Carl Tyler's Blog

I recently had a need to show a domino view column in ISO 8601 date/time format.  I was really hoping that as Notes uses this format in many of it's representations in Notes XML views that there would be something like a simple @TEXT option, sadly there isn't.  I wouldn't recommend using this in a view column directly, put a computed text field in your document that stores it, and refer to that in your view column.

So here's the formula that will return a date in UTC (zulu) time, assuming I want to use the Created date for the document

TimetoConvert := @Created;
DocTime := @TIMEMERGE(TimetoConvert ;TimetoConvert ;"Z=0$DO=1$DL=3 -1 1 10 -1 1$ZX=36$ZN=GMT");
Year:=  @Text (@Year(DocTime));
Month := @If(@Month(DocTime) < 10;"0";"") + @Text(@Month(DocTime));
Day := @If(@Day(DocTime) < 10;"0";"") + @Text(@Day(DocTime));
Hours := @If(@Hour(DocTime) < 10;"0";"") + @Text(@Hour(DocTime));
Minutes := @If(@Minute(DocTime) < 10;"0";"") + @Text(@Minute(DocTime));
Seconds := @If(@Second(DocTime) < 10;"0";"") + @Text(@Second(DocTime));

Year + "-" + Month + "-" + Day +"T" +Hours + ":" + Minutes + ":" + Seconds + "Z"


If you're wondering what "Z=0$DO=1$DL=3 -1 1 10 -1 1$ZX=36$ZN=GMT" actually means, it's basically the Domino Time Zone code for GMT with no Daylight savings, aka Universal Time(zulu time).  Anyway you'll have to continue to wonder what the format means exactly, to quote one of the best lines in an IBM support document ever.

he third parameter of the method contains a lengthy text string which represents the relative time zone (for example the string for Easter Daylight Time is "Z=5$DO=1$DL=4 1 1 10 -1 1$ZX=25$ZN=Eastern"). There is no documentation on these parameters, and in order to determine the correct string for the time zone you would like to use it is suggested that you create a sample form with a field with the type 'Timezone'.

How about someone documents the parameters? It must be on an internal IBM spec that defined this function when they wrote it, surely someone could document it for the public?

I hear Domino 8.5 is much better at this with XPages, but I can't run my server on Domino 8.5 until a supported Sametime version is shipped.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:13:41 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (5)

I few people have asked me, and I am pleased to announce, that yes LotusphereLive will be back for 2009.  I will again live blog the opening session, and with my new toy from a few weeks ago there will be plenty of pictures.  To the end user not much will probably change in the presentation of the data.  To Chris and myself though who enter the postings, I've made things much easier for us, with integrated picture upload and sizing.  So entries should appear much more quickly.  Also for those with one (not me), I'm making sure that the chat can be watched from an iPhone.

Another new capability, is that anyone who registers on the site, can also have their own LiveBlogging session, so you'll be able to do you own live blogging using the Domino platform if you want.

I built the application in such a way that it can very easily be modified to support unique chat rooms, which leads to a question, are Lotusphere attendees and non attendees come to that, interested in a persistent chat room for each Lotusphere session?  Are Lotusphere attendees interested in chat rooms for their sessions?  Let me know, as it isn't much work to add that capability, it could probably be somehow tied into Ben's Lotusphere Session database.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:43:44 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (8)

With a large number of blog readers using the IM.BLEEDYELLOW.COM server, I thought it might be cool if I could get a chat with me icon on my blog, that would be shown if the user read was using the Sametime 8.0.1 client (or Notes 8.0.1 with the additional plug-in) Web Connect capability.  I tried it, and I couldn't get awareness for Bleedyellow users.  From my testing it looks like the WebConnect API will only provide awareness for users in the first community.  I tried a number of formats to try and make the community work, preceded names with im.bleedyellow.com: but still not luck.  If I made Bleedyellow my primary community then awareness worked fine.  My guess is that most bleedyellow users, do not have it set as their default community.  I really wish IBM would figure out the whole community thing, it should be much easier to switch default community on the fly, versus having to reset the user in order to switch it.

Sadly I can't find any technotes on WebConnect so the only documentation is what comes in the toolkit.  If an IBMer that worked on this feature is reading, please let me know if my findings are correct.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:29:32 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

The prices are pretty amazing, at Bestbuy they're all around $350.

Depending upon how hot they run, for small regional offices of 2 or 3 people they'd be powerful enough to run a Domino server with a few Domino apps.  But they have the added benefit they have the screen, UPS, keyboard etc. already in the device.  You'd want one with a network cable socket rather than just wireless.  Most of them have Flash card slots, so you could even automate backup to them, talking of flash drives, I got a Kingston 16gb thumbdrive for $24.99 the other week, amazing.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:48:06 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (10)

Starting a new Poll, which Sametime Client do you use?

Here are the results of the last poll, ST Advanced Plans

Already Deployed - 19.23% - 20 Votes.


Installing Soon - 17.31% - 18 Votes.


No Plans - 63.46% - 66 Votes.


Total Votes: 104

This leads me to the question, why such a high percentage of No Plans?  Not enough perceived value in the features? Is it the Websphere requirement? No skilled staff to handle a Websphere/DB2 enivronment?  Please feel free to post your reasons if you said no plans.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:38:10 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (6)

We've all seen them, IBM slides where they have product shots, that are left over from pre-ship, you know the fake one's before the product finished. But it's not just slides, it's also the screenshots they continue to use on the IBM website.  Personally I wish IBM would stop using them, take for example this one



Can you see what's wrong with it?  How do we know it's fake.  Well the thing that gives it away is actually the content of the chat.  In the chat we can see that Kelly is chatting with Sam.  In fact we can see that this is Kelly's chat window as she says "Hey Sam" in the paragraph that she is about to send.  Which means the business card at the top is wrong, when you start a chat with someone, you don't see your business card, as that would be pointless, you see the business card of the person you are speaking with.

You can see similar mistakes repeated on a number of screenshots on this page http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/standard/screenshots.html  Seriously, I look forward to the day when Sametime Video quality looks this good, I mean what are the chances, Kelly's static photo is identical to her current video image, amazing.

Kelly never has a bad hair day.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:33:58 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4)

It came in a polystyrene container filled with dry ice.  I love dry ice, hhmm, where could I put the dry ice for some fun? Hey the dog bowl.



If you see some bogus message about the Flickr video not being available, that's BS, it's here http://www.flickr.com/photos/iminstant/3029481487/

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:02:42 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3)

At VoiceCon in San Francisco, IBM and Microsoft said their work to test federation between Sametime and OCS (formerly LCS) was complete.
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/11/microsoft_ibm_a.html

Expect to see something in a few months.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:08:26 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sametime is more than a pretty face
People are familiar with Sametime’s powerful User Interface, but the IBM Lotus Sametime platform also has the most flexible and rich programming interfaces available for any Unified Communications solution. Carl Tyler will give you an overview of the different Sametime Toolkits that exist, explaining what they can do, why you might use one over another and will demonstrate real world examples of how you can use them to improve your business.

Speed up your development and testing with Virtual Machines
Come and learn how using Virtual Machines everyday can greatly speed up your testing and development of Domino solutions.  Learn how you can test you applications on different operating systems without the expensive costs of additional hardware.  In this session you’ll learn about the options that are available and how to get started with Virtual Machine technology.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:29:21 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

I did submit two sessions this year for Lotusphere 2009, one on Sametime - "Sametime is more than a pretty face" and one on VMware - "Speed Up Your Development and Testing with Virtual Machines"

Now all I need to do is find my abstract so I can remember what details I promised.  I know I ask this every year, but IBM, please include the abstract text in your response emails, it really would help track these things.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:04:10 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)