Carl Tyler's Blog :: I wish IBMers would stop using fake mockup screenshots in their presentations

Category Screenshots Sametime

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

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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.
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Kelly never has a bad hair day.

Comments

1 - My team just spent a week creating updated Notes, DWA, and Notes+Mac screen shots in preparation for 8.5 launch. This is not as easy as it may seem, because IBM guidelines prohibit use of actual employee names in externally-used screen shots. That means that the Notes PM has to set up multiple personalities, do the whole calendar workflow for those users, set up another calendar to show throw for the new overlay feature, etc.

Let's just say I didn't win manager-of-the-week last week. But the screen shots for Notes/Domino 8.5 launch are real.

Posted by Ed Brill At 01:46:20 PM On 11/16/2008 | - Website - |

2 - @1 Well I didn't make the claim they're easy, I've created more than my fair share of screenshots to know what's involved.

That's why I love VMware, I can have servers configured for this purpose, user accounts that aren't really people. You can normall spot my screenshots as they involve:
Penny Pincher - Finance
Bill Bolts - Manufacturing
Peter Packer - Shipping
Suzy Sparks - Car Manufacturer

Obviously it would be nice if IBM Lotus made it easier to run multiple instances of Sametime on the same machine without having to involve a witch doctor and voodoo magic.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 04:50:14 PM On 11/16/2008 | - Website - |