Carl Tyler's Blog

Category : None
Like many others I will be in St. Louis next week, speaking at IamLUG, and Epilio are sponsoring the Monday night drinks.  I decided not to do any really tough presentations on Sametime, but am instead doing an updated version of a presentation I first did at UKLUG "25 Years of Lotus and Still Going Strong" which contains lots of demos of old Lotus products.  As usual, I'll probably have some old freebies to give away.  

If you've not already registered yourself, you better get on it.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:41:18 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Domino Dander
It's time for you to reach into your pockets and sponsor me.  Perhaps you've used our free plug-ins, perhaps you've used our free Sametime admin tools, it's time to pay up.  Now it's not like that crazy sponsorship thing where all I had to do was shave my head and paint my face blue, this one actually involves some serious preparation and training. We managed to raise close to $3,000 dollars for the head shave, so really hoping people will delve deep for this effort to smash that amount.

In May along with a number of friends, I will be taking part in the Domino Dander for Dosh.  The hike will take place in May, and involves hiking from one side of Scotland* to the other along the Great Glen way, which is 80 miles over 4 days.  I will not be along, there is a team of us doing it.

It's all for a a very worthy cause and is the Children's Hospice Association Scotland, currently my donation page shows zero donations, which lets face it, is embarrassing.  So please please sponsor me, if you don't want to support the charity, just think of the pain I will be in after walking 80 miles in 4 days, and the pleasure you will get from knowing I am in such pain, surely that is worth something?

My individual sponsorship page is here:
http://www.justgiving.com/Carl-Tyler

You can find out more about the charity, our route and the team of hikers here:
http://slightlydoolally.com/d4d/

Thank you for your support, every little bit helps.!

* All travel expenses are met by myself, no sponsorship money is used towards anything but the CHAS charity.

UPDATE: I have agreed with a friend, that if I raise more than 2k I will do the hike in a Kilt and Pith helmet.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:29:01 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (4) |      

Category : None
Similar to the other post earlier today, this overview is of the Plantronics Calisto 620

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:25:43 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category : None
I posted a video overview of the Phoenix Quattro 3 to YouTube.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:24:48 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category : Connect Video
I put a GoPro on top of our booth at IBM Connect and put it on an egg timer to do the rotation.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:24:45 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Category : SametimeProxy Slides
Here are the slides that William Holmes and I presented at IBM Connect 2013 for session AD109.

AD109 - Using the IBM Sametime Proxy SDK: WebSphere Portal, IBM Connections - and Beyond from Carl Tyler and William Holmes

This is the sample file I showed for having a button appear if a user, or number of users are online or offline (right click on link and choose save as).
SupportRep.html

Other Connect 2013 stuff.
As many know, I decided to fly myself down to Orlando this year.  So I left with a temperature of -5F/-20C and landed the next day to temperatures of 75F/24C, Quite a change, the engine was actually configured for the colder temperatures, so started to run a little hot by the time we were in Florida.  Total time to fly down was 10.6 hours, with two stops, one in Virginia and one in Marion, South Carolina.  Total Miles travelled was 1226 Miles.  Skyvector Route

On Thursday afternoon, I flew down to a friends in Naples from Orlando, and started the long flight back on Friday morning, for arrival in New Hampshire Saturday afternoon., with a stop over in Marshfield, MA to drop off my friend who flew back with me.   So with the extra miles down to Naples, the return flight was 1,572 miles in 14 hours.  Skyvector Route

We flew the VFR corridor up the Hudson River coming back, and the weather was beautiful as can be seen in this video.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:56:18 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category : Lotus Orlando
OK, it's not called Lotusphere anymore, it's called IBM Connect 2013, and looking at the exhibitor list it's becoming a combo HR/formerly Lotus stuff/Social IBM trade show.  I really don't have a problem with the name, and honestly, I have so much yellow s*&t around the house I'll be glad to see the back of it.  I also don't have a problem with the show evolving and changing into something else. If it didn't it would just keep dying.  I will be there, looking to embrace the new atmosphere and I will be up to various things such as the following.  

