBM Lotus Web Content Management V6.1 adds key enhancements for building next generation Web sites

IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1 leverages Web 2.0 to provide exceptional user experiences

WebSphere Portal Express 6.1: Easy-to-deploy solution includes application integration, document management, Web content
management, and collaboration capabilities in a single package

IBM Portal Pack for SOA Configurations V6.1 enables you to leverage an SOA-based portal

IBM Lotus Mobile Connect V6.1.2 expands Nokia device support, enables authentication chaining, and offers an API-only client

IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory 6.1 supercharges application development and delivers high performing applications faster by
providing a significantly improved developer user experience

IBM Lotus ActiveInsight V6.1 helps organizations communicate and achieve performance goals and objectives

IBM Lotus CEO Community Collaboration Bundle delivers a complete communications collaboration solution (now including Sametime Advanced)

IBM Content, IBM Collaboration, and IBM Enterprise Suite Accelerators 6.1 help organizations gain more business value, faster,
from IBM WebSphere Portal

IBM Mashup Center 1.0: Empower your business

IBM WebSphere Dashboard Framework V6.1 adds new business intelligence systems integration; new tutorials and samples for
WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Application Server, and deployment to a range of clients including Lotus Notes 8

More info to follow as time allows ;-)

Shame on you, BBC...

Stuart McIntyre — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:35:10 +0100

Yes, yet again, the BBC tears defeat from the jaws of victory...

Wimbledon 2008 (starting today) is offering full live online video coverage via their "(IBM hosted/managed)Wimbledon Live" site, and at the good value of 12.90GBP ($24.99) for the two weeks:

Wimbledon Live Video Service Information

Wimbledon LIVE
Watch live action from Wimbledon 2008 on your PC with Wimbledon LIVE - a online subscription service offering unprecedented video coverage of The Championships.

High-Quality Live Streaming Video
Watch live coverage of all matches from Centre Court and No.1 Court and up to six other courts throughout the Wimbledon Fortnight.

Video On Demand Library
If you miss a match, you can download or watch it online later. We'll be recording every point, game and set we show live to our Video On Demand area. Choose the matches you want to see, when you want to see them.

Classic Wimbledon Moments
For the 2008 Wimbledon Live service we have expanded our classic area. Re-live all the best historic moments!

Sounds good, doesn't it? And it's avaialable pretty much globally. Only, the following small print might just get in the way:

# Windows OS: 2000, XP (Preferred) or Vista - Unfortunately Apple Macintosh and Linux is NOT supported. This is due to the digital rights management and sharing technology used.
# Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher with cookies enabled (default setting) and security settings set to "medium"
# Windows Media Player 10 or 11

Yup, delivered via Windows Media to MS platform only. And I'd thought they'd learnt their lesson after the iPlayer debacle. Shame on you, BBC...

Credit where credit’s due...

Stuart McIntyre — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:54:42 +0100

You may remember that I raised an issue earlier this week regarding Connections 2.0 compatibility with the newly launched Firefox 3.0 and Flock 2.0 beta browsers, effectively causing the Home Page and Profiles modules to stop rendering. At the same time as posting the entry, I also emailed a number of members of the Connections team in IBM to make sure they were aware.

To their credit, the response was instant, with several comments on the blog post, plus a number of IMs, tweets and emails to discuss the problem. Adrian Spender has now responded formally on the Synch.rono.us blog:

Hopefully many of you are now exploring the features and capabilities of the newly released Lotus Connections 2.0. We are very proud of it and we think you'll like it too.

I suspect many of you are also enjoying the newly released Firefox 3 browser. I know I am. I have been very impressed with the speed of the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine in particular (I'm not so sure about the way it handles self-signed certificates though.)

Those of you at the bleeding edge have probably tried running Connections 2.0 in Firefox 3. If you have you may well have noticed that there are some problems, particularly with the new Home Page and when viewing people's profiles. In fact that is putting it mildly - Home Page in particular just won't render much of its content.

He goes on to admit that:

Yes, we knew about this before the product shipped.

and>So, guilty as charged. The good news however is that there will be an ifix to resolve this particular issue in the very near future. What we cannot promise is that every aspect of Connections 2.0 will work seamlessly on Firefox 3, because at the end of the day it hasn't had the level of testing we give the supported browsers. After all, we did actually ship before they did!So, on the positive, IBM have reacted very quickly this week, and are promising an ifix "in the very near future". Well done guys.

So what about the "we knew about this before the product shipped"... I personally hope that this relatively minor issue may have changed a few attitudes in IBM. In my opinion, it is no longer acceptable for this kind of problem to be kept quiet within the IBM walls, particularly when it relates to Web2.0 software such as Connections. This isn't a product that will sit entirely within a carefully managed customer network, with 100% locked down PCs running a set build of Windows XP Service Pack 2 with mandatory IE7 browsers - it will be accessed by users from home, on mobile devices, on hotel internet kiosks and far more places besides. It is a different ball game now.

As Adrian points out in his post, IBM has made great strides with their support for the other browsers (Firefox, Flock Safari etc.) and platforms including Linux and Mac OS X. However, sites such as Facebook, Del.icio.us, Wikia and Linked In aren't in a position to solely support a small number of browser devices, they must be continually on the lookout for the next one on the horizon and be dealing with whatever issues arise. More important than that however, is that sites like these look to be open to their users in identifying problems before they become an issue, informing them via blogs etc. and then fixing them ASAP. In short, they need to be one step ahead the whole time.

I don't think we can reasonably ask IBM to support every browser or platform that is out there, much less every new release and/or beta from the day they are available, and I'm not targeting the Connections team with this - I think that it relates to all the Lotus products and many more IBM SWG products besides. However, we can ask that they tell us as soon as they know of a problem (in this case as soon as they downloaded and used the first FF3 betas), and forewarn us of the likelyhood of issues that can be avoided or workarounds that can be used - in this case suggesting that regular users of Greenhouse, www-949 or internal Connections deployments hold off upgrading to FF3. This is the era of the collaborative vendor/partner/customer relationship, and we need IBM to lead the way.

On another topic altogether...

Stuart McIntyre — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:59:50 +0100

1) To all those who hear that we home-educate (not 'home-school' - why ever would we want to replicate school at home!), and ask how we're qualified to do such a thing:

I just wish these folks would stop and think about what is REALLY bothering them, what their concerns really are. Usually, their objections are based on assumptions they have never seriously analyzed.

Like this one. If I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, But youre not a scientist. How are you going to teach them biology, chemistry, trigonometry? I could pay my mortgage and have change left over. I always answer, quite seriously, Well, I took those classes in high school. Didnt you?

Of course, the skeptic will say, but its not like I REMEMBER any of it.

This cracks me up. Sometimes Ill say, if Im feeling snarky, Then surely I can do a better job than your teacher did!

Great post - go have a read!

2) Sometimes in the Lotus community we get a little introspective, and think how big we've got, how many readers we have, and how, like, "everyone who uses Notes must know about all these great blogs out there!" Well, sad to say that just isn't the case, and I know others have realised that and are taking steps to change this perception.

Well this brought it home to me... My wife is an avid reader of blogs herself, typically of "Moms" that home-educate or else just have interesting things to say on topics that she finds relevant. Well, you should see these blogs published by supposedly non-IT folks, using beautiful blog templates, clever widgets and web elements, and with huge readerships. Take this one, Rocks in My Dryer. It looks great, has super content, and oh boy, gets huge numbers of readers and comments.

For comparison, what's the most comments you've ever seen on a Lotus blog? 100, 120 maybe? Probably on Ed's or Nathan's blog? Well Rocks in My Dryer gets an average of 100 comments, and has been known to get more than 1000. And this isn't unusual for this kind of blog. They are hugely popular and really engage their audience even if you and I might find the topic of conversation a little... mundane?

So, as John and others have been suggesting... I think we need to all step it up a bit. How do we get our blogs up to that kind of readership and engagement by those out side the 'clique' we live and work in?

Lotus Sametime and LDAP - a lesson learnt in testing

Stuart McIntyre — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:26:25 +0100

Lesson learnt this morning...

Don't try, even in very small scale test mode, to set Sametime to use itself as an LDAP server - it doesn't work.

You get errors such as this:
19/06/2008 12:29:34 Error attempting to access the Directory *[127.0.0.1]:389 (no available alternatives), error is LDAP Server is NOT available.

It appears that the issue is that the LDAP service and the Sametime-configured DA.NSF cause a loop. This technote gives more detail:

If you are running the LDAP task and the "Directory assistance database name" field is pointing to the directory on the same Domino server where Sametime resides, Directory Assistance is not needed, and causes problems.

Sametime should not, under any circumstances (in the stconfig.nsf or da.nsf), point to LDAP on the local server. When this is done, an infinite loop occurs through da.nsf because LDAP does a lookup against da.nsf when web authentication occurs.

So if you want to use Sametime and LDAP for test (e.g. to test the migration from Domino Directory to LDAP authentication), you will need two servers as a minimum.

Web2.0 goes to work, except in the Notes client!

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:43:40 +0100

Sorry, that title is a bit of a cheap shot, but this has been nagging at me for a while, and I finally had to say something...

Lotus has been dealing with Web2.0 technology for what, a minimum of 18 months - 2 years? Blogs and wikis have been around for 5 years+, yes?

So why-oh-why does the Notes client spell check not recognise such common terms as web2.0, blog, wiki and mashup? Even worse, why does it not recognise Lotus' own trademark products, Sametime and Quickr?

(Oh and I'm running the latest greatest Notes 8.5 Beta 1 here).

Surely it's time for an update of the standard spell-check dictionaries for the Notes client?

IBM Provides Free Online Training in Hot Technologies

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:19:25 +0100

I think this is a super initiative from IBM:

IBM Provides Free Online Training in Hot Technologies

WALTHAM, MA - 16 Jun 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is helping to prepare the next generation of business and IT experts at no charge with online resources designed to educate students about hot technologies. Six offerings are now available, providing students access to tutorials, forums, games and other resources, and helping them develop marketable skills in hot job areas such as enterprise computing, Web 2.0 programming and database management.

Additionally, through the Student Portal on the IBM Academic Initiative web site, students can access a three-step tutorial on Service Science Management and Engineering (SSME), a new academic discipline that brings together ongoing work in the fields of science, engineering, and business management, combined with the study of social and legal sciences. The SSME resources prepare students to take advantage of a growing field of "hybrid" technology jobs that require multi-disciplinary backgrounds, such as environmental engineering, information analysis and urban architect planning.

...

IBM customer MIB is moving toward a Services-Oriented Architecture extended with Web 2.0 to better serve its 500 member life and health insurance companies. Therefore, it is looking to attract emerging talent in Massachusetts who can continue development of Web 2.0 capabilities and Rich Internet Applications to assure secure data exchanges.

"IBM is demonstrating leadership by providing supplemental Web 2.0 learning resources where students play -- the Internet. At the same time, by working closely with universities to deliver those relevant skills, we're confident we'll have the talent pool we need to succeed," said Alexander Klevitsky, Director of Architecture and Enterprise Software for MIB.

Whilst there is no direct Lotus link here (the courses use Websphere Community Server, DB2 and Jazz) it is clear that any positive input to student training from IBM has to be a good thing, especially if they leave college knowing and having enjoying using IBM software.

Read the full press-release here.

Connections 2.0 and Firefox3

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:03:57 +0100

Houston, I think we have a problem...

It appears that Connections 2.0 is not compatible with the released version of Firefox3 and its sibling Flock2. Go to my profile on the new Connections2.0 site and see what you get.

Safari renders it fine (for once), as does IE7. Whereas Firefox3/Flock2 give the following:

at least four times before completing the page. This happens on many of the sections of the Connections 2.0 site, whereas BleedYellow (Connections 1.0.2) is fine. Unfortunately the Greenhouse also suffers the same errors.

I kinda feel sorry for IBM as there is little they can do to legislate for changes in browser configurations, but at the same time, the Firefox3 betas have been around for several months, so I am surprised this hasn't been seen before. Does anyone have a pre-GA copy of FF3 they can use to test?

Upgraded

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:47:45 +0100

Upgraded this blog/web/mail server to Domino 8.5 beta 1 this morning. As usual, the process took just 20 minutes or so, including backing up just in case, the upgrade and refreshing all the database designs. All looks fine and dandy.

Sometimes you have to wonder whether it is almost too easy? If this were Exchange or even Websphere, would we even be considering deploying beta software into a semi-production environment, let alone doing it remotely over a VNC connection whilst sat in a hotel room in Cambridge ;-)

Firefox3 is just so... yesterday!

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:28:57 +0100

Flock v2 beta has been released, based on FF3 technology:

Now you can have the best of BOTH worlds!

Flock 2 includes all of the award-winning Flock features that people are raving about, PLUS all of the enhancements introduced by the latest FireFox 3 technology from Mozilla.

* New and improved security features - better!
* Enhanced performance - faster!
* Robust favorites and history handling - stronger!

Download it here.

It’s easier to be...

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:14:47 +0100

...an asshole to words than to people...

XKCD has it on the button yet again.

Domino Internet Site documents and SSO - is it really this difficult?

Stuart McIntyre — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:36:03 +0100

OK, this one bit me on the bum today (and many thanks to Chris Whisonant for his assistance), so I figured I ought to see whether anyone else feels this is a bit daft...

With Domino, you have two means of configuring web servers:

In the server document itself, using the HTTP and Domino Web Engine tabs under Internet Protocols (each server has one, and only one, web site hosted on it)
Using Internet Site documents, by enabling "Load Internet configurations from Server\Internet Sites documents:" in the Basics tab in the server document and then creating an Internet Site document for each site you want to host (multiple web sites or URLs can be managed very flexibly).

