Carl Tyler's Blog :: Did you use NotesBuddy?

Category None

At it's peak about 100,000 IBMers were using NotesBuddy instead of the native Sametime client to connect to the IBM Sametime servers. NotesBuddy was also available on Alphaworks and I know a few people that used it daily. Notesbuddy has now been sunsetted, so is going the way of many other sunsetted products ie calculator heaven.

They guy that created NotesBuddy, Alan Tannenbaum has fallen victim to an IBM resource action (a.k.a. Lay off) and he's looking for feedback from anyone that used NotesBuddy. I think for nostalgic reasons, he'd like be able to sit down in a few years and read through people's comments on how they used NotesBuddy and why they liked it. Rather than posting Alan's email address here, post a comment if you used Notesbuddy and would like to let Alan know how it changed the way you worked, helped save Sametime in your account, or whatever.

I know I'd like to thank Alan, at a time when IBM had pretty much for all intent and purpose sunsetted Sametime itself by shifting it's focus on Workplace IM, he was one fo the few that still saw how much power and value Sametime had, and did something to keep it alive within IBM. Thanks Alan.

Comments

1 - I sure did use it ! And loved it ! I was one of the first adopters in IBM and I fell in love with all the nice features it had, that at the time were missing from ST. Many of the features of NB eventually made it into ST, starting from version 7.
Almost every colleague I met, I convinced to use NB rather than ST3. There was a trick; pressing Ctrl-Shift-F12 turned the NB users blue in your buddylist instead of green. I recall my buddylst growing more and more blue as time passed...
NB has been one of the most outstanding and useful piece of sofwtare I ever used.
RoB

Posted by Roberto Boccadoro At 12:33:02 PM On 11/15/2007 | - Website - |

2 - I used NotesBuddy before ICT then use ICT for it's extensibility. Over the years, I used a number of alternative Sametime clients. I think, if it were not form NotesBuddy, ICT, etc. The Sametime Connect client would still look like ST3.

Posted by Glen At 05:45:34 PM On 11/15/2007 | - Website - |

3 - I used NotesBuddy till I moved to Sametime 7.5.x.
The feature that attracted me to NotesBuddy was the ability to read my inbox, helpful since we were logged on to our seperate development environment, NotesBuddy helped us keep track of our "live" inbox.
<b>NotesBuddy is a piece of gem!!</b>
Note my use of present tense, still dont think it to be dead.

Posted by Jas At 08:22:32 AM On 11/17/2007 | - Website - |

4 - I discovered this late in its life, and was very dissapointed when it didn't work in the ST 7.5 environment. It had so many good features that the existing ST client didn't, and was much quicker than the all new "slow as treacle" client. However when I showed it to my clients struggeling with the basic Sametime client they loved it!

Thanks again Alan.

Posted by Rupert At 06:10:50 PM On 11/19/2007 | - Website - |

5 - I used it a lot and recommended it at client sites as well.
Users especially liked being able to send screenshots etc..
My personal favorite: Reading the e-mail out loud; especially useful when you are reading a book and/or sipping a beer in the sun and don't want to run to your notebook every time just to find out it is not the 'important' mail you have been waiting for Emoticon

It was a real bummer when I found out it was being discontinued
Emoticon

Posted by Vince Schuurman At 07:18:48 AM On 11/20/2007 | - Website - |

6 - Add me to the list. I used the NotesBuddy tool for several years in my BP organisation, and simply loved the ability to have the new emails read out - especially for shared helpdesk-type mailboxes. The UI was always lightweight and fast too - it could show ST7.5.1 the way in many regards...

The only problem I ever had was when some colleagues realised that it would read out rude email subjects across the office and so spent an our or so sending increasingly impolite emails to my mailbox! Emoticon

Great tool, sad news...

Posted by Stuart McIntyre At 09:55:16 AM On 11/20/2007 | - Website - |

7 - I used it alot and like it very much.

Posted by piyush At 07:32:04 AM On 11/23/2007 | - Website - |

8 - In my experience, it was not so much that NotesBuddy was fine and just worked most of the time (unlike Sametime 7.5.1) but the fact that an instant messaging client is surely not supposed to be ultra-bloatware that consumes more than any other process on my workstation ... my personal favourite IM client is Miranda but of course that is no longer supported on the IBM internal network either :(

Posted by Bob At 06:07:30 AM On 11/27/2007 | - Website - |

9 - I have been using NotesBuddy for 3 years alteast and I love it. It took Sametime and turned it into a useful IM client and one that did not have a heavy footprint on your harddrive or system memory. A pity that IBM is locking it out of 7.5. IBM does a good job of killing off stuff that actually works.

Posted by Gaurav At 11:44:27 AM On 03/18/2008 | - Website - |

10 - I did use NoteBuddy instead of other alternatives (eg. ST) a few years ago. Been obliged to move to STConnect but miss NotesBuddy a lot since it was incredebly more performant than ST and offering same level of services....
Emoticon

Posted by F michelis At 09:11:36 AM On 01/23/2009 | - Website - |

11 - I have used NotesBuddy for four years and it was a blessing, UNBEATABLE PRODUCT, can we do something to make it alive again?

Posted by Goher At 12:54:09 PM On 01/23/2010 | - Website - |

12 - Hi, I used NB before also falling victim to the IBM resource action. I miss it a lot. My current work uses MS Communicator. I sure miss my emoticons from NB. Do you think it's possible to make NB work with Communicator?

Posted by null At 03:03:11 PM On 10/04/2010 | - Website - |

13 - Hi, I used NB before also falling victim to the IBM resource action. I miss it a lot. My current work uses MS Communicator. I sure miss my emoticons from NB. Do you think it's possible to make NB work with Communicator?

Posted by null At 03:03:40 PM On 10/04/2010 | - Website - |

14 - I used, and loved, NB for years - until just a couple of weeks ago when the ST server was "upgraded" to 851 and NB would no longer connect. I'm hoping that perhaps some on may be able to give me a clue as to what can be done to allow it to function again. We have had nothing but problems with ST since the upgrade. Any ideas ?
Emoticon