Gmail 2010 = Lotus Notes 1995?

A very interesting article from PC Pro comparing and contrasting the progress of Google Mail with Lotus Notes. Comparing a robust reliable product matured over many years to the new players on the block reminds me of an old anecdote my Dad used to tell; "When I was a kid my father knew nothing. It's amazing what he has learned since then."

"Comparing the Notes architecture back then (all of which is still in the product, even now) with what Google is laboriously developing, as if there were no prior art, is pretty illuminating: Notes does smart replication between servers and clients, works offline or in low-bandwidth connections admirably well, secures the inter-machine traffic with robust levels of encryption, doesn’t have to sit on top of protocols used for other things, stamps messages with irrefutable digital identities so you can verify who the sender really is. These are all things which SMTP (on the one hand) and webmail over http (on the other) are struggling to reproduce, the best part of 20 years later."

Full Story: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/01/15/gmail-2010-lotus-notes-1995/

The Perfect Job Interview

It is always important to understand your potential employer when considering how to answer interview questions.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Saving an email directly to the file system from Lotus Notes

I have pretty much lost count of the number of times MS Outlook users who have been upgraded to Lotus Notes have asked me how to save an email either to their file system or to their desktop. The most commonly stated reason for this is so that all the emails, files and documents related to a project can all be saved in one folder on a shared drive. Most organisations now recognise that collaborating through shared drives creates a whole raft of problems including security, duplication, compliance and the inability to find the "one version of the truth".

This capability is pretty much redundant to Lotus users since they have many ways of collaborating including Teamrooms, Quickr Places, Wikis, Blogs and Connections Communities. These tools include access control, search, versioning and all the various features that promote good information management. However, we must remember that users do tend to become a bit set in their ways, so if they do want to copy mail messages to their file system I point them at the free File Navigator sidebar plugin for Lotus Notes 8.5 and above available from OpenNTF.org.

My frolleague Darren Adams wrote about it last year. Quite simply it shows your file system in your Lotus Notes sidebar and you can drag and drop files and email to and from it. Specifically, you can drag emails to folders on the file system where they will be stored in their entirety as .eml documents* (including embedded graphics and attachments). You can also drag multiple emails at the same time. Very cool and great for knocking an old objection on the head.

Notes:
1. The Quickr Connectors can also create .eml versions of email messages by drag and drop but of course these are stored in Quickr Places rather then the file system.
2. Lotus Notes 8.5.x has an .eml viewer built in if you have the Quickr connectors installed: See here: http://tinyurl.com/ydm9xcy

8 Bit Fun (Pun)

Click the picture for the appalling pun. I would apologise - but I think it's very funny :0)

Why better isn't always best

I guess it is now pretty evident that humans are not the greatest at predicting the future. It is well established that generals tend to prepare to fight the previous war (hence aircraft carriers and fighter jets take on AK47 and IED's). Looking back at the predictions from the 1930's we see reusable rocket ships and hand held ray guns being on the cards whilst in the 50's folks were predicting we would be eating food pills and flying around in jet packs. In fact we only have to look back 10 years to see some predictions by noted futurologist and author Arthur C. Clark which have mainly been shown to be hopelessly wrong (All coal mines closed, Humans cloned?).

So how did they miss real game changers like television, mobile phones, personal computers and of course our old friend the Internet? Perhaps the answer is that, in these 4 examples, they were solutions waiting for people to notice that they needed them. For example the Victorians didn't sit watching a painting in the corner of their living room wishing it would move.

But strangely a lot of recent work has not been about introducing new game changers but rather has been in making things better. On the audio side manufacturer have moved us off vinyl records onto CD, then SACD then DVD-Audio but actually more and more people are perfectly happy with sub standard low bit rate MP3's because they can carry their entire music collection around with them. Similarly with video, manufactures moved us from VHS/Betamax to DVD to Blueray and HD but so many of us consume low quality video on the likes of YouTube.com or the BBC iPlayer because of the vast amount of content. How many people don't even bother carrying around a dedicated camera anymore because the one on their mobile phone (with poor lens, low resolution and rubbish flash) is good enough?

Similarly, desktop operating systems (and I don't just mean Windows Vista) have been piling on more and more capabilities requiring more and more horse power when out of the blue a massive market for netbooks emerged because many people have quite simple requirements easily served by a low cost, low capabilities device especially when it can be much more mobile and also always connected through WiFi and 3g. Look at the motor industry, particularly in America, and the vehicles were getting bigger and stronger when the customers were crying out for cars that were smaller and more environmentally sound. Witness the success of that glorified milk float the Toyota Prius.

All of those improvements were better in many ways than their preceding versions but being better is not enough. You need to ensure that things are better in a way that embraces the needs and requirements of the customer. Partly this can be achieved through Agile Development. The key tenets of this design philosophy is to introduce new features faster and ensure that they are aligned to what the customers want by involving them at regular intervals. This is what the Lotus Design Partner program is all about - letting business partners, developers and end users have the chance to ensure that what Lotus is building is what people need.

And I think this is reflected in the scope of the Lotus portfolio now. On Premise, Hosted or Cloud based depending on what is right for a particular organisation. Thin client, thick client, browser client, mobile client depending on what is right for a particular user. And a full set of capabilities to truly allow people to work better and smarter. From basic collaboration, team working, real time collaboration, unified communication, professional networking through to knowledge enablement. I really believe that we have all the bases covered and aren't just trying to make a better email client, but building the best ecosystem for people to work together.

