The Sametime 8.5.x Proxy Server, Web Client, and RESTful APIs — An Introduction
Category : SamtimeProxy TheView
I forgot to post this whilst I was at Lotusphere
The View published a new article I wrote on the Sametime 8.5.x proxy. It's
an introduction article that can get you started with development.
Discover the Sametime
8.5.x Proxy server and its new client for browsers and iPhone. Learn what
the Proxy server does, how it works, and the ways that you can add Sametime
presence to Web sites using the powerful APIs exposed in the server’s
Browser Client toolkit.
The View requires a subscription to
read the article and can find the article here:
Category : Hiking Ireland
Rather foolishly or rather smartly, I have
not yet decided, late last year I agreed to take part in the 2012
Big Bloggers Dander for Dosh (not sure it was called big last
year, perhaps they added that for me?), anyway, I signed up and I will
be taking part in the week prior to UKLUG
Why should this concern you? Well
during the year I'm going to be trying to hit you up for sponsor money,
all those people that I've ever helped free of charge with a Sametime question,
it's going to be time to cough up, all those folks that are using the free
Epilio plug-ins and tools and never pressed the Facebook like button, you'll
need to pay up too. So let this be fair warning to you, start saving
your pennies, I'll be expecting you to sponsor me and I wont be shaving
my head this time.
If you're interested in taking part,
put a comment on Steve's blog I'm sure we can accommodate.
For those that always ask about Jessie,
and the majority of people that read this blog do, and she does appreciate
it, it is my plan to try and take Jessie, so we will be training leading
up to the event, and hopefully I will have all her pet passport etc. sorted
out for entering the UK. 26 miles may not sound like far, but now
imagine doing it with a couple of hundred pound back pack!
Category : Lotusphere NoFacts
Overall the feedback I have been hearing
from people around Lotusphere 2012 has been very positive, they liked the
OGS and felt very positive afterwards. What I personally took from
the OGS was this, having no panels will score you big points with the attendees,
saying Notes or Domino will get you the largest cheers in the OGS. Mike
Rhodin's speech basically bored me to tears, it's the same sentences as
his section at every other Lotusphere, just in a slightly different order,
if you're playing buzzword bingo, you only need to pay attention during
his and Sandy Carter's bit. Michael J Fox was inspirational and made
me feel sad at the same time. I don't feel sad for Michael J Fox,
but I do feel sad that someone so young is slowly being taken over by a
disease he has no control over, that makes me sad. The way he is
handling it though, and the efforts he is making to raise money are inspirational.
It also brings guilt, here I am with a body that does react to my
commands (well apart from the jump high one) and I'm taking it for granted.
So a great opening speaker, but lots of different emotions. I
think along with panels, OGS is seen as positive if you don't say anything
bad towards Notes/Domino, so as long as you don't say Notes/Domino is dead
you're in good shape, but honestly, all the new stuff IBM is heavily pushing
is WAS based, the web experience WAS, Connections WAS, Social Mail WAS.
OK so now onto some of the things shown
and what I think the future holds. So this is my gut feel of what
we can expect to see in the future based upon things seen and heard around
Lotusphere 2012. None of this is based upon any factual information,
or from back room chats, or information from old friends, this is
just my gut feel for how things are going to go after watching what was
shown at Lotusphere. So let me begin with IBM Docs.
I think I blogged at the time when IBM
Symphony was the wrong move, IBM Docs is where IBM should have been all
along. Symphony is not a game changer, IBM Docs is. IBM Symphony
is now part of Apache, IBM will tell you that IBM is committed to Symphony,
but I personally think the move to Apache is the first step of many where
IBM will be able to start reducing the effort that is placed in Symphony.
IBM has a dirty secret, Lotus SmartSuite makes more revenue for IBM
that Symphony, yep IBM still sells SmartSuite, did you know that? They
still have some customers on maintenance, amazing isn't it. Symphony
doesn't have revenue, and I can't think of any product at IBM that makes
zero revenue that stays around, after a few reorgs and someone new comes
in that wasn't involved, they will always ask why do we have product x
that makes 0$ ? So I expect in the coming years, you will see less
and less in the way of Symphony updates unless they are from developers
working at home for free (kind of like Lotus focused redbooks). Don't
get me wrong, I think Symphony was an interesting idea, it was just more
than 10 years late of when it was needed. As I said, none of this
is based in fact, just my gut feel on what we'll see.
Biggest cheer of the OGS, the Notes
plug-in for browsers. Details are sketchy right now, but basically
you'll have the equivalent of 90% of the Notes Basic client able to run
inside a windows browser. So how do I think this will be used? My
gut is this will be used as a migration tool for folks moving away from
Notes. Sure there will be some that use it on their path migrating
to Xpage apps, but my gut is that most will use this as a tool to help
their migration away from Notes. Now here's the thing, if that is
the case it won't be reflected in Notes CAL sales very quickly, I imagine
this is going to require a Notes CAL to be used, which means that customers
before which were moving just stopped paying maintenance will now stay
on maintenance to get the plugin. I think what IBM hopes will happen,
is this will speed up the adoption of XPage apps, personally I think the
opposite will happen, I think maybe companies that were considering moving
some Notes apps to Xpages, will now just say, you know what, we can save
a tonne of money by just giving people the notes app in the browser instead
of rewriting it, and any net new apps will be done on some other platform.
I can imagine there being companies that even expose some of their
"Legacy" (not my choice of phrase but IBM now use it) Notes apps
inside Sharepoint via the plugin.
Sametime - with IBM shipping Sametime
8.5.2 IFR1 late last year, there wasn't really any Sametime news this year,
well no announcement anyway. Most interesting thing I saw though
was a session given by Bill Quin and Rob Fox, AD206 The upcoming IBM Sametime
Meetings Server Remote Client SDK. This SDK looks like it has some
really exciting potential, so keep an eye on it. Not Sametime related
directly, but I did attend a demonstration in the Dolby suite at the Dolphin.
Dolby were showing how they can improve the effectiveness of online
audio calls through some of their magical jiggery pokery. If you
imagine a regular audio call with lets say 6 people, if everyone is speaking
at the same time, you just kind of hear blugh and it's hard to differentiate
between people. What Dolby have done, is taken those different audio
input streams, and make it sound like the people in the call are sitting
around you in different places. So just as if you were in a real
room with people chatting around you and you can tune in to hear the different
people quite easily, you can do the same with the Dolby system. This
isn't a solution that Dolby is selling for customers, it's a technology
that vendors could include in their solutions, kind of the way, SONY could
include Dolby support back in the Walkman days. It wouldn't surprise
me if sometime in the not too distant feature you see a audio conferencing
company as promoting their conferencing software with Dolby inside. For
best results it does require a stereo headset in order to simulate the
spacial awareness. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
Social Mail - For me my eyes kind of
glazed over at this point. Basically for email I need only a couple
of things, my All Documents view and full text index, that's where I spend
99% of my time when in mail. The idea of my mail and everything else
being in a stream just doesn't work for me, and for a company the size
of Epilio (think the same size as those 6 million other small businesses
in the US), the number of servers required to get Social Mail just isn't
going to fly for us. From what I could see it basically looked like
a web page running inside a Notes client, I may be wrong, but that's how
it looked. For large companies this may be the best thing since the
fax machine, I'm taking a wait and see attitude on this one. I think
it could struggle though, with the same thing Notes has struggled with
against Outlook. "We like Outlook as it's just mail" but
wait "Social mail is more than mail, it's streaming connections, files,
you can act of things, it's cool, you want more than mail surely?"
as I said, I'll wait and see.
The Closing General Session - Lessons
learned here for IBM I think are if you're going to have someone that isn't
known around the world they better be inspirational, Zander was known by
less people that Bob Costas, but he went down really well as he was inspirational.
Lotusphere attendees don't like me me me type personalities. We're
really separated from the food we eat, someone chopping up a clam on stage
really upset some people, the same people that a few minutes before had
quite happily eaten a meat sandwich, apologies to those of you that are
Vegetarian, you have reason to be upset. Personally, I do watch the
guys show so I didn't find it that bad. I would have loved to have
seen a situation with 5 Lotusphere attendees up there where a kind of mini
fear factor with food was done. Other takeaway IBM VPs will eat something
fishy that looks like a penis in front of hundreds if it means looking
good in front of their boss. As for me, you could have been chopping
brocoli up on stage, I still wouldn't eat it. So I didn't mind the
CGS at all, but others hated it with a passion.
I did get told by a few folks that they
didn't feel there was enough technical content and the pendulum had
swung too far towards MBA type sessions, where basically you could say
anything you wanted as long as it fitted within IBMs message.
There you go, a poorly laid out ramble.
As I said not based on facts, purely my gut feel.
Category : Large wave
I think this wave could do some terrible
damage to you if you didn't know what you were doing. The person
who made this video knew what they were doing.