1. Epilio will have a booth on the exhibit floor and we have some exciting announcements for the on premises and off premises telephony space, so be sure to keep an ear out for those.  We'll be at booth C40 right opposite the bookstore, so we can grab hold of you whilst you're waiting to get a copy of Ed Brill's book signed.

2. Epilio are proud to sponsored the Great Geek Challenge again, and I will be emcee with Paul Mooney again also.  So be sure to come along so Paul and I can humiliate you by asking you questions about subjects I know nothing about.. Judging by the happy smiles when people leave the event, being humiliated by Paul and I is a lot of fun, so be sure to either form a team or get on one. The quiz takes place Tuesday Jan 29th 8-10pm at The Fountain Restaurant.

3.  UK Night, yes I struggle with the accent and the funny pronunciation of words, but we're also pleased to again be sponsoring UK Night at Connect, there are limited numbers allowed into the party, so be sure to find yourself a sponsor and get an entry sticker and practise your best UK accent (check wikipedia if you're not sure which countries that is). UK Night is Monday Night at Shulas Bar.

4. Spark ideas- I've volunteered to do a short session on learning to fly.  Spark ideas will be Tuesday 29th Jan 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM in the Swan Mockingbird 1 & 2

5. AD109 : Using the IBM Sametime Proxy SDK: Websphere Portal, IBM Connections - and Beyond; I will be presenting this session with William Holmes from IBM.  We've done a lot of work in this last year with the Sametime Proxy, customising it, building 100% custom clients etc. and we've bounced a lot of ideas off William in the process as we've tried to make the Sametime Proxy do tricks that it was never imagined it would do.  This session goes into some of the things we've learned along the way.   Thursday 31st Jan 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Dolphin S. Hem III

6. As with the last 5 Lotuspheres, Chris Miller and myself will live blog the OGS using www.lotuspherelive.com, although this year you'll be able to access it www.IBMConnectLive.com too.

7.  I'll be flying myself down to Orlando over a couple of days, so depending on weather I'm going to be getting in Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

If you want to find me to ask questions or just catch up, I'd suggest looking for me at the booth first, if you still can't find me, just shoot me an email I'll be around.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:24:56 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : 2012 Videos
Sure, I could blog about how my blog posts are down, but Facebook posts are up, but who cares about that, here it is, all my 2012 flying videos in chronological order...

Taking off from Alton Bay Ice Runway (B18) from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Piper Cherokee departing Oswego, NY from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Niagara Falls - May 2012 from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Flying in Formation behind Glen Salmon from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Flying around New York, NY in a Piper Cherokee from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Piper Cherokee departing Runway 03, Salmon Farm, Virginia. 53VG from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Flying around New York City, NY in a Piper Cherokee from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:41:02 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category : IBM BYOD
Late on Friday night I got a call from a distraught friend, their daughter had been playing with their mobile phone, and whilst the child was playing with the phone, the device had prompted for a password, after their 5th attempt at entering a password the device reset itself to Factory settings.  So what had happened?

Well about 3 months ago this person was let got by IBM, prior to that, they had been using their own iPhone as their business phone, you know all that we're so tight so bring your own device nonsense.  So part of the deal at IBM, is if you use your own device, they install some IBM security software which enables remote wipe and enhanced security etc.  It appears that part of the leaving process at IBM is not removing that software.  So when the daughter tried one too many passwords, the phone was reset, losing everything since the last backup.  Sadly for this person, that last backup was on their IBM laptop a few months ago which they no longer have.  So all the photos of her kids on her phone gone, Christmas school stuff with kids, gone. You get the picture.

So if you work at IBM and use your own device here's a few suggestions:
1. Backup your device regularly to a none IBM owned device, if you are using iOS, then iCloud is a great option.
2. Check those backups, even if you're taking them make sure they work.
3. Seriously consider if you really want IBM to do what they want with YOUR device.  You signed up for them to zap what they want, do you really want that?
4. Pull photos and videos off your phone regularly onto a local PC (that you own)

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:47:20 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (7) |      

Category : Sametime iOS
Use Sametime on your iOS device?  Want to add some bling to your messages?