I look forward to a great 2010 working for IBM Lotus Software and I wait with baited breath for more exciting announcements from Lotusphere 2010. For instance, what will the next major release of Lotus Notes be called?

So long Doctor

So the 10th Doctor has regenerated into his new incarnation Matt Smith. Geeks will appreciate the synchronicity in this appointment since The Doctor often refers to himself as Mr Smith when he is incognito.

But from my perspective there is a more significant change - which is that the venerable Dr Who logo which has been used since the series returned in 2005 is being replaced with this one. I can't say I'm convinced but I suppose we will have to see how it suits the new season which starts in the UK this spring. However, it has certainly prompted me to regenerate the poorly plagiarised Ports Thoughts logo into something a little less showy.



If you are an old timer like me and you are interested in the history of the Dr Who logo's from very beginning then this is quite cool.

New Bathroom

We have a small problem with our bathroom. Her name is Lucy. When we moved into our house it didn't have a bath, just a fancy shower.

This was fine when Lucy was a baby. But she is now on the verge of being two and a half and doesn't really fit into the baby bath. So it was time for a new bathroom.

Quite aside from Lucy and the shower situation, the old bathroom was a bit crap. Pink tiles and faux marble are not a good look in 1989 never mind 2009.

First job, get rid of the awful pink tiles.

Fit a bath where the shower had been.

Now the very laborious job of putting fresh new tiles up.

Using the new bath as an impromptu work bench. Very enterprising.

Tiling round corners is a bit tricky.

All done with most of the spacers removed.

Next up is the grouting. Starts looking worse before it looks better.

In with the toilet and new sink.

Now that is starting to look better.

A shower curtain and a place to put the shampoo.

A lick of paint on the side of the bath and it is finished.

And a new mirrored cabinet and shelf finish off the sink.

Lucy loves her new bathroom but especially her new bath.

Boo Loves Smarties

Cats are inscrutable

e:Mail is a part of collaboration

Lotus Knows that collaboration means people working together to achieve better more productive results. Sometimes this means participating in finding expertise, sharing files, discussions, instant chats, collaborative applications, workflow, knowledge management and sometimes it means sending an email or scheduling a meeting. Lotus Notes and Domino allows all of these types of collaboration (and more) on a single platform via any client (Rich, Web or Mobile) on any O/S (Windows, Linux, Mac).

Competing solutions require multiple platforms to achieve these capabilities. Why would you want to use one solution to send an email or schedule a meeting but then require a different solution to book a holiday or participate in a collaborative team space? They are all collaboration. Email is the TCP/IP of collaboration and should not be thought of as a different product. (Remember when calendaring was separate from email (cc:Mail and Organiser vs. MS Mail and Schedule+) - would you ever want them separate again? of course not. So why do it with collaboration?


If you agree, vote for this thought on the LotusKnows Ideajam

Lotus Knows: How to integrate Notes and Connections Business cards

In honour of it being Yellow Day and for those of you who missed MBR's Notes 8.5.1 update at IamLUG, here is one of my favorite forthcoming features. Lotus Connections in the Notes 8.5.1 Business Card. Nice.



And here in the integrated Sametime. It's never been easier to know who you are talking to.

Many a word spoken in jest

I was chatting with my frolleague Rick Robinson a couple of days ago about Enterprise Social Networking. Specifically we were talking about how people may feel inclined to put more accurate information in internal Social networking systems such as Lotus Connections than they might do for external sites such as Facebook. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I gave the example of my own Linkedin account. In a vain attempt to divert attention from my meagre academic achievements (an O'Level in Woodwork) I invented what I thought was an amusing spoof degree, "Applied Quantum Philosophy" which I assumed anyone would see for the joke that is was meant to be.

Imagine my surprise then when Dr Rick said, "Oh yes, I studied that at University. Fascinating". Later on he followed this up with an email "PS you pulled "quantum philosophy" out of the air as an example subject when we spoke about collaboration ... I'd very much recommend the following book on the subject ;-) In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbins". That is certainly the philosophy of quantum mechanics. I think I might have to leave the "applied" part alone for the time being though. My cats are stating to look worried.

Lotus Notes on The Wire

I love the TV show The Wire. My Wife and I are halfway through watching the fifth and final season on DVD. It's brilliant TV. All the better for seeing what software Bunk uses for his colloborative needs ....

Maybe that is why crime is going down in West Baltimore. (Season 5, Episode 5, 47.14). You feel me?

MS Groove - RIP

So Groove is no more. Microsoft have announced that they have renamed it Sharepoint Worksplace 2010. Nice name. I wonder if Ray Ozzie was involved in it being called Workspace? It seems vaguely familiar to a Lotus Notes head like me.

They have also claimed that "Groove is to SharePoint like Outlook is to Exchange". What a shame that in Microsoft's world you need to install two rich clients if you wish to do both Messaging and Collaboration. After all, isn't messaging an aspect of collaboration? For a unified solution, look no further than Lotus Notes (or indeed a web browser or a Portal or a PDA).

http://blog.brothersoft.com/tag/outlook-2010/

Access to Archive from Preview Pane

John Lance wrote a couple of days ago about how cool it is that in the next release of Lotus Notes (8.5.1) You will be able to access calendaring functionality from the preview pane of your mail. This is indeed a very welcome improvement and being able to accept or decline a meeting without having to open the invitation or your calendar is great and will save time.