Category : Lotusphere Content
I am back from Lotusphere into the sub
zero New England temperatures, as I promised during my Lotusphere Session
BP209, I have posted the slides and demonstration content on the Epilio
website. You can find the slides and the demonstration file details
here:
http://www.epilio.com/web/lotusphere2012.htm
If you did attend the session, please
be sure to complete your evaluation. These help me a great deal in
deciding content for future events. For those of you that got up
early on Thursday morning and came along, I thank you. I hope you
found it both enjoyable and educational.
Also, a continuation of my previous
post with regard to Lotusphere videos. You can find all the videos
I took of people at Lotusphere here in this YouTube playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL68DB220720A7718B
I will probably compile my Lotusphere
2012 thoughts in a separate post.
Category : Lotusphere Videos
As with last year, I'm doing video snippets
of folks that are willing to give them. Posted 3 from today, I've
even created a little intro collection.
If you're at Lotusphere and you're willing
to provide your expectations or impressions so far, please feel free
to stop me, I take all of 2 minutes.
Where I'll be at Lotusphere and space on my dance card.
Category : Lotusphere Orlando
Yes I will be going to the ball. Ooops,
I mean Lotusphere. I will be presenting a single session (why do
all that extra work of additional sessions), and have quite a few meetings
and social engagements planned. I still have room on my dance card
however, so if you'd like to meet to discuss Unified Comms solutions or
opportunities ie opportunities for my company to work with you, or maybe
you just want a free general advice chit chat, shoot me an email at ctylerls@epilio.com
and we can set up a convenient time and place to meet.
Here's where you'll definitely be able
to find me whilst I'm down there:
BP209 Doctors have scalpels, carpenters
have hammers, IBM Sametime Developers have SDKs Often the hidden power of a platform lies
in its Software Development Kits (SDKs) and IBM Sametime is no exception.
IBM Sametime has one of the richest SDKs of any UC platform, and knowing
about its capabilities can allow companies to understand further how they
can fully exploit all of the capabilities Sametime offers
DL N. Hemisphere E - Thursday
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM
You don't have to be a developer to
attend this session, if you're just wondering how you can make Sametime
a more valuable asset within your company, this would be a good session
to attend.
UK Night - Shula's Monday 8pm - 10pm
Sunday Epilio is proud to beone of the sponsors
for this event again. This is the third year, and is a fun and popular
event every year. I look forward to sharing a few jars with you there.
The Great Geek Challenge - The Fountain
Restaurant (bottom of escalator Dolphin hotel) - 8pm till the quiz finishes. This took place for the first time last
year and was a huge success and everyone attending had lots of fun. I'll
be emceeing/quiz master with Paul Mooney, so put on your thinking caps,
and come along and join a team. There are great prizes and plenty
of challenging questions (which is why I'm quiz master, don't want to look
stupid by not being able to answer any of them).
Bloggers and friends Annual Lotusphere
Dinner (BALD) - Saturday 3.30pm Big River Grille on the boardwalk. Normally I miss this as I am at another
event, this year I'm free so I'll finally be able to attend.
The Turtle Party - ESPN - Boardwalk
Saturday Night. I get to this one late, normally after
the party has finished, but the Lotus faithful are still around partying
hard with their first party of the week.
Opening General Session - Monday
8am - 10am I'll be there, and like the last few
years, www.lotuspherelive.com will be up and running.
This year, I'll have a laptop with a battery that lasts longer
than 30 minutes.
GURU101 GURUpalooza! - Thursday 10am
- 11am Don't worry I won't be blue this year,
so Tom your head is safe. On the off chance a question comes up about
Lotus Approach I'll be there to answer it.
Blogger Open - Thursday 4.45pm -
6.45pm Watch out <<insert favourite golf
player here>>, as I will be using all my minigolf skills to either
win or come last this year. I'm going home with a prize, one way
or another.
Welcome Reception - Sunday night The first opportunity to get an idea
of how many people have come along to Lotusphere this year, and to see
how tight IBM is being with the budget. The earlier the beer and
food is removed, the tighter they are. Last year I took a lot of
video at the Welcome Reception, not sure if I will do that this year, what
do you all think?
Solutions Showcase Reception
- Monday night, this normally starts around 5-6pm I think There are a lot of our customers with
booths at Lotusphere, with many of them showing solutions we built for
them, but which are badged as there own, so I tend to spend quite a bit
of time down there. The Solutions Showcase is a must see for anyone
attending Lotusphere, it's important to show your support for partners,
and it's also a great way to discover new ways of using the products within
your organization.
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone
there, if I don't see you make sure above all else you have fun. As
I said, if you're interested in a meeting to discuss Unified Communications,
please shoot me a note.
What's old is new again - or as IBM likes to call it Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1
Category : IBM Sametime
Great news, IBM today released IBM Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1, seriously what are
they thinking with the name? I mean for one thing, this is the first
release of Sametime now officially supported on Domino 8.5.3, and didn't
IBM say they were going to sync release versions so it would be less confusing
for customers (yeah I know, they did that for one release, then forgot
they ever said it). Seriously though, people hear Interim Fix and
they think bug fixes, they don't think a release with some major additional
features.
UPDATE: So IBM just contacted
me (through Facebook chat no less) So IFR does not mean Interim Fix
Release it means Interim Feature Release, how I was confused I have no
idea.
So what are the features to be found
in Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1
New native client for Sametime for
Apple iPhone and iPad mobile devices Great news, a web app is adequate for
many use cases, but native, installed apps are nice for a number of reasons,
less network traffic, better background processing, ability to use other
notification methods. Background notification of new messages, much better
now on the iOS 5 devices with the notification center (Android folks always
had a decent notification mechanism)
IBMs bone headed move for the mobile
client? This "A dialer providing additional mobile telephony
capabilities for licensed Sametime Unified Telephony users" Seriously
IBM you are a few cans short of a six pack here. You have telephony
partners that have TCSPI solutions, your other clients support TCSPI dialing,
why not put it here? I have a concern that IBM is basically removing
focus from TCSPI in a desperate attempt to make SUT the only option. IBM
messed up big time with the launch of SUT and how they delivered it to
the market, I think making some options only available via SUT is not going
to solve it. I'm hoping this is actually a mistake, and someone that
didn't know better wrote down SUT only and in fact TCSPI solutions (thnk
Avaya, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent etc.) were just overlooked. Not the
best way to show partners commitment to something in my opinion.
New Sametime browser-based meetings
for the Apple iPad and Google Android tablets Whilst this is a catchup feature to
competitive web conferencing tools like WebEx and GoToMeeting, it was much
needed. I am forever attending web meetings on my iPad, whilst I continue
to use my regular desktop, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I
look forward to Sametime catching up with the other capabilities of the
likes of GoToMeeting by adding audio, video support etc. in the future.
So I titled this blog entry what's old
is new again, why would I say that? Well a lot of the new features
in Sametime 8.5.1 IFR1 meeting room aren't really new at all. They're
just features that IBM removed in Sametime 8.5 and have now had the time
to develop and add back in the WebSphere based meeting server, examples
of these "new" features
A new Leave Meeting button for owners
and participants. An Active Speaker indicator in the
meeting room will quickly and clearly let you know who is speaking. This was a big omission in Sametime
8.5 It was a feature that many telephony integrated customers on
Sametime 8 liked, and then found it removed in 8.5.x, Hearing IBMers now
talk about how cool this feature is in 8.5.2 IFR1, makes you wonder if
they ever knew it was there before?
So what is new?
Offline Messages Personally I don't like this feature,
well not the feature, but the idea, but I know many people that want it
and like it in things like Yahoo and Skype. Personally I hate it.
I don't want my IM client to become another inbox. This has been
possible in Sametime for a long time, and the Sametime SDK has shipped
with an example of how to do it since Sametime 2.0 (about 9 or years ago).
I wait to see how this will be used/adopted by companies with Sametime.
Organizational tree view I find it funny when IBM is promoting
social computing and they add a feature like Organizational lookup. We
all know why people look at organization charts don't we? To decide how
important the person is they're talking to, can they be ignored? Do they
report to someone important, are they important? Oh they're way down
the org chart, I can ignore them. Not exactly promoting social is
it? I think this feature will be most widely adopted in very large companies,
where hierarchy is very important. Be sure to mention to you HR folks,
that org data is going to have to be up to date.
If you're using your Sametime Entry
license entitlement and you want some of these features, then please remember
you need to purchase a Sametime license, none of these features are available
to you as a Sametime Entry license.
So with all that said, this is still
a release you should use/upgrade to. Whilst some of the features
are old yet new again, the reason they're back is because they were good
features that people used, and people complained about when they went away.
With Sametime 8.5.2 finally adding Audio/Video that works in the
real world, with the missing 8.0.x functionality now back in 8.5.2 IFR1
and the addition of native mobile meeting clients, Sametime customers can
now finally look at 8.5.x, compare it to a feature table of 8.0.x. It
took a few years, but now customers can see real additional functionality,
this will help customers justify the additional hardware they now require,
which for many customers had been a hard justification to make.