No problem, just install Emoji as an additional keyboard, then use the globe button to pick images and you can send messages that contain all sorts of coloured emoticons.  If the person on the receiving end is using a Windows device, they'll see them as black and white Emoji (Windows doesn't have coloured fonts), Mac devices will see the full colour.  Why do this instead of using emoticons? Well with these you're not sending jpgs around your organization, they're no different to sending text in different fonts, so it's nice and compact data, especially useful on mobile networks.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:31:51 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category : Sametime Photos

Posted by Carl Tyler At 06:12:41 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Sametime Webchat
As many know, I really like the Sametime Proxy that came available with Sametime 8.5.x, I'm not a fan of the name mind you, but this blog post isn't about that.   I see lots of companies that deploy the Sametime Proxy and then use the mobile and web clients and then ask the question "Where are the user photos?", I'm sure you've seen this  




Many companies had gone through the process of importing user photos into their LDAP/AD/Domino directory specifically so they could have user photos in their Sametime client, yet the Sametime Proxy server doesn't proxy the images, the Sametime Proxy server requires that the users images be accessible via a URL, which in turn is accessible by the users web client, so it must be a public URL if the web client us used outside the firewall.

So let's say you already have your photos of users accessible via a URL, how do you enable that for the Sametime Web Client?  You need to do the following:
1. Connect to your Sametime Community Server, as in connect to the machine with remote desktop etc. to be able to access files etc. on it.
2. Locate the file UserInfoConfig.xml typically located in the domino program directory, example: Lotus\Domino\
3. Open the UserInfoConfig.xml with your preferred text editor, and in the <details> section add the following additional Detail.

<Detail Id="PhotoURL" FieldName="PhotoURL" Type="text/plain"/>

DO NOT remove any other settings you may have in there, this does not replace the photo Detail, leave that as it is.  People often get confused here, easily done as the documentation is so weak, and start modifying the settings on the Sametime System Consoles business card settings, don't they don't relate to the image that the Sametime Proxy uses, but to the image the Sametime Connect client uses.
4. Save the xml file.
5. If your Sametime Community Server is currently running, shut it down, and restart it. If it was already shutdown, start it up.

So what have you just done?  Well you've told the Sametime Community server that the URL location for a users photo is stored in the field PhotoURL in your LDAP directory.  If it was not in PhotoURL but another LDAP field you would change the FieldName to be the LDAP field that it is stored in.  

Now the URL stored in the PhotoURL should contain the text representation of the URL where the users photo is, for example my PhotoURL field on our LDAP server contains:
http://webchat.epilio.com/STLDAPImage/servlet/Image?username=ctyler@epilio.com

If you start a Sametime chat in the Sametime Proxy client now, If the PhotoURL resolves to an image, you should see a photo for a user in the client



So what then if you had taken the step of storing your photos in your LDAP directory, how can you now get those accessible as URL?  Well that's the reason for this post, we have a new tool, if I was IBM I'd call it something like LDAP Photo Proxy, just so you can get even more confused when you're talking about WAS Proxies, Sametime proxies and reverse proxies.  Even I'm not that mean, right now it doesn't have a name, but it really is an LDAP Photo Proxy.  It installs on your Sametime Proxy server, and provides a means to access your LDAP server photo fields as a URL.  The LDAP directory will need to have the PhotoURL record updated for each user to point at their relevant URL, which if you're using Domino is easily done with a Domino agent, or any other LDAP directory, using a tool such as LDAPMODIFY.

So the URL above http://webchat.epilio.com/STLDAPImage/servlet/Image?username=ctyler@epilio.com is actually my photo being served up from my Domino LDAP directory via the servlet running on the Sametime Proxy server, the directory source could easily be Active Directory as LDAP, or some other LDAP source.  The LDAP directory used, doesn't even have to be the same LDAP directory you use for Sametime, as long as the unique identifier for the user is resolvable.