Now given the choice, I always plump for the latter, it is more flexible, more granular and is very well suited to Web App servers and blog servers.

However, as you probably are aware by now, Sametime and Quickr DO NOT support Internet Site documents right now - I'm not going to go into the whys and wherefores of this right now, its just a fact that they don't.

So therefore, most reasonably complex Domino environments will have a mixture of Internet Sites and Server Document-configured Domino web servers. This is reasonably easy to deal with and shouldn't cause too much heartache.

Unless you want to do Multiple Server SSO (single sign-on) across your Domino infrastructure...

Why?

Because in the Web SSO Configuration Document there is an either-or field - "Organisation Name". If you are are using Internet Site documents, this must be set to the Organization Name you have used in those documents. If you are using Server Documents, it must be left blank. The tooltip when filling out the Web SSO document helpfully tells the admin this in very wordy terms, whilst the Admin Help itself does not mention that this is the case.

This seems to work as described (at least based on my tests today), but obviously presents a real issue when you'd like to have one SSO config that covers all your servers - Domino, Sametime and Quickr.

So, my wonderful readers, have you hit this? if so, how did you overcome it? I'd love to know...

IBM’s latest CIO study available - "We have to collaborate to survive"

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:17:14 +0100

From my PoV, one of the most essential docs to read each time it is released is the IBM CIO Study. This is published biannually as part of IBM's research into the views of C-level execs (CEOs, CFOs, CHROs (that's human resource officers) and CIOs) and covers the views of CIOs worldwide, their passions, strategies and the issues they face:

IBM has just produced a very insightful document based on our 2008 CEO Study which contains statements, analysis and trends that are very pertinent to matters of collaboration and integration - two things that are at the core of what Lotus software helps organisations address:

'Convergent thinking among the C-suite:why integration and collaboration spell big opportunity for CIOs.'

These are just two of the quotes

“We have to collaborate to survive; there are fewer things that will be cost effective to do on our own. We will continue to do less inside the organization and more with partners and even competitors.” – Global CEO Study 2008 participant

They [the CIOs] also point to the importance of collaboration across business lines and organizational boundaries as key to unlocking hidden talent, identifying new opportunities and exploiting their companies’ innovation potential.

Definitely worth downloading, reading and then sharing with others in your organisation.

Collaboration without boundaries

Stuart McIntyre — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 05:53:17 +0100

IBM has recently run an excellent series of online events known as "developerWorks Live!" briefings, including one entitled "IBM Lotus Software: Collaboration Without Boundaries":

See how collaboration solutions from IBM compare with those from Microsoft, highlighting the clear differentiators and competitive edge provided by the IBM Lotus solutions.

Audience

Decision makers, business and IT managers, business process or IT operations owner, developers, programmers, project managers, program managers, architects, practitioners, business partners and ISVs.

Objectives

* Learn how to reduce server sprawl and consolidate your infrastructure with Lotus Domino.
* Gain a deeper understanding of the reliability and quality of Lotus Domino.
* Learn how to extend your enterprise processes and systems using portal-based solutions.
* Hear about open document and platform alternatives to Microsoft Office and Windows.
* Learn about unified communications solutions and enterprise-ready Web 2.0-based social software services that enhance collaboration.

Duration

Full day

Description

Are you currently running Microsoft Exchange 2003, but struggling with reliability issues and losing the cost battle to ever-larger server farms? Are you feeling pressure to upgrade to the latest proprietary solutions, but instead want an alternative that will give you greater choice, increased flexibility, and lower costs? Have you cobbled together an e-mail system from heterogeneous parts, possibly open source, but are now looking to centralize on a proven and extensible platform? Are you comfortable with your Lotus Notes collaborative platform but now want to add unified communications and social software to further drive the productivity and innovation of your work force?

This briefing addresses the "pain points" of companies from all these perspectives. Specifically, well compare collaboration solutions from IBM with those from Microsoft, highlighting the clear differentiators and competitive edge provided by the IBM Lotus solutions. Using both presentations and live demonstrations, well stress the technical advantages of IBM Lotus collaboration services, demonstrate their richness and highlight how they integrate with, enhance and enrich your current email application, be it Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook.

Unfortunately, this session isn't currently scheduled to run again in the near future, but all the presentations are available for download:

Agenda
Introduction
Reaching Out with Lotus Sametime
Web 2.0
Team Collaboration with Lotus Quickr
Lotus Connections
Enterprise Portals
Save Money with Open Client
Cost Containment
Summary

Thanks to the ever cool Giuseppe for the heads-up...