But personally I am more pleased to see this innovation. If you have a message that has been archived (as can be seen by the little "torn paper" icon next to it) there is now a button in the preview pane to say "Open in Archive". Obviously this was always possible using the "Open Archived Document" in the Actions menu but putting it as a preview button (also there when the message is opened) is far more intuitive. It is only a little thing but these things really matter.

*As always these things are subject to change

Button injured in horrific F1 accident

From my frolleague @FunkySimm. Obviously funnier if you got this through Twitter or RSS.

Pig dancing to ABBA

A cute pig dancing to ABBA. My twin sister is the Svengali behind Mickey the pigs genius dance.

Lotus Notes on BBC News

I was half watching the BBC News tonight in the middle of the Red Nose Day charity bash (do give generously). However, my attention was caught when I saw this interview with Geordie Greig the new editor of the London Evening Standard. What would he choose to have displayed on his monitor during this high profile appearance? The Standard web site perhaps? Publishing staples like Quark or Photoshop? No, he's gone with Lotus Notes mail.

I'll be honest, I don't think I'm gonna get a job as a photographer any time soon. But this is clearly a valid Lotus Notes on the TV sighting. (Looks like Notes 7 - the latest version is Notes 8.5)

A sneak peek at LinkedIn integration into Lotus Notes

The Profiles component of Lotus Connections is a great way of finding expertise and information about people within your organisation. This has been greatly enhanced through the tight integration into Lotus Notes 8.5. So whenever I see a name in a Notes document "Live Text" recognises that it is a name and allows me to search Profiles for that user. This is great for finding out about people internally but there is also a need to be able to find information about people who are external to your organisation. So Lotus announced at Lotusphere that they are working with LinkedIn to produce similar integration and I have just installed it to see how well it works. And the answer is brilliantly. When I select a message in my inbox;

It automatically enters that name into the LinkedIn sidebar application and returns a search matching the name (I had to manually edit the "J" our of my name since it does not appear in my LinkedIn profile).


Clicking on my name in the search results brings up my profile in the sidebar. So if I receive an email from a partner or customer it is that easy to find their LinkedIn profile and understand. There is still a little bit or work to do on the installer (you can't just drag it into your widgets sidebar yet) and I'm not sure if it will be released as a standalone plugin or as part of maintenance release but it is going to be well worth the wait.

My little kid is quite cute

This is my little kid Lucy being quite cute.

How Microsoft Outlook Ruined Her Birthday Cake

The good thing about standards are that there are so many to chose from. But when you make up your own there are even more problems .... I think this is very funny.
http://www.labnol.org/internet/microsoft-outlook-ruins-birthday-cake/6824/

Of course it is a bit unfair since HTML statements surrounded by < !-- Blah --> tags are comments so the bakery's system should have ignored them. But it wouldn't be the first time an email client had been bad mouthed without justification would it!

Jumping cursor when typing on Thinkpad

I have been suffering from a most infuriating problem for the last few months. Every now and again when I'm typing my cursor will jump to the beginning of the line. Since I don't touch type I spend quite a lot of time looking at my clumsy fingers and not at the screen so when this cursor jumping happens and I don't notice it can cause carnage to my document. At other times it was causing a seemingly random word to be selected and as I continued to type would overwrite it. As you can imagine this weird behaviour started messing with my head.

Having worked in IT Support in a previous life I am well aware of the need to find a reproducible set of circumstances in order to trouble shoot a problem. Since I spend most of my life in my beloved Lotus Notes client that was where I first spotted the problem. My initial thought was that it could be a bug in the editor since there had been loads of improvements to it in recent releases (drag and drop stuff mainly). However, it didn't take long to spot the problem happening in other applications including Firefox and even Notepad. With my support head on I might have suspected "Finger Trouble" but even though my typing is not great it isn't that bad.

However, I just had a stoke of luck. For no particularly good reason whilst in an web based editor I just happened to tap my Trackpoint and witnessed my cursor moving to the beginning of the previous line! But that is dumb - since when have trackpoints behaved like mouse buttons? Well after a bit of research I found out that this behaviour is called "Press-to-Select" and can be configured in the Control Panel/Mouse. I have been using Thinkpads for 13 years and I am sure that it has never been turned on in any of my previous machines - I wonder why the default has changed to on now. Whatever, at least I understand what is happening so now I need to decide whether to turn it off or to take advantage if it.

From the Trackpoint tab in the Mouse menu you can configure your trackpoint.

Ticking enable Press-to-Select allows you to configure that particular function.

Multiple Domino instances on a single machine.

Although it is completely unsupported, I have a requirement to have two Lotus Domino server installed on my Thinkpad at the same time. One is my super stable environment for performing standard cusotomer demonstrations which includes Domino, Quickr, Traveler, iNotes and Sametime. This is currently using Domino 8.0.2. Then I have a more experimental server which is running the latest build of the code I can get my hands on which I use for playing with the new toys like DAOS, Xpages, ID Vault, DCT etc. The problem I am having is that when I now upgrade either of the servers (they are just installed locally on my C:\ drive) it causes the other to show the following error when started:

This is a known issues and you can see the Technote here. The problem is easy enough to fix, just reinstall the code and the server is fine again. The problem is that in fixing one you have knocked out the other. This has only just started happening to me in the last month or so - prior to that I could have as many servers as I like installed and they would all work fine independently of each other. I am pretty much sure that the problem relates to how Domino reads or writes to the windows registry.

A similar scenario happens with the Notes client. IBM do not support having multiple versions installed on a machine at the same time. But clever folks in the Lotus community have found ways to get it working. The best description I have found is this one from Thomas Bahn which even allows the versions to be running simultaneously. So my question to the community is has anyone found a similar workaround for having multiple versions of Domino installed on a Windows laptop (not running simultaneously of course!).

p.s. I know I could use VMware workstation and the problem goes away but I hate using VM's for customer demos. I don't like introducing additional moving parts.

Windows 7 Beta: How well does Lotus Software work?

When I first tried installing Windows Vista I used a Thinkpad T41. The results were very poor. Whist the operating system did install it was pretty much incapable of doing anything useful. I quickly reverted to using Windows XP again. With the launch of the Windows 7 Beta1 I thought I would try the same test again. And I am very encouraged by the results. It is clearly a step up from Vista both in terms of stability and performance.

From downloading the code (over 2GB) to burning it onto a DVD to installing it onto my venerable Thinkpad only took a few short hours. Within a couple of reboots it was recognising my Wireless Lan, Graphics Card and the other computers on my network. Impressive although nothing you wouldn't expect from a Mac or Ubuntu.

But the big question is does Lotus Software work on it? The answer is a resounding yes. The first thing I installed was Lotus Mobile Connect to get VPN access to IBM's internal systems. Then of course it was Lotus Notes. It installed a treat and after I copied my bookmarks, workspace (OK I'm occasionally old school) and ID file it was like working on my main PC. As you can see, Lotus Sametime also works brilliantly as well.


I also checked out the Lotus Symphony editors and they all worked faultlessly.


All in all you would have to conclude that Windows 7 is a massive improvement on Vista. I happen to know that IBM Lotus Quality Engineering always test out latest software on older hardware. Specifically, they have used a Thinkpad T30 which is over 5 years old to ensure that performance would be fine. Despite a slow start with Notes 8.0 the performance optimisation in 8.0.2 and 8.5 is really impressive.

It is a shame that the same cannot be said for Windows 7, because so far I have had complete lockups trying to use Windows Media Centre, Windows Media Player and - *ahem* - Solitaire! I guess Microsoft's QE team must still be using those Cray Supercomputers to do their testing!

So in conclusion, Lotus Notes 8.5, Sametime, Symphony, Quickr and Portal all work fine on Windows 7 Beta 1 on a three year old computer. But beware if you want to edit a picture, watch a video or play a simple card game!

Of course the funny thing is that I was running Solitaire perfectly well on a 286 with 8MB of Ram nearly 20 years ago on Window 3.0. And now a PC with around 30,000 times the processing power that put a man on the moon can't run it. Progress!

Reply to All and Message Recall cause massive Mail FAIL

There is an interesting story reported on Slashdot about a mail storm debacle that brought the US State Departments MS Exchange infrastructure (branded OpenNet eMail) to it's knees. The problem was not simply by sending the message to many thousands of people - any mail system could handle that. The problem was that a significant minority of the recipients chose to "Reply to all" requesting their name be removed from the mailing list. This exponentially increases the number of messages flowing through the system which is further exacerbated by having "receipt request" specified. If that weren't bad enough some of the users then started trying to recall their message.

What many folks don't realise is that Message Recall is actually rather inaccurately named as a message is not recalled, it is deleted from the recipients mail file. And how does it know to delete the message? Well another message is sent to all the recipients with that instruction! Further doubling the workload. In Lotus Domino these recall messages are processed by the mail router so it is very efficient. However, in an Exchange environment the requests are processed by the Outlook mail client - so the request will obviously fail if you are using another mail client or an old version of Outlook. This is compounded by the fact that the recall request gets delivered to the users highlighting that the sender is trying to recall the message (which will of course draw additional interest to the original message).

Here is an example I received a few weeks ago.


My surprise about this issue is not that a load of under trained users/politicians caused the problem by the inappropriate use of "Reply to All". It is that the US State Department doesn't have a more efficient method of making an announcement to all it's staff than a blunderbuss mailing. Of course there are many ways to mitigate the problems that "Reply to All" can potentially cause. Putting the mailing list in the BCC rather than the CC field will help a lot (and be more discrete). Alternatively you can restrict access to mail groups, create a maximum number of recipients allowed or cause users to be prompted/warned if they try to send to too many users. But these are really attempts to fix technology when the fault lies in the culture.

This is made all the more ironic because the blanket email sent round to everyone was apparently a warning about using "Reply to All".

So what is the alternative?

Well firstly we need to move away from the 1980's notion that eMail is the only way to collaborate and communicate with people. It would be far more efficient to post the communication on their corporate intranet as a news story. If you required the ability for users to be able to comment on the communication then it might be more appropriate to post it on a corporate blog. If your organisation doesn't have a single blog that all users access regularly then it might be appropriate to email the communication to business unit leaders and ask them to post in in their local Team Rooms/Quickr Places/Sharepoint Sites/Public Folders etc. If you need to ensure that users are informed about the policy change immediately then it would be better to send a broadcast message using realtime collaboration tools such as Sametime. Better still, a combination of these capabilities to ensure that users get to view the communication using their preferred client, for example an RSS feed or a News Reader.

As my frolleague John Wylie points out we should not blame the users. That is the typical IT department response ("The system would work fine if it weren't for the users"). Users should not be put in a position where their actions can cause such a catastrophe. And the way to do that is to collaborate with them more intelligently.

Further reading for Domino message recall here
Further reading for Exchange/Outlook message recall here
Mail Fail Image from Crunchgear

Did you know?

A really insightful video celebrating the exponential progress of Information Technology researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman. It also contains some interesting metrics comparing the United States with some large emerging nations such as China and India. I don't know if all the statistics are accurate but it all seems very credible.

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

Does everyone love Outlook?

I had a meeting today with a company from the finance sector. I was there to show them our team collaboration solution Quickr. I knew they used Outlook/Exchange so had no intention of talking about email since Quickr works great with Outlook as well as with Notes.

So I was rather surprised when in his introduction one of the chaps volunteered the following; "The previous company I worked for used Lotus Notes. Since I moved to xxxxxxx it has taken me 2 years to figure out how to work as efficiently in Microsoft Outlook". Crikey! Two years seems like rather a long time to get used to a mail client. On hearing this one of his colleagues said that she has to find and print out any emails that will be useful in advance of a meeting because "it is almost impossible to find anything quickly in Outlook".

It was especially interesting since these were line of business users and not administrators or developers. It is an example of how not all users love Outlook. They were very interested in Quickr and moving to a mode of work that took them out of their inbox and into easily searched and organised team spaces.

Lotus iNotes on the Nintendo Wii

There have been a few people talking about the new Lotus iNotes Ultralite and specifically how well it works on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Less comment has been made about the fact that iNotes Ultralite works very well in a browser on a PC. What I haven't seen mentioned so far was if iNotes Ultralite works on a Nintendo Wii. So I thought I would give it a go.

First I type in the URL and see if the Wii version of Opera will be able to handle it.

Not surprisingly iNotes brings up a dialog saying that it is not certified to use this browser. But offers a link to use Ultralite mode.

And it works perfectly. It looks pretty stunning on my 40 inch Sony LCD TV.

As you see, here is my Inbox.

Even complicated emails (this is a calender invite) all render perfectly, Obviously IBM will most likely not be certifying iNotes for the Wii any time soon, but so far I have yet to find any functionality that works on the iPhone that doesn't work on the Wii. So if you want to check your email between rounds of Mario Kart Wii you now have an excellent solution.

Double Click attachments in Lotus Notes

Receiving attachments via email is a bit of a two edged sword. On the one hand it is quite an easy way to get stuff, but on the other hand you don't necessarily know if the attachment contains wondrous information which will transform your life or viruses and other malware which will destroy your computer.

In order to help users, when they double clicked on an attachment Lotus Notes would bring up a dialog box warning the user of the possible perils and offering some alternatives including "viewing" the attachment to check that it was safe before launching it. But these days most computers and particularly those ones that are used for business have Anti Virus software installed to watch your back. In which case if you add AttachmentActionDefault=1 to your notes.ini file then double clicking an attachment will launch it in the native application with no dialog box.

More details are here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21292126

F5 Refresh in Lotus Notes 8.5

There are some debates about IT products which are far more like religious arguments rather than technical discussions because there really are no right or wrong answers, just opinions.

Obvious examples are the two button "PC Mouse" vs. the single button "Mac Mouse", coding using "Multi Threading" vs "Multi Process" techniques, using images in GIF, JPG or PNG format or perhaps the ultimate in cosmetic comparisons, the Black Thinkpad vs the White Macbook

One such debate has revolved around what key should be used to refresh a view or page or in the case of a mail client, check for new mail. As with most things in the PC Software world, there has never been a standard for such things. Each developer does what they think best. However, over time "De facto" standards sometimes emerge. In the case of the refresh key, it became the key F9 since this was what was used by Lotus 123, the dominant application at the beginning of the PC age. As 123 was gradually overtaken by Microsoft Excel it also used F9 for refreshing. Lotus Notes has followed this convention and has used F9 for refresh for nearly 20 years.

However, in more recent years Microsoft started using the F5 key for refresh in some (but by no means all) applications, most notably Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. Confusingly Microsoft Outlook 2003 uses F5 to refresh the view but F9 to check for new mail.

So what to do with Lotus Notes? Clearly it wouldn't be fair on our current customers to change the behaviour of F9, but on the other hand many new Lotus Notes users expect refresh to be F5 because of their experience with Microsoft Windows. So in version 8.5 of Lotus Notes either F5 or F9 can be used to refresh a view and check for new mail. It also means that F5 can be used in Symphony Presentations to start a slide show. A very pragmatic solution I think.

Honda Whites

I had the pleasure of visiting a Lotus Notes customer today and briefing them on what is coming up in the forthcoming Notes/Domino 8.5 as well as Quickr, Sametime and Connections. That isn't particularly unusual, I spend a lot of my time ensuring that our customers are aware of upcoming features in new versions of our software and indeed our new collaborative and social offerings.

But what I really enjoy is finding out about our customers. They are all unique and vary from International Airlines to 5 people Internet start ups, film makers to police forces, Universities to chocolate makers. Today I was at a manufacturing plant of a well known worldwide car maker based in Swindon. The main thing that struck me was that all the employees were wearing identical white uniforms.


This would not normally be worthy of comment. Many manufacturing sites mandate that their staff wear protective uniforms. What was unusual here was that everyone from engineers, secretary's to Senior Management all wear the same white uniforms. So in my meeting today all the IT staff were wearing the same white uniform with their name on the left and the company name on the right. It made it very easy to be able to identify the IBMers from the Customers :-)

It was really interesting to walk down a corridor and see some folks who were clearly very hands on in the manufacturing process wearing the same clothes as some executive carrying a laptop and a briefcase. Apparently the uniform is referred to as Honda Whites. And before you think that this uniformity stifles individually I can tell you that the folks I met were full of character, and also one of the guys name badge read "Gadget". "Funny name" I said. "It's my nic name" he replied. "I like Gadgets".