Is this something that interests you? Do you find yourself in this situation with your Sametime Proxy photos in your company?  If so, we're looking for a handful of companies to test it in their environment.  If you're interested, please drop us an email at info@epilio.com.  To install it, you'll need admin access to your Sametime System Console.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:21:11 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category : Sametime Video
Yes, as my Dad keeps telling me, I haven't blogged since February.  In fact, in the time since my last blog about Microsoft Flight, Microsoft have already laid off the Microsoft Flight team, so we won't be hearing much more about that product.  Any way, on to the free stuff.  A long long time ago in technology terms, 5 years ago almost, I blogged about a little tool that I thought was promising, but didn't work for me, namely Fake Webcam.

The concept for Fake Webcam is simple, use a stored video file instead of your live webcam in things like Web Meetings.  I mentioned at the time this would be great for those online meetings, where you had a video message from the CEO or something that you wanted to share with everyone.  Back then and still now, Sametime doesn't have a way to have a video that you can share and start playing automatically.  You can upload the video as a file in the document area, but that isn't what people want, they want to be able to start it playing and have everyone watching the same video in sync at the same time, Fake Webcam will let you do this.

There are two versions of fake Webcam available right now, 7.1 and 7.2. 7.1 worked great with skype and Yahoo Messenger etc. but didn't work with Sametime, giving a scrunched up picture.  7.2 Does work with Sametime and using it made my life much easier for testing video.  I could have a VM loaded with one Sametime client connected into a meeting with video enabled, sharing a video on loop, whilst on my host machine I could have another Sametime session with my regular webcam.  Think about that, with enough VMs, you could do the Brady Bunch Connections video demo without requiring another person. Here's a very short video showing how I can switch between stored movies that are played, and the resulting video showing in the Sametime Meeting window.



Yeah, yeah you say, what about the free stuff.  Well Kate who writes Fake Webcam posted a comment on my blog about her software and made a really nice offer for blog readers, if you download the software, and shoot them an email with your registration key and mention my blog, they'll send you back a key for your own free copy.  
To download 7.2 here is the link:

www.fakewebcam.com/download/setup7.2.0.0.exe

So not a bad little gift.

So I started thinking, it would be a great way to have people attend a Sametime meeting and have a looping video play, make the video the right length and you could say, demonstrations start every 30 minutes or something, but as I started to think about implementing that I came across various things in Sametime Meetings that really made it not a good idea.  So here are some suggestion for IBM regarding Sametime Meetings with Audio/Video.
1. If a moderator sets it so that users entering a meeting are muted, the user should not be able to unmute themselves.
2. A user should not have to manually select join audio/video in a conference
3. There should be an option for a moderator to set a Sametime Meeting as broadcast mode, where users will see video but cannot share their video

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:48:49 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4) |      

Category : Flight Game
A couple of months ago I started my participation in the Microsoft Flight beta program, the details and the NDA meant that I couldn't speak about the beta, but now Microsoft Flight is available.  

Now i've been using Microsoft Flight Simulator since the early days, when it booted of it's own 5.25" disk so I've watched this program evolve over the years.  A couple of years Microsoft disbanded the Flight Simulator development team, and to be honest never really explained why, I believe the group very easily funded it's own development.  After they laid off that team, they created a new one which would build what became Microsoft Flight.

Now Microsoft Flight and Microsoft Flight Simulator have a number of things in common, they both have Microsoft Flight in their name, they both involve flying aircraft and they're both from Microsoft, and that's about it.

Microsoft Flight does not have simulator in it's name and that's for good reason, Microsoft Flight is not a simulator, it's a game.  Microsoft is really aiming Microsoft Flight at an online audience that wants to fly against others and do challenges.  The program is free, with users having options to buy additional planes and locations etc. in the future.  Similar to the model being used by simraceway with an online racing community.  Microsoft Flight will take a new user through a tutorial on how to fly the included planes, and will take them through a number of challenges, progressively getting harder.

