Carl Tyler's Blog

Category Sametime Podcast
Myself and Gabriella Davis recorded over the weekend our first UCHear podcast.  This one is focused on the upcoming Sametime 8.5 release, and we're sure to have a few more.  As usual I try to keep Gab honest, and we have a few differing opinions

You can find this episode and future episodes at www.UChear.com

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:07:06 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Resolver TheView
Wassim who wrote Buddylist Control recently wrote an article for The View that was published this week.  

Build a Sametime Resolver Load Test Tool to Accurately Assess Performance

The article covers the Sametime resolver, what it's doing and how different Lotus products can impact the performance of your Sametime server.  Code is provided to get a baseline of your resolver performance.  You need a View account to read the entire article.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:54:38 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Notes Symphony
Notes 8.5.1 cleaned up a lot of the rough edges in Notes 8.5 and fixed some of the irritating inconsistencies, there are some though that still remain.  One area that Lotus has started to improve is drag and drop, but it still needs some work, especially in the interaction between Notes and embedded Symphony.  Here are the things I like to see improved.

* If I have Symphony installed, why can I choose Create, Clipart in Symphony inside Notes, but not Create, Clipart into a Notes Rich Text fields?
* I can drag stuff from Symphony Document and Symphony Spreadsheet  into Notes Docs, but I cannot drag anything from Symphony Presentations?
* They need visual indicators that you about to do drag and drop, and what kind of drag and drop you are performing.  Try moving to the edge of a selected cell in Excel and 1-2-3, look at your pointer it changes, hold down the left mouse button, try holding down Ctrl and the left mouse button, see how you're given a visual indication that you're doing something a little different.   Drag text in Notes 8.5.1 and you'll see a visual indication too. Symphony needs that.
* Shortcut key conflicts - If you use Notes, you probably know Ctrl-M is File, New Memo. Now if you going it Symphony, it still says File, New Memo, but it does different stuff.  In Documents for example it shows non-printing characters, and doesn't create a new memo.

I'll try and get around to creating a video later that shows what you can do between Symphony and Notes if you're not familiar with drag and drop.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:12:17 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Gadgets
The latest 1352 report podcast is posted and ready for your consumption.  This week featuring stand-in replacement for Sean Burgess, Chris Miller.

Make Roomba for your new gadgets

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:19:53 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Cool Gadgets
Someone was asking the other day what was the best gadget of 2009.  For me it had to be my Keurig brewing system I got early this year.  I use this for making single cups of tea, and coffee when people visit. Interestingly enough the iPhone didn't pop into my head.  This wasn't a new gadget to the market in 2009, it was just a new gadget for me.

The Windows Home Server became a machine that I'd find hard not to have now.  It's running uTorrent with the web UI, Domino 8.5.1 Server that replicates regularly to backup key database, it takes daily backups of my desktop machines, and it's my main media server for the PlayStation 3. Earlier this year I started my experiment of not having cable for TV, and I haven't missed it a bit, and I really don't miss the $100 plus bill.  It really is amazing how much stuff I can now watch on the PS3 with Netflix and HULU, and with the antenna on the roof.  The great thing about HULU, it even has less commercials than the regular TV broadcast version.  I still don't think watching TV on the computer is the way things will go, but I think one day no TV will ship without a built in media player capable of streaming content from the web.  

What new gadget in 2009 did you get that you love?

Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:07:50 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (11) |      

Category IBM Microsoft
Bruce Morse has thrown down the gauntlet to Microsoft.  IBM hurls defiance at Microsoft after communications pitch flop

"I'm here today to tell you I'm not afraid to get in the cage with Microsoft - in their closed cage," said Morse. "And so, I'd like to issue a challenge today for Microsoft at VoiceCon in the spring, to put up or shut up. I'll be willing to match up our capabilities against Microsoft and let the audience judge."

It would be an interesting head to head match to see.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:14:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Matrix BW

Rob Novak is a big, sorry let me change that, huge, no massive, well he's a big fan of the Matrix

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:05:50 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Scalextric
So there I was watching tonight's episode of James May (Top Gear fame) Top Toys on Meccano, and it ended with a preview of next weeks show, and who should I glimpse, but none other than my Brother and Dad.


They and my nephew volunteered one Sunday to help put together track for next weeks episode where they attempt to make the worlds longest Scalextric track.  Be sure to keep an eye out for them next week.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 06:58:55 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Kaoalas Australia

I don't know how the Koalas are getting chlamydia, but these little things need to be saved!  One of my highlights of visiting Australia was holding one of these little things, they're just so cuddly. So Oi Australia forget Cricket, forget Aussie rules football, forget surfing, forget pokies, save the Koalas or I'll never forgive you!  So give them little Koala condoms or whatever sort it out.