If that's what we get for an interim
fix release, I can't wait to see what we get with the next major release,
I'm expecting loads of features!
Epilio Translator now available utilizing the Microsoft Bing Translation server
Category : Sametime Translation
A while back I posted a blog entry about
Google's plans to drop their Translation SDK in December and how that would
render the Sametime Translation plug-in obsolete. Well nothing has
changed there, Google still plan to drop their Translation SDK. What
has changed however, is I'm pleased to say Epilio now offers the option
for users to install a new Sametime Translation plug-in which uses the
Microsoft Translation server.
The new Microsoft Bing Translation plug-in
is now part of really easy to use consolidated
plug-in installer. I would strongly suggest un-installing
the Google Translation plug-in (via the windows control panel) before installing
the Microsoft one, as to be brutally honest, we have not tried the two
installed together, and you could very well get some strange results, and
remember this is unsupported software, you have been warned.
Obviously if you use Sametime for any
confidential chats within your organization, you don't want to be using
a public translation service, but want your own translation servers, so
for organizations requiring continued translation capabilities through
a secure cloud or on-premises solution, please visit our partner LinguaSys
and take a look at the TGChat
product which was developed in conjunction with Epilio.
ACT NOW! If you have any Sametime servers accessible outside using LDAP as it's directory source, ACT NOW
Category : Sametime Security
Recently IBM business partner Integrasys identified
a security risk with IBM Sametime. Be sure to read this security
bulletin and act now!
Sametime Audio/Video working in a real world environment, ie one with firewalls.
Category : Sametime LUG
If you have held back on Sametime 8.5 audio
and video because it basically didn't work in the real world, then a session
I am doing on Thursday with the LotusUserGroup maybe for you. In
the session I'll be talking about the Sametime 8.5.2 TURN Server (NAT Traversal)
server, which addresses this shortcoming of the earlier 8.5 versions and
how it finally makes Sametime Audio/Video usable in the real world.
Category : None
This entry is as much for my own records
as the usual public service. As many of you know I like to get my
BBC and other shows whilst still living in the US. I do this using
a VPN service, in my case Witopia.net, Witopia
works great, but whenever I want to connect to it on a PC or on the iPad
etc. I have to connect to the VPN, and if fellow Brits are visiting and
they need to appear like they're in the UK, then they'd need to setup the
VPN connection on their device. For the PS/3 as I blogged previously,
I have to go through a Proxy server. Which works great, but doesn't work
for ITVPlayer. So what's the solution? The solution is connecting
a second router to the VPN service. So I'm storing these instructions
should I ever have to do it again...
1. Buy a router that can support DD-WRT big installation, which includes OpenVPN
client capabilities. In my case I purchased a refurbed Cisco/Linksys
E2000 from Microcenter for $50.
3. Now signup for a VPN service like
Witopia.net For Witopia, you'll need to
purchase at a minimum the personalVPN™ SSL (openVPN) only option. I
personally go for the PersonalVPN Pro option, as then when I'm travelling
I can still use the VPN on my PC, iPad, iPhone etc. Sometimes it's
useful to appear like you're in the US as opposed to the UK, example trying
to watch Netflix from UK.
4. When you register with Witopia, they
will send you a link that contains their windows installer, you can ingnore
the windows installer (unless you want to use it), instead look for the
line on the page "If you don't have an operating system we support
with our installers, or desire to download the components by hand and put
them in place yourself, go here." Click this link.
5. Download from the Witopia Page, the
New Certificate, your New Key and the Personal VPN ca.crt (you might need
to use right mouse button, to save link as), keep them safe and remember
where you downloaded them to.
6. Connect your new router to your existing
router, connect the existing router to the new router via the Internet
port on the new router.
7. Connect an ethernet cable from your
PC to the new router
8. Login to the admin panel, typically
192.168.1.1, sign in. Go to the Setup, Basic Setup Tab, in the Network
Setup section, under Router IP, change the Local IP Address to one that
is different to your existing router, example 192.168.2.1
9. Scroll down to the Network Address
Server Settings (DHCP Section), enter DNS servers, I just use google, 8.8.8.8
and 8.8.4.4
10. Scroll down to Time Settings, Enable
the option, select your timezone and enter an IP address for an internet
NTP server. Use IP incase there are any problems with DNS.
11. Click, Save and then Apply Settings.
12. OK now gets a little trickier, but
really isn't that hard. Log back into the router, but using the new
IP address entered in step 8, 192.168.2.1
13. Switch to the tab Administration,
Keep Alive, and set the following options, where Proxy IP Address is the
witopia server you are connecting to
14. Click Save, Apply Settings.
15. Click on Administration, Commands
Tab.
16. Now we're going to need to create
a startup script for the router, I found the easiest way to do this is
with a text editor like Notepad, don't do it in Word or any other fancy
word processor as they tend to add extra stuff or change quotes when you
cut and paste. In your notepad editor paste the following text :
echo "
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
INSERT YOUR NAME.KEY HERE
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
" > /tmp/client.key
chmod 600 /tmp/client.key
echo "
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
INSERT YOUR NAME.CRT HERE
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
" > /tmp/client.crt
./myvpn --config client.conf --float
route add -net 192.168.2.1/24
dev br0
###########################################
Now we need to be careful as we need
to edit the text and modify a few details.
1st Locate the line "remote vpn.lon.witopia.net
1194" and change the server name to the Witopia server gateway you
wish to connect to, in this case vpn.lon.witopia.net
2nd Open up the ca.crt file you downloaded
from witopia with another instance of notepad. copy the contents of it
and replace the lines -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----,INSERT CA.CRT HERE,-----END
CERTIFICATE----- with it's contents
3rd Open up your .key file provided
by witopia, and replace the lines -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----, INSERT
YOUR NAME.KEY HERE, -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY----- with it's contents
4th Open up your remaining CRT file
provided by witopia, and replace the lines -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----,
INSERT YOUR NAME.CRT HERE, -----END CERTIFICATE----- with it's contents
5th Locate the last line "route
add -net 192.168.2.1/24 dev br0" and change the IP address to the
IP Address you assigned to the router in step 8
17 Paste the new text file contents
into the Command window and click Save Startup.
18. Now in the Commands window, paste
the following Line and click Save Firewall
iptables -A POSTROUTING -t nat -o tun0
-j MASQUERADE
19. Click on the tab Administration,
Management and scroll down and click on Reboot Router.
20. Now give your router a couple of
minutes to reboot and to connect to the VPN. Then fire up a browser
and try a website like www.whatismyip.com to see if your IP address is
being shown as the correct location. If it is, just use the hubs
wireless network connection to appear as if you're in the UK, or whatever
country the VPN resides in.
That's it, now people who visit can connect to my TylerUK wireless network
and they'll appear as if they're in the UK, if they connect to my TylerGuest
network then they appear like they're in the US. Done.
Category : Revolabs Conference Audio Review Speaker System Revolabs may be one
of those companies you've never heard of, but if you've used the audio
system in your companies boardroom, your local church, a trade show or
similar event, you may very well have used their equipment without
even realising it. The Revolabs FLX is a new product, that opens
their products up to a larger audience which includes SMB all the way through
to enterprise size businesses. Revolabs had heard that Epilio do a lot of
work enabling Sametime with telephony systems, so sent us the Revolabs FLX2
to review. Video review located at bottom of article.
The device comes in a environmentally
friendly recycled cardboard box, and upon opening it, you are immediately
presented with the instructions sheet for connecting the device.
After removing the instruction sheet,
you're can see the core components for the package, the wireless handset,
the wireless speaker, the charger station and the wireless microphones.
The bottom layer contains the base station
which connects to the phone, bluetooth and audio sources and two power
supplies and a phone cable.
The next step is to connect everything
up. The wireless microphones, handset and speaker sit in the charger
station, which is connected to the power and the base station is connected
to a power supply and your PC/audio system, bluetooth device and telephone
system (see video for connections).
The unique thing about the Revolabs
FLX setup, is that the speaker and microphones are all wireless. What
this means is that you can give a microphone to someone at one end of the
table, and a microphone to someone at the other, and put the wireless speaker
in the middle or anywhere else you want. This avoids the situation
I often hear or see, which is a speakerphone that has been placed right
beside the projector with the cooling fan blowing on it during the entire
conference call, leading to a pretty miserable experience for the person
attending the call on the phone. In the review system I was provided
with, I had a table top microphone and lavalier/lapel microphone.
Here you can see the speaker removed
from the charging station
The base station that does all the work,
can be placed on a shelf somewhere or in a cupboard, it can connect to
your telephone line, a Bluetooth device and a device that has audio input
and output. In my case, I connected the device with my regular telephone
land line, my Bluetooth phone (iphone) and connected it to my PC
for use with IBM Sametime,
Microsoft Lync and Skype.
Connecting it to your phone line is
a just a case of plugging in the supplied phone cable, and connecting it
to your phone jack. When it's connected, the handset immediately
shows the phone line as being there, and you can now make and receive calls
using the handset. Audio quality as you'd expect from a high end
audio company was very good. The handset has an easy to read screen,
provides a list of missed or recently made calls, has a directory for storing
phone numbers and options to configure various settings. Sometimes
for my big fat fingers the buttons felt a little small, but they always
worked, and I got what I expected when I pressed them, so there wasn't
really a problem.
Bluetooth pairing was simple using the
handsets menu system. Unfortunately, you can only receive calls,
or join existing calls using bluetooth, you cannot use the handset as a
dialer for your Bluetooth device, so if you want to join the call using
your Bluetooth phone, you have to dial the call using the phones keypad,
not the Revolabs FLX handset. In most cases this won't be a big issue,
in the future as more companies move towards replacing desk phones with
mobile phones, this might be a missed feature. That time is a long
way off though, and I'm sure Revolabs could address that if it became a
big demand.
Connecting to my PC proved a little
difficult, and it turned out to be an issue with my laptops audio system.
If I connect a mono 3.5mm cable to my microphone socket on my laptop
it turns out, my laptop won't record audio from it, the cable has to be
a stereo cable. The sockets on the Revolabs base station are mono,
so I was going mono to mono. Using a mono to stereo converter cable solved
my issue. My desktop PC didn't experience this issue, and it turns
out it really depends on the chipset in the machine, or driver, as there
were even differences between similar PCs, but made at a different time.
Once I had connected the device to my PC, I tried it on IBM Sametime,
IBM Sametime with SUT, Microsoft Lync and Skype audio calls. The
quality, as with Bluetooth and the phone line was excellent, with the PC
audio it is even clearer than the phone line due to the much higher quality
codecs used over the ancient phone system. The device doesn't have
any specific plugins for Sametime or Lync, like some of the Plantronics
devices for example so is purely interfacing with the PC as a MIC and Speaker,
so this means if you mute the device on the PC that isn't reflected in
the handset and vice verse. There is currently a USB socket on the
base station and charger station, but this does not interface with the
PC, in the future it would be great if that could be used as the audio
connection, and also to provide a method for updating the handsets address
book from the PC.
One thing that is really nice about
the Revolabs FLX2, is the ability to merge audio streams, what does this
mean? Imagine you're on a Sametime phone call, using the PC audio
connected to the Revolabs device, and the telephone rings, well now you
can answer the phone and the Sametime calls audio and Phone calls audio
are now merged, so you can continue to hear and speak to the Sametime person,
and telephone connected person, but more importantly, the Sametime folks
and telephone folks can also hear and chat to each other. The mixing
levels between the line scan be controlled by a menu on the wireless handset.
One thing the Revolabs has going for
it, is certainly it's looks. Everyone that has come by and seen it
sitting on the table have always asked "Sweet, where's mine?"
If you're a company that has spent a small fortune on your conference
room table, this thing is not going to look out of place if it's made from
glass and metal or is 200 year old antique mahogany. It's a really
nice, classy looking device.
Overall I was very impressed with the
device. It's has an attractive unique design, offers great audio
quality which is really what matters and a number of connection options.
Cons Not able to initiate a Bluetooth call
using the devices handset
Cannot yet connect to a PC using the
USB sockets, so no way to update the directory from your PC
Category : Google Translate
This is an important update for users of
Epilio Translate, one of our most popular Free Sametime plug-ins.
Recently Google have decided to officially deprecate the Google Translate
API as of May 26, 2011. What does this mean for Epilio Translator users?
The Google Translate API is used by the Epilio Translator to translate
Instant Messages between languages, this decision by Google may impact
the number of translation requests you may make per day and the Google
Translate API will be shut off completely on December 1, 2011. This means
that come December 1st, Epilio Translator will cease to function.
For organizations requiring continued
translation capabilities through a secure cloud or on-premises solution,
please visit our partner LinguaSys
and take a look at the TGChat
product which was developed in conjunction with Epilio.
Epilio will stop shipping Epilio Translate
when Google disables their Translate API in December.
A bit of a Sametime meeting security/privacy oversight me thinks
Category : Sametime Meetings
Looking at the Epilio website traffic this
morning (one of my favourite things to do if truth be told) I noticed an
interesting referring link. Three almost identical links from three
different people. Looking at the links I could work out the following:
1. Some IBMers on their internal IBM
Sametime server had a Sametime meeting.
2. In that meeting, they shared a URL
to the Epilio
Buddylist Control webpage 3. Three people in that meeting clicked
the URL
4. I can tell you the Sametime Meeting
ID, not much use unless you're on the IBM network.
5. I can give you the email addresses
of the three people that clicked the URL, now to protect them from SPAM
I won't share the email addresses, but lets just say it was 3 IBMers in
the software group. One in California (Comcast customer), one in Missouri
(SBC Customer, they are possibly actually in Brasil looking at the IP details)
and one in Massachusetts (Comcast customer). I'm guessing two of
them work from home.
Now most of this is totally fine, and
you can get the information or work it out on most web traffic logging
software, but line 5 is a big NO NO. The email address should not
be included in the referring URL, if it is needed it should be encrypted
or something so that others can't see it. If I click a link, the
website I go to should have no information that can track it down to a
specific person.
Here's an example of the referring link
from the meeting (changed slightly)
http://stdev1.swg.usma.ibm.com/stadvanced/controller?meetingId=20110606-1234-5388-4139-1234&userName=UhOhMyEmail%40us.ibm.com
Category : Live Camera
I went to use my Canoe a week or so ago,
and found a nest with 5 eggs on the underside of one of the seats (the
canoe is stored upside down). Lots of people on Facebook requested
a camera so I set one up. The eggs are all hatched (about 2 days
ago), so now I'm just waiting for them to get big enough and leave so I
can use the canoe again.
Category : apple email
If you receive an email on your iPhone,
iPad, iPod touch etc. If it contains a text string like tomorrow
morning it will be clickable and prompt to add an event to your calendar
tomorrow morning. Messing around I've found other text strings that
work.
Tomorrow Afternoon
Tomorrow at Noon
Next Monday
Next Tuesday
Next Wednesday
etc.
Tomorrow lunchtime
Next Monday at noon
Why do I say agenda like? Well here
is a quick demo of what agenda did in converting English phrases into dates.
Remember this product you are about to see is over 20 years old.
I always wished Lotus would have added an @function that did the
same thing to a rich text field an returned the dates it contained (there
was a 3rd party product addon included with R5 that did something similar
called Actioneer if anyone remembers)
I shamelessly stole this puzzle from another website
Category : Puzzle Numbers
I stole this puzzle from another website, I liked it and thought the people that
typically read this blog would like it too. Here it is:
A friend of mine has £100 in a bank
account. Whenever he takes out money he records how much he has taken
out and the balance. Here are his accounts for last week….
Withdrawn
Balance
40
60
30
30
20
10
9
1
1
0
There is one small problem – the WITHDRAWN column adds up to 100, but
the BALANCE column adds up to 101 – how can this be the case?
First let me say, fantastic work by
the UKLUG organizers and crazy hard workers. They did a fantastic
job again. Great location, great sponsors and great organization.
If you wanted someone to organize a pissup in a Nunnery I'm sure
these guys could do it
This was the first time I gave this
session, a few things were clear to me, first I had way more than an hours
content, so I only showed about a quarter to half of what I really would
have liked to. Secondly I very rarely use my laptop as was evident
at the beginning of the presentation. Where my screen was mirrored
to the projector, but the video was only showing on mine, so must figure
that out if I line up any more presentations. Thirdly, it's hard
to say how this session can really fit into a LUG, I think it was funny
and somewhat educational and maybe showed a couple of things many people
didn't know, but it's a strange session, that doesn't really fall nicely
into any of the slots, I had submitted it to Lotusphere but it didn't get
selected and I'm sure that (and me presenting it) is probably most of the
reason it didn't get a look in. it's probably a session that would
be best suited to a room with a beer tap and peanuts. I don't know
though, so I look forward to reading peopls evals. Oh also, I forget
how much effort it takes to creating slides, and these were a little more
awkward than usual as I updated the smartmaster (stylesheet) as it changed
throughout the years. So apologies that I was hardly seen at UKLUG
on Monday, or Monday evening, I wasn't ignoring you, I was getting my slides
completed and my VMs working on my laptop.
Anyway, the slides are posted, but I'll
be up front, without me presenting them they will probably appear very
strange and look like some kind of ego trip, as the session was really
as much about the stories surrounding the slides as it was the slides themselves,
and the slides can't really do justice to notion of me in a superman costume
can they?
Again thanks to the team for doing such
a great event, and also for giving me the opportunity to present on something
where I didn't mention Sametime once!
