05/30/2009

Notes has some magic tricks. Caution: could bring on seizures.

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The first magic trick Notes 8.5 has is the amazing appearing/disappearing workspace icons.  Every now and again I would notice the icons on my Notes 8.5 workspace would go a little crazy, appearing and disappearing really quickly as I moved the mouse over them.  Today I figured out how to do it every time.  Warning, if you try this yourself I am not responsible for any seizures that may occur.  This video doesn't really capture it too well, but you can see it a bit.


To turn the appearing/disappearing trick off, just click on a different tab and then back.

Next up is the incredible vanishing text entry cursor.  To see this one:
1. Open your mail file
2. Choose View, Search this View (do not choose this if the old style Notes Search is already showing, I don't mean the search box in the top right).
3. Now type in some search text, make sure it's some text that is going to find some documents and press enter. I think your mail file has to FT indexed too
4. Now without clicking anywhere else click back in the search text entry and type some more text, voila the incredible vanishing cursor.

I'm guessing both of these effects are caused by Eclipse, as typically anything strange in Notes 8.5 is blamed on eclipse and neither of these things happen if I load Notes 8.5 in Basic mode.

None of these issues are show stoppers, and as far as I know don't cause data loss, but when you start adding up all these quirks, Notes 8.5 really starts to feel like a rough product with some sharp edges. It doesn't feel like a mature product that has been in production for 20 years.  I won't say Notes sucks, but I cannot honestly say I get pleasure from using Notes 8.5, I find many of the changes and quality issues very frustrating, some areas of the product appear to have made great progress where as other areas feel like they were ignored and pushed back to later releases, maybe due to lack of resources and an active decision or lack of pride, I don't know.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:22:18 PM Location | | Comments (14) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/29/2009

It's been a month and a half since I canned the cable company.

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It's been a month and a half since I got rid of my cable television and how has it worked out?

It's been fantastic.  The only thing I should add to my previous post is that I put an antenna on the roof to pick up a few free over the air tv channels.  With a big enough aerial I was able to receive 4 HD channels and a few analog ones(about 14 channels in total) have I mentioned I live in the middle of nowhere? It will be interesting to see what the Tivo still picks up when the switch to digital takes place, maybe it will pick up more?  The main reason for putting the aerial on the roof was so that my folks will still be able to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy when they visit, and if in the winter it snows and I lose internet I should still be able to see semi local news if you consider Portland Maine local.  

So what I have found the most refreshing about this system is I can watch a lot of shows via hulu on the big screen with a lot less commercials, many shows have one commercial at the beginning and that's it. Much more civilized.  The combination of Hulu, ABC, Netflix, Amazon VOD means there is always something I can find to watch if I have the time.  

Setanta-i.com has turned out to be great and I will be watching the FA Cup final tomorrow on that.  Also credit to ESPN360.com which also has great streaming quality and yesterday I was able to watch Manchester United put on a terrible performance against Barcelona in the UEFA Chanpionship.

Having my setup work with the BBC iPlayer through the Playstation 3 (PS3) has also been great, I've been a little bit hooked on a show that was on everyday called "The Great British Menu" which finished today, after watching it I really want to try eating pigs ear, maybe I should steal one that I normally give the dog.  Also I am embarrassed to say it, I have been watching the English Apprentice show, I loath these types of shows, and I blame Gab and Tim Davis for making me watch it.  If these people are the cream of the cream, then Britain has problems, it's like watching a train wreck every week, where's your common sense people, arggh I can feel my blood pressure going up just thinking about that show.

Anyway, would I recommend this to others.  It depends, if you're comfortable with computers and getting it setup, have a reliable internet connection then absolutely.  For those interested these were my initial and ongoing costs:
1 Year Subscription to Setanta-i.com $149 (includes all Setanta Pay per view events, formerly I would pay $29.99 to watch those, maybe 4 rugby and England games a year)
1 HD TV Aerial $85
1 TV Aerial Pole $15
1/2 month credit back from cable company -$50
One off Total: $199

 TivoHD Monthly subscription: $9.99
Netflix Monthly subscription, 1 DVD at a time, unlimited instant watching: $8.99
UK VPN Monthly subscription: $5
Monthly Total: $23.98

My previous monthly bill for Tivo's and Cable was roughly $140 a month. + $120 a year for PPV events.

Projected yearly savings: $1,512.24

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:33:10 PM Location | | Comments (3) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/29/2009

IBM offering what Microsoft Offers

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A few IBMers (you know who you are) falsely accuse me of having a dig at IBM in this post but if you read the post you'll see IBM was never mentioned, today the folks on The Collaboration Soapbox published their evangelist kit for "Work Smarter with IBM Collaboration", has a number of things that will help you demonstrate and talk about Lotus solutions.

we've had a lot of feedback from customers that we need to make it easier to find the right stuff, and so we've started collecting the materials that are relevant and putting them all together in what we call the "Work Smarter with IBM Collaboration" evangelist kit. It is all of our relevant brochures, flyers, videos, and presentations.

Good to see this being provided in a nice simple download.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:28:04 AM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/28/2009

Illegal downloads costing the economy tens of billions of pounds - I disagree

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Illegal downloading is bad, it's stealing plain and simple.  But statements like this:
Around seven million people in the UK are involved in illegal downloads, costing the economy tens of billions of pounds, government advisors say.


taken from this BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8073068.stm are surely wrong?  The money is still going into the economy, it's not like all these illegal downloaders are great savers and sitting on huge wads of cash, they're still spending the money, but maybe not on music.  I still believe that if the music industry and movie industry got their pricing model and delivery mechanism right they would see a huge reduction in piracy, but they keep taking the approach of making it harder for legal paying customers to get the stuff and make the whole experience less satisfying.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:59:00 PM Location | | Comments (7) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/28/2009

Gillette shaving tips...

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Shave for a taller tree??

Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:23:42 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/28/2009

Coming soon to a browser near you, Google Wave

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Tom Krazit writes on CNET about the upcoming Google Wave announcement.  

Google Wave is an attempt to "combine conversation-type communication and collaboration-type communication," said Lars Rasmussen, who launched the project with his brother Jens after Google acquired their mapping start-up in 2004. The brothers Rasmussen said they were inspired by the fact that two of the most commonly used Internet communication technologies--e-mail and instant messaging--are based on relatively ancient offline communication techniques, namely the letter and the telephone.


Certainly looks interesting if you use Gmail and Gtalk.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:56:29 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/28/2009

Ctrl-End and Ctrl-Home equivalents in Notes 8.5

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I just found out by accident, that if you want the equivalent of Ctrl-End and Ctrl-Home in Notes 8.5 Java views (think mail file) then it's just Home and End no Ctrl key.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:19:18 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/28/2009

How do you do absolute cell references in Lotus Symphony Spreadsheet

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An absolute cell reference is where the cell looks something like $B$1 instead of B1, absolute cell references allow you to copy the cells around the spreadsheet and still have them point back at the same cell, versus relative cell references which change when you copy and paste cells.

In Excel and 1-2-3 the key for changing absolute cell references to absolute was F4, in Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets is Shift-F4.

F4 doesn't appear to do anything in Symphony so not sure why they changed it.  Anyone that spends any time in Excel doing spreadsheets will find this a hindrance if they switch.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:08:01 AM Location | | Comments (4) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/26/2009

I was thinking about prescription drugs over the weekend

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This weekend I was thinking, if healthcare is not a human right but a privilige as many in the US argue (falsly I believe), why shouldn't prescription drugs be available to those without healthcare so they can self prescribe?  Obviously no one else feels responsible for these lazy, no good people that don't work hard enough to get health insurance, so why would they care if they took drugs that could heal or harm them?

Yes I've read a couple of things that put me in one of those people are crazy moods today.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:18:09 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/26/2009

Internet Explorer 8 breaks word wrapping in Sametime and slows down Notes 8.x

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People are asking me this question more as their machines get updated so I thought it was worth a blog entry.

If you're running Sametime on Windows, Sametime uses Internet Explorer as an embedded object to render the chat.  Users that have had their machines updated to Internet Explorer 8 are finding that their chats no longer word wrap.  There are a few solutions to this problem:
1. Don't chat with people that send you long lines of text.
2. Remove IE8 and install an older version (good luck on that one) as IE8 is not supported by IBM
3. Follow the steps in this technote, that explain how to modify a Sametime Cascading StyleSheet to make it work.
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21380355

If you're using Notes 8.x you may notice a big delay when you open emails sent to you via the internet.  This is also due to IE8 and Notes 8.x now using Internt Explorer as it's rendering engine.  I fixed this one for me by setting the preference "Disable embedded browser for MIME email"

EmbeddedbrowserforMIME

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:34:51 AM Location | | Comments (2) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/25/2009

Are Beavers relatives of Black Labs or Black Labs relatives of Beavers?

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I have often believed that Jessie is some distant relative to the beaver. She likes nothing more than to find logs at the bottom of the river, drag them around and chew off any bits sticking out.

This weekend on our walk around the Isinglass River, I recorded her in action.  She poked at this stick for a good 10 minutes when she found it before deciding to move it, this is the short version.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:09:14 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/23/2009

How threatening exactly is Cuba? Microsoft shuts off MSN IM

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I've never really understood why the American government is still so terrified of Cuba, what exactly is the threat from that country?  I'm pretty certain that these embargoes and travel restrictions have only harmed innocent people and not the leaders. What use are embargoes, if other countries deal with them anyway?

Microsoft cuts IM service to five 'hostile' nations

Microsoft has stopped offering its Windows Live Messenger service to users in five countries that are subject to U.S. sanctions, the company confirmed Friday.


The U.S. considers each of those countries to be hostile or threatening in some way to its national interests.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 05:19:22 PM Location | | Comments (3) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/22/2009

Further update on World Cup 2010!

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Well it went from nothing to great success with the tickets.  The second batch I put in had some technical issue, so I had to resubmit my request a few days later, at which point the games available had changed.  Well it turns out that wasn't a bad thing.  As I put in a request for five more games for the three of us, and very unexpectedly was granted all three games, wow!  I can tell, Andy, Adam and myself are now very excited for something taking place more than a year away.  I do still have one disappointment, which is I didn't get any games in Capetown, where the two people I actually know in South Africa live!  So our travel schedule is going to be a little hectic moving back and forth between Rustenburg, Johannesburg and Durban.  I think we'll rent a car and share the driving between the locations, although one drive will involve getting from Johannesburg to Durban over night, and I really have no knowledge of South Africa and how feasible that is, how the roads are etc.

So if you have experience with South Africa, and are willing to share advice, hints and tips on getting around, where to stay etc. please feel free to share, the three of us would really appreciate it.  Here's a little picture that lays out our rough travel agenda.

South Africa World Cup 2010

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:32:48 PM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/22/2009

Oops, not so great Microsoft

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SP2 glitch renders SharePoint trial ware

Microsoft has disclosed a bug in the Service Pack 2 update to SharePoint Server 2007 that causes the application to expire after 180 days.

The flaw improperly resets the product expiration date for the widely used program as if it was a trial installation, a SharePoint VP says here. It affects anyone who has installed SP2 on Office SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008, and Search Server 2008 Express.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:23:50 PM Location | | Comments (3) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/22/2009

IBM Ranked #1 in Web Portal Software Market Share

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IBM Ranked #1 in Web Portal Software Market Share

IBM Portals have also been well received in the financial industry. This IBM software is being used by the top 10 global banks, nine of the top 10 U.S. banks, seven of the top 10 European banks, and eight of the top 10 Asia Pacific banks.


So IBM is behind the financial market collapse

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:35:15 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/20/2009

Big UC news from HP and Microsoft

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HP and Microsoft are today announcing a new 4 year strategic glocal initiative to deliver end-to-end unified comminocations and collaboration solution blah blah blah.

Basically HP and Microsoft are spending a tonne of money to create joint teams to collaborate on products and services development across Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Communications Server, as well as HP ProCurve networking products.

Read the press release at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/may09/05-19HPUCGPR.mspx

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:53:11 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/20/2009

Notes 8.5 first impressions

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So a couple of months ago I got a much beefier machine more memory etc. which was more capable of running Notes 8.5.  Honestly I had found 8.x too sluggish on a 3ghz dual core 2gb ram machine (and yes anti virus was disabled for the Notes directory).  These are my impressions after a couple of months of usage, call them gripes if you want I really don't care, I've been loyal Notes user for over 18 years, so it's not like I'm a newby, and I'm sure that is why I also have some of these frustrations, 18 year old habbits can be hard to break.  

Notes 8.5 performs much better than Notes 8.0, but still isn't as fast as notes 7.x or Notes 8. Basic.  I have Symphony installed, but unless IBM sends me an ODF file, I don't use it.  I use that other more functional IBM suite still for 80% of my desktop stuff

The Notes client still needs more threading, especially around attaching/saving files, saving documents etc.  I shouldn't really have to look at an hour glass in 2009.

1. I'm starting to get used to running Sametime in my Notes client, but it drives me crazy that IM windows aren't on a different thread.  Not being able to chat when Notes is displaying something like a preferences panel drives users nuts though. So often by the end of the day I am running Sametime stand-alone again.  Subtle (undocumented) differences between embedded notes Sametime and standalone Sametime also make Sametime plug-in development harder than it should be.

2. Having my plug-ins for Notes and Sametime in the same place is nice, but you need a good size monitor to really use them.

3. Type ahead for addresses from emails I've received, fantastic to see Notes has this now and a huge usability feature.

4. In-line Spell check, only took a decade, along with drag and drop. I do often have instant spell check turned off so get frustrated that Alt-E, K the previous shortcut for spell check no longer works.  

5. Mark Read/Unread should be a right mouse button option. UPDATE: design refresh of mail file added this, now inconsistent with other dbs

6. Workspace looks like, well I don't need to say anymore.

7. Alt-B 1 no longer brings up email.  In fact, Alt B no longer brings up shortcuts for bookmarks.

8. Font selections, what a pain, the status bar options have gone, to be replaced by a drop down that shows 5 choices and involves lots of scrolling.

9. A confusing mish mash of stuff between settings in location documents and others in preferences.   Some settings still exist in Location document, but are overridden by options in preferences.  You find out which has the higher priority through trial and error.

10. I'm forever double clicking on the Sametime status indicator in the system tray, expecting the contact list to appear.

11. Inconsistencies, lots of inconsistent behaviour in the Notes client, forget inconsistencies between apps, these are all within Notes itself.  The answer to most inconsistencies seems to be Java Views, which as an end user I don't care about, it's inconsistent and I have to work different ways in different parts of the application.  Ctrl-End works differently in Java Views to regular Views, double right click doesn't work in Java Views (I hear fixed in 8.5.1). I've blogged about the help inconsistencies before too. I keep find other inconsistencies, man I could do a big blog entry on those alone.

12. John Head politely described Designer in Notes 8.5 as experimental, personally I don't think companies should ship experimental software and charge for it, lets just say I have a VM loaded with Notes 7.x just so I have some where to go to do some quick domino db dev stuff if I need to.

13. Esc shouldn't close the Workspace if it's set as my homepage and the last page open.

14. I like the new password dialog that appears very quickly.

14. Notes 8.5 on the mac observations - Esc doesn't close my mail inbox. It closes other views.

16. Notes 8.5 on the mac observations - When it's loading up, it keeps taking focus so it's impossible to switch away and do something else whilst it loads.

17. Notes 8.5 on the mac observations - It's much harder to discern the difference between read and unread in views on the Mac than on a PC.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:16:04 AM Location | | Comments (8) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/15/2009

WorldCup Tickets, result!

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I know, I know, what's with the WorldCup in 2010, well it's my blog and I care so tough

The good news is, that three of us are hoping to go the World Cup in 2010, my brother in-law Adam and my good friend Andy Higgins.  We'd all put in for some tickets, and luckily, a couple of Andy's requests had a result!  So now the trip is for real, we will be going to South Africa, very exciting!  Also June 27th is Andy's birthday, so we'll be at a game for his Birthday.

So we have three tickets to:

Match 52, R16 - 1B v 2A - 27 June, Johannesburg 20.30        CAT1        3 tickets        Successful        $600.00
Match 24 - D4 v D2 - 19 June, Rustenburg 13.30        CAT2        3 tickets        Successful        $360.00

I've put in some addition requests, for the following, so fingers crossed, one or two will be successful.
Match 57 - QF - W53 v W54 - 2 July 16:00        Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium        Category 1        3        $ 900.00
Match 60 - QF - W55 v W56 - 3 July 20:30        Ellis Park Stadium        Category 1        3        $ 900.00
Match 44 - E4 v E1 - 24 June 20:30        Green Point Stadium        Category 3        3        $ 240.00
Match 47 - H4 v H1 - 25 June 20:30        Loftus Versfeld Stadium        Category 2        3        $ 360.00
Match 37 - C4 v C1 - 23 June 16:00        Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium        Category 3        3        $ 240.00
Match 33 - A2 v A3 - 22 June 16:00        Royal Bafokeng Stadium        Category 2        3        $ 360.00

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:42:11 AM Location | | Comments (6) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/14/2009

My second attempt at FIFA WorldCup tickets

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Had similar success to my first attempt, gggrrrrr.

Ticket Application Number : 30008xxxx
Status : Application Unsuccesful
Would you accept a lower Category? : Yes
Item Team/Venue Seat Category
Quantity
Price
Match 59 - QF - W52 v W51 - 3 July 16:00 Green Point Stadium Category 1
0
$0.00
Original Request:
(Category 1)
(3)
Match 56 - R16 - 1H v 2G - 29 June 20:30 Green Point Stadium Category 2
0
$0.00
Original Request:
(Category 2)
(3)
Total:
Quantity 0
$0.00

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:57:13 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/12/2009

Microsoft does it right.

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This an example of a company giving customers tools to help the deployment of their product, but at the same time giving customers materials that are basically marketing  their products within those customer sites, so a win win.  Take a look at this from Microsoft.  It's the Microsoft Unified Communications 2007 R2 Adoption and Training Kit.  It provides resources and guidance for IT Professionals, Helpdesk and Support Professionals, and Trainers to support end-users who use Microsoft Unified Communications Technologies. Content includes:
    * IT Pro - Planning Checklist, Benefit Statements, E-Mail Campaign Samples, Success Metrics Examples, and User Education Materials
    * Helpdesk - Planning Checklist, Frequently Asked Questions, and Troubleshooting Guides.
    * Trainer - Planning Checklist, Quick Reference Cards, Tips and Tricks Flash Cards, How-to's, Getting Started Tours, and Web-based Tutorials and Training

I mean seriously, this thing is jam packed with pretty much everything someone inside a company, hell even the things Sales folks and Systems Engineers need as leave behinds when they visit customers.  

They even took the time to make a cheesy video explaining what's in the pack.  
http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/uc/Ken_and_harry_final_blur-640x360-5kwmv.wmv

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:04:56 AM Location | | Comments (4) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/11/2009

Right double click in Notes poll results...

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So this is I think the closest poll I've ever had since I started doing polls, the question "Do you close Notes documents with double right mouse button?"  The results are:

Yes - 52.73% - 87 Votes.
Yes: votes (87)

No - 47.27% - 78 Votes.
No: votes (78)

Total Votes: 165

So from this result, I can conclude that 47.27% of you work really inefficiently

The other 52.73% (the smart half) operate really efficiently and hate some of the keyboard changes in Notes 8.x and scream at Notes daily when they double right click in their in-box for it to open a document, or do something even worse depending on where the cursor fell.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:34:23 PM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/11/2009

Episode 11 or is it Episode Millenium, no it's Episode 11 of the 1352 report.

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Bruce has stopped slacking and has published the latest episode of the 1352 report.

We tried to keep it from turning into a IBM Lotus marketing sucks bitchfest, I think you can probably be the best judge of if we succeeded or not.

Get it here

www.1352report.com

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:19:01 PM Location | | Comments (2) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/11/2009

Deep dish or Fish and Chips? Maybe you want both?

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When yo read this in the morning, Collaboration University 2009 registration will be open.  It seems like only yesterday a few of us were upset/mad/steaming enough at IBMs pitiful showing of Sametime and Quickr at Lotusphere (less than 10 sessions total were given) that we started Collaboration University (CU) as the go to place for an in depth focused conference on these two products.  Well since then a few years have passed and CU has become more popular each year, but even better than that, IBM came to the realization that their customers had a few years prior and realized that Sametime and Quickr are key products in their portfolio. IBM has reinvested in both the Quick and Sametime product lines so there's more to learn than ever before.  

So to celebrate the opening of registration we're offering a Day One special discount of $100, and that's on top of the usual early bird discount and Alumni discount!  

The events are taking same place at the same great locations as last year on the following dates

     September 14-16 in Chicago
     September 21-23 in London

So put all that money you saved by using Symphony instead of Office to good use and come to Collaboration University!

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:07:29 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/10/2009

Interesting new website Twilio.com - can interact well with Domino

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I noticed on Chris Millers Google reader share feed the other day he had linked to an article about Twilio.com

Reading the article I discovered that Twilio.com is basically a telephone IVR system operating in the cloud.  What's nice about it, for most developers is that it's language is than VXML and in a matter of minutes a competent Domino developer can have a system up and running that lets you dial in to a telephone number, enter a pin and have it read back to you your days calendar for example, or give you a weather forecast for the zipcode you're calling from, check if your servers are up from the phone etc.  You can even have Twilio record messages, so imagine a support phone number which people call into and leave their their message, this could then be moved straight into your Domino CRM/Support system and have workflow applied to resolving and interacting with the customer.  Twilio can also make outgoing calls, so could automatically call you for example if Domino server goes down, you need to notify employees of snow days etc.  It's also fun having Sametime bots interact with the service.

To use Twilio, you basically need to build Domino agent that outputs XML.  For example, this very simple Domino agent does the following with Twilio:
1. Announces "Hello, thank you for calling my first application"
2. Plays the sound of a monkey howling that is stored as an MP3 file on the Twilio server (could be any mp3 on any public server)
3. Asks the user if they wish to log this call, if the user makes a selection it calls the domino agent TwilioLogSelection with the results.

Sub Initialize
    Print {Content-Type: text/xml}
    Print {<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>}
    Print {<Response>  }
    Print {<Say>Hello, thank you for calling my first application</Say>}
    Print{<Play>http://demo.twilio.com/hellomonkey/monkey.mp3</Play>}
    Print{<Gather numDigits="1" action="TwilioLogSelection?OpenAgent" method="POST">  }
    Print{<Say>To log this call,  press 1.  Press any other key to start over.</Say>  }
    Print{</Gather> }
    Print {</Response>}
End Sub

How simple is that?

In the agent TwilioLogSelection, it's basically a simple Domino agent that logs the call details and selection choices.  Twilio will provide the following information from CallerID:
CallerCity: The city of the caller.
CallerState: The state or province of the caller.
CallerZip: The postal code of the caller.
CallerCountry: The country of the caller.
CallGuid: A unique ID for the call as it is passed from one URL to another.

This to me is one of the most exciting things about the cloud.  Being able to play with technologies that would normally require hardware investments, payments to telephone companies, waiting weeks for telephone companies to setup accounts etc. then finding out you need additional consultancy to make it work in your environment etc.

You can try this out for yourself by getting a Twilio account, you can also call the above example with your phone using the following details:
Number to call: +1 (866) 583-6913
Pin: 24576889

Here's a movie of it in action.  It shows the logging to a Domino database at the end of the call.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:04:26 AM Location | | Comments (4) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/08/2009

IBM PR should be all over these folks...

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Notes could easily have played this part, was it even considered, what efforts did IBM make?

Posted by Carl Tyler At 06:43:18 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/08/2009

More American workers outsourcing their own jobs overseas

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he he

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:00:48 AM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/07/2009

This screenshot just screams $100 billion plus company

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Talking of IBM documentation, this is my favourite screenshot in the Sametime TCSPI documentation.  I think it was taken on bring yoru child to work day. It screams quality.

Favourite IBM Screenshot

In case it isn't obvious, the red squigly circle and arrow were not added by me,   this is the high class image markup IBM does.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:05:42 AM Location | | Comments (4) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/07/2009

The Sametime 8.0.2 document is missing quite a bit of information

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I had thought the Sametime 8.0.2 client release was pretty much a collection of hotfixes with no UI changes.  How wrong I was.  The Sametime 8.0.2 what's new document is missing quite a bit of information.  Reading that you would think the only updates were print capture and Sharepoint integration.  But there have been UI changes too.  Especially in the area of Click-to-call.  These kind of changes make big differences for ISVs and training material developers and they should be documented by the manufacturer (IBM).  Not to nit pick, but the what's new document also talks about the "Show Online Only" but the command is actually just "Online Only".

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these changes shouldn't have been made, but they should be written up and documented.

Take a look at these screenshots for some of the differences.

New menu option on drop down, Create Call Invitation
8.0.2 Create Call Invitation Menu

New Create Call Invitation Dialog
8.02 Call Invitation Dialog

New Call control dialog - contains different toolbar, different action menu items, whole new layout, no longer shows the options for muting the meeting chair (call initiator), no call-in details button
Call Dialog

More here http://www.epilio.com/web/802diff.htm

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:47:56 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/06/2009

Somebody please buld this application

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I have seen mobile phone applications that let you record some music from the radio, send it off and it will come back with the artist information etc.

I want a similar application but for bird songs.  I want to be able to hold my phone up, record a few seconds of a bird singing, send it off to the service and have it send back a picture of the bird and other details.

I've looked but I can't find anything. Anyone seen anything?

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:01:46 PM Location | | Comments (4) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/06/2009

Quest adds Sametime to their Lotus to Microsoft migration offerings

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Quest now offers Quest Migrator for Sametime to assist companies migrating from Sametime to OCS.

Quest Migrator for Sametime simplifies migration from Sametime to OCS by providing a detailed pre-migration assessment, centralized project management, and automation of tasks. User contacts and settings are migrated with complete accuracy, saving end users from having to rebuild or reorganize their contact lists, which could take up to an average of 30 minutes per user. For a company with 10,000 users, they could save approximately 5,000 hours of productive time by using the tool.


It has a nice looking application and addresses some of the key issues companies come across when moving from Sametime to OCS, such as restricted number of users in the buddylist, different naming for public groups, handling nested groups, static and dynamic groups etc.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:18:11 AM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/06/2009

Sametime client gets installed and when ran the user is welcomed by the error message for geeks

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An administrator called me from a company where they were having a problem installing Sametime connect on a users machine.  They would install Sametime and whenever they tried to launch it they get this friendly end user message, which I think makes no sense to anybody outside the core eclipse developers and offers zero assistance as to what is going wrong, also most users get confused as the OK button is off the screen.  

support-058

After asking a few questions I discovered that the administrator was installing Sametime remotely on the users desktop and was using Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) to install the software.  I had them un-install the client, and made sure they logged in using RDP with the admin/console switch and then the install worked.  Here's the thing, most IBM software doesn't get along well with RDP, they won't even support Sametime on servers accessed through RDP, so I suggest using another option like the free version of LogMeIn.com and avoid those painful calls with IBM tech support arguing about why it makes no sense for them not to support RDP that go no where.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:18:23 AM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/04/2009

Struggle with IBM partnerworld site? No problem IBM asks for your password.

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Stunned disbelief.  Today is just yet another day where I experienced some issue with the IBM Partnerworld website.  Partnerworld is that part of IBM.com that 50% of seems to be down 50% of the time.  Last week I was trying to do some maintenance on my company profile and the site was down.  Today I go back, the part I tried to get into last week is now up, but some other part is down.  So I still can't complete what I want to do.

The best part of my experience, yet again was that a popup appearing offering assistance.  I again, decided to take the assistance.  Take a look at the chat discussion below and see if you can see where IBM help folks do something really really stupid.  I do mention in the chat I think it's a little nuts.  Clearing the cache following Jimmy's instructions also ended the chat, so also a genius suggestion.  

In Fortune this month, Sam Palmisano is boasting about IBMs profits, how about a little less profit Mr. Palmisano and some investment in your website and training support staff on things to never ask customers for.

Please wait for your IBM representative to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Jimmy Batiste'
Jimmy Batiste: Hello!
you: Hi Jimmy, I am clicking on the option Update your profile and I am getting &quot;Our apologies...&quot; the page you requested cannot be displayed.
Jimmy Batiste: please provide me your name IBM ID and company
you: myrealemail@epilio.com
you: Epilio
you: Do you selectivey not make pages work for certain companies?
Jimmy Batiste: Please allow &nbsp;2 mins to check your profile
Jimmy Batiste: you must be entitled depending on what you are tryiong to access, you must be an IBM Business Partner to access Partnerworld links
you: Yes I know that
you: I am entitled
you: Or are you telling me that I am no longer entitled?
you: so IBMs error message if not entitled is &quot;Our apologies...the page you requested cannot be displayed.&quot;?
Jimmy Batiste: Please allow me 2 mins to verify
you: No problem Jimmy.
Jimmy Batiste: thanks
Jimmy Batiste: Thanks fro your patience, everything is ok withe your profile ...Please clear your cash , and close your browser and the &nbsp;open a new &nbsp;browser from the desk top and try again, if you give me your ID/PW I can try from my end
you: yeah right, I'm going to give you my password
you: is that IBM policy?
Jimmy Batiste: We see your ID , you can always reset your password, we see your information internal &nbsp;I have no use &nbsp;for your password but to assit you
you: Sorry, but asking for my password, should be verbotten.
you: It is terrible that you would even ask for it
you: and I am sure some kind of breach of IBM policy.
you: if it isn't it should be.
Jimmy Batiste: You do not have to , please try clearing your cache and reseting you password and then try againg your profile is &nbsp;working fine,
you: I will do that, thank you.
Jimmy Batiste: changing &nbsp;I will wait for you
you:
No difference


Then I lost poor Jimmy as I cleared my "cash" although I think he meant cache.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:51:19 PM Location | | Comments (6) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/04/2009

Great Customer Service from ASA (Aviation Supplies and Academics INC.)

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There are many products out there that claim to offer "Lifetime Warranties", but when you read the small print and clauses they tend to be worth very little.

Recently the headset I use for passengers stopped working, I could hear them speak, but they could not hear me speak (strange how none of them ever complained).  The headset in question was a ASA Air Classic HS-1 headset.  This is pretty much the lowest price headset you can get for flying, I see no reason for my passengers to be kitted out with the more expensive Dave Clarks.

So I sent ASA an email telling them of my problem with my 10 year old headset asking how to get the headset replaced under the lifetime warranty.  I expected to get an email back telling me how only the nuts and bolts of the headset are covered or something stupid like that.  Instead a couple of hours later I got a nice email telling me I can take the headset to the place where I bought it, and they can replace it with a new set, if the shop either no longer existed or didn't carry the headsets anymore I could just send it back to them.  Well the pilot shop I bought it at, didn't carry the headsets anymore, so last Saturday I sent the headset back to ASA, expecting it to be gone for a few months.  Imagine my pleasant surprise when I got home Friday afternoon to discover a new replacement headset sitting on my doorstep.  Big thumbs up for ASA customer service.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:57:44 AM Location | | Comments (1) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/04/2009

Let me be the first to say I was worried Adam would be naked.

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Adam Gartenberg dresses for success...
http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/dressed-for-success

As you can see I continue to experiment with Webcam Clothing.  The shirt I sent Adam was the first one I made with a quick release collar, no velcro.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:55:18 AM Location | | Comments (3) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This 

05/01/2009

Damn damn damn, anybody know anyone at FIFA?

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World Cup Tickets = 0!

Gutted

Will try again on May 4th, when any tickets that were awarded that weren't paid for go on sale for first come first served.  This event isn't until next year and England haven't even qualified yet. Bugger.

Out of the total of 1,862,319 tickets requested from 205 countries, 555,871 tickets were drawn successfully. Of those, 245,948 tickets were drawn to South African residents - this corresponds to 44 per cent of all tickets successfully drawn during this first phase of ticket sales. Outside the host country, the highest number of tickets drawn was to residents of the United States (69,208 tickets), followed by the United Kingdom (39,421 tickets) and Germany (29,330 tickets). From the applications received, the most popular team was England, for which a total of 228,822 team-specific tickets (TST) were requested and for which the total number of available TSTs was 8,895. With regard to individual match tickets, the most popular ticket category was Category 4 and the most heavily oversubscribed match was the final, by a factor of 3,000 per cent.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:03:35 PM Location | | Comments (0) | del.icio.us  Technorati  Digg This