Koalas 'could face extinction'

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:45:05 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Belair Malibu
Is that really a bad thing?

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:40:51 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category Notes Upgrade
I upgraded my Notes client to 8.5.1 today.  And here are the two reasons you should upgrade if you're on 8.5.
1. Double right mouse click works consistently in your mail. So now you can double right click when reading internet mails, or when looking at a view.  This was broken in 8.5
2. Ctrl key now works when switching between views, keeping the selected document highlighted as you move between them. This was broken in 8.5

Ctrl End/Ctrl Home still doesn't work consistently between the old style views and Java views, with the old style navigating to the first or last document and selecting it, in 8.5 and 8.5.1 it doesn't select the document, which can often cause to accidentally deleting an email, as you think you have the last document selected, but you actually don't.

So are these really reasons to upgrade to 8.5.1? Yes, if you're on 8.5 they really are.  These things were a pain and just gave 8.5 a feel of someone didn't quite care enough to finish it.  8.5.1 feels much more polished.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:35:10 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Sametime Solution
I saw a few posts recently to forums and blogs of people saying that Sametime 8.0.2 had broken their Sametime Rich Text bots.  This weekend I came across something similar with the Sametime 8.5 client Beta (Sametime 8.5 beta is on Lotus Greenhouse, so I'm not breaking NDA talking about it before anyone asks)

I decided to start of by loading the stockbot sample code I posted a while back to the OpenNTF.org website.

Loaded up the code in eclipse and started it up.  Started a conversation with it using Sametime 7.5 all worked ok, 7.5.1 still good, 8.0 still good, 8.0.1 still good, 8.0.2 no picture, 8.5 no picture.  Hhhmm, so something changed in 8.0.2 (another of those undocumented changes no doubt)

Investigating further I discovered that 8.0.2 and 8.5 have become much more fussy about the HTML they render, even down case in some cases.  So regardless of the statements some have made that bots can not longer send Rich Text via bots, this is wrong, they can, you just have to make sure the format is handled by the Sametime client.

So for example, previously I could send

"<span style=\"font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;font-style:normal;\" class=\"left\">"
+ "Stock Price for <b>"
+ messageText
+ "</b><BR><IMG SRC='http://stockcharts.com/c-sc/sc?s="
+ messageText
+ "&p=D&b=5&g=0&i=t88252470817&r=5447' width='460px' height='284px'></span>");

and it rendered fine, now I have to send
"<span style=\"font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;font-style:normal;\" class=\"left\">"
+ "Stock Price for <b>"
+ messageText
+ "</b><BR><IMG src='http://stockcharts.com/c-sc/sc?s="
+ messageText
+ "&p=D&b=5&g=0&i=t88252470817&r=5447' width='460px' height='284px'></span>");

Notice how SRC is now lowercase.
So how can you figure out the format of the text that Sametime?  Well the easiest way would to be to look at the documentation out of IBM, but sadly that doesn't exist, so I find the best way is to send text from a Sametime client to the bot, and have the bot output to the console the incoming text, which will show the HTML of the incoming message, and using that it is pretty easy to figure out the HTML format Sametime expects.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:09:06 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category Dog Birthday
Finally there is now someone in the house that is older than me!  Yep, Jessie turned 6 today, or 42 years, she's aging better than me and she also photographs much better.

For those of you that ping and email me asking about the dog, here are some memories for you...















Lots of Jessie Photos

Videos of her a as new puppy

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:44:03 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Category IBM rational
New solutions for testing software in the cloud offers developers more flexible options

The IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud is a dynamically provisioned and scaled runtime environment that provides everything needed to develop and test application code; more importantly, it is one that highlights IBM's software offerings. This includes tools to configure and manage the dynamic execution environment, an IDE that facilitates the direct use of the execution environment and build and test tools that can exploit the execution environment. Other areas might include SaaS solutions for collaboration and governance infrastructure and resource repositories for source and reusable assets. All of this, supported by an internet based user experience that enables collaboration and reuse.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 04:46:30 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category IBM Microsoft

IBM announced
IBM Advances Cloud Computing in Education; Unveils IBM Cloud Academy

Microsoft announces who's using theirs.
Microsoft Woos University Customers to Cloud Computing Offerings

Microsoft also announced a price drop in their BPOS offerings this week, pretty much a 30% reduction with the price going from $15 a month to $10 month with a 5 seat minimum.  It's the 5 seat minimum that impresses me most.  There are millions of companies around with that number of employees.  I think LotusLive is still looking for a minimum of 500 seats, but IBM is still learning this stuff, so I'm confident lower numbers will come with time.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:50:56 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (6) |      

Category 1352Report

http://1352report.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/a-palm-pre-spoiled-the-halloween-risotto/

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:36:30 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |