CuriousMitch

ID105 Presented with John Lance @ Lotusphere 2009

Abstract

Come and hear both sides of the user experience story. An IBM User Experience designer and a dedicated customer compare notes about various user experiences that met, or exceeded, the designer’s expectations when introduced to users in the real world, as well as a few that, umm, did not.

Presentation
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/29/2009 @ 12:13:58 PM | Permalink

Thanks to some help from Chris and Carl I am attending Collaboration University in Kansas City this week. Rob Novak opened the session among his other opening remarks was that in the next 3 days 30 + sessions would presented with NO powerpoint as all the  presentations were created in the Open Document Format using the Productivity Tools in Notes 8

 Mike Rhodin (General Manager Lotus Software) delivered the keynote this morning to kick things off.  Mike started off with a mid year check in on the product announcements made at Lotusphere.

• Lotus Connections 1.0 - Shipped 2 weeks ago
• Lotus Quickr 8.0 - Shipped 2 weeks ago
• Sametime 7.5.1 - Shipped in April
• Notes/Domino 8 - Shipping Early August.
  
  
  The key points Mike was trying to drive home in all the new product development is openness of the standards being used so that anyone can access data and services in the Lotus products without a proprietary API,  and the Seamless integration being built in to all of the Lotus Family products (another post on this later as there are still some areas where IBM is falling short in this area).
  
  There was a brief mention that RIM and IBM are working on a mobile solution for Lotus Connections, will have to look for more on that.
  
  Mike was followed by Satwik Seshasai, Development Manager, Lotus Quickr  gave a demo of Quickr.
  
  More later on the rest of the days sessions.
  
  
   

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/09/2007 @ 11:35:09 AM | Permalink

Following a long night of travel to Kansas City ( it is a pleasure living close to the perpetually delayed Newark Airport) it was a busy first day, starting with Mike Rhodin's Keynote and then six content filled sessions.

Lotus Installation Services for Domino Installation and Configuration - Jerald Mahurin - main points of interest to me at this session was the differences between a clean install of Quickr as opposed to upgrading an existing Quickplace instance. In an upgrade places remain in the familiar Quickplace directory, in a clean install they will be in the LotusQuickr directory. Jerald also covered a bug with switching themes in an upgraded Quickr environment caused by a hardcoded reference in HaikuForms.nsf to the LotusQuickr Directory, there is a hot fix pending for this issue. Finally of interest is that hot fixes for Quickr are being posted publicly on IBM Fix Central where there is already one fix for Domino and a bunch for Websphere.

Deploying Sametime in your Environment - Chris Miller - Chris covered quite a bit of ground in an hour, here are some of the key points In 7.5.1 Hyper threading will still cause meetings to not go active - turn hyper threading off on all server where meetings occur. There is a buddy list conversion tool that must be run or people will lose their privacy settings (Tech Note 1242317) 7.5.1 offers the ability to offload the conversion service for slide display to another server to improve performance, conversion server is on the second CD or a separate download

Developing Sametime Connect Plugins - Carl Tyler - Carl presented an overview of the Eclipse framework which is the foundation for Sametime 7.5.1 and Notes 8, as well as the components of a plugin. Carl wrapped up with a demo of editing plugins in eclipse as well as a demo of the plugins that ship with the SDK. Carl of course spent time on his greatest accomplishment, running Space Invaders or Asteroids as a Sametime Plugin.

Deploying Sametime Connect Plugins - Chris Miller - following Carls session on developing plugins Chris explained how to use the update server to deploy the plugins to the clients. One point highlighted was a bug in 7.5.1 which does not allow different update sites, for different policies. Chris also talked about the Update Site template shipping in Notes 8. Chris also emphasized that while the Notes 8 Client will use the same technology this is only for Eclipse based portions of Notes 8, Smartupgrade (or another tool) will still need to be used to update the core nlnotes.exe etc.. in Notes 8.

Lotus Quickr: Introducing and Understanding the New Templates - Viktor Krantz, Troy Reimer - Viktor and Troy demoed live the functionality of the templates being developed by Snapps for Quickr. So far the most popular question of the day is "When will the new templates be available for download" (the answer is soon). Check out Viktor's blog for links to all of the template demos.

Sametime Gateway for Public IM Installation and Configuration - Chris Miller - nothing like ending a short day with a simple topic like the Sametime Gateway. I have been working with the gateway for a few months now, will save this for a full post on my experience with gateway another time.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/09/2007 @ 09:34:31 PM | Permalink

Day 2 has been billed as "Marathon Day" at CU with 8 sessions running consecutively from 8 AM to 6 PM. Here is a summary of the sessions I attended today.

Integration Strategies for Lotus Quickr, Quickplace, Domino and Sametime - Jerald Mahurin

Jerald covered integration points between the different products in the Lotus product family, mainly focusing on integration of Sametime and Quickr (or Quickplace). The actual steps to integrate awareness and meetings in to Quickr are fairly straightforward, but there are 2 gotchas to be aware of, first the versions of Quickplace or Quickr need to match up against specific versions of Sametime, Quickr 8 requires Sametime 7.5.1 CF1 and for those following along yes that is correct CF1 is not due out till later this month. Without CF1 awareness will work, and a chat window will launch, but you can type all day, your message will not be sent to it's intended recipient.

LDAP Configuration for Lotus Software - Chris Miller

Try to keep up as Chris plows through LDAP terminology and Architecture, with a focus on how your LDAP performance will impact your applications that depend on it, definitely some takeaways to check out on my LDAP servers when I get back to the office.

Lotus Quickr Development: Leveraging Template Code in your own Applications - Troy Reimer

Yesterday Troy and Viktor demoed the new templates that will be available soon from Quickr. Today Troy demoed taking the comment functionality in QPresent and adding to an existing place to let users comment on a document without leaving the document. Of course this once again prompted the most popular question of the week again, when will the templates be available (the answer is still soon). The templates alone are a great value added to Quickr, however seeing how they are built and how you can take an entire template or pieces of the template and easily add them to an existing place makes them even better.

Firewalls, Proxies, and Other Stuff in the Way!

One of the biggest issues in getting all the pieces of Sametime to work is making sure that all of the components can communicate on the required ports, Sametime 7.5.1 introduces many new challenges with Voice, Audio, Video, and the Sametime Gateway adding a number of new ports that need to be accessible between different parts of your network. Of course the one thing Chris can't help you with is convincing the firewall admins to put all your rules in (though he did suggest bribing them with chocolate).

Bandwidth and Capacity Planning, Monitoring and Managing your Sametime Servers - Gabriella Davis

An in depth look at how new features in Sametime can impact your network, File Transfer, Audio, Video are all bandwidth intensive applications. A new Sametime server install will default video to 512Kbps, this will consume bandwidth very quickly, this can be lowered all the way down to 16Kbps though for performance it is not recommended to go below 64Kbps. Gabriella also reviewed the audio codecs (G723 6.3Kbps and G711 64Kbps) it is a trade-off of quality verse performance. Probably the best recommendation was to determine what your network can support, turn off services that will not function properly over your network, run what you can support and introduce new tools only when they will deliver the desired user experience .

Sametime Links - Develop Your Own Queuing Application - Carl Tyler

Carl showed how to use STlinks to have presence that is a front end for a defined group of users, great for enabling a live chat on a web site or a help desk queue, without having the presence tied to a single individual. Having been to a number of Carls STlinks sessions I really need to make some time to play with STlinks.

Lotus Quickr Services for Websphere Portal: Development Overview - Rob Novak

Rob explained the differences between Quickr services for Domino and Portal, then went in to development techniques for Quickr on Portal. Interesting content, but some of the portal development was a little over my head, and right now I am focused on Quickr on Domino. Hopefully if I do find the time to play with Quickr on Portal one day, something will ring a bell.

Top 10 Support Issues for Lotus Sametime - Carl Tyler and Chris Miller

Carl and Chris presented their top 10, many of which were issues I have seen or worked on over the last few months (or maybe that is issues I have pinged Carl or Chris about over the last few months). Office integration or lack of was a big topic of discussion among the crowd. I brought up a very odd issue I have with my Sametime gateway where AOL and Yahoo users are being displayed with a red box instead of the appropriate community icon seen here



no one else in the room has seen this one, and IBM has not come back with an answer that makes sense yet (will post a follow up when we resolve this one).

Tomorrow is a lighter day with two presentations by IBM in the morning, followed by the final session where each of the speakers will present the best 10 minutes from their sessions, this will be a good oppurtunity to pick up some of the content from the sessions I could not get to.

Then it is back to the airport for the flight home, with thunderstorms predicted in NJ tomorrow afternoon and evening should be fun to see what tomorrows airport delays are like.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/10/2007 @ 11:52:55 AM | Permalink

The final day of CU started with two presentations from IBM first up was David Marshak on the future of Unified Communications & Collaboration (yep a very long way of saying Sametime). David showed some of the integration of telephone and video being done by IBM and partners. Sametime 8 was mentioned, though it seems that Sametime 8 will mainly be fixes and support to run on Domino 8. Next up was Jelan Heidelberg to talk about the next steps for Quickr, So if I heard this all correctly there will be a fixpack around October, with a point release in time for Lotusphere which should include the Quickr personal edition.

The last session was each speaker from the week giving a 10 minute presentation with the highlights from their presentations over the three days of CU. Carl was nice enough to drive me back to the airport, where I would be for a while. We finally took off a little after 8PM central time, and I made it home about 12:30 this morning.

Rob Novak and the rest of the SNAPPS team along with Carl , Chris , and the rest of the presenters put together a great event. CollaborationUniversity is really different then any other conference I have attended, since the event has 50 attendees over the course of three days you get to meet the other attendees as well as spend time with the speakers outside of the sessions. The content presented was excellent and very relevant to projects I am working on, I know I came home with a list of things to follow up on. Check out the CU web site for their upcoming Notes and Domino 8 version of CU In September.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/12/2007 @ 01:00:00 AM | Permalink

3:30 local time in Kansas City 3 hours before my scheduled departure and it already looks like it will be a long trip home.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/11/2007 @ 04:33:48 PM | Permalink

I previously mentioned about the mystery of the red icon well today IBM support has come back with an explanation which is almost a bizzare as the problem itself. To recap the problem we have is after upgrading our Sametime Server to 7.5.1 AOL and Yahoo users in a Sametime buddylist were appearing with a red icon

instead of the or icons.

After a number of rounds of debug and other troubleshooting here is the answer we were given. When an external user is added to the buddy list, the subscribe request is sent from the client to the Sametime Server to the Sametime gateway, included in the request is a "Network of Origin request" Prior to 7.5.1 the Sametime Server did not handle "Network of Origin Requests" so the client defaulted to the locally stored icons. Sametime 7.5.1 handles the request and passes it to the gateway, which returns to the client a URL with the location of the icon for AOL or Yahoo ( this is apparently a result of a legal agreement between IBM and AOL/Yahoo where they want the icon retrieved from them real time, not using a locally stored version). The Sametime client received the URL, but does not honor the OS Proxy settings, so if the client can not access the URL it returns the red icon, which is a default in Eclipse.

SPR MALN74YLF4 has been created, but is not included in Sametime 7.5.1 CF1 which is due out this month, we are hoping to obtain a hotfix from IBM, we are not sure if it will make Sametime honor the proxy, or if it will default to the icon stored locally if the one specified in the URL is not reachable.

Has anyone else seen this? IBM seems confident in the answer, but I find it strange that no one else has seen or reported this issue to IBM
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/12/2007 @ 02:46:29 PM | Permalink

A 75-year-old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been given a scorching 40 Gbps internet connection — the fastest residential connection anywhere in the world

More
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/15/2007 @ 01:26:29 PM | Permalink

I have been playing with Lotus Quickr for the last few months, now that the environment has been upgraded from beta to the GA code a pilot group has been given access and today uncovered a bug in the Connectors. Not to be negative, if you have not checked out Quickr and the Connectors yet, I highly recommend it, the connectors allow you to see your places in Windows explorer so you can upload or download files via drag and drop, the connectors also integrate into Office allowing you to open and save files directly to a place in Word, excel, powerpoing, Sametime, and Lotus Notes (this is out of the box, you can then extend the connectors on your own to other applications). Now on to the bug, if you have anonymous or reader access to a place, the connector allows you to drag and drop a file and looks like it uploads, never giving any warning or error that you do not have create rights, of course the file is never actually uploaded, but sure would be nice if the user received a message letting them know they did not have rights.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/16/2007 @ 03:53:26 PM | Permalink

SNAPPS has released the additional templates they have created for Lotus Quickr. Download them here. You can also visit Viktor or Rob's website for flash demos of the templates.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/16/2007 @ 04:22:55 PM | Permalink

On the list of things to do today was to turn on presence awareness in Quickr today, conveniently in addition to the notes I took down at Collaboration University last week, Paul Mooney posted the sequence of events this morning from the London version of CU. The steps are pretty straightforward as listed by Paul or you can use the Documentation, and it did not take long to get it up and running, and while it works, it is not with out a few quirks.

First I am using the Sametime client that is embedded in Notes 8 as my Sametime client, and in the build I am using (a later build then Beta 3) the Client ID of Sametime is wrong, as a result the Sametime server is sending all of my incoming chats to STlinks, and not my 7.5.1 client. After a few months of using a 7.5.x client using STLinks is really not pretty (assuming it ever was)

ST Links
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Sametime 7.5.1


The second quirk is that the STlinks has no awareness of the "In a Meeting" status which is new in Sametime 7.5, if you go to change your status you are presented with these options

However if you go into a 7.5.1 client and set your status to "In a Meeting" STlinks has no icon to present your status so it spells it out

which really does not look good.

So at the end, awareness is working, but certainly a few quirks that need to be worked out. Will play with it more tomorrow, and then decide when to implement on the server that a handful of pilot users are working on for some additional testing.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/19/2007 @ 06:51:59 PM | Permalink

When replying in Lotus Notes there are two options



Why is Lotus Notes the only e-mail client which still defaults to replying with the attachment, sure you could drop down in the menu and select "Reply without Attachments" but how many people really do that? Early in the Notes 8 Beta I requested that the default be Reply WITHOUT Attachments and change the drop down button to allow the original attachment to be included, but apparently Notes 8 will ship unchanged. Thunderbird and Outlook both default to replying with out the attachment, Notes needs to get on board.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/20/2007 @ 11:38:50 AM | Permalink

A couple of updates on some previous posts

1. The Sametime Gateway and the mystery of the red icon this is now officially fixed in 7.5.1 CF1 SPR #MALN74YLF4. CF1 should be out any day.

2. Quickr Connector bug after applying the update (available at IBM Fix Central) there is now an error meessage when a user with reader access tries to upload a file:

While this is better then nothing, not sure this is what I want my users to see, have submitted an enhancement request for a clearer error message.

3. Sametime awareness in Quickr last week when I set this up I found that when using Firefox, the "In a Meeting" status which is new in Sametime 7.5 was not working. With some help from Carl was able to figure this one out. When using IE the STlinks applets are launched directly off of the Sametime server, but when using Firefox the applets are launched from the Quickr Server itself. Quickr ships with an older version of STLinks, to fix I copied the STlinks directory from my Sametime server to my Quickr server (STLinks is in the Domino Data directory in domino\html\sametime). After copying the STLinks directory you then need to replace the stlinks\stlinks.jar with the one in the stlinks\signed directory, since Firefox will only run the signed applet. Finally I had to clear my browser cache since it had cached the applet that was originally on the server.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/24/2007 @ 02:50:09 PM | Permalink

So a friendly Microsoft salesman was kind enough to send this link to Paul Mooney's blog entry on Lotus Connections 1.0 and it's lack of support for Domino LDAP to some folks at my company. This of course landed in my inbox as I am in the middle of building a pilot environment for Lotus Connections.

First off, this was a major blunder by IBM releasing a product under the Lotus name, which lacked support for the Lotus Domino LDAP, there is no getting around this issue. When this first came up back in March here was a comment I made to IBM

Perhaps the name Lotus Connections is not quite right for this product, as that should indicate that it is compatible with the rest of the Lotus product line, I think it is great that IBM does not force you to use Domino LDAP and that you can use IBM Products against other vendors LDAP if that is your configuration, but certainly you should not be penalized for being an all Lotus shop.

With that out of the way let me now clarify what you can today with Domino LDAP (yes even though it is not "supported"). You can use Domino LDAP to authenticate your users to Lotus Connections, what you can not do out of the box is use Tivoli Directory Integrator which ships with connections to synchronize data between Connections and other applications (for example pulling in reporting structure data from SAP). I have various pieces of connections working today using Domino LDAP, and hope to have all five services up sometime next week, leaving out the TDI piece for now. To configure LDAP I used the Instructions from the Sametime Gateway intall which is similar as they are both Websphere Application Servers. While this is not supported, if your goal is like mine which is to get 20 people in to Connections as a pilot to figure out where it belongs in the enterprise this will get you going.

IBM has promised support for Domino LDAP in version 1.0.2 which is due out in October, which gives me time to build the environment and then have time to play with TDI when it will support Domino LDAP.

It is interesting that Microsoft felt the need to point this out, true Microsoft never has any problems like this, they only support their applications with Active Directory. IBM on the other hand lets you run Sametime, Quickr, Connections with out requiring that you be a Domino shop, it is even rumored that efforts are underway for the next version of Domino (Not 8, but whatever is next) to allow the Domino Server to run with user credentials coming from another source i.e AD. So no excuse IBM this was a bad move, but thanks Microsoft for pointing out how easy it is when you support only one option.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/26/2007 @ 01:09:38 PM | Permalink

One of the things I love about the Notes 8 client is having Sametime 7.5.1 built in. An issue that has come up repeatedly is where the menu functions are in the client. If you use a Standalone Sametime 7.5.1 client you have these menu choices



In Notes 8 the options are carried over to the same place in the menu



What I have seen from the managed beta group and from my internal beta deployment is that many people find this confusing, and have not been able to find the menu items they have been looking for, which leads me to believe in a wider deployment this confusion will continue and in greater numbers,

Head on over to Mary Beth Raven's Blog for a more detailed explanation, and a chance to voice your opinion on where the Sametime menus should be in Notes8
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 07/31/2007 @ 07:27:05 AM | Permalink

Sametime CF1 is out, I used the update site to push the updates down to my client, this is a feature I have been waiting to see work for a long time. Remember as Chris pointed out last week, not all of the SPR's will be fixed via the update site. I have read through the client SPR and came up with four that will not work via update site, the other 30 Client SPR will work fine.

SPR That will not push via update site.

SPR# CBRN6ZC69J - When sametime is running, an icon is added to the dock. If you select to 'Keep in dock' so that you can start the client, it just opens a terminal window and fails to start Sametime. With the fix, the dock icon should start Sametime. This fix is not included in the 7.5.1 CF1 update site. To obtain the fix, Mac client users should perform a full install of the 7.5.1 CF1 client.

SPR# CGRF726LTB - The presence of the flushws.dll limited the amount of memory Sametime could use to 40 MB. The memory limit had an adverse effect on the client's performance. The fragment that includes flushws.dll has been removed. Note that only the full CF1 installer will contain this fix. The CF1 update site will not include this change.

SPR# DSCR72BRDN - The Sametime Connect 7.5.1 client stores the Eclipse configuration in a configuration subdirectory under the directory where Sametime was installed. This configuration directory is used by Eclipse to store configuration information, and it also used by JCL Desktop to generate JXE files for our plug-ins. In some environments, the user does not have write access to the program directory. In this case, Sametime is unable to store Eclipse configuration information or generate JXE files during the initial launch. The user won't generally notice these problems, because the product will still appear to operate normally, but it will impact startup performance and prevent Eclipse from saving information. For CF1, the configuration directory has been moved to the user's home directory. This fix is only available from the full install for CF1. Users upgrading 7.5.1 using the CF1 update site will not get be impacted by this (the existing configuration directory will continue to be used).

SPR# YLIN6QZ6MC - Starting in the 7.5.1 release, TCSPI implementers could provide custom error messages for telephony errors. In 7.5.1, these custom errors would be displayed in web conferences but not in the Sametime Connect client. In 7.5.1 CF1, Sametime Connect also displays these custom error messages.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/01/2007 @ 09:52:57 AM | Permalink

As Carl, Chris and I am sure others have pointed out, there was a Technote released regarding a potential vulberability in Sametime 7.5.1 Server. This is not fixed in CF1, rather it requires contacting IBM for a hotifx. The hotfix is an updated stconf template, the installation procedure is:

1. Stop the Domino Server
2. Backup the old stconf751.ntf
3. Copy the new stconf751.ntf into the Domino Data directory, and replace the design of stconf.nsf
4. Restart Domino
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/01/2007 @ 12:08:08 PM | Permalink

This moring I took the Acela from Newark to Boston, if you need to travel from the New York area to Boston this is definitely the way to go. The train takes 4 hours, and lets me off walking distance to my hotel, and eliminates the hassles of the airport.

The next three days will be filled with sessions begining tomorrow morning with Mike Rhodin's keynote, and networking with other Lotus Premium Support customers. I am also hoping to find some of the experts to get some help with my Lotus Connections install.

I expect tomorrow morning Mike Rhodin will put some focus on ND8, the product is apparently done, and very close to shipping. I have not written much about ND8 yet, but I have been using the Notes 8 client as my primary client since last November, currently running my 11th version of the Beta. There is a lot of good stuff in this client, there is also some work to be done yet. I have a post in the works on Notes 8 that will show up later this week with more details.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/05/2007 @ 10:36:04 PM | Permalink

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/06/2007 @ 06:39:56 AM | Permalink

Technotes for ND8 have been making their way out for the last couple of weeks, here are some that popped up yesterday covering some of the new features in ND8

1. Article on message recall how it works and how to configure, and of course read the fine print

Because Lotus Notes mail can be read offline, with the user disconnected from a network, the read and unread status of a local replica of a mail file can be different from that of a server-based copy until replication takes place. Thus, a recall request sent to the server may report that a message was unread when, in fact, the user read it offline.

After much debate mail recall will be enabled by default, so make sure you check those settings when upgrading or installing.

2. Recent contacts is a new feature in Notes 8 which saves your 2000 most recent contacts to a special view in your inbox, see these technotes on deleting recent contacts, and on disabling the feature..

3. Here is an article on Domino Fast Server Restart which is supposed to allow a new instance of Domino to start while a crashed instance is still running NSD. Make sure to check this point on memory requirements at the end of the note

To ensure satisfactory performance of the new Domino instance while NSD is collecting data, it is recommended to have double the amount of physical memory available. Specifically, if the Domino instance uses up to 4 GB of physical memory, it is recommended that the new instance of Domino has access to an additional 4 GB of physical memory.

4. Finally for blackberry users, here is a note on BES support under Domino 8
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/08/2007 @ 07:24:36 AM | Permalink

Had an interesting experience yesterday at the Lotus Premium Support Seminar. On of my co-workers attended a lab session on using Server.Load, when he (and everyone else in the room) launched the Notes client on the lab machine, they were prompted for their password, only the ID file was mine. They were then given ID's to use for the lab. Interestingly enough we recently had an onsite engagement with Lotus Field Support Services to some load testing in our environment, while they were there I know I had taken a configured Notes 7 client and copied it over to one of the IBM peoples machines, as we needed as many machines as possible to ramp up the load test, apparently that client was then taken and used to create an image duplicated on to all the machines in the lab.

Now let me be clear about one thing, while my ID file was on the other machine, my password was never given out, and while I am sure that giving another person access to my id was not bet practice, it was on of those things you do when you are under pressure to get something done and take the easy way out, but needless to say I was surprised to find my ID file on a bunch of lab machines at a conference.

I suppose lessons learned and I will prepare better the next time we have people coming on site who need access to systems.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/09/2007 @ 09:39:43 AM | Permalink

The Premium Support Seminar was a mini Lotusphere (minus a few miles of walking each day). Over the course of 3 days I had the chance to attend numerous technical sessions, and meet a number of IBMers as well as other customers. There were a number of sessions focused on ND8 (though at this point I suppose I lost the pool on the date it would be released). There is definitely great anticipation for the Notes 8 release, most of the people I spoke to had plans to test and pilot with ND8, but wait for 8.0.1 early next year for their deployments.

I had the opportunity to meet Ted Stanton and discuss Lotus Connections, I also met with some of the Connections design team and got a look at some of the concepts being considered for Connections 2.0 next year.

One of the sessions I attended was Chris Pepin's presentation on IBM's implementation of the Lotus products at IBM, I have seen this one at Lotusphere before, but wanted to see how it was update for Sametime 7.5.1. IBM has updated the web conferencing side of their Sametime infrastructure with 7.5.1, however the chat side is still at 6.5.1 since IBM has a custom implementation with the buddy lists stored in DB2, not in a notes database. Once of the questions I am always asked when we make changes to systems is if we are running the tools the same way IBM does. Sure is hard to answer yes to that one when IBM is not running the same version they sell.

The PSM Seminar is in Boston every year which makes the travel real easy. I took the Acela Express, the train takes 3.5 hours from Boston to Newark Penn Station, and you avoid the hassle of security at the airport, and only need to show for the train a few minutes before it is scheduled. Since my last few flying experiences out of Newark have been horrible, it was nice to travel without being delayed for hours.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/09/2007 @ 09:59:07 AM | Permalink

I have previously mentioned the complexity of the Sametime menus in Notes 8, another one of my complaints has been with how the Sametime Tray icon performs differently in Notes 8, as opposed to the Stand-alone Sametime 7.5.1 client. There are obviously some issues with what is the correct way to implement this, now is your chance, head on over to Mary Beth Raven's blog and put your two cents in. I think I am leaning towards option 3, but giving the user the choice to float sametime, or launch the entire client.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/13/2007 @ 12:40:37 PM | Permalink

I have not seen any Technotes yet, but HF11 for Quickr is now available on IBM Fix Central

For those of you who have installed the previous hotfix, don't worry you still have to manually copy a bunch of files, still no installer. Fix list is in the readme, looks like this fix is mainly fixes to some issues in the Blog and Wiki Templates, but it is a consolidated hot fix so it includes all previous fixes.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/13/2007 @ 03:33:32 PM | Permalink

So as was announced yesterday by Ed Brill, Mary Beth Raven, and many others by now Notes and Domino 8 will be available this Friday. Since last November I have been using Notes 8 almost exclusively, and early this year I moved myself over to a Domino 8 server to take advantage of the few features that require a Domino 8 Server. I have been through 11 Client builds, and 4 Server builds, and overall I would say IBM did a great job. Here are the highlights in my opinion:

Notes Client

1. The new and improved UI - the client is much easier to navigate, many more tasks can be accomplished without changing views, and over all it is much more pleasant to work in then previous versions. 2. Mail Conversations - one of the best productivity enhancements in the client, I mainly use conversations in two ways, first it really shrinks down my inbox every morning when I can start at the end of a thread and very often never have to open any of the other messages in the thread. Second for the really long mail conversations I use the conversation mode to eliminate many of the older entries (lets face it everyone replies with history, no reason to save them all). 3. Dynamic Contacts - by default Notes now adds anyone you have contact with to a Recent Contacts view (up to 2000) allowing you to find these addresses via type ahead same as a contact in any other address book you have configured. This means people who sent you mail or even who were CC on e-mails sent to you can now be pulled up in type ahead. 4. The Sidebar - The day at a glance view is terrific, lets me see my day without having to open or switch to the calendar view. I love having the Sametime client embedded, one less application to launch, one less reason to leave or minimize Notes. I have also been using the Activities sidebar as I have been building and working on Connections, this is a great example of a Composite application used to extend the notes client. This is just the stuff that is out of the box, I am sure there are many more uses for the sidebar that are yet to be developed. 5. Ghosted Calendar entries - having initiations that are in your inbox now appear on your calendar in a different color is great, besides preventing me from double booking a slot or accepting the wrong meeting in a given slot, on more then one occasion it has also reminded me I had an invite that had not been acted on yet. 6. Productivity Tools - I have been using them, I have them as my default application for word, excel and powerpoint, I think this will be a tough sell in my organization to replace Microsoft Office, but then again the tools are nice and maybe the price is right.

Domino Server

1. Out of Office agent as a service, say good bye to users setting the agent to run on local, setting it locally and not replicating, and any one of the 100 other tricks that caused problems with the Out of Office agent. Enable the OOA as a Service and let the server handle it. In addition once you enable the service you have the ability to set the OOA in hourly increments, if you only want it for part of a day. 2. Fast Restart - this one I am excited about, one of the most frustrating parts of a server crash is the time it takes to run NSD, depending on the server and the crash it can take up to 20 minutes, which is a long time when a server is down. Fast restart is the best of both worlds, the server can restart while the NSD completes. I have to say that my Beta servers have not crashed so I have not really played with this one, but when the day comes and it does happen hopefully it will work. One note of caution on this one see point # 3 in this post regarding memory requirements for Fast Restart 3. Policies - I have been told that 95% of the client settings can be configured via policy (in the process now of checking this) in additon policies can now be configured to "Set and Enforce" which will gray out the preference for the user.

These are just my favorite features, there are many many more, check 8 Things to Like About Notes 8, Part 1 and 8 Things to Like about Notes 8, Part 2 as well as the Notes homepage for more information.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/15/2007 @ 01:04:18 PM | Permalink

I have the honor of living in New Jersey, where we pay the highest property taxes in the country

Source: Propery Taxes: Where does your state rank?

Well this Indiana resident got a little fed up with his recent property tax increase.

Cary Malchow was so upset by his property tax bill he decided to make a scene by paying it — all $12,656.07 — with bags of change and $1 bills.

Click here for the full story.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/14/2007 @ 08:50:22 PM | Permalink

I previously mentioned the situation with Lotus Connections 1.0 and lack of support for Domino LDAP, well despite that I have been working to install Lotus Connections using a Domino 7.0.2 server as my LDAP source.  It has taken some time, but I now have Activities, Blogs, Communities, and Dogear up and running.  I have installed TDI and created the Profiles database and next up is the attempt to install Profiles.  I did run in to a few problems along the way I opened  a PMR with support, turns out that Communities would not run properly and the problem was Domino LDAP.  I was pleasantly surprised that instead of being told it was not supported, I was offered a fix to test, which worked.  So I am going to attempt to detail my environment and how I set it up here.

I had three goals in this installation, first to learn about the installation and architecture of Connections, second to have a system to demo with, as there is a high level of interest within the organization and this is easier to explain with a live demo, and third I wanted the install to be self contained and portable, as I work in different locations, and a good deal of this install was performed on trains or other places when I was disconnected.

The hardware configuration is Windows 2003 Enterprise edition, Service Pack 1, 1GB Ram, 1 CPU running on my laptop which is a Lenovo T61, 2.00 GHz Duo Core CPU, 3GB RAM, the VM itself resides on an external USB drive.  I created 3 drives for the VM a 6GB drive for the OS and the DB2 executables, a 10 GB drive for Domino, Websphere, HTTP Server, TDI, and the DB2 Databases, and a 4GB drive for the install files, this drive was set to "persistent" in VMware to exclude it from snapshots.

I do not intend this to be a complete how to install connections, rather document what I did to install and get it working with Domino LDAP, the documentation in the Connections Info Center will provide detailed step by step instructions.

1. Install and configure Domino 7.0.2 FP1, configured for LDAP, and also brought up the SMTP listener, and configured mail routing, so I had a mail destination forConnections and when connected to the network I can route e-mails from Activities.

2. Install DB2 - DB2 will go to install into C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB by default, but later on in the Connections install it will default to look for it in c:\IBM\SQLLIB so you can save yourself some trouble and just install to c:\IBM\SQLLIB. ( You can install anywhere you want, the Connections install will let you change the location, this is just the path of least resistance.)

3. Install Websphere Application Server 6.1 - Default install path will be \Program Files\IBM\Websphere.......  I eliminated the \program files and installed to \IBM\Websphere and highly recommend that to keep the paths from becoming too long.  When prompted for the type of install you want Websphere Application Server, and you should configure an Administrative ID and password when given the option (Make sure the ID and Password do not exist in your LDAP).

4. Install Update Installer for Websphere

5. Install the following required Fixpacks

• 6.1.0-WS-WAS-WinX32-FP0000003.pak
• 6.1.0.3-WS-WAS-IFPK37124.pak
• 6.1.0.3-WS-WAS-IFPK34390.pak
• PK38815.pak

6. Now is where it gets interesting, and I did not know this part till later on, there are at least 2 SPR regarding Domino LDAP SONL6WLKT4, and CKRR73WQ92 I can not find technotes on either one yet.  I opened a PMR and support provided me with an additional Websphere fixpack which I was cautioned that the fix is only being tested.  Without this Fixpack I was able to get Activities, Blogs, and Dogear working, but Communities would not allow a user to login, the fixpack fixed Communities, but because it fixed something in the authentication I had to drop and recreate my Activities database to get that working again.  Since this is a sandbox install for me no big deal - but be warned.

7. Launch websphere, and configure Federated repositories, since Domino LDAP is not supported, there are no instructions for this step in the Connections install guide, so I used the instructions in the Sametime Gateway install (both products run on  Websphere 6.1)

If you did not enable Administrative Security during the WAS install do this step first, if you enabled already you can skip this.  You want Administrative and Application security to be enabled, do not enable Java 2 Security at this point (the Communities install will enable it later on).  Next follow these steps to configure your LDAP source.

8. Create the databases for Activities, Blogs, Communities and Dogear.  Do not create the Profiles DB, that is a different process which requires TDI  to be installed first.

9. Install and configure the IBM HTTP Server, make sure to install the WAS Plugins as part of the install, if you want to map the features and not require the port number in the URL.

10.  Install the Connections features, they are installed one at a time, there are different ways to do this, I installed all the features in one WAS profile.  

So after all this I have a working configuration of Activities, Blogs, Communities and Dogear.  If you can do this in a VM Environment I suggest you do, and use Snapshots along the way, they are life savers when  you blow something up along the way and you can simply revert to a working snapshot.  One other note on snapshots, I took all my snapshots with the VM Powered down, the advantage of this is that Snapshots taken when powered down can be used to create a clone, so I can take the machine at any snapshot, clone and pick up the install from that point if I want to try something else, saving me hours of installation and configuration.

Next steps for me are the TDI and Profiles install, this is the part that is supposed to be the real issue with Domino LDAP so will see how far I get, and what other fixes support is willing to cough up at this time.

One other piece of news, in Connections 1.0.1 due out later this month, I have heard they will be releasing a pilot install kit which one installer will wrap the DB2, WAS, and Connections installs, this install will only work with Tivoli Directory Server an is designed for pilots or demos, but you can add your own users into the LDAP.  While an installer like this might have saved me a lot of time, I definitely learned quite a bit doing it piece by piece, this will help me when our pilot hardware arrives and I install this in a more production like environment.   Domino LDAP support is still on track for 1.0.2 in October.

Questions, comments, reactions welcome, will report back on my adventures with TDI and Profiles.

Lotus Connections Resources

Connections Info Center
Websphere 6.1 Info Center
DB2 v9 Info Center
Lotus Connections Test Infrastructure Documents
Lotus Connections Support Page
Lotus Connections Forum

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/16/2007 @ 08:23:02 PM | Permalink

Looks like it's a popular download item, my downloads from IBM usually go much faster then this, but it's worth the wait.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/17/2007 @ 07:21:18 AM | Permalink

The VoiceCon conference is taking place this week in San Francisco (no I am not there).  Carl already posted some news this morning.  Looks like Wednesday there will be some IBM announcements around Sametime and Unified Communications so stay tuned.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/20/2007 @ 07:34:03 PM | Permalink

Everyone has their own way of picking names for the kids, some are based on local or religious custom, others just pick names they like, well enter a new criteria in name selection, is the domain name available?

Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.

"One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available," Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett's online identity.

More >
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/21/2007 @ 07:53:43 PM | Permalink

Beat Last years 186 :)

Dear Lotusphere Attendee: Your ID number is 27

Lotusphere 2008
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/22/2007 @ 06:02:03 AM | Permalink

Mike Rhodin delivered a Keynote address today at VoiceCon and made the following announcments.

IBM acquired WebDialogs which positions them to compete with Webex, and others for the hosted conferencing services. On the WebDialogs web site Sametime has already been branded as the "on premise" conferencing solution, while WebDialogs Unyte service becomes Sametime Unyte.



There is a 14 day trial of Unyte available, I will have to check it out.

IBM then announced that Sametime would now become a family of products Sametime Entry, Standard, and Advanced, and Sametime Unified Telephony.

Sametime Entry - this is Sametime chat and presence awareness, but does not include web conferencing, but if you need a hosted web conferencing provider well, the way I read the press release does not look like plugins will be supported in the Entry client.

Sametime Standard - this would appear to be Sametime as we know it today, chat, presence awareness, web conferencing, and the Sametime Gateway, as well as support for plugins and Office integration.

Sametime Advanced - this will include persistent chat, broadcast tools, and the ability to share screens without entering a meeting.  It also looks like advanced will contain some additional location based features.

The Unified Telephony product using Siemens OpenScape technology is being designed to allow Sametime to integrate into existing telephony systems, and will simplify telephony integration for Sametime, especially if you have telephony equipment from multiple vendors.  In addition there will be a Soft Phone for Sametime, and the ability to display your phone status in addition to your IM status.

Sametime Standard is due out later this year (Sametime 8) with the other offerings due out early next year.

WebDialogs Press Release
Sametime Press Release
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/22/2007 @ 08:06:46 PM | Permalink

Lotus support is hosting an open mic call on the Sametime Gateway on August 30th.  Technote 1268468 has all the details, as well as instructions to submit your questions in advance.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/23/2007 @ 01:09:57 PM | Permalink

Lotus support is hosting an open mic call on the Notes 8.0 Client on August 29th.  Technote 1268483 has all the details, as well as instructions to submit your questions in advance.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/24/2007 @ 11:38:06 AM | Permalink

Chris reminded me the other day that Notes 8 Basic configuration contains the Nomad functionality allowing it to be installed on a USB drive.  So I decided to download the basic client and replaced my Notes 7.0.2 with 8.0 on my USB Drive.  In 7.0.2 the install would only put down the client, not administrator or designer (there was a hack to copy down nadmin.,exe and ndesign.exe to get them to work though).  I downloaded the Basic install for all clients (Part number C13NEEN) and ran the install

setup /a /v"NOMAD=1 TARGETDIR=F:\ /qb+"

and it installed the Notes Client, including Admin and Design.  When running off of the USB key which I don't do that often, I don't think I will miss the Standard client.  I tried out the built in IM client, it is not really improved from Notes 7, but it does let me see external buddies through the gateway, I can't add new ones, but can see and chat with my existing external contacts.  Like I said I don't really have the need to use the install on the USB stick to often, but it has saved the day on more then one occasion.
 
So what else do I carry on a stick? Mainly stuff downloaded from PortableApps,  I have installed 7-zip, Filezilla, Firefox, OpenOffice, Putty, and Pidgin (which used to be called GAIM Portable) for IM.  Pidgin supports most IM platforms, including Sametime.

Any other suggestions for useful portable apps? Let me know.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/24/2007 @ 11:45:34 AM | Permalink

One more road sign to study for the drivers test.

"The first official road signs to warn drivers about the dangers of trusting their satellite navigation devices (satnavs) were introduced on Tuesday in a Welsh village."



"The four signs have been introduced around one particular black spot in the village, where the electronic devices direct truck drivers to a shortcut between the main M4 motorway and Cardiff airport."

More >
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/28/2007 @ 07:19:26 PM | Permalink

I have had a Blackberry for five years now (currently using an 8700), and really happy with it, but working on a new project now, which includes Windows Mobile devices, so in addition to my  Blackberry I now have an AT&T 8525 with Windows Mobile 5.0.  This is my first experience with Windows Mobile, and while I don't yet have my mail setup, I have been playing with it a little trying to get used to it so here are some of my observations about this device, and Windows Mobile.

I am not crazy about the slide out keyboard, I find it very hard to hold and type.  I realize there are other models some of which are more like a blackberry style,   if I see myself using this long term, I will either get used to this keyboard, or look for one with the blackberry style keyboard. When typing  it does not help you like the blackberry does, when typing a URL on the blackberry you can hit space and it knows to insert a period, or in an e-mail address the blackberry will interpret a space as an @ sign, maybe I am spoiled by the blackberry, maybe I really need to sync my favorites and address book, but it would be nice if it were a little smarter.
I installed ActiveSync on my laptop (well actually a VM, I try not to install things for the first time on my laptop I like to see how invasive they are first) to sync, now I don't really plan on synching files to often, is there a reason once I launch I can't quit? Sure I can hide the tray icon, but do I really need it running all the time if I am not using it, the only way I can find to shut it down is to end the process.

I like having the camera, my blackberry does not have one, sure it is not a great camera, but a nice toy, and unlike the camera on my cell phone (yep I have a plain phone too, so that is 3 phones now) I can get the pictures off without paying to message them.

One nice thing is it supports wifi, so when there is (free)  wireless available, can switch to wifi. There is a VPN client, but I have not had any luck connecting back to my office yet.

These are just my first observations, next up is to get my mail, calendar, an contacts synched, and install Sametime so I can really use it, beyond that I can't really post here about the project right now.

One final note, I don't know who had this phone number before me, but I really wish I spoke Spanish so I could explain to the gentleman who calls about 5 times a day that he has the wrong number.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/28/2007 @ 07:29:39 PM | Permalink

More details are available here.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 08/30/2007 @ 06:40:41 PM | Permalink

One of the new features in Lotus Connections 1.0.1 is the Pilot install, the idea is to have a single installer that handles DB2, Websphere, and Connections and allows you to experience Lotus Connections, without having to install and configure all of the individual components.   I downloaded and installed the Pilot system over the weekend, and it really was easy to complete.  Just to clarify, this is NOT a production ready system, if you want to run Connections in production you will need to learn to install and configure all of the various components, and scale them to your needs, what this is, is an excellent resource for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of Lotus Connections, or demo it to others in your organization.  The Part Number for the pilot install package is C10HDML, and it is 1.4GB.

Before you start check the Lotus Connections Info Center, for the Pilot Install Overview.  A couple of things to consider before you begin.  First you can customize the users in the installation by creating a users.txt file, if you do this, you can create a few users, who can use their real names to log in, and have their correct e-mail addresses in the system.  If you do not customize your users, you will have a system with 20 users named test1, test2, etc......  If you want to create your own users file the instructions are here.  Make sure you copy the file up to the machine you are installing the pilot on before you begin the install.  Second, consider carefully if you think you might want to migrate your pilot install to a full production install.  There is a section on this topic under the administrating Connections section of the Info Center.  I personally would treat this as a pilot, I would not plan on putting data in here with the expectation of migrating it later, I think it will be one more thing to worry about when trying to build a production environment.

Now on to the install itself, it truly was a simple as firing off the installer, and answering five questions.

1. Select your language
2. Path for the installation (default is c:\program files\IBM\LotusConnections, I removed the \program files piece to keep things simpler)
3. Set the ID & Password for WAS
4. Set the ID & Password for DV2
5. Select which Connections services to install (Activities, Blogs, Communities, Dogear, Profiles, you can as many of the services as you want installed)
   
   Once you are done sit back and wait for the install to finish.  Once completed you will be prompted for the users.txt file to populate your users in to the system.
   
   So as advertised, a one click install which will let be up and running with a Lotus Connections Sandbox in about an hour.
   

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/03/2007 @ 08:11:15 PM | Permalink

One of the features announced with the release of Lotus Connections 1.0.1 are the new plug-ins  for Microsoft Office, Windows Explorer, and Lotus Notes (Notes 7, and Notes 8 basic client, the Activities Sidebar is already available in Notes 8 Standard).  They are listed in the documentation, but don't seem to be posted in the Catalog yet.



After following this directions, I only see the three plug-ins which had been there already



I am hoping that they will show up tomorrow morning, if anyone else has spotted them please let me know.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/03/2007 @ 08:34:11 PM | Permalink

I have mentioned before that in Notes 8 not only is Message Recall  introduced as a new feature, but it is also enabled by default.  There was much debate about this when the decision was made, and I disagreed with the decision to enable by default, there are too many issues that need to considered for your organization before turning it on.  I am going to focus here on only one issue end user training.  Will the end user understand what mail can and can not be recalled?  I am going to say no, this is at least the third occasion I have received a mail recall message in my inbox from outside my organization.  Now I have no expectation that Lotus Notes will magically reach out across the internet and grab a message back for me, but do most of your mail users understand or care about the final destination of their mail?  Mine don't, however if your user wants to use mail recall, they are going to have to understand where it will and will not  work.  So what happens when you try to recall an internet message?  Here it is, this is what landed in my inbox when the sender tried to recall


Mail recall is a nice feature to have, and one day when I do implement in my organization might even save me one of those panicked phone calls from someone who hit send just a little to fast, but in this case the message is not only not getting recalled, but this message in  inbox  is screaming at me to read the original  message!   So clearly there are some improvements needed in the process, before I am ready to let it out in the wild.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/04/2007 @ 06:01:09 PM | Permalink

Nice article today about a free tool that has been developed to synchronize connections from LinkedIn, into Lotus notes.  There is an updated version in the works to synchronize with Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook as well.  I am going to have to download it and give it a try.

LinkedIn Contact Importer for Lotus Notes/Domino
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/05/2007 @ 11:44:28 AM | Permalink

Today my daughter Molly turned four, happy birthday Molly.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/05/2007 @ 07:45:25 PM | Permalink

IBM announced "gizmos" for developerWorks which are widgets and gadgets to extend developerWorks content in to applications, browsers, mashups, and an interface for the iPhone.  This is not enough to make me want to run out and get an iphone, but I will have to check out some of the other gadets.

Full Story
developerWorks gizmo page
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/07/2007 @ 07:41:17 AM | Permalink

Lotus announced today that support for Sametime 6.5.1 (well technically  Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing 6.5.1) will end on September 30, 2008.  Sametime 3.1 will be out of support at the end of this month.  If you are not already planning or in the middle of a 7.5.1 upgrade, here is just one more incentive to start working on it.

Links
Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing support announcement
Lotus Sametime 3.1 support announcement
Software Support Lifecycle RSS feed
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/11/2007 @ 08:38:24 PM | Permalink

IBM has launched the Lotus Connections deployment Wiki

 

where you can find information to help you get up and running quickly with Lotus Connections. On this site you will find a variety of deployment scenarios that have been validated by IBM. You can also share and find deployment experiences from the community of Lotus Connections users.

The wiki contains a few documented scenarios for deploying Connections, and being a Wiki allows customers to contribute their experiences in deploying connections.  I hope people do contribute will be interesting to see what choices people are making in their deployments.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/12/2007 @ 12:34:12 PM | Permalink

I don't use the web client for administration that often, but on occasion the need arises, it  always bugs me that I have to leave Firefox and launch IE to use Web Admin.   This technote documents that as of 7.0.3 Firefox will be supported for the Web admin client.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/12/2007 @ 01:39:25 PM | Permalink

I don't know if either of these are new, but I came across them this weekend, and thought they were pretty useful.

Jott is a website that you can use your phone and send a reminder, the reminder is then transcribed in to text and e-mailed.  You can Jott to yourself, or set up an address book to Jott others.  I don't really see myself setting up and address book and sending reminders to other people, but this is pretty handy for those great ideas while driving, or other situations where I need to create a reminder to myself.

GrandCentral which was acquired by Google in a site that once registered provides you with a phone number which you can then use to direct calls between multiple phone numbers.  I found this site a while ago, but it was in closed beta, I got an e-mail the other day letting me know it was my turn to get in to the beta.  Once you set up your phones you can determine which calls should ring which phones, you can tailor by individual in your address book.  I set it up to ring my cell phone and office phone, so if I am in my office I can answer, if not I can get the call if I choose on my cell.  You can also hot transfer calls from one phone to another, and the person on the other end will never even notice.  Since I am only in my office a couple of days a week, using this will let my phone follow me (when I want it to).  I hope to build this type of infrastructure internally at work next year, but until then this will be a big help to me.  If anyone is interested, since I am in the beta I have some invites, drop me an e-mail if you want to try it.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/17/2007 @ 08:20:47 PM | Permalink

Today I was at the Hayden Planetarium for the NYC edition of the Lotus Collaboration Summit.   Steve Mills and Mike Rhodin delivered the keynote,  covering the announcements IBM made today.  

Lotus Symphony was the first announcement of the day,  IBM has now released the productivity tools that shipped in Notes 8, as a stand-alone free office suite.  The Symphony name is being recycled as it was used years ago for another Lotus Office Suite.  I suspect this one will do a little better with the price tag being right, and the document format being open so it will work well with other office suites.  I suspect the system requirements might also be a little different then original Symphony product.

Like its predecessor, Symphony is loaded once into memory. Then, unless you need to print graphs or use some of the other arcane functions, no further program loading is necessary. The differences is that 1-2-3 requires about 128K of system RAM for program instructions while Symphony uses twice as much. Lotus recommends a minimum of 320K of memory to use Symphony, but a more practical configuration would include 512K. With the minimum RAM you can load the program and use all of teh software features, but the amount of data you can manipulate is reduced.  

Symphony was also covered in the Technology section of the New York Times today

Next up IBM announced plans to provide hosted Notes 8 environments for small to mid-sized companies, with options to include Sametime and Quickr, and plans to provide hosting for more products down the road.

There was a recap of the Sametime Announcements made last month at Voicecon, even better after the keynotes there were demos of some of the Sametime Advanced, and Sametime telephony products in the innovations labs.

Domino 8.0.1 was officially announced, as well as some of the new features that will be delivered with 8.0.1:

• Domino Web Access light
• UI Improvements to the To Do's
• Quickr Sidebar integration
• Mail Quota gauge
• Better compression delivering 35% reduction in storage.
• 64 Bit for Windows and AIX
• Notes Traveler for mobile e-mail, calendar, contacts and to do  on Windows Mobile  (and yes if you are curious this is why I got a Windows Mobile device, been beta testing this for a few weeks now)
  
  For all the Mac users out there there was a demo of Notes 8.0.1 on the Mac as well.
  
  Quickr 8.1 was announced, with new features
  
• Quickr integration with Outlook
• UI Improvements
• Quickr Personal edition
• Integration with Enterprise Content Management Systems (Filenet, Documentum, and more to come)
  
  Quickr content integrator - a new product being released to facilitate the migration or synchronization of data from Sharepoint, Exchange, Domino and Domino.doc with Quickr.
  
  Finally Lotus Connections was covered, and in the labs they were showing some of the plans for Connections 2.0.  The plans for 1.0.2 in November with official support for Domino LDAP was confirmed as well.
  
  One of the themes throughout the entire presentation was not only the features and enhancements to the products, but the commitment to seamlessly integrate all the products together, this is an area that IBM needs to focus on, and it is nice to see them talking about it when they are announcing products and features.
  
  There was a portion of the program which was a customer panel where customers answered some questions based on their experiences with Lotus products and their plans for the next year.  I had been invited to be a member of the panel, but unfortunately did not have enough time to get sign off from my corporate communications department to participate, maybe next time.
  
  The Hayden Planetarium was a really great choice for the event, and the weather was great today to be walking around NYC.
  
  Symphony press release
  Collaboration Summit press release
  Product announcement press release
  
  
   

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/18/2007 @ 04:01:12 PM | Permalink

The Connections plug-in for Notes, Office and Windows Explorer are now available for download in the Lotus Connections Catalog.  Will report back later about the install and functionality.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/18/2007 @ 11:40:45 PM | Permalink

I downloaded and installed the Lotus Connections plug-ins, they installed no problem, this post will cover the Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer integration, I will post part 2 later covering the Lotus Notes integration.

Microsoft Office integration, the tools install to Word, Excel and Powepoint, all three integrate with Activities and Profiles, in addition Word integrates with Blogs, and allows the creation of To Do's in Activities as well.  Once installed you have the Lotus Connections Toolbar in Office



The next step is to configure the plug-in, the only information you need is the URL to Activities, Blogs and Profiles



Once the configuration is done, you can save files to an activity, unlike the Quickr connectors where you save the file to the place, in the Connections plug-in you need to save the file to your hard drive, then you can add it to an activity.



You can also select text within a Document and create a To Do in an activity with that text.  One other feature is the ability to create a new activity from within Word.

The next feature is the blog integration, you can type your blog entry in Word, and then post it straight to a blog, it defaults the subject to the first line of text, but it can also be edited prior to posting.



One thing that did not work was formatting from Word did not copy in to the blog, I created a test post with a numbered list, some underline and some bold, the text was all posted to the blog, but none of the formatting made it.  To me there would be two advantages to creating blogs in a word processing tool, as opposed to via the web interface, the first is it does provide a nice off line capability for blogging, allowing you to work on a post and save over time until you are ready to post.  The second would be the ease of formatting your document, so I hope there is a plan to fix this and copy the styling with the text in to the blog.

Finally the Profiles integration, which was a little disappointing to me.  You can only search by name or e-mail address so you lose the value of searching by tags, the other thing I would like to see is to be able to hover over a name and see at least some of the profile data, the only thing you can do with the results is click to open up the profile in a browser.



One other note, so now I have the Quickr Connectors, and the Connections plug-ins installed on my machine which leaves me with two Lotus toolbars in Word, Excel and Powerpoint, which creates both clutter, and confusion, I would expect a lot of help desk calls if we deployed this way.



The Quickr Connectors are labeled Lotus Tools, I hope that in the next release there is one installer, and one toolbar for both products, and organizations can customize the install to deploy the pieces they need.

Windows Explorer integration supports the ability to right click on a file and add it to an activity



Once you click on Add to Activity the interface is the same as the one pictured above in Word, including the ability to create a new Activity.

Overall the integration is nice, definitely some room for improvements as noted above, but certainly a good start.  Stay tuned for part 2 on the integration with Lotus Notes.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/19/2007 @ 03:56:45 PM | Permalink

In part 1 I covered the integration between Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer and Lotus Connections.  Part 2 focuses on the Lotus Notes integration with Connections.   The Lotus Notes integration is currently supported in Notes 7, and Notes 8 Basic client only (Notes 8 Standard already has the Activities integration in the sidebar) support for Notes 8 Standard is due in a later release.  I installed the plug-ins to a Notes 8 basic client to test.

After installing when starting Lotus Notes I was greeted with this screen



I am not sure what the point of this screen is since clicking OK performs the install and takes me to this screen



a restart of the client was necessary to see the toolbar and the bookmarks folder.  Following installation you need to configure the plug-in, all that is required to configure is the URL for each of the services, and your user credentials.



While there is currently only integration for Activities, Profiles, and Dogear, all five URL are required as a link to each service is added as bookmarks.  I hope in the future that this can be configured via policy so the user will not need to fill this information in.

With the Activities integration you can either copy a notes document in to an activity, or you can create a document link in an activity.



again you have the ability to create a new activity on the fly.

The Dogear integration is great as you now have the ability to add a Notes Database, View or Document in to Dogear



Links to Notes documents show up with the Notes icon in Dogear



This is a great extension to Dogear allowing Notes content to be bookmarked along with web sites.

In the Office integration I was disappointed with the profiles integration, but in Notes they seem to have gotten it right, you can highlight a name and click the profiles toolbar icon, and you do get a nice summary (just ignore the fact that I do not have a lot of data populated in my profiles database yet)



Despite the fact that the plug-ins are not supported in the Standard (Eclipse based) client, I did install and try them, and for the most part they work.  The Dogear and Profile integration worked exactly the same as they did in the basic client, and Activities is already integrated in to the Notes 8 Standard client in the sidebar.  If you click on the Activities toolbar icon, it simply tells you to use the sidebar which makes sense since the sidebar has more functionality then the toolbar icon.



I would imagine the plan for the Standard client would be sidebar integration for Dogear and Communities similar to activities to allow both the ability to add data from Notes, as well as view and work with existing data.

The toolbar icons are all simply calling agents in a database titled Lotus Connections Plug-in for Notes (ilc4ln.nsf) so the code is out there to view and I suppose modify to suits ones needs if you wanted to.

The plug-in for notes will provide nice integration between Notes and Connections for organizations deploying Connections before upgrading to ND8, since I am running ND8 already I am looking forward to more sidebar components for Connections.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/19/2007 @ 09:14:48 PM | Permalink

The Sametime Gateway when installed is not a Windows service, and when started as an application must be started from a DB2 command prompt.  Here is the technote on how to configure the Sametime Gateway to run as a Windows service.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/20/2007 @ 08:40:50 PM | Permalink

Last week I had to turn down an invite to the Notes/Domino software design review, in Westford. I would have loved to have been there, but the timing was not good, the event took place on Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur began Friday at sundown making the travel logistics impossible.  I made it to Boston for two events this week, today is the kickoff of the Lotus Connections Customer Community, where detailed plans for Connections 2.0 will be presented.  The Connections Blog has a post and screen shots of some of the features that were being shown at the Lotus Collaboration Summit last week.

On Monday evening the IBM Global Customer Partnership Council meeting kicks off, while the council holds monthly virtual meetings, this is the annual face to face meeting of the council.  The GCPC event runs through Thursday, but I will be heading home Wednesday for the holiday of Sukkot which begins at sundown Wednesday evening.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/24/2007 @ 06:46:41 AM | Permalink

Monday was the kick off meeting of the Lotus Connections Customer Community, the community was formed by IBM to help guide the future direction of Lotus Connections, and set priorities based on customers needs.  IBM shared the current plans for Connections 2.0, I can't go in to any real detail here, but I can say the product looks like Connections will be getting some cool new features, and have tighter integration with the other products in the Lotus Family.   It was an interesting day spent with a number of other Connections customers, all at different points in adopting and deploying Connections,

Monday evening the GCPC annual face to face meeting kicked off.  Tuesday the day began with a Keynote by Alistair Rennie VP Development and technical support  and Charlie Hill IBM Distinguished engineer, The began by reviewing last years council recommendations and how they were acted on by IBM.  A good part of their presentation was similar to what was presented last week at the Lotus Collaboration Summit followed by a look ahead at the next product release cycle.  Tuesday was focused on Notes and Domino, with Rob Ingram, Russ Holden, and Mary Beth Raven giving at look at plans for 8.0.1 and 8 Next.  Much of their presentation was similar to what was covered at the  Notes/Domino software design review last week in Westord (Nathan I am no lawyer, but it would seem we can talk), though less in depth.

The last session of the day was a feature prioritization session for 8.0.1 and 8 next.  Grouped with other customers we worked through 6 categories of feature and enhancement requests, move the ones important to high priority, secondary priority, and trash the ones that we considered unimportant.  The catch was we had a limit as to the number of high priorities we could select, so it was a negotiation within each group to work out the features that were important to all to see in the next release.  Hopefully we got it right and the design team can work the high priority features in to the next releases.

The rest of the week will be  focused on Quickr and Sametime, and at the end of the week, the Council will present the priorities for all of the products to IBM.  Unfortunately I am not able to be there the rest of the week, but I was able to sit down with some of the Sametime and Quickr teams and discuss future direction with them as well.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/26/2007 @ 12:27:23 PM | Permalink

Quickr HF 15 is now available on  IBM Fix Central



Here are the fixes in HF15 that are new since HF11 (the HF is cumulative though so you do not need to install HF11 first if you have not done so.

9/19/2007	BACY75WLT9	8000.015	Date of attached file is wrong when viewed w/ IE if Quickr Server is set to Danish time/date
9/19/2007	XZSU75P9VW	8000.015	can not restrict user to add comment but not able to create blog entry.
9/19/2007	SORA75WQNS	8000.015	Calendar invites: ICS file not proc right. Sent as std email with attach - no accept/decline buttons
8/24/2007	JCHU75EAPM	8000.014	L10N : Create place doesn't work for French Language
8/24/2007	JSDZ75T9QH	8000.014	After translation, "Edit" cannot work correctly in wiki page.
8/24/2007	TCHU764JR7	8000.014	L10N : User management layout problem for DBCS
8/24/2007	TCHU75CAMA	8000.013	L10N : Translated strings "Click for Page Menu" in nquickplacers.dll, not displayed in UI
8/24/2007	JCHU762G8Y	8000.013	L10N : Create Custom Theme: action buttons wrap when text too long
8/15/2007	N/A	8000.012	Fixes layout alignment issue when customizing forms in a non-English install.
8/15/2007	RTIN75NGK2	8000.012	Quickr sending sensitive information to browser
8/15/2007	RELS75G33F	8000.012	Quickr crashes while authenticating

There is still no HF Installer, it is still a manual process of copying files, this one is 20 files across 7 directories.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 09/26/2007 @ 01:09:18 PM | Permalink

Default reply options were a hot topic of discussion at the GCPC last week, and it looks like Mary Beth Raven, and  the design team got the message, in this post they solicited feedback on Reply with or without attachment by default., and the community responded loud and clear.  I can't say I read all 100 responses, but in scanning through them I think it was unanimous that the default reply action should be without attachments, and we have been heard.

This is definitely good news for 8.0.1 and going forward, yes it could still be better, policy support and user preference settings for the default reply options would be even better, but if changing the default is all I get for 8.0.1 I will take it.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/01/2007 @ 04:24:09 PM | Permalink

The last 2 days has gone something like this.  Yesterday around 11 AM I received a call from the office, it seems the Spam filter had for no reason at all decided to start acting up to the point that either no mail was flowing in, or all the mail spam included was getting through.  So while I had intended to be seated in front of the TV watching the Mets at 1 PM on Sunday instead I was on a conference call working on a stubborn spam filter.  

Speaking of the Mets, well I guess I didn't miss much, the game was apparently over in the first inning. So lets review on September 13th the Mets were in great shape with a 6.5 game lead and 17 games to play.



yet here we are 2 weeks later, and the season ended like this



The Mets managed to go 5-12 down the stretch while the Phillies went 12-4 to take the division.  So now it is October baseball without the Mets which is a huge disappointment.

The lone bright spot of the weekend was the Giants defeating the Eagles and in the process tying an NFL Sack record.  The Giants not exactly off to a great start this season at least saved me a little aggravation from a few friends of mine who happen to be Phillies and Eagles Fans.

So fast forward to this afternoon, when I was on a conference call reviewing yes you guessed it the spam filter, when my wife arrived home and informed me she had a flat tire, which granted in the grand scheme of car troubles I would take a flat tire over most other problems.  I did manage to remove the flat and install the spare tire, all while remaining on the previously mentioned conference call.

So all that is left to figure out now is who to root for in the playoffs, I think it is finally the Cubs turn to win this year after all they recently won a World Series 99 years ago.  So my playoff teams are the Cubs, and whoever is playing the Yankees.

Just remember 138 days until pitchers and catchers report to spring training.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/01/2007 @ 06:58:33 PM | Permalink

When you configure a Domino server to use multiple ports the order in which the ports are started can be important, while port 1352, will bind to all configured ports, and HTTP Binding is configured in the Server Document, other internet protocols (SMTP, POP3, LDAP, IMAP) will bind to the first port on the PORTS= line in the notes.ini.  So for example if a Domino server is configured with two ports named public and private so the notes.ini looks like this

PORTS=public, private

if no further configuration is done SMTP for example would bind to the public port, however if the public port was disabled and then re-enabled, the PORTS= line would be rewritten like this

PORTS=private, public

Therefore on the next server restart SMTP would bind to private, most likely rendering it unreachable.

There are two ways to manage the server to prevent this from happening

1. Specify the port for each protocol in the notes.ini as documents in Technote 1097004

To force IMAP, LDAP, POP3, or SMTP to bind to a TCP/IP port other than the first listed port, use the following notes.ini parameter:
NotesPort=

This method was introduced in Domino 6.0

2. Specify the port order in the notes.ini as documented in Technote 1279003

The PortOrder parameter is used as a state variable to hold the location of disabled ports so that if the disabled port is ever re-enabled, it will be added back to the Ports parameter in its previous position in the list. Here's an example:

State 0:
Ports=Port_1, Port_2, Port_3

This method was introduced in Domino 7.0
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/02/2007 @ 10:12:39 PM | Permalink

This afternoon I got prompted to download the latest Java update, and along with it Sun is now pushing OpenOffice.  With the download prompt came the following.






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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/09/2007 @ 03:01:49 PM | Permalink

So I happened to ping Chris Whisonant this evening, that is Chris who was made famous yesterday by Bruce Elgort, so Chris and I are chatting, and turns out he was back in Times Square again (Chris is incredibly talented at walking any typing on his blackberry, not an easy task in the middle of NYC), so we snapped a couple more shots of Chris, from a different camera.  Now it looks like he is smiling in the picture, but he is really depressed over the Yankees loss last night.




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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/09/2007 @ 08:01:44 PM | Permalink

Developerworks has a new article posted today on using REST Services for Quickr

IBM Lotus Quickr makes it easy for users to share business content. An important design principle of Lotus Quickr is to build the application on open interfaces that allow customers and partners to access content where and when they need it -- otherwise known as the principle of information on demand. This article focuses on the Lotus Quickr Representational State Transfer (REST) services, including an overview and a simple example of how you can use them. Here we introduce the basic operations you can perform using Quickr REST services; more advanced operations will be explained in a future article.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/10/2007 @ 06:05:28 AM | Permalink

I have tried Second Life and I just don't get, maybe it was the computer I was using at the time that lacked the proper resources, maybe it is just a lack of time to play with it, but it has not kept my attention.  I caught this article today, IBM and Second Life have announced plans to work together to open up virtual worlds so you can take a persona created in one world and use it in another.

Interoperability is emerging as a key goal of the nascent virtual world industry, which attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in investment on the hopes that video-game graphics and rich 3-D environments will supplant flat Web pages.

I am not sure how fast the web will be replaced by virtual worlds, but who knows, since Social computing has now grown up and entered the enterprise maybe the online virtual office is next, and it would be nice to be able to have one persona, and be able to leave the virtual office for a virtual meeting  I am still not sold on the whole thing,  I think for now I will just focus on building the Lotus Connections environment.

 Second Life, IBM in open borders for virtual worlds
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/10/2007 @ 09:35:29 AM | Permalink

We recently went live with out Sametime 7.5.1 servers so people now see their photos in the business card section, prompting many people to want a new picture, so the question arose after changing ones photo how long does it take for users to see the new photo.  If a user has never had your photo before then it is almost immediate, however once I have seen your photo it is cached locally, and the client by default will not attempt download a new photo for 7 days.

The default cache period can be changed by editing the plugin_customization.ini (in the directory where Sametime is installed) and add
'com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.imhub/lookupExpirationDays=x'  where x= the number of days to cache the photo.  You can set it to 0 to lookup the photo every time, but that could have an impact on performance.

Technote 1264766 details all of the possible preferences that can be set via the plugin_customizations.ini, and technote 1261055 details how to package them up and send them to users via the update site.

Finally if you are not using photos at all technote 1260018 details how to prevent users from seeing the empty gray box where the photo would be displayed.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/11/2007 @ 08:49:30 AM | Permalink

Two stories today about little kids taking to the roads.  First six year old Josh Barber really wanted Applebee's chicken nuggets so tried to drive himself there to get some.  To his credit he was very concerned about safety, even moved his car seat up to the drivers seat

After taking the car keys, he unlocked the car, moved his child seat to the driver's seat so he could see better and tried to drive off.

but the plan did not work out too well

But, unable to take the car out of reverse, he backed up 75 feet from her house into a transformer, knocking out electricity and phone service to dozens of townhouses in this suburb north of Denver.

Next up was three year old Jordan Will and his unnamed two year old passenger who took to the roads in his battery powered car .  They made it several blocks from the house before the police managed to pull them over, but apparently not ticket was issues as they had obeyed all the traffic signs.

He even obeyed the signs, so that was good. He stopped at the red light and got on the cross walk," said neighbor Jaci Bauer.

Jordan had a perfectly good explanation for where they went

He just said, 'We went for a ride, daddy,'

but it looks like his days of cruising around the neighborhood are over for now.

All Jordan can do now is sit in the little car. His father has taken away the keys and removed the battery.

My four year old has just recently learned how to operate the garage door openers, and unlock the door from the house in to the garage, maybe it is time to start rethinking where I keep my car keys.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/11/2007 @ 10:53:55 PM | Permalink

For those of you who are not aware, IBM has their Sametime environment open to the public, if you want to connect Chris Pepin has detailed instructions on how to set up your client.  I have been logging in to the IBM Community for well over a year now, and it saves me quite a bit of phone tag and time in my daily dealings with IBM.  Sometime around Notes 8 Beta 3 the Sametime client ID in Notes 8 was changed preventing it from logging in to the IBM Sametime community, since they limit logins to specific client ID's.  So for the last 6 months, I have been using Sametime in Notes 8 to connect with in my company, but still had to launch the stand alone 7.5.1 client to connect to IBM.  In August when I saw Chris Pepin, I asked him when it would be fixed, he promised to look in to it.  In September when I saw Chris the first thing he said to me was "October 13th".  Well true to his word, I can now log in to the IBM Community with the Sametime client integrated in Notes 8.

Thanks Chris!
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/14/2007 @ 07:09:15 PM | Permalink

Lotus Traveler which was announced back at the Lotus Collaboration Summit in NYC  provides out of the box mobile support for Windows Mobile devices.   I have been testing Traveler for a few weeks now, and it is now time to set aside my Blackberry for a week and carry only the Windows Mobile device.  I thought I could use them in parallel and still do some testing , but  I have had a Blackberry since 2001, and there is no question I am a "crackberry addict", it has become painfully obvious that if I have my Blackberry I will use it.  This is not in any way a comment on the Traveler technology, more a comment of me being a creature of habit.  I will reserve my full comments on Traveler until later in the process, since I am pretty much limited by the Beta NDA anyway in what I can say right now.

I am about 6 hours in to the Blackberry free experiment now, I miss my blackberry, but I am getting my mail, I have Sametime for Windows Mobile, and my phone is being forwarded.  If anyone has any suggestions for IM clients for Windows Mobile, or any other useful Windows Mobile apps, please let me know, I am knew to the whole Windows Mobile thing.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/16/2007 @ 03:41:27 PM | Permalink

Just caught this story  on IBM's first  use of RFID technology to track conference attendees

At its Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas, IBM is deploying RFID technology on name tags worn by attendees that automatically tracks their session and meal attendance.

The use of RFID in the badges was not a secret, and attendees were given the option to opt out

Of the 6,500 people here, approximately 2 percent didn't want a name tag with an RFID chip in it, said Mary Ann Alberry, IBM's conference manager.

I wonder if we will be seeing this technology at Lotusphere this year as the article explains the benefits,,

The real-time aspects of the system help with day-to-day conference management. If a room gets filled to capacity, a decision can be made to repeat the session. If a person needs to be reached in an emergency, he or she can also be tracked down, Alberry said.

I personally have no problem if they want to put an RFID tag in my badge, if it helps them manage the conference, it should help me get to the sessions I want to, and make sure the sessions being repeated are the ones with the demand.  Does anyone have any strong objections to this?

 IBM Uses RFID to Track Conference Attendees
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/17/2007 @ 07:13:57 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I was in Boston for the day where I was invited to speak at an internal IBM meeting  of the IBM Quality Software Engineering team.  I was asked to present from a customers point of view on what IBM does well, and where improvement is needed in the quality of the products shipping from IBM.  I spent about an hour presenting an overview of my companies IT strategy, and then focused on 3 main areas, Integration of IBM products (or the lack of in some cases), Configuration, mainly focused on client configuration issues, and Serviceability of the product once it has been deployed.

While much of presentation was not on specific issues, I did choose a few areas to highlight that needed attention including

- Quickr should honor name changes made via the AdminP process
- Sametime and Quickr should support be supported on servers configured with Internet Site Documents
- Integration for Notes, Sametime and Quickr Calendars

In addition to presenting I had the opportunity to meet with members of the Quality teams, and Executives in smaller groups to discuss more specific issues.  While I can't tell you the items mentioned above or some of the others I discussed will happen right away, I can tell you it is obvious from the questions I received and the number of people who wanted to talk to me when I am done, that IBM is listening and trying to meet the customers needs.

This was my third trip on the Acela in the last 2 months, but this time I had my brand new Verizon Wirless broadband card, giving me internet access for the 4 hour train ride.  Over the entire trip there were only two spots where the network disconnected, one was a drop and immediate reconnect, the other was about a three minute stretch with no coverage, overall pretty impressive coverage, and decent speed.

The entire trip was done without my Blackberry, Notes Traveler has been doing a good job for me so far, though the device itself is very different and takes some getting used to.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/18/2007 @ 02:09:54 PM | Permalink

I have been using Document Viewer from OpenNTF for a while now, today John Head posted about a new sidebar plug-in for Notes 8 which automatically displays the document properties, in a format that is much easier to read then natively in Notes.  John also provides excellent detailed instructions for installing the plug-in.  Here is a screen shot from my sidebar.



Thanks John and "Mr Frunobulax"

One interesting note, I originally tried to install this from my office where I require a proxy to get out to the internet,  when I tried to update, it could not find any updates, when I came home and tried it immediately found and installed the plug-in, this makes me believe that the plug-in install engine does not read the proxy setting from the location doc (other sidebar plug-ins do not honor the location document settings either).   I will have to do a little more testing on this.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/18/2007 @ 09:08:35 PM | Permalink

Microsoft has announced a new server named "System Center Mobile Device Manager" designed to manage Windows Mobile devices.  The server is being designed to allow for remote management, software provisioning, and VPN access for Windows Mobile devices, or in other words, what the Blackberry Server has done for years now.

According to the article Microsoft wants to gain a piece of the enterprise mobile e-mail market, which RIM has an estimated 70% of.  What I wonder is how many people are going to even think about dumping their Blackberry infrastructure in favor of Windows Mobile.  In my experience (now one week) with Windows Mobile, I still find it easier to do everything I want to on the go with my Blackberry, and while I am sure some of it is familiarity (6 years of using a blackberry) it does seem to take more keystrokes or clicks to accomplish the same task.

On the other hand, for shops using Good Messaging, or otherwise have applications developed for Windows Mobile, this could be functionality they have been waiting for.  The new server is due out in the first half of 2008, it also offers possibilities for organizations that want to use Lotus Notes Traveler, but require stronger capabilities to manage the devices.

For me personally when I am done testing Traveler (which has been working great) I am going back to my Blackberry, and while I personally don't use Facebook, for those of you Blackbery users that do, RIM announced a Facebook client for the Blackberry today, which you can download here.

With BlackBerry in Crosshairs, Microsoft Debuts Mobile Server
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/24/2007 @ 04:07:01 PM | Permalink

This coming Sunday is the day that in the past we would have set our clocks back an hour, but thanks to Congress, the fall back will take place the first Sunday in November.  If you prepared properly prior to the change in March, you should be in pretty good shape, here are a few reminders and resources for more information.

1. For Sametime servers prior to 7.0.2 FP2 make sure you have run the Java Time Zone Utility Update
2  Sametime . 7.5 CF1 is the minimum version required for DST (7.5 CF1, 7.5.1 require a fix, 7.5.1 CF1 is fine)
3. The agents for fixing calendar entries can be found here, no harm in running them a second time to if you want to be safe just run them again.
4. Don't forget Blackberrys, we found a bunch of new ones distributed after the spring time change that went out with out the patch.  You can install the patch from here.  If you device is running a 4.2 release you may not need it.

These are just some of the things I have been checking lately, there is quite a bit more information out there.  Also of note, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand are also going through DST changes of their own now.

Additional Links
Executive Summary and End User Guide: Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007
Troubleshooting tips for Notes and DWA regarding Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007
Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007 information for Lotus Sametime
Knowledge Collection: Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Notes/Domino


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/24/2007 @ 08:40:48 PM | Permalink

I finally got around to downloading and installing Quickr 8.0.0.2, over all a fairly smooth process, and no major issues, just a couple of things to look out for.  The Quickr Info Center has a section on upgrading, but you need to follow the Quickr 8.0.0.2 Readme  for some minor changes to the steps. If you are using the SNAPPS Quickr Templates per Rob, hold off on your upgrade..

Don't forget to reinstall the Quickr Connectors as there is a new version as well delivered in 8.0.0.2, though for some odd reason the Connector is labeled 8.0.0.1



The Connectors now have built in local cache management, so you can keep locally cached files to a minimum, but  it is disabled by default



Quickr 8.0.0.2 Fixlist

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/29/2007 @ 12:40:50 PM | Permalink

Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF1 is available on IBM Fix Central.



Looks like it fixes four known SPR

Created	SPR	Build #	Problem description
10/25/2007	CCLI77E53A	8002.001	AIX: WebService long run crash Domino on AIXissues
10/25/2007	BROK77UNT9	8002.001	Main place (lotusquickr\lotusquickr) gets wrong template (h1_meetingroom) when server upgraded
10/25/2007	MLZG77SBVK	8002.001	After click "Add More..." when create blog entry,user can not publish it.
10/25/2007	JHHO7759YR	8002.001	UAT/On-Ramp/ST: can't visit folders in the place.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/31/2007 @ 08:25:40 AM | Permalink

Every once in a while I find that I need either a bunch of large files, or  a file of a very specific size for testing, today was one of those days and after a little googleing, I found a way to easily create a file of a specific size.  I needed a file that was 10,000,000 bytes exactly to run some tests.  

Step one is getting the hex equivalent of the number of bytes in the file, so I launched the windows calculator and put it into scientific mode, enter the bytes and click on hex



You then need to pad the number with 0 from the left to make it 8 digits so 10MB = 00989680

Step 2 open a command prompt and enter the following

-debug filename (and ignore the file not found error)
-rcx and press enter
-now enter the last four digits of the hex code (in this example 9680) and press enter
-rbx and press enter
-now enter the first four digits of the code (in this example 0098) and press enter
-w enter to write the file
-q enter to quit

it looks something like this


and when you are done you have a file like this





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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 10/31/2007 @ 07:16:12 PM | Permalink

This hotfix seems to have caused much chaos on confusion, Chris has a great post on it. here.  You can also check out this thread in the forums for more info.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/02/2007 @ 12:57:02 PM | Permalink

For those of you in the New Jersey area, I can now safely predict that we will get through this winter with out any major snowstorms.  I can confidently say this since yesterday I purchased a Toro CCR 2450 Snowthrower.  If my forecast it correct it will have been worth every penny.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/05/2007 @ 07:18:59 PM | Permalink

Lotus Connections 1.0.2 is coming soon, according to the Software  Announcement posted today, 1.0.2 will be available for download on November 16.  While some of what is listed as new has been around since the 1.0.1 release (pilot install, and plug-ins for Notes, Sametime, Office, etc...) there are significant changes in supported Client and Server Operating systems, as well as LDAP Directory support.

Most significantly is that Domino LDAP 7.0.2 and 8.0 are supported !!!!, in addition on the server side there is now support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on Intel and AIX.  For the client there is not support for Vista, and Macintosh OS X 10.4.8 (which I guess will disappoint those who have upgraded to Leopard).

Here is an excerpt from the announcement marked up to indicate which items are newly supported in 1.0.2



T-10 days..... and counting.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/06/2007 @ 12:29:50 PM | Permalink

If you have looked at the preferences pane in the Notes 8 client well there are a lot of them.



 While you can set all the options through one panel,  the preferences themselves are stored in a number of different places, notes.ini, mail file, address book, xml files etc...  Technote 1283416 documents where the individual preferences are stored.




See the Technote for the complete list.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/07/2007 @ 01:05:39 PM | Permalink

Yesterday was election day, here in NJ we were voting on some really important issues facing the state as you can see from this ballot issue



and in case you are wondering it passed



Link to the full Ballot Issue
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/07/2007 @ 01:26:17 PM | Permalink

And look who made the list



Well OK it is not me, but a number of people pinged and e-mailed me the link, come to think of it, I wonder if this guy is running around with my notes id too.

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2007

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/07/2007 @ 07:07:52 PM | Permalink

If you are running Domino on systems with more then 2GB of RAM at some point you have probably had to tune the amount of memory available to Domino (especially if you are running on AIX).  There are a number of ways to do this most commonly by implementing either PercentAvailSysResources, or ConstrainedSHM/ContrainedSHMSizeMB in your notes.ini.  This controls how Domino calculates the size of the UBM (unified buffer manager).  If the UBM grows to large Domino is prone to crash.  

In previous versions of Domino the UBM was allocated by taking a percent of the memory available to Domino, in Domino 8 by default the UBM is set to 512 MB, which according to testing is the most efficient setting, though NSF_BUFFER_POOL_SIZE_MB can still be used to increase the UBM if desired, but it is not recommended.   Keep this in mind when upgrading servers and strongly consider removing any of the previously mentioned ini parameters from the notes.ini and let Domino 8 manage the memory with it;s default setting.

I won't be upgrading my production servers to 8 until next year, but am considering setting my 6.5.x servers to NSF_BUFFER_POOL_SIZE_MB=512 and removing ConstrainedSHM which should allow my 6.5.x servers to allocate memory the same way Domino 8 will by default.

Technote 1268988 New default limit on UBM size in Domino 8
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/08/2007 @ 02:06:51 PM | Permalink

Friday I was in New York City for the a Premium Support customer summit, there were about 70 customers in attendance.  I gave a presentation on Lotus Connections.  The presentation covered the five connections services, as well as the explaining the business case used to promote lotus connections in the organization, and a demo of my test Connections environment.  



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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/10/2007 @ 08:11:57 PM | Permalink

I arrived today in Dublin to spend a week with the team here.  The week will be spent reviewing our 2008 plans, and some training.  I suspect I will be doing another Lotus Connections demo sometime this week as well.  Hopefully we will find  a little time for some sightseeing before flying home on Friday.

Right now I am getting ready to watch Giants - Cowboys via a Slingbox, THANKS Carl!
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/11/2007 @ 04:11:02 PM | Permalink

So apparently here in Europe being a Lotus Professional means something a little different then back home



Lotus Professional
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/14/2007 @ 03:27:02 AM | Permalink

Technote 7010860 popped up this evening with detailed system requirements for Connections 1.0.2.   For those of you planning on using Domino LDAP note you need to install WAS Fix PK52839.

,



In addition there are now three supported database platforms DB2 9.1, Oracle 10g 10.2, and now Microsoft SQL Server



Just waiting for the download to hit the passport site, which should be tomorrow, since I am flying home tomorrow I might not get to this one till after the weekend.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/15/2007 @ 04:09:18 PM | Permalink

Very shortly after midnight EST it was available on the Passport site.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/16/2007 @ 01:52:23 AM | Permalink

After going almost a month without my Blackberry in preparation for my trip to Dublin I upgraded to the Verizon Blackberry 8830  World Edition since my Windows Mobile device does not have an international service plan.  This is my first Blackberry with the trackball on the front, instead of the wheel on the side for navigation and it has been a bit of an adjustment.  I got the device the day before I left so I have been installing software as I go along, so far I have added my gmail, yak-on for aim/icq, Google Talk and a beta of the Sametime 8 Blackberry client.

The one thing that drove me crazy this week was the flashing LED on the blackberry, I have never quite bothered to figure out the logic of when a blackberry flashed a particular color, and usually when I am on the road I just throw a towel over it at night to cover up the flashing all night  The hotel we stayed in had no clock in the room so I needed to use my Blackberry as my alarm clock (I don't wear a watch).  So I turned off all LED Flashing in my profile, yet I continued to have green and blue flashing at me all night.   After a little digging I discovered blue indicated a blue tooth connection, that was easy enough to solve by turning off my blue tooth headset at night.  The green took a little more digging, green indicates you have network coverage, and finally under the options for Screen/Keyboard I was able to turn it off.



Other then that  the network coverage was great in Dublin, and the phone is definitely better quality then any of my previous Blackberries.

Next week it will be back to testing Lotus Traveler as Domino 8.0.1 Beta 1 has shipped and it included Traveler Beta 2 so I will be upgrading my Traveler Server and Mobile Client next week.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/16/2007 @ 01:57:05 AM | Permalink

Stuart already posted them, but in case you missed it make sure you read these four technotes when installing/upgrading to Connections 1.0.2

Required iFix for Lotus Connections 1.0.2
Error installing fixes to Lotus Connections 1.0.2 server
Authentication failure when installing a Lotus Connections fix
Fixing issues with Community descriptions in Lotus Connections

You can also check out the Lotus Connections page on Upgrade Central

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/20/2007 @ 11:23:19 AM | Permalink

After the initial confusion over Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF1 I went out to IBM Fix Central  just to make sure I had the right one, and much to my surprise found Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF2



Here are the FP2 fixes (but the fix is cumulative no need to do FP1 first)

11/07/2007	JASH78KVX4	8002.002	ILQD08002.SYS2 is missing from 8.0.0.2.
11/07/2007	BACY75HMDZ	8002.002	Beta - Dates on files copied with the Windows Connector show the wrong create and modified dates
11/07/2007	DYLU77EDKC	8002.002	Without modify qpconfig.xml, add group to place will cause server crash
11/07/2007	JYYG7648DU	8002.002	Upgrade from domino7&QP 7 to domino703&QP 8 get error in AIX
11/07/2007	CCLI78G8MB	8002.002	WebService: Create document via Connector crash Domino AIX only
11/07/2007	JHHO78BEFW	8002.002	UAT/On-Ramp/ST: the folder open failed
11/07/2007	XZSU74R7P8	8002.002	(7.0 HOTFIX) Advance Search by author don't work if access the place via My place
11/07/2007	RELS77DQUM	8002.002	Cannot change TOC order precisely after upgrade PMR 04947,005,000
11/07/2007	THES769PXE	8002.002	Cannot move folder into folder  PMR 06859,848,84
11/07/2007	SHYN75VPGL	8002.002	Quickr Server crash logging from the inline QP porlet
11/07/2007	TKAO772SBA	8002.002	Moving folder in the Browser UI causes the Connector UI to show nested folders recursively.
11/07/2007	THES779P3T	8002.002	Columns are misaligned
11/07/2007	ESEO76QPAX	8002.002	Create button instead of publish button
11/07/2007	THES6N6JAZ	8002.002	Fonts grow small when upgrade place
11/07/2007	MMOI76BQCT	8002.002	Server crash - nquickplace.HuWebCache::GenerateHTML ntdll.RtlEnumerateGenericTableWithoutSplaying
11/07/2007	SHYN77FKXU	8002.002	Buffer Overflow error when click on: What's new
11/07/2007	RELS77C5FM	8002.002	Pre-Quickr themes do not display correctly after upgrade

In addition while upgrading the server I went out to the SNAPPS template site, to grab the latest files there as well.  On November 15th they posted the files required to support Quickr 8.0.0.2.  


Depending on the current version of the templates you are running you might just need one file (qp_ajax.js) or if you have an older release you will need to replace the QP Common files and Qengine.

On item of note is that by default anonymous places are no longer listed in My Places.  You can change the server to display anonymous places,  this forum post contains the required entry for the qpconfig.xml.

Since applying all of the upgrades all appears to be working well, and the server is now compatible with the beta Quickr Connectors for Notes 8.0.1 so I can begin testing those now as well.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/21/2007 @ 11:21:32 AM | Permalink

Following all of the other Lotus Products Notes and Domino now has an online Info Center for documentation.  While much of the data is the same as contained the admin help files that ship with Notes, the online Info Centers are generally kept up to date.  As a bonus right now there is documentation up there on products that are in Beta right now.


       
IBM Lotus Domino and Notes Information Center


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/21/2007 @ 11:52:56 AM | Permalink

A technote popped up this morning with the Sametime 8 Release Notes.  The pdf which can be downloaded here seems to contain information relating to the Beta releases.  Hopefully this means we will see a Sametime 8 release this week.

Update:  Ed has confirmed the 11/29 ship date for Sametime 8
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/26/2007 @ 07:55:07 AM | Permalink

The developerWorks Notes from Lotus Support blog, has just posted a new diagram detailing where NAT will work in a Sametime Environment, and where it won't.  I have spoken to many fellow customers working on Sametime Gateway implementations and this is definitely one of the most popular questions asked.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/28/2007 @ 12:22:47 AM | Permalink

It wasn't at 12:01 AM this time, but Sametime 8 is out.  Downloading the Gateway now.


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/29/2007 @ 09:17:50 AM | Permalink

I have been running Sametime 8 on my Blackberry for a few weeks, now that it has shipped I can share some screenshots.  The look and feel is all upgraded to the new Sametime 8 look, so the green icon is gone, and the login screen is upgraded.





I also can now add external contacts as well (this might have been in 7.5.1CF1 I don't remember) but until now I was able to use external contacts that I added in my client, but not add new ones while mobile.



Overall this is a nice mobile client, I find myself using it all the time now.  The only thing I wish is that I could log in to my Blackberry and my desktop at the same time.  AOL and Google do a great job with that if I stay logged in on my Blackberry and Desktop I only get the IM's on my Blackberry when my desktop goes in to away status.  The Sametime 8 server will still not support this, I hope this is high on the to do list for the next version.










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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/29/2007 @ 10:09:34 AM | Permalink

The Sametime 8 Information Center is live


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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 11/29/2007 @ 03:52:07 PM | Permalink

Check out the new Synch.rono.us blog.  The blog will focus on Social Software, and is being written by three members of the Lotus Connections team.  Welcome to the blogosphere and looking forward to some reading the blog.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/04/2007 @ 07:11:13 AM | Permalink

There are a number of things I wanted to blog about this week, but it has been a busy week upgrading our Sametime 7.5.1 Gateway to 8.0, and building a Lotus Connections pilot environment.   I will try to get to some of the other topics, but for now I want to cover briefly one of the enhancements in the 8.0 Gateway which is the LDAP Configuration Wizard.  In the Sametime 7.5.1 Gateway you had to follow this 35 step process to configure the Gateway to use your LDAP.  Sametime 8.0 you simply complete the wizard during install and it is done for you.







Now you tell me which one would you prefer the 35 step process or 3 screen wizard?

One other nice feature in the 8.0 Gateway is that the status for each community is now displayed, so you have a visual indicator if a community is completely down.



The upgrade was fairly smooth, we are still working our some issues with connectivity that are left over from 7.5.1.  Once we have it all connected we will then have to see how the stability is over time.  In 7.5.1 a week was about the limit then awareness was spotty until the gateway was restarted.  8.0 is supposed to contain improvements in connectivity that should let us keep the gateway up for longer.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/06/2007 @ 02:55:47 PM | Permalink

Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF3 is now available on Fix Central



Fixed in HF3 are



We had just finished testing HF2 in our dev environment and were ready to move it over to production, will have to see if we can quickly test this and move it in at the same time as well.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/09/2007 @ 10:55:19 AM | Permalink

Ben has done it again and posted the database version of the Lotusphere 2008 schedule.  It is the only way to plan your days at Lotusphere.   Note the warning on the download site, this is a preliminary version, check back often for updates.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/10/2007 @ 08:11:32 PM | Permalink

Stuart gets on the board first on this one, but right on the heels of HF3 is HF4 for Quickr available on Fix Central


Fixed in HF4



Still no installer with these fixes, so having completed my HF3 upgrade about 4 hours ago, here I go copying files again.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/10/2007 @ 08:24:31 PM | Permalink

Disclaimer:  This information was received and posted with permission by resources in the Sametime Level 2 support team.  It is provided as is for reference only and subject to change.

A common question when working with the Sametime Gateway  is how requests route between the gateway, and the Sametime community.  When setting up the gateway the only connection you define is from the gateway to one Sametime sever in the community.  From there the gateway will discover the other servers in the community.  Inbound and outbound requests are handled differently

"Inbound requests  (external user adds internal, external initiates a chat) are forwarded Round Robin by the Gateway server to the next server in the round robin list. This can be any server that is in the Sametime Community. The Sametime server that gets the inbound requests does the lookup on the user being subscribed too.  If the community server that got the request isn't the server that the internal user is connected to, then the request will be routed (internally, among the ST servers themselves) to the correct Sametime server.  This would be for both request to add user to contact lists and the chats themselves.

In a non-clustered environment where a Sametime Home Server is specified, the Gateway server will still round robin these inbound requests to the next server, but the Sametime server will now use the SametimeServer value to route the communication to the user's home server.  This would be different than routing it to the server he is logged into.

Outbound is different. (Internal user adds external user) The server the user is physically connected to does the lookup on outbound "

The key here is that all servers in your local Sametime community regardless of the service they provide, must be accessible to the Sametime gateway on port 1516, in addition in the LDAP Server of your stconfig.nsf you need to make sure the search filters can resolve the e-mail address on all the servers as well.



Click here for a larger image
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/12/2007 @ 10:45:31 AM | Permalink

For those of you using the QProject template from SNAPPS there was an update posted to it today



The same update is available for QSite as well which is the combination template for demoing or testing the functionality of all the templates (except QActivities)
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/12/2007 @ 08:21:05 PM | Permalink

Well a couple of mail server crashes made me late to this party, but better late then never.  Today IBM announced Atlas for Lotus Connections, consisting of these components

1. Net / My Net - Net displays visually different groups that have formed based on projects, activities, communities, areas of expertise and other commonalities. My Net is similar but used to give a visual representation of your network, and it would appear this uses not only data from Lotus Connections, but data from e-mail and instant messaging as well to depict your connections graphically. Alan Lepofsky has some screen shots here.
   
2. Reach - graphically depicts the shortest path between yourself and a person to reach, or in other words this example from the press release
   
   

   For example, Jim needs more information on compliance regulations in the financial services industry to close an important deal. His social dashboard shows him that Barb is an expert in compliance and is active in various communities. Jim can also see that his teammate Matthew reports to Denise, who co-authors a blog on compliance regulations with Barb. By using his social network Jim can connect with Barb faster to get the information he needs to close the deal.

   
   
3. Find - using the data in Lotus Connections extends search to find people based on almost any factor, reporting structure, community memberships, locations and more.
   
   Towards the bottom of the press release comes the real catch to Atlas
   
   

   Atlas is currently available via services engagements through IBM Software Services for Lotus.

   
   
   thats right it is not a product you can buy rather a services engagement  from ISSL, Chris, among others are not happy about it being offered as a service not a product.  Atlas certainly would be a nice complement to Lotus Connections, and should it be a product rather then a service? Yes I would agree, but in reading various posts on Atlas here is the key piece of information I found in  the sync.rono.us blogs coverage of the Atlas announcement after Chris and Stuart comment on it being an ISSL asset Chris Lamb who is the senior product manager answers them with this comment
   
   

   So the reason that it is a service offering and not just part of Lotus Connections is that there is a lot of customization work that can be done: deciding on the weighting of the data sources, how and where you want the visualization to appear, pulling in data from other sources, etc. Once we we some deployment patterns, we will be able to set default values and configurations that customers expect with an off the shelf product.

   
   
   So it sounds like this will become a product, ,but it needs some work before it is something a customer can install and run with out of the box.  
   
   Finally Chris Lamb was interviewed by Inforworld, and leaves some interesting teasers for Lotusphere announcements around sharing of profile data between different social networks
   
   

   A growing number of people use multiple networks and would like to easily move their profile data between them. Without providing specifics, Lamb said IBM is moving to address the problem.  "That's something that we're looking at, how we aggregate that," he said. "There will be some announcements around the Lotusphere time frame."

   
   
   This sounds very similar to IBM's announcement with Second Life on moving personas between virtual worlds, but I suspect profile data will be easier to exchange then Second Life avatars.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/18/2007 @ 10:19:57 PM | Permalink

Chris gets on the board first on this one (Stuart what happened? :) )

HF6 is out for Quickr 8.0.0.2 and available on Fix Central



SPR Fixes in this release are (but the HF is cumulative so includes earlier fixes)






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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/19/2007 @ 02:49:06 PM | Permalink

Who knew posting Quickr Hotfixes would become a full time job!  Don't get me wrong I think it is great that as the problems are being found the fixes are being put out.

So Quickr HF7 for Windows only is now available on Fix Central



SPR Fixed in HF7  (fix is cumulative it includes all previous fixes)



Stuart is that two in a row :)



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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/20/2007 @ 07:30:54 PM | Permalink

IBM  today announced IBM Ominfind Personal E-mail Search (or IOPES for short) for Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.  I downloaded and installed the Notes version which allows you to select local NSF files to be searched.  The install is a little quirky, for example right up front it warned to me shut down Notes and Sametime though neither were running at the time.

Once the install completed it prompted me to select local databases to index



I selected three local databases, my current mail file and two older archive databases



after this step completed it launched Firefox and began the initialization process, the databases I selected were 550MB, and contain about 20,000 documents, the initialization process took about 10 minutes, but as you will see further down this was only initialization, indexing is not complete yet.



The install also places a Firefox plugin on your desktop to install



This installed the an Omnifind Search in my toobar



Omnifind is now in the process of indexing my e-mails, I left the default setting as gentle, and it does not seem to be hurting performance on my machine.



In addition to the search plugin, if you go to the search page you can specify keywords, as well as sender and recipients to search.  There is also a Tag feature, which I have not played with yet, but looks like you can build custom tags to find data that matches patterns, there are a few predefined tags (Phone Number, URL, Date, Time) and you can build your own.

What I have not been able to find in the Press Release or on the Download Page are the system requirement for IOPES, obviously it requires Lotus Notes, and Firefox ( It does not seem to work in IE).  The system I installed it on is Windows XP running in VMware Workstation with 1 CPU and 512 MB of RAM.  I have Notes 8.0.1 Beta 1 Basic running in this VM.  Right now with the index running it is consuming about 200 MB of RAM, I expect when the index completes it will be using significantly less RAM.   The server it installs can be stopped, and started so you can let it build the initial index when it is convenient.  

I will have to allow the index to complete, and then try out the search, I also have a few more archives I could add in as well ( yes I am somewhat of an e-mail pack rat, but once in a while it comes in handy), and will take a look at how fast the search is as well as how accurate.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/20/2007 @ 08:00:43 PM | Permalink

Thats right December 23rd is Festivus, for those unfamiliar with Festivus, you can view this clip from Seinfeld or read the script.  You can also check out an article that appeared in the New York Times Magaziine in December of 2004.  For anyone interested in purchasing a Festivus Pole, this site has them.

Here is a photo taken in December of 2006 of Molly and I with the office Festivus pole.  The pole is back up this year, but I didn't make it in to that office for a photo this year.



So we are celebrating today, but not Festivus.  December 23rd also happens to be my birthday, so we will celebrate that instead :)

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/23/2007 @ 11:41:09 AM | Permalink

For those of you who have been following along at home (or trying to implement Quickr) you will have noticed that the hotfixes are coming fast and furious.  Along the way that has led to some negative comments around the forums and blogosphere, for example this forum post where the poster says

Four hot fixes in quick order following the release of 8.0.0.2 for Domino also does not give me great confidence in the product.

or a comment to this posting on the Quickr Blog

This is becoming disconcerting... talk about a product released a bit too early...

Well I disagree with both comments, and others that I have heard regarding the frequency of hotfixes, I say keep them coming.  What is happening here is not that the software was released too soon or without testing, rather that IBM has made it easier for all of us, by making these fixes available without first having to find the problem, open a PMR, and then have support provide the hotfix, which all this time was there and coded and could have avoided the problem in the first place.  The Notes from Lotus Support blog covered this topic in September, detailing the creation of Fix Central and the effort to make more hotfixes available this way (you can also note in the comments to the post that entitlement to support is not even a requirement in all cases to be able to download a hotfix).

Another point to consider is that while there have now been six hotfixes for Quickr 8.0.0.2 (curiously numbered 1,2,3,4,6,7, did anyone ever see 5?) they have each been cumulative, so if you ignored them all and then ran in to a situation where you needed a fix, you got them all.

Lets compare this what is going on in other Lotus Products, if you take a look at the Notes/Domino Fix list you can see that the Fixpacks only contain a limited number of fixes, my understanding is the Fixpacks are designed to fix the SPR that are generating the most support calls, not a bad strategy, but look at the numbers of fixes, even if you are running 7.0.2 with a fixpack there are still any number of 1000 known issues you can run in to (enter Murphy).   In additions the releases of versions or Fixpacks rarely if ever coincide with my organizations maintenance schedule, but if the hotfixes were distributed regularly via Fix Central I could at least apply fixes for the majority of known issues each time I have a window to perform maintenance.  There is obviously a little more complexity to doing this for a Domino server with all the various server components as opposed to Quickr but I am sure they could be worked out, for example limiting hotfix builds to only specific versions and fixpack levels.



Today you can download hotfixes for Quickr, Quickplace (see Technote 4017549), and Connections on Fix Central.  There are options to choose Domino and Sametime in the product list, for Domino the Fixpacks are posted, and the Sametime 8.0 Hotfix is available.

I will not complain about too many hotfixes for Quickr, my complaint is some of the other products need to do as good of a job at getting the fixes available so quickly and easily.

Quickr 8.0.0.2 Release History

Quickr 8.0.0.2  - October 29, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF1 - October 31, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF2 - November 21, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF3 - December 9, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF4 - December 10, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF6 - December 19, 2007
Quickr 8.0.0.2 HF7 - December 20, 2007
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/25/2007 @ 02:39:17 PM | Permalink

A quick look back at 2007 and a brief look ahead to 2008.

The biggest project of the year was the  Sametime 7.5.1 upgrade, while we had a few small bumps in the road overall the project was a huge success.  I personally spent a lot of my time this year working on Notes/Domino 8 and now 8.0.1 Beta releases, as well as Quickr 8.0 beta and now the released product.  Lotus Connections was another big focus for me from getting Lotus Connections 1.0 to work with Domino LDAP to building a full environment with the 1.0.2 release, and getting involved with IBM in the design partner program for the next release.   I was fortunate to be able to attend a number of conferences this past year including Lotusphere and Collaboration University, and the IBM Premium Support Seminar.  Launching and keeping up with this blog was a major accomplishment for me this year.

Finally just this morning I completed watching  the entire West Wing series. I never watched it on TV when it aired between 1999 and 2006.  A friend of mine loaned me the first season, and I was hooked.  The seven seasons kept me occupied during my morning workout on the treadmill.   I have a backlog of other things to watch, I think next up is 24 Season 4, Prison Break Season 1, and I am waiting for The Shield Season 6 to come out.  I also think I missed one or two seasons of Rescue Me along the way will have to catch up there as well.  I am always looking for suggestions for new things to watch, as long I have something to hold my interest I am pretty good at putting a few miles in each morning, which is good since I spend the rest of the day sitting at a computer.

Looking ahead to next year, January will be mostly consumed with Lotusphere, I will be speaking at Lotusphere, still working out all of the details so I will post them soon.  I am looking forward to meeting in person many people I have met only in the blogpsphere.  Following Lotusphere I have a busy year planned with Upgrades to Notes/Domino, Quickr, and Sametime planned, as well as working on an implementation of Lotus Connections.  I will also be participating in more managed beta and design partner programs with IBM in 2008.  Personally 2008 will be an exciting year as my wife and I are expecting our second child in the spring.

Happy New Year
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 12/31/2007 @ 12:08:18 PM | Permalink

From the Lotus Connections Forum

The call will take place in two sessions: 8:30 AM EST (1:30 PM GMT Thursday January 10, 2008) and then again at 9:00 PM EST (2:00:00 a.m. Friday January 11, 2008 in GMT) in order to facilitate participation from our clients around the globe.

This call will last approximately 60 minutes. Please dial into the call 5 minutes before the scheduled start.

Call details will be posted shortly on the  Lotus Connections Support site.

Get those questions ready.  

Update:  Chris is correct January 10th is a Thursday (as in tomorrow) technote 1292865 has been corrected and has the conference call information
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/08/2008 @ 07:41:18 PM | Permalink

Ed has broken the news the Wednesday night Lotusphere Party will be at Universal Studios - Island of Adventure



I believe this is a reprise of 2005, but I recall having a good time there, that Hulk ride is amazing. (Jim are we going to get you on the roller coaster this year?)

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/09/2008 @ 08:58:32 PM | Permalink

Looks like you can now register in advance for Hands on Sessions, spotted this e-mail a few minutes ago though a few people I know have tried and no one had been able to log in yet,  Has anyone been able to log on successfully?

The Lotusphere hands-on sessions have become an extremely popular and
highly-rated component of the Lotusphere agenda, In order to maintain those
high attendee ratings, this year we will be accepting reservations for each
of the sessions. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis, and
the demand for each session will determine your level of participation.
Please make your selections carefully, as you will be able to make your
selections only once. Also, please be sure to read the
Lotusphere 2008 hands-on session policy below.
Thank you!

To register click on this link:

https://www-926.ibm.com/events/lotus/lsph2008.nsf/hndsonlogin

You will be asked to provide your Registration Confirmation Number and the
e-mail address that you submitted as part of your Lotusphere Conference
Registration.  Please note:  Make your selections carefully, as you will be
able to make your selections only once.


Hands-On Session Registration Policy:

Reserved" seating in hands-on sessions is based on enrollment via the
registration site. Attendees who pre-enroll for hands-on sessions will be
admitted first (this includes both "keyboard" enrollees and "keyboard
partner" enrollees) 10 minutes prior to session start. At 5 minutes before
session start time, standby and then gallery seating will be admitted. Any
pre-registered enrollees arriving less than 5 minutes before start time
will forfeit their spot and be seated based on standby
availability.

For each session the first 25 enrollments are reserved as keyboard
enrollees and the subsequent 25 are reserved as keyboard partners.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/10/2008 @ 02:46:42 PM | Permalink

I received my e-mail this morning with my log in information for Lotusphere 2008 online.  A quick look at this years site and it is using three of the Lotus Connections components.  Profiles, Dogear, and Communities.



It would be nice if for those of us who already have a profile (and other data)  in the Greenhouse if that information would be pulled over, that might be something for next year as I mentioned when the Atlas announcement was made there is certainly the hint of announcements coming on aggregation of data from across different social networks.  Should be easy to do if in this case both  networks are running the same platform.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/13/2008 @ 12:44:40 PM | Permalink

Every year the first day of Lotusphere coincides with the NFL Championship games (yes I know it used to be Super Bowl Sunday but that was before my time at Lotusphere).   Today the Giants beat the Cowboys to earn a trip to the NFC Championship game in Green Bay which kicks off about the same time as the Lotusphere Welcome party.  Hopefully they will have more TV's out on the beach this year, last year it was hard to get close to a TV to see the action, of course last year the Patriots were playing and there are one or two people from the Boston area at Lotusphere. The Patriots play the early game this year which will be over before the party.

John, I hope I can count on you to hang out and watch the game, we were together last year when the Bears clinched the NFC Championship maybe you can return the favor this year.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/13/2008 @ 08:16:23 PM | Permalink

Blog has been upgraded to version Blogsphere 3.0.1 B8a, (was running B6 so upgrade was really due) to enable support for BBMetablog 1.2.2.  Test post from blackberry seemed to work fine.  Thanks to Jason Hook for BBMetalblog, and Declan Sciolla-Lynch   for getting out the upgrade to the Blogsphere template.  I also found a new feature I had asked Declan about a while ago in this version which is the ability to add code to the <head> section of the blog via the configuration document, preventing the need to make the change in the code.  This makes Blogsphere upgrades even easier then they are already without worrying about changes to code if you want anything additional in the <head> section, so thanks again Declan.

Chris - thanks for being there for the upgrade today.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/14/2008 @ 05:29:00 PM | Permalink

Testing BBMetaBlog 1.2.2. If all goes well you are reading this.

Update: test edit
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/14/2008 @ 05:05:49 PM | Permalink

I decided to take the Notes design team up on their offer, and will be teaming up with Notes calendar designer John Lance in the 3rd annual Lotusphere Boat Race!.  Looks like there are still a few spots available in the race, so find your crew and sign up before all the slots are gone.  John and I will be out racing at 1:05 on Monday.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/14/2008 @ 08:17:16 PM | Permalink

I think Nathan, Chris, Michael, Devin, Tim, and David are trying to tell us something, I just can't quite figure out what it is.  I wonder if it has anything to do with bleeding yellow.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/15/2008 @ 08:20:42 PM | Permalink

Off to Florida, should be boarding the plane in about 15 minutes.  Heading a little further south then Orlando to see my parents, and will drive up to Orlando on Saturday night.  Right now the forecast for the week looks like cool weather, packed the Giants sweatshirt for the beach on Sunday evening (no Hawaiian shirt or me).

More later from Florida.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/17/2008 @ 12:45:45 PM | Permalink

The folks over at Lotus911 have announced BleedYellow.com

Lotus 911 is pleased to announce that registration is now open at BleedYellow.com. BleedYellow is a Lotus Connections site open to all those who bleed yellow. After registering at the site, you will be able to work with all of the components.

So head on over to BleedYellow and register yourself.

You can also post items from this blog to dogear on  BleedYellow, by clicking this button



Want to add this to your blog, this code works in the blogsphere template, it will work in others, just replace the blogsphere tags with the appropriate variables

<a href="javascript:dogear('<$BSPlinkURL$>','<$BSEntryTitle$>');"><img src="http://www.bleedyellow.com/images/icon_bullet_holes2.gif" border=1></a>

<script type="text/javascript">
var h='http://www.bleedyellow.com/dogear';
var d=document;
var b=d.body;
var e=encodeURIComponent;



function dogear(targetHref, title) {
        if(b) {
                var p = d.createElement('script');
                p.charset='UTF-8';
                p.src= h + '/tools/blet.js';
                b.appendChild(p);
        }

        var u=d.getElementById('dogear_postUrl');

        if(u != null) {
                u=u.href;
        }
        else {
                u = h+ '/post?url=' + targetHref + '&title=' +e(title);
        }

        dw = open( u +'&ver=0.9','dogear','toolbars=no,width=670,height=650');
        if(!(dw==null||typeof(dw)=='undefined')) {
                dw.focus()
        }
}
</script>

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/18/2008 @ 02:37:50 PM | Permalink

Incredible first day of Lotusphere.  Started the day with three Jumpstart sessions.

First up was JMP403 QuickStart: IBM Lotus Quickr in Action, quite a bit of the session was focused on Quickr 8.1 and it looks good, will cover all the details as they are announced at the Opening General Session tomorrow.

Next was JMP206 Web Services Bootcamp presented by Bill Buchan, while I am not a developer this was an excellent session showing capabilities in Domino for web services, differences between versions, and best (and worst) practices to look out for.  Bill was even offering up donuts from the podium.

After lunch was JMP401 QuickStart: Warp 9 -- Getting Up to Speed on Social Software and IBM Lotus Connections, this session had something for everyone, if you are new to Lotus Connections there was an overview of what is Lotus Connections,  the components and architecture.  The second half of the session was on best practices for adoption of Lotus Connections in the enterprise.

After a quick break it was off to a reception for Notes/Domino 8 design partners, and then off to the beach for the welcome reception and of course to watch the Giants game.  It was cold out on the beach (well not anywhere near as cold a Green Bay).  Great party, and then we went back to the Yacht Club to watch the second half in the warmth of the bar.  John and I did meet up in the end at the same time and place as last year so we are now 2 for 2 with his Bears going to the Super Bowl last year, and the Giants going this year.  One other note, apparently the folks at Lotus put out a lot more TV's on the beach when the Patriots are playing, I only found two TV's this year, last year there were many more.

Only a few pictures from day one can be found on Flickr

Getting ready to call it a night, looking forward to the Opening General session tomorrow morning, I have a yellow badge so I will be in the 8:00 showing of the OGS, and as long as the battery holds, and the network connectivity is good will be live blogging .  Of course right after lunch tomorrow there is the little matter of a boat race to attend to.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/20/2008 @ 11:04:00 PM | Permalink

Looking for me at Lotusphere? Follow me on Twitter, you can find my stream here, or you can follow me on the Lotusphere Twitter stream.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/20/2008 @ 11:48:45 AM | Permalink

You might recall this story a while back about IBM using RFID to track conference attendees.  So no big surprise to see the RFID readers outside of the session rooms today.





I know this bothers some people, I have no objections.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/20/2008 @ 10:55:08 PM | Permalink

excluse the typos, will clean it up later - constantly updating so refresh for the latest

The band and Symphony Orchestra were rocking, Mike Rhodin took the stage with his Connections Profile on the screen.



 Bob Costas introduced as the guest speaker.  



Bob it a little to pro the New England Patriots for me,  

Mke Rhodin is back on stage, taling about Collaboration and the changing workplace.  History of collaboration to where we are now Community Centric Collaboration, talking about  his daughters Facebook page and how kids today air their disagreements are sorted out online, not in the school yard like when he was a kid ( I think he used the same story at the NY Lotus Collaboration Summit last September) .  Now on to how Collaboration leads to innovation which leads to growth, and also helps attract and retain talent.  Mike is now talking about how we need to move from Search to Discovery, search provides results on what you ask, discovery lets you find new information for example using tagging in Connections allowing people to find information, and people with common interests or the skills they need.

First announcment - new agreements between IBM & RIM for increased development of mobile solutions for  Blackberry.

Mike is now talking about Open standards, vs proprietary formats, and takes a nice shot at Microsoft Office in the process.

CTO of SAP Dr. Vishal Skika just took the stage with Mike, announcing "Atlantic" to deliver SAP tools in Lotus Notes, the first co-developed soltuon between Lotus & SAP, the tool is designed to drive utilization of SAP by providing data in the familiar Lotus Notes environment.   First product will ship in Q4 this year.  Travel and expense management, as well as vacation and leave requests will be in the first release, as well as access to reporting.

Ron Sebastian - the demo guru on stage now for a demo

Allistair Rennie VP of development and support now on stage talking about Notes and Domino.  Now running a showdown between Jeff Eisen (Notes) and Russ Holden (Domino) almost in a take off of the Macintosh vs. PC commercials.  Lots of good stuff about the client - key points iPhone is DWA access, Ubuntu Linux will become a supported platform;.  Macintosh 8.5 Public beta is now going.  From the Server side increased performance, reduction in I/O and Storage, optimized HTTP to support new DWA interface.

Ron is back on stage now demoing the clients, and showing Widgets in 8.0.1, support for Google Gadgets, and creation of widgets from feeds, web pages, and notes views.  Showing widgets that use live tags i.e stock quotes, flight status etc.  Ron is now showing DWA Lite designed for faster web access to mail and day at a glance.  Rich web client designed for performance.Now demoing DWA on iPhone.

Russ Holden now intorducing Domino 8.5, starting with better ID management, centralized vault where ID's can be stored.  Notes Client can retrieve ID at runtime.  Opening up the directory, and new data storage model to reduce duplicate attachments.  

Domino Designer 8.5 built on Eclipse announced, Maureen Leeland on stage to demo, with the new designer you can both design web2.0 applications and re-skin existing applications to use the new look and feel.

Kevin Cavanaugh now on stage talking about Symphony.  Symphony is more then an IBM distribution of Open Office, Beta 4 will ship soon with support for API, and the ability ot leverage applications and mashups in Symphony that will also run in Notes.  Kevin mentioned the completely sold out Symphony boot camp at Lotusphere, look for the sympny boot camp on the road at http://symphony.lotus.com.

Bruce Morse is now on stage to tale about Unified Communications, happy anniversary Sametime 10 years 1998-2008.  Now showing a customer video on Sametime, I was filmed for a similar video which will be shown at the Unified Communications keynote tomorrow morning.  Bruce is walking through Sametime Entry, Standard and  Advanced as well as Sametime Unitifed Telephony.  Ron is back on stage demoing Sametime Advanced, community broadcast tools and skilltap, as well as persistent chat rooms.  Screen sharing without launching full meeting.  Sametime Unified Telephony adds presence awareness for phone and IM, not only Click to call, but integration with external phone systems.  Ability to provide a single phone number to a user which can follow them and ring where they are when they want it to.

The screen which has been yellow all morning just turned purple which means Larry Bowden has taken the stage to cover Websphere Portal.  Websphere Portal is not an area I focus in, going to stretch the fingers and let others cover this section in detail.
 
Jeff Schick now on stage to discuss Social Software.  Social software is changing the way we collaborate, work and play.  Looks like we are getting close to some Connections and Quickr announcements.  Quickr 8.1 shipping in March,, making it easier then ever to  share documents.  Full integration with Notes, Symphony, and Outlook, and Enterprise Content management integration coming later this year..  Demo of Quickr Personal File Sharing template.   Quickr futures beyond 8.1 watchlists, document rating, access control to limit data to groups and individuals, and the ability to recommend a document   Demoing integration of Quickr and Connections, and the new Media Library for sharing podcasts and videos.

Jeff has now moved on to Lotus Connections and is working his way to Connections R2 announcements, even more language support, and language translation services.  Integration to Yahoo answers, Facebook, easier customization of Profiles and Communities..  My Connections home page which utilizes widgets and mashups.  Offline support for Activities, and moble device support for connections.  Demo of Connections R2.  Profiles is integrated with links to Quickr Personal file sharing.  Demo of Connectons on Blackberry looks GREAT!.   Communities now contains a discussion forum, and includes integration with Sametime Advanced to save chats.  Communities also integrates with Wiki;s in Lotus Quickr and other wikis.  Demo of Atlas for Lotus Connections.

Jeff just introduced Lotus Mashups, a web based  graphical tool to design mashups, and maintain a catalog of mashups.  Mashups will ship with many prebuilt components.  Mashups will work in Connections, Portal, and Notes. .

Mike Rhodin back on stage, big dramatic fanfare for the SMB announcement.  Lotus Foundations shipping later this year using technology acquired in the recently announced Net Integration Technologies.

Mike is now introducing Bluehouse software as a service for collaboration complimenting Lotus Foundations to support the external collaboration needs of SMB.  Ron is back on stage to demo Bluehouse.  Bluehouse is in Managed Beta today.

Mike is now wrapping up the OGS.

More later



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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/21/2008 @ 08:05:53 AM | Permalink

As i had mentioned, myself and Notes calendar designer John Lance teamed up for the Lotusphere Boat Race.  I am happy to report that John and I made it to the first buoy and back (yes there were four or five buoys to actually get through.  The wind definitely played a factor, though I might have done better if the boat was controlled with a mouse and keyboard.

John is pointing where we need to go, the boat had it's own ideas, at one point we ran ashore and needed a push out.

 


On the left is John and I finally approaching the first buoy, on the right is Terri and Declan who are on their way back already having reached all the buoys.  I think that should be a clear picture of the lack of progress John and I made.  On the bright side, we don't have to worry about our schedules Thursday for the finals.



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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/21/2008 @ 02:34:25 PM | Permalink

He is also a Giants fan apparently



Amazing what an IBM Executive will do for a customer :)

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/21/2008 @ 10:45:18 PM | Permalink

I was invited to attend the blogger Q & A with Mike Rhodin this evening, I was trying to capture all of the Q&A and take pictures, and it was just impossible to keep up.  Many good questions and answers, and Chris Miller will be posting it as a podcast.  I have not had the chance yet to go back and read my live blog from the OGS this morning, but I suspect when I do I will realize it was a good thing to leave the Q&A to the podcast.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/21/2008 @ 11:06:24 PM | Permalink

Quick wrap up of day 2 and a look ahead to what will be a busy Tuesday for me.  Got a nice early start today in order to get a good spot in the front of the Opening General Session, you can see my photos from the OGS on Flickr.  After the OGS I spent some time at the vendor showcase, followed by lunch and boat racing.  In the afternoon I attended the following sessions

ID501 IBM Lotus Quick Technical and Architecture Overview
ID310 Focus on Sametime Integrating IBM Lotus Sametime with Telephony

I thought I would live blog from both, but my battery was drained, and while I had found a seat near an outlet, was told it was a fire violation to be plugged in, so no live blogging, and no time to fill in the blanks now.   What I can tell you is both sessions were packed, especially the "Sametime all the time" room which seems to be full every session.

After the sessions was a meeting with other members of the GCPC, followed by the Mike Rhodin blogger Q&A, IBM Customer Reception, and Jamfest.  I have lots more pictures will try to get them on Flickr tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I will be participating in the Unified Communications Keynote I will be featured in a video, and participating live in a panel discussion on Unified Communications.  In the afternoon I will be speaking at:



More tomorrow, now it is time to get some sleep.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/21/2008 @ 11:51:00 PM | Permalink

I know it has been quiet today here and on the twitter feed, been a very busy day at Lotusphere.  Tomorrow the schedule will break a little so hopefully some updates and pictures.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/22/2008 @ 11:41:22 PM | Permalink

OK So I have lost count which day is this?  This is actually the first time I have really sat down in front of a computer in two days (it actually might be the first time I sat down in two days).  Tuesday went something like this, first thing in the morning participated in the panel at the UC Keynote.  Lunchtime Q & A with analysts, followed by a presentation at "The Customer Speaks - selling Lotus internally".  Before and after the presentations was preparation for this morning Social Computing Keynote. Dinner, and made it to sleep a little after midnight.  Another early start today to speak at the Social Computing keynote.  I did manage to spend some time at the vendor showcase today, as well as in the meet the developers labs.  In the evening I tried to be in two places at once, of course one of the places was the Yacht and Beach Convention Center, and the other was the Swan, not exactly close to each other.  I did manage to stop by the Bloggers BOF session for about 20 minutes, wish I could have stayed the whole time, oddly enough at this time I can't find anyone who blogged the session I suppose that is ironic.

Tonight at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, I rode the Hulk, and even though I really didn't want to I went on the Spiderman ride again too, it was only fair I dragged John out Boat Racing, so he repaid the favor and dragged me on to Spiderman.  

Tomorrow (well today) I am going to try something completely different and actually attend a few sessions something I have not done since Monday.  I actually have this crazy idea in my head that I will be at a 7 AM BOF at the Swan but I am really going to try.

If all goes well and my battery is charged I will live blog from Gurupalooza, and Ask the Developers, which are two of the highlights of the last day of Lotusphere.  I have loads of pictures to sort through and upload, and a bunch of other stuff to write about Lotusphere, and will hopefully get to it over the next few days.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/24/2008 @ 12:02:35 AM | Permalink

Started this morning at the Lotus Connections Community BOF session, considering this was a 7 AM session following the party at Universal Studios was very well attended.  Interesting discussion with the Connections Product and Design team on deployment issues, both technical, and on adoption techniques.
Next up was a session on Policies with a look at new features in 8.0 and what is ahead in 8.5.  Major impovements in 8 in simplifying the structure of polices, and allowing true lockdown of Notes Client setting that can be enforced.

The next session was a Lotus Connections deployment session, which covered deployment scenarios, best practices, and common mistakes.  Like many other sessions this week the room was full and overflowed.

I am currently sitting in Gurupalooza.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/24/2008 @ 11:38:56 AM | Permalink

Wow.... just like that Lotusphere is over.  This is the fourth Lotusphere I have attended, but the first time I ever attended the closing session.   I never watch the Food Network, and had not heard of Alton Brown he was very entertaining.  

Lotusphere next year is January 18-22, and IBM announced that they are now committed to holding Lotusphere at the current location through 2015.

It will take me a little time to organize my thoughts and put together a Lotusphere wrap up post, which will probably not happen until the weekend.  I knew going in to this week that I had set myself up for a very busy week, but I don't think I realized just how thin I had spread myself, I really thought I would have blogged more content from Lotusphere, there just turned out to be no time.

So now off to find something to do in Orlando this evening, and an early flight home tomorrow
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/24/2008 @ 05:41:55 PM | Permalink

A question that came up a number of times at Lotusphere was when MSN would be supported by the Sametime Gateway.  It seems clear from the responses that while there are technical issues, the business issues of Microsoft agreeing to the federation is the real blocker.  While this is going on it looks like AOL is moving to support XMPP.  According to a comment left by an AOL Architect

Thanks for blogging about our commitment to openness. We’ve been working
really hard over the past few years in making all of our services more
open and standards based, working with the SIP as well as the
Jabber/XMPP communities. Our XMPP gateway at xmpp.oscar.aol.com, which
we’ve been working on for a while now, is just one approach we’re
tinkering with. As you pointed out, though, this particular server at
xmpp.oscar.aol.com is a test server, so I wouldn’t count on it being
reliable or even continuously available until we put some more work into
it to bring it up to our standards.

So while MSN continues to be proprietary, and for now not willing to federate with IBM, AOL is moving to be more open and compatible.  If AOL moved to a stable XMPP implementation it could eliminate the need for provisioning for gateway connectivity to AOL.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/24/2008 @ 09:41:32 PM | Permalink

What a week, it flew by so fast, I can't believe it was really a whole week.  I flew home Friday morning, and slept eleven hours Friday night which probably exceeded my total for the previous week.  Here are some random observations from the week

• iPhones were everywhere, I was surprised by how many of them I saw over the course of the week
• I saw more MacBooks then I expected to, I know they have picked up in popularity, but did not realize how many people are using them.
• Sessions in general were packed, especially the "Sametime all the time" room, I only made it to two sessions there, but both were packed and overflowed.
• Even Thursday morning sessions were crowded, I attended a 7 AM BOF that had a great turnout considering the time slot.
• People got really bent out of shape over the use of RFID technology to track session attendance.
  
  Here are some release dates I captured from the week (don't hold me to them)
• Notes/Domino 8.0.1 - March
• Quickr  8.1 March
• Connections R2 - June
• Sametime Advanced - I thought I had written something down on this one - anyone?
• Sametime Unified Telephony - I believe this is second half of the year.
• "Atlantic" (SAP integration) - Q4
  
  While Mac has definitely become more popular, the announcement that Ubuntu linux support is coming in 8.5 is great news, which even made it to Slashdot, where I rarely see any Notes related articles.  Will be interesting to see next year how many more Macs there are, and how many more people will be running Linux.
  
  It will definitely be an interesting year as all of the products start to ship, will have to watch and see how the SMB market is won over with the release of Foundations and Bluehouse.
  
  I came away from Lotusphere with two products of interest one being Lotus Mashups, and the other being Lotus Forms, I think these two would fit in nicely with all the other products I am already using (Notes/Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections).
  
  On a personal note, over the course of the week I got to catch up in person with old friends, and meet in person many people who I had previously only been in touch with online.   There were other people I really wanted to meet in person, some of them I even know I was in the same room as on different occasions, but never caught up with them.
  
  Finally I just want to say thank you to those of you who stopped me and told me you read my blog, and also to those of you who stopped me and told me I did a great job in my speaking, it was really greatly appreciated.  Of course there was the one person who threatened to stop reading my blog if it became all about the Giants for the next week :).  
  
  So one week from now I will be watching the Giants beating the Patriots in the Superbowl, three weeks the Mets report to spring training, and in 357 days Lotusphere 2009 gets underway, see you there.
  
  You can find my pictures from the week on Flickr, I will be adding some more this week

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/27/2008 @ 07:14:00 PM | Permalink

Declan is proposing "Forum Friday" for the Lotus Blogging Community

During the Bloggers BOF at Lotusphere there was a discussion on how some people were worried that the topic that they were posting might be considered to be aimed at beginners and would not be of interest to others in the Lotus Blogging Community.

The idea is called 'Forum Friday' and it is very easy to take part. All you need to do is go to the DeveloperWorks ( notes.net ) website and pick one of the many forums that are available, Have a look through some of the questions and pick one to answer. Write up your answer on you own blog and then reply in the forum with a link to your blog entry.

So head on over and leave a comment volunteering to participate.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 01/29/2008 @ 11:53:51 AM | Permalink

Other titles considered for this post
-19 -1 =18
- Bob Costas was wrong!

I watched the game in HDTV on my friends new 52" TV, and what a game it was.  Putting aside the Giants for one second, probably one of the all time best Superbowls.  Being that I am a huge Giants fan just made it even better.








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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/03/2008 @ 10:48:42 PM | Permalink

During Lotusphere I blogged this photo of Mike Rhodin wearing a Giants hat,




it was also included in my presentation at "The Customer Speaks" session on Tuesday, where I had already declared the Patriots final record to be 18-1.

During Lotusphere many people were of the belief that I photoshopped the hat on his head, and again today I received numerous comments about this picture and it's validity.  So to set the record straight the photo is real, and the history goes back a year.  At Lotusphere 2007 I met Mike Rhodin at the Notes/Domino 8 Managed Beta/Design Partner reception, and had my photo taken with him, so this year when I saw him at the IBM Customer Reception on Monday night decided to get another picture with him, and at the last second grabbed my giant hat, and put it on him.  Another thing you should know is that I am not even close to being talented enough with Photoshop or any other editing software to have staged this.  Now I realize that the hat is not straight which is why many people thought it was fake, well the reason for that is Mike Rhodin is much taller then me, I had to stretch to get the hat on his head,  In case you are wondering, what he had to say about this, his reaction was "This is going to wind up on a blog somewhere isn't it".
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/04/2008 @ 07:05:10 PM | Permalink

To recap the instructions are

    1 - Go to Wikipedia's random article page. The first article you get is the name of your band.

    2 - Go to the Random Quotations page. The last four words of the last quote is the album title.

    3 - Go to Flickr's Interesting photo page. Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.

    4 - Put it all together to make your album. Either crop it to CD cover size, or just use the raw image itself ... the only rule is you're only allowed to add the album title and     artist title.

Hey it was something to do while on a conference call...........
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/05/2008 @ 05:26:34 PM | Permalink

Lotus Quickr Content Integrator general availability has been announced for March 21st, have not seen a GA announcement for Quickr 8.1 yet, but the time frame seems right for them to be released together.



Lotus Quickr Content Integrator product information
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/06/2008 @ 06:56:50 PM | Permalink

Lots of ND 8.0.1 Technotes are appearing today, including more information about Lotus Notes Traveler.

Technote 7011701 Detailed system requirements - IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1
Technote 1294566 IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1 - Troubleshooting
Technote 1294477 IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1 - Limitations and restrictions

There are a number of items to be aware of detailed in the technote, but probably most importantly is this one regarding mail deleted on the mobile device.

Items are deleted immediately on the mobile device. They are not moved to a trash folder on the device.

As previously announced Windows Mobile is the only supported platform for this release, but I expect to see more mobile platforms in the near future, which is good news, I have been running Traveler for a while now, and as I have mentioned my only complaint so far has been the Windows Mobile device, not traveler itself.  Since the first beta drop install and configuration has been easy, and it has been very stable, and of course if you are already running Notes/Domino you can't beat the price.

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/06/2008 @ 07:19:27 PM | Permalink

Interesting article on the CIA's use of Social Computing sites and YouTube to gather intelligence.

In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.

U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media.

While I doubt they have employees whose exclusive function is watching Youtube, and I suspect some of it is automated, probably an interesting job, which I would expect requires some  language skills as well.

Apparently at least the CIA thinks there is intelligence out there :)

CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/07/2008 @ 04:42:09 PM | Permalink

Welcome to two new bloggers Andy Yiu and Vineet Rohatgi (Vinny), Andy and Vinny both work at IBM in L2 Support.  I have worked many Sametime PMR with them, and done quite a bit of work on the Sametime Gateway with them as well.

You also might recognize Andy and Vinny from Lotusphere as they presented HND301 Deploying & Managing the IBM Lotus Sametime Connect Client.

Head on over and welcome them to the community.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/08/2008 @ 03:46:43 PM | Permalink

OK I didn't come up with a forum post to answer today, but thought I would put this tip out there.  You can view the Lotus Fourms, and Product fix lists right in your Notes client.  This article explains how to register your notes ID, and setup your client to access the content in Notes, you can even replicate the databases locally.



If you need a proxy server to access the internet don't miss this section on configuring a proxy.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/08/2008 @ 03:40:00 PM | Permalink

81%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/10/2008 @ 07:40:38 AM | Permalink

If you never heard of the Scaphoid bone, well neither did I until yesterday, but the on my left wrist might be broken.  This all started back on Super Bowl Sunday when I took my daughter ice skating, and took a little spill.  Last week I had made an appointment to get the hand x-rayed, but the Dr. cancelled, and it was feeling better so I never rescheduled.  The hand though continued to have pain, even when not being used, so yesterday I had it x-rayed.  The x-ray does not show a break, but apparently x-rays can not conclusively see a break in the Scaphoid bone, so next up is an MRI on Thursday evening.  For now the hand is in a splint and in a fair amount of pain, not to mention slowing down my typing quite a bit.  I don't know, going skating seemed like a good idea at the time, and Molly seemed to enjoy it, she even asked to go again this Sunday, but I am not sure how fast that is going to happen.
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/12/2008 @ 07:20:25 PM | Permalink

So quite the coincidence I spent most of today planning and sizing a production environment for Lotus Connections, and planned on blogging about it, at the same time Yancy Lent of Planet Lotus fame was curious (yes he actually used the word curiosity so I had to answer him :) ) What does it take to implement Lotus Connections.  So I hope this helps answer the question.

If you are just looking to get exposed to the functionality of Lotus Connections there is a Pilot Install available, the pilot install will handle the WAS, DB2 and Lotus Connections install with a simple wizard.  I posted about the pilot install when it was introduced in 1.0.1.  The install is easy, you will be up and running in 30-60 minutes depending on the machine you install it on, and you can test drive connections.  The pilot install does not include the HTTP server so you have to include the port number in the URL, not a big deal for a test drive.  In addition conversion of a pilot install to production is supported.

Moving on to a production install, I will address each component and it's requirements, I am not going to cover LDAP here as most organizations already have their LDAP directory in place, and will use the existing directory for Connections. (supported LDAP Servers are Domino 7.0.2 or later, Tivoli Directory Server 6.0.0.3, Sun Java System Directory 5.2, or Microsoft Active Directory 2003)

Websphere Application Server (WAS) - The five Lotus Connections services are Websphere applications so the first task is to install Websphere, note that there are two versions of websphere WAS or WAS Network Deployment, (WAS ND) if you are planning on doing clustering you must use the WAS ND Installer.  You can install Websphere on Windows 2003 (Standard or Enterprise), Red Hat ES 4, SUSE Enterprise 10 Server, or AIX 5.3.0.4 or later.  The installation of Websphere takes anywhere from 20 minutes or longer depending on your hardware. You also need to install the WAS Update Installer, and install the Required Fixes, I would plan 2 hours to get Websphere and all the patches installed.  

Database - There are three supported Databases, DB2 9.1, Oracle 10g  or MS SQL 2005 Enterprise (note should you go the SQL Route you need to use Windows 2003 Enterprise not standard for both the DB as well as WAS).  In a production environment it is recommended that the DB Server be on separate hardware from WAS.  Remember you will be creating 5 databases one for each feature.

I would suggest the following guide to selecting a database platform, if you have any one of the supported databases in your organization already, and a dedicated team of DBA's who manage it, go with that and nicely convince them to create and manage your databases.  If you don't have an existing database environment, then use DB2 as you get the limited license to use it with Connections when you purchase Connections.

Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) - TDI is used to populate the Profiles database, and sync data from different sources (LDAP, HR System etc) on an ongoing basis, the recommendation if possible is to install TDI on the same box as the database.

At this point you have the minimum requirements you need start the actual Lotus Connections install, but.... there are some other recommended components

IBM HTTP Server for WAS (IHS) - you need to install the HTTP server which is an IBM implementation of apache if you want URL's that don't contain port numbers when you access Lotus Connections, simply put it is the difference between a link like this "http: //myconnectionssever:9080/activites" or "http: //myconnectionserver/activities".  I would also caution you that each Connections service will have it's own port number, so you probably want to use an HTTP server, you can map all five services to one HTTP server.  Again in production you want this on a separate box then WAS or the DB.  When installing IHS make sure you install the plugins for WAS.  You will need  an hour to install and configure IHS.

Caching Proxy - it is strongly recommended to place a caching proxy in front of the IHS Server, if you have an existing caching proxy you can use that, or you can use Websphere Edge Components.  This can greatly improve performance, and maximize the resources of you IHS and WAS servers.

There are a few tasks left before you are ready to install Lotus Connections

Database Creation, depending on your database platform the Infocenter contains instructions on creating the databases for Connections, and the scripts are contained in the install.  I have created the databases on DB2, it will take you five minutes to create the databases for Activities, Blogs, Communities, and Dogear.  Profiles will be a little more involved as you need to install TDI, create the database, map the fields from your directory, and then populate it from your LDAP.  Depending on the size of your directory this could take a while to run.  Once I had TDI configured and my fields mapped it took about 20 minutes for my database to populate 20,000 users.  

At this point you have some decisions to make regarding your WAS architecture, you can create multiple WAS Profiles with in one WAS installation and install each feature in it's own profile (this is recommended and supported) or you can have multiple installations of WAS which means more hardware of course.  I will talk more about how to do this and sizing in Part 2 (hopefully tomorrow).  If you are looking to do a simple proof of concept install (and did not use the pilot install) you can install all 5 services in one profile, however this is not recommended for  production, and if you are doing clustering will provide some serious limitations.

Once you have created your WAS profiles, you need to configure Federated Repositories, this connects WAS to your LDAP directory.

Congratulations you are now ready to install Lotus Connections.  As you hopefully realize at this point, Lotus Connections is made up of five services (Activities, Blogs, Communities, Dogear, Profiles)  each service is it's own install so if you are planning on running all five services you will be running the installer five times.

So this is Part 1, in Part 2 I will talk about WAS and considerations for how many profiles, some more detailed requirements, and clustering.  In Part 3 I will cover more on the specific requirements for each Connections feature, ,and in Part 4 I will cover more on TDI, so stay tuned for more.
 
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Posted by Mitch Cohen on 02/13/2008 @ 08:10:00 PM | Permalink

In Part 1 I covered an overview of the components required to implement Lotus Connections.  This post will focus on Websphere Application Server (WAS) and considerations for deploying WAS for Lotus Connections.  

Remember WAS is available for many different platforms, in fact more platforms then Lotus Connections is supported on, so make sure you check the Lotus Connections Software requirements when selecting a platform for WAS

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