So what's my take on it?  Well I like that it's free, and you get to fly around part of Hawaii for free, but it's a game, it's no simulator.  I like that it doesn't use GameSpy which is the biggest POS for connecting to and was the major downside to online connections with Flight Simulator (why oh why Microsoft can't you replace that online engine with an update?)  I had no trouble connecting to the new online service during the Beta, but my brother (also on the beta) did have some problems, but we think they were Beta related.  Flight does require an internet connection to function.  If you're looking for an update to Microsoft Flight Simulator, this isn't it, but if you want to get your feet wet just flying a plane with simple physics etc. then at the price it can't be beat.  For online play that's interesting they better add guns pretty sharpish, this working together lark is lots of fun, but after a while you just want to become the Red Baron or Biggles and shoot people down.  Oh and a PS for Glen, they have  Stearman.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 04:51:57 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category : Sametime Proxy
As many know I really like the functionality of the Sametime Proxy, and I really like what IBM did with the SDK.  During the betas, I express concern that I thought the name for the product was confusing.  I was firmly told that was pretty much just me. So I always laugh when I see technotes with titles like this one:

"WebSphere Proxy redirects to Sametime Proxy unexpectedly"

The Sametime Proxy is running on Websphere, but it is a not a Websphere Proxy, and is not managed in the same area as Websphere Proxies, because it isn't a Websphere proxy, it's a Sametime proxy.  Not confusing at all.  It reminds me of that great Abbot and Costello skit from 1945.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sShMA85pv8M?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

So I still love the product, just hate the confusion the name creates

Posted by Carl Tyler At 04:58:56 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (6) |      

Category : Snow Circles

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:04:42 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (6) |      

Category : Parachute Fool
The video shows it...

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:08:00 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category : Sametime Branding
With Sametime 8.5.2, many of us believed IBM had a small bug in their code with the login panel not having any kind of graphics or colouring, as can be seen here:



I'm suprised IBM didn't add the text "This space has been intentionally left blank"

The same cleansing process has now taken place with Sametime Proxy, so this is a conscious design decision by someone.

Before



After


Which do you think looks better?

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:40:35 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Category : AdminDev Sametime
I'll be presenting two sessions at the AdminDev 2012 Conference taking place in Washington DC, May 16-18.  The two sessions are:  What's new in Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 and Sametime administration best practices.

The View folks currently have an early bird discount with $300 off,  that ends Friday (24th).  So if you were going to go, or were thinking of going, get in early for a discounted price.  I hope to see you there.

www.viewad2012.com

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:46:57 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Flying Ice
This weekend it was time to do the Alton Bay (B18) ice runway again. Alton Bay is the only FAA designated iceport in the USA, it is located on the surface of the southern tip of Lake Winnipesaukee, 21.4nm to the northeast of Concord, New Hampshire.  Last year due to a weird mix of snow, rain and cold weather they were never able to get a smooth surface so the ice runway didn't open, this year has been very mild, with very little snow so much of Lake Winnipesaukee hasn't even frozen over this year, which is very unusual.  

Fortunately a week or so ago, there was some good news that the ice runway was open as the ice was thick enough at about a foot (30cm) and strong enough to take landing planes.  Earlier this year I had promised to take a friend flying as a birthday present, so what could be more unique than taking them to an ice runway.  First I flew down to Minute Man airfield in Stow, Massachusetts to pick him up, and then we flew up to Alton Bay.  This also gave me the opportunity to have someone get out of the plane with one of my cameras, let me take off again and have them record my landing.  This enabled me to create the following videos where you can see the landing from both inside and outside, which is the first time I've been able to combine the two.  My brother in the UK grabbed a photo of the plane in the parking area from a webcam.  

After some low level flying around Lake Winnipesaukee and buzzing a few brave (maybe stupid) ice fisherman, headed back to Minute Man, where we grabbed something to eat at Nancy's Airfield Cafe. After grabbing a burger I headed back to Portsmouth, at this point it was now night flying, and clouds had started to form. I'd planned to fly back to Portsmouth at 3500 feet, but I discovered it was snowing at that altitude so I took the plane back down to 3000 feet.  It has to be said, flying in snow with the landing light on at night, is much like the effect you see in Sci Fi programs where someone jumps into light speed, if you're not sure of that effect think of the Windows screensaver where the stars are flying towards you.

Here are a collection of some of the videos of me landing this weekend, and also some photos.



The same video, but with Picture-in-Picture



A video that I happened to find on YouTube of my first landing.


Some photos that my passenger took.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:14:06 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |