My oldest Notes application in production?
Category Notes Domino
So many many moons ago, close to 20 years in fact I created my first ever Lotus Notes database, it was a database that contained all the UK number singles from 1952 to 1986, not very useful I know, but it was a good one to use to learn about Notes, testing importing of data etc. Then came an internal Lotus database Hotline Technical Faxes, that was basically used as a store for faxes we'd send to customers who called in and we wanted to get rid of them quickly, and sending a fax from this database through the gateway was much much quicker than sending the fax manually with a machine. It took those "I got a Unrecoverable Application Error on Windows" down to 2 minutes calls as we'd just say "OK, I'm going to send you a fax, after you have tried everything suggested in the FAX call us back" the poor buggers didn't realise it was a 30 page fax. After that I built a database for collecting the jokes I'd often get sent through email, in fact that database is still used today, but rarely updated. So skip forward a few years and we get to 1994 and the FIFA World Cup in the USA, this database I built for my colleagues at Lotus, it had a very active discussion database, schedules for the games, details on the venues etc. It became very popular with the sales folks during the World Cup as they were able tot demonstrate taking part in a discussion whilst being disconnected, demonstrate replication with a modem, look up details on a game etc. Although 1994 wasn't very long go, the term internet wasn't known by many. So it wasn't like most people could go to a browser and just look up this information. You might find it on CompuServer or AOL, but most likely you only had it because you kept the free Panini World Cup poster that came with the News of the World one Sunday.
So after 1994, the internet become much more popular, people started install browsers, Windows 95 shipped, if you were really lucky you had a high speed 64k ISDN line at home that work paid for (I was not that lucky). So 1998 came along what did I do? I was now living in the US, and all my friends quite honestly didn't even know that the World Cup was about to happen. As Americans say "they had no skin in the game" why would they care? No chance USA can win, so what does it matter? It appeared that unless an American could win something, they weren't bothered. How could I fix that, how could I get it so that my colleagues wanted to slink out of work at 2pm to catch the game across the street, did I build a new fancy Domino webpage? Actually no, I was really lazy, so I built a spreadsheet and put a results rage up on my Geocities webpage (RIP Geocities). The idea was simple, my friends game me 10 bucks and they were randomly assigned a team from the entrants, this was their team, if their team won the World Cup they won most of the money, the rest going to second place. If their team lost, they got nothing. Pretty simple really, no skill whatsoever. Fortunately most Americans didn't know if they had a good team or not, apart from the two women who had Iran and Tunisia, they knew their prospects weren't good. The best thing, it worked, people rooted for their team, they came to the bar, they skipped work, very productive days for Lotus. I think the winner won something like $270 and the second place person won $50.
Now fast forward to 2002, I no longer work at Lotus, most of my buddies no longer work at Lotus, but I'm getting emails asking if I'll be doing a World Cup pool again. I decided email wasn't the way to organize this, and my approach before of people being assigned a team was too limited, it limited me to 32 entrants, and there were people upset with me that they couldn't enter because I had ran out of countries in 1998, so I needed to avoid that. The web was even more popular, paypal existed for payments and browsers had become more flexible in what you could build. So I finally built a Domino database, with a web front end, had some fancy DHTML for drop down pickers with graphics, oooh. My friends took part again, more friends in fact, even some of their parents and spouses , this time the rules were different though, you had to pick the teams that proceeded to the next round, with points assigned for the correct picks, and you had that added challenge, do you go with your heart and pick your home country, or do you go with your head? Solution for many was to put in double entries. 1st place prize for 2002 was around $500, with second place about $100 I think, and 3rd $66. This was an early morning final for those in the US as the final was in Korea, so I had a few friends arrive around 7 to watch the final on the big screen. This one really came down to the final game, with 1st and 2nd place possible winnders both watching the game at my house, and the winner being settled by the final game. That year, Art Fontaine won, he has been a football/soccer fan ever since. Art was also the tester for the application, and the joke is that his picks were purely random when he was testing the app.
2006, loaded up the 2002 database of the backup zipdisk, updated the team details, updated venue details, added a side competition and away we went again. Added a discussion forum. Uh oh, problem, 3 weeks into the site being up, got a cease and desist order from FIFA! Read the letter in detail, ok not too bad, I just can't have a picture of the world cup trophy on the website, because it's copyrighted by FIFA. Update graphics to contain no trophy and site continues. 1st place prize $875.
Now roll on 2010, loaded up the database of the backup CD, updated team details, updated graphic, removed discussion as no one used it, and removed side competition as it just confused people, so now we're ready to go!! Who knows what the prize money will be this year, but if you want to enter, the core database is the same as the one I put up in 2002, and you can enter at http://www.worldcup-pool.com
I hope you'll take party, it's normally a lot of fun.
So many many moons ago, close to 20 years in fact I created my first ever Lotus Notes database, it was a database that contained all the UK number singles from 1952 to 1986, not very useful I know, but it was a good one to use to learn about Notes, testing importing of data etc. Then came an internal Lotus database Hotline Technical Faxes, that was basically used as a store for faxes we'd send to customers who called in and we wanted to get rid of them quickly, and sending a fax from this database through the gateway was much much quicker than sending the fax manually with a machine. It took those "I got a Unrecoverable Application Error on Windows" down to 2 minutes calls as we'd just say "OK, I'm going to send you a fax, after you have tried everything suggested in the FAX call us back" the poor buggers didn't realise it was a 30 page fax. After that I built a database for collecting the jokes I'd often get sent through email, in fact that database is still used today, but rarely updated. So skip forward a few years and we get to 1994 and the FIFA World Cup in the USA, this database I built for my colleagues at Lotus, it had a very active discussion database, schedules for the games, details on the venues etc. It became very popular with the sales folks during the World Cup as they were able tot demonstrate taking part in a discussion whilst being disconnected, demonstrate replication with a modem, look up details on a game etc. Although 1994 wasn't very long go, the term internet wasn't known by many. So it wasn't like most people could go to a browser and just look up this information. You might find it on CompuServer or AOL, but most likely you only had it because you kept the free Panini World Cup poster that came with the News of the World one Sunday.
So after 1994, the internet become much more popular, people started install browsers, Windows 95 shipped, if you were really lucky you had a high speed 64k ISDN line at home that work paid for (I was not that lucky). So 1998 came along what did I do? I was now living in the US, and all my friends quite honestly didn't even know that the World Cup was about to happen. As Americans say "they had no skin in the game" why would they care? No chance USA can win, so what does it matter? It appeared that unless an American could win something, they weren't bothered. How could I fix that, how could I get it so that my colleagues wanted to slink out of work at 2pm to catch the game across the street, did I build a new fancy Domino webpage? Actually no, I was really lazy, so I built a spreadsheet and put a results rage up on my Geocities webpage (RIP Geocities). The idea was simple, my friends game me 10 bucks and they were randomly assigned a team from the entrants, this was their team, if their team won the World Cup they won most of the money, the rest going to second place. If their team lost, they got nothing. Pretty simple really, no skill whatsoever. Fortunately most Americans didn't know if they had a good team or not, apart from the two women who had Iran and Tunisia, they knew their prospects weren't good. The best thing, it worked, people rooted for their team, they came to the bar, they skipped work, very productive days for Lotus. I think the winner won something like $270 and the second place person won $50.
Now fast forward to 2002, I no longer work at Lotus, most of my buddies no longer work at Lotus, but I'm getting emails asking if I'll be doing a World Cup pool again. I decided email wasn't the way to organize this, and my approach before of people being assigned a team was too limited, it limited me to 32 entrants, and there were people upset with me that they couldn't enter because I had ran out of countries in 1998, so I needed to avoid that. The web was even more popular, paypal existed for payments and browsers had become more flexible in what you could build. So I finally built a Domino database, with a web front end, had some fancy DHTML for drop down pickers with graphics, oooh. My friends took part again, more friends in fact, even some of their parents and spouses , this time the rules were different though, you had to pick the teams that proceeded to the next round, with points assigned for the correct picks, and you had that added challenge, do you go with your heart and pick your home country, or do you go with your head? Solution for many was to put in double entries. 1st place prize for 2002 was around $500, with second place about $100 I think, and 3rd $66. This was an early morning final for those in the US as the final was in Korea, so I had a few friends arrive around 7 to watch the final on the big screen. This one really came down to the final game, with 1st and 2nd place possible winnders both watching the game at my house, and the winner being settled by the final game. That year, Art Fontaine won, he has been a football/soccer fan ever since. Art was also the tester for the application, and the joke is that his picks were purely random when he was testing the app.
2006, loaded up the 2002 database of the backup zipdisk, updated the team details, updated venue details, added a side competition and away we went again. Added a discussion forum. Uh oh, problem, 3 weeks into the site being up, got a cease and desist order from FIFA! Read the letter in detail, ok not too bad, I just can't have a picture of the world cup trophy on the website, because it's copyrighted by FIFA. Update graphics to contain no trophy and site continues. 1st place prize $875.
Now roll on 2010, loaded up the database of the backup CD, updated team details, updated graphic, removed discussion as no one used it, and removed side competition as it just confused people, so now we're ready to go!! Who knows what the prize money will be this year, but if you want to enter, the core database is the same as the one I put up in 2002, and you can enter at http://www.worldcup-pool.com
I hope you'll take party, it's normally a lot of fun.
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Comments
Posted by Selcuk A At 09:35:03 AM On 05/06/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Carl tyler At 09:45:54 AM On 05/06/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Selcuk A At 10:14:25 AM On 05/06/2010 | - Website - |
The prize money is literally a computed field on a form, I did toy with the idea of hiding it till later but then people ask me what's the prize. Believe me, the final prize is well worth winning, and who cares about 3rd place, you want to win 1st!
Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:36:32 PM On 05/06/2010 | - Website - |
And actually there was kind of a logic to my 2002 picks -- I picked the countries where I'd been that were craziest about soccer -- thus Brazil over Germany. That set of picks was indeed supposed to be for your application test, but when it was time for the real picks I said, "Screw it, leave 'em."
Posted by Arthur Fontaine At 10:00:17 AM On 05/08/2010 | - Website - |