Cloud Burst

A few days ago my friend Ed Brill was writing about the suitability of services such as Gmail in the Enterprise. Despite the vogue for services such as Google Apps and other "Software as a Service" and "Cloud" computing, he points out that they simply aren't as reliable as on premises solutions (or hosted ones for that matter). However, one of the biggest challenges with these solutions is "who you gonna call" when there is a problem. If you can't access Gmail you won't get very far phoning Google. However, these free services are normally deemed to be fine for consumer use.


Well I have just had a personal experience that even makes me question that. Since around 2000 I have been maintaining a web site for the band that I'm in. Being a cheap skate I just grabbed a free site at Tripod. It was a bit spoiled by the adverts but it worked fine. Tripod was subsequently purchased by Lycos but it didn't seem to change anything. It only got a thousand or so hits per year and I didn't update it particularly frequently but it was a nice place to keep all the band related stuff together and to inform our vanishingly small fan base about gigs and such.

A little while ago I made a music video of one of our songs and so I popped over to the site to provide a link. To my surprise all the content had vanished. When I tried to log in to my account I got an error message stating that my account had been suspended because of suspected abuse! It directed me to a Lycos troubleshooting and reporting site where it asked me to create a problem report promising a response within 72 hours. Several weeks later and despite me repeatedly emailing they have stubbornly refused to contact me other than an automated confirmation that they had received my report.

My account has subsequently been re enabled but all the content on the site is gone for good. Now being a paranoid sort of chap I have always saved copies of everything I uploaded to the site - but I would imagine many people are not so careful. Interestingly I have never bothered to save the contents of this blog. What could I do if I came here and found it blank? Even worse would be if I found the Blog that I write for my daughter was gone. Who would I ring? When I restart my bands page it will not be on a free service but rather with a host who provides a support number so I can talk to someone if problems occur. Not a vast anonymous blob.

As we sometimes say, free software is worth every penny! Incidentally, remember that nothing is ever really deleted from the internet. The Internet Archive still has a copy of my site.

Olympic BSOD

OK - so it is kinda like shooting fish in a barrel poking fun at MS Windows for crashing. I'm sure that we have all seen the famous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on airport monitors and ATM machines, not to mention our home and work PCs. But it is rare to see one as high profile as this - during the climax of the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. More ironic because PC suppler Lenovo ditched Windows Vista for the supposedly more stable Windows XP. Full story Here

Matt and Alexis' Wedding

Matt and Alexis looking ravishing seconds after tying the knot.

Matt and Alexis on Kew green

The bride and groom with the bridesmaids and page boy.

Matt with some of his family

Alexis and some of her family

Matt and Alexis on the back of a vintage Routemaster bus which was used to transport all the guest from Kew to the reception in Soho.

Matt's Mum and Dad with Akira and Junji

Traditional cheesy self service shot of Mr and Mrs Ports

Alexis and her daughter Tracy

The fantastic wedding cake made up of loads of tiny cakes

Matt and Alexis have their first dance as a married couple

Ali cuts a rug on the dance floor

Alexis opens the card from Lucy

Alexis and Ali

Matt and his Best Man.

Tom and Laura's Wedding

Tom poses with his Best Men, brothers Olly and Ben, before the ceremony.

The ceremony itself was beautiful being held in the back garden of Laura's Parents house overlooking the glorious Gloustershire countryside.

After the ceremony the normal festivities kicked off. Ian was looking particularly racy in his white suit.

The core of legendary band Sideburner. Al, Tom and Ports pose together.

Ports and Ali take a traditional self service picture.

The happy couple at the reception

He might be married but Tom is still a ladies man.

The traditional cheesy wedding band

Ali and Lynne compare shoes

Ali and Laura

Ali with the Happy couple

Matt's Stag Night

As my best friend Matt's Best Man I had to organize his stag night. The first thing we did was go for a superb champagne flight on the London Eye. Not only did a couple of glasses of bubbly make the flight more decadent but the other advantage of a champagne flight is that you get to jump the long queue. Even better the long queue of people get to see you jumping the queue.

Next up it was a trip to the excellent Benihana Japanese restaurant in Piccadilly. This is great place to dine as they mix excellent surf and turf style cuisine with with what can only be described as a performance chef who practically juggles the food in front of you as he cooks it on your tables personal hot plate.

The over to the The Comedy Store for some fine stand up comedy. Finally we all piled back to my place. I take my Best Man duties very seriously so this is how I had prepared the fridge. Full of Lager, Guinness and Wine with just enough room left for sausages, bacon and eggs for a fry up in the morning. (And a bit of friable Halumi cheese because Jason is a filthy vegetarian).

Jason looking in remarkably good health despite being a vegetarian.

Alex starts off with a Guinness.

And then in a rather strange move for a stag night - we start playing chess!

Chess might seem an odd way to finish a stag night but as you can see - the stag enjoyed it.

Matt Graduates as a Security Don

Completing any degree is hard work, but it is especially challenging when you are doing it in your spare time whilst also having a full time job. So I was very proud when my buddy Matt invited me to attend his graduation ceremony after gaining a distinction in his Masters degree in Information Security from Royal Holloway. Interestingly the degree is part of the school of mathematics rather than the school of computing. Here are Matt with his Mum, Dad and Fiance looking appropriately chuffed.

Time for the group photo. Matt is in the middle.

What could be more traditional that the Mortar Board (hat) throwing ceremony.

After spending 4 years earning his Masters, Matt decides to continue wearing his mortar board to the amusement of many passers by.

Tom's Stag Night

For Tom's stag night his brothers Olly and Ben first arranged for us to got to the famous Ice Bar where you are provided with a very fetching smock, locked in a sub zero room and plied with vodka cocktails. An interesting experience.

Stag Tom sits on his ice throne.

Obviously being a stag night we had to have a couple of ales.

Olly and Ben had also provided fine Cuban cigars and champagne outside.

Al is no expert on smoking cigars.

Ports has got the idea.

Back at the pub Neil and Ian plot strippers (not really)

Olly and Ben congratulate themselves on being excellent Best Men who laid on a cracking stag night for their brother.

Gadget Overload

I love a gadget me. I mean I really do. The problem is that there are so many of them but none of them are quite good enough to make the others redundant. This means that on any business trip I carry 5 gadgets. An iPod Touch, A Blackberry Pearl, An AT&T Tilt, a Samsung SGH-U600 and my trusty T61p Thinkpad laptop computer.

The iPod may be thought the poor relation to the iPhone but is it a better media player because it has more memory (32Gb) and is significantly thinner. Of course all the other devices can play an MP3 but they cannot sync with podcasts with anything like the straight forwardness of the Apple device. Also none of the others can so seamlessly integrate with my jalopy when I want to listen to audio books on long trips. Of course it has built in wireless networking so I can access my mail and calendar using the forthcoming Lotus iNotes Ultralite in Domino 8.5 as well.

Talking of email on the move, the Blackberry is very much the vogue for secure enterprise messaging and is indeed an excellent device for syncing with Lotus Domino mail. But the fact is that it isn't really a full PDA and despite what the fan boys say, the keyboard is a challenge for someone with sausage fingers like me. The real limitation for me is that it doesn't support wireless networking.

The AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II) on the other hand is a proper PDA with full Windows Mobile capabilities. Again I can access my Lotus Domino email and calendaring using Lotus Notes Traveler. Also it supports both GPRS or 3G dialup and wireless networking. Lotus Mobile Connect VPN software makes a pretty good job of ensuring the most appropriate (cheapest) service is always used. The slide out keyboard is also pretty good. The downside of this device is that it is about the size and shape of a house brick.

The Samsung may seem a little light in functionality compared to these super gadgets - but that is the point. It is my personal phone that I keep with me all the time and the most important attribute is that it is small and light so it can hang off my belt without making me look like a Star Trek nerd.

So my real challenge in life is not connectivity or functionality - its big pockets in suits!

When the impossible happens

There are some things that should just never happen. Some time lines that by all rights must be impossible. Normally strange intersections are reserved for Science Fiction. Just think Marty Mcfly fighting off the attentions of his teenage mother in Back to the Future when he visits his past.

But it isn't just science fiction - you may remember the story about the twins parted at birth who went on to marry before discovering the unpalatable truth.


Well a similar if not quite so serious situation has befallen me. For 31 years I have been supporting the mighty Manchester United football club. Some may wonder why I didn't support my local team of Hull City, but they were so laughably inept that there was no chance that they would ever play in the top flight. In fact their claim to fame was they they were in the semi final of the FA Cup in 1929. Beside which, Hull was really a Rugby town.

So how has this happened? In just five seasons Hull City have risen from the bottom division of the English Football league to being promoted to the Premier League! For many years Hull was famous for being the largest city in Europe to have a football team that had never reached the top division. Now they are up there with the elite. The dilemma of course is what do I do when the plucky Tigers are playing Man United? Do I root for the team I have always supported or do I hope the underdogs from my ancestral home will triumph? Very simple - I'll stick with ManU but really hope Hull beat Chelsea. And Arsenal.

The Preposterous Toyota Prius

I'm not suggesting that every tree hugging hippy who drives a Toyota Prius is a smug idiot. But people who follow Hollywood actors in an effort to be green might just want to consider if this is the best role model they can find. They might also want to consider if the Prius is the only car owned by Cameron Diaz or Leonardo DiCaprio (hint: no). It is true that by driving a Prius you get cheap car tax. However, is it really as green as these Eco warriors would have us believe?

For an objective assessment, let's have a look at what conclusion Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team came to.


And here is a slightly more sober story from the Sunday Times showing a video comparing the Prius with a BMW 520d on a trip from London to Geneva. Guess what - the 520d is more fuel efficient when driven over 500 real world miles.
Click here for the story

I guess we should leave the last word to Jeremy.

Awesome Story

I have a number of points on my driving licence for driving marginally faster than the Police deem to be acceptable. Thus I was most amused to stumble upon this story from a little while ago. Even though I love my new BMW 520d Touring with leather seats and cup holders, I might have done better to get a Tornado F3 with Sidewinder Missiles. Unfortunately IBM's company vehicle policy isn't quite that generous. And parking it at IBM Southbank would be a bitch.

Clicky Clicky for bigger.

How an iPod integrates with a BMW

One of the things I was most looking forward to with my new car was the fact that it features "proper" integration with my iPod Touch. The idea that I could access gigabytes of music, audio books and podcasts on the go was very appealing. Fiddling with an iPod whilst driving is about as dangerous as using a mobile phone. Also on my old car I tried using an FM Transmitter to send the output from the iPod to the car radio using FM. It was rubbish. The problem is that there are no spare frequencies in London and if you go for a long drive the available frequencies change requiring constant retuning. All in all it made it impractical.

The new car features a combined 3.5mm audio jack and USB connector. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the sounds to be routed through to the cars Hi-Fi but also for the control of the iPod to be passed to the cars iDrive Control system. iDrive is far from perfect but is significantly improved since it has stopped being based on Windows CE and has moved to a proper real time OS.

Here we see the iPod Touch hidden away in the Drivers center arm rest.

Another advantage of the combined USB/Audio connector is the the iPod is also being charged when it is connected to the car. So no worries about a dead battery.

The iDrive control screen is in the center of the dashboard allowing either the driver or front seat passenger to operate it using the controller knob on the center console.

The iPod is identified as Audio Aux. As you can see, many of the iPod options are available including all your play lists as well as Artist and Album views.

It is very qucik and easy to zoom up and down these lists by spinning the control know and then pressing it to select.

You will notice that the Audiobook and Podcast views are missing from the menus - but this is not a problem because they are still available in the master list - so an Inspector Rebus audiobook I purchased from iTunes is listed under the artist/author Ian Rankin. Likewise the Russell Brand Podcast I subscribe to is listed under the artist Radio 2.

So it is a little different to the iPod interface but it really doesn't take long to get used to it and then the world is your oyster.

Since I found this information very difficult to find on the Internet let me also include a ...

Mini FAQ.
Q1: Do I need to specify anything when I order my BMW for this great functionality?
A1: Yes. You need to order the optional Auxiliary input port. It was a couple of hundred quid

Q2: Is that it then? I'm ready to rock?
A2: Nope. You will also need a special cable which goes from the iPod Doc connector to a USB and 3.5mm jack. This is where I got mine Cooper BMW on eBay. Should be about £35

Q3: Can't I just use an 3.5mm audio cable?
A3: Of course. But you will have to operate your iPod directly and it will not be charged.

Q4: Will this work for any iPod?
A4: Yup - as long as it has a docking connector. So not the iPod Shuffle. But then the whole point about the Shuffle is that there is no UI so it would be a rather daft thing to do.

Q5: There is loads of stuff on the Interweb saying that the connection is in the glove box and it is free.
A5: That is true - but it is much more basic (essentially the first generation of iPod compatibility from several years ago). To get the cool integration above you need the Aux/USB option.

Q6: Have you tested all BMW Models?
A6: Nope - just my own 520d. But this should all work with new BMW's with the iDrive

Q7: What else doe this Aux/USB port give me?
A7: Well you could do things like copy MP3's to a USB stick, plug it in and play those track through the car stereo. Pretty cool eh?

Q8: What if I have some inferior sub iPod clone?
A8: Dunno. I use and iPod Touch. But the documentation refers to MP3 players rather than just iPods.

New Car

I find it almost unbelievable how much stuff you need to take with you when you have a kid - especially if you are staying overnight. Push chair, Baby Bath, Travel Cot, food, clothes, nappies etc. So Lucy was a big consideration in choosing my new car, a BMW 520d Touring. It certainly isn't a particularly pretty car. Jeremy Clarkson said it looks like it is wearing Dame Edna's glasses. Obviously I don't agree but the front end is certainly quite distinctive.

From this three quarter view I think the car looks very imposing.

In it's Touring (BMW's posh name for an estate) form it looks particularly good from behind.

One of my favorite features is the split rear door which enables you to just open the window if you just need to pop a shopping bag in the back rather than open the whole boot. And also notice the rock star tinted rear glass which makes people think someone famous is in the back seat but really is so that Lucy won't get sun stroke.

Gartner predicts the collapse of Windows

Slashdot is reporting that Gartner has predicted the collapse of Microsoft Windows. It is quite an interesting article.

It talks about the monolithic nature of windows and the bloat of Vista when the requirement is for virtualisation and modularity in order to support differing workloads and platforms. One size does not fit all. In fact it concludes that if Windows 7 follows the current path then Windows will collapse. Being Slashdot many of the MS haters were happy to predict the rise of OSX and Ubuntu as Windows dies and as ever they are way premature. Neither Microsoft or Windows are going anywhere any time soon.

I have been running Vista for about 4 months on my home machine and I have been enormously disappointed. Of course there are some nice features (the Windows Photo Gallery is a great improvement and I love the DVD creator) but the performance when running on a super fast Quad core machine with 3 gigs of memory is nowhere near what I was getting from my previous single core AMD box with just one gig that was running XP. I am also getting up to 3 BSOD crashes per day with analysis of the dump files showing no clear pattern. That is aside from the hangs and the lock ups. But I have stuck with Vista in the hope that SP1 will resolve many of the reliability and performance problems when it hits Windows Update later this month.

If that little rant sounded bad - that isn't my biggest problem with Vista. What winds me up the most is that in it's flurry of new features and pretty new UI it hasn't actually made my life any better. In fact many of the things I do day in day out now take many more steps that they did on previous versions. I find the nannying UAC throws undesired prompts at some really basic operations and the redesigned file explorer slows down navigation unless you are using the prescribed Vista directories (Pictures, Documents, Video etc). Unfortunately some of us need a bit more granularity that that. In short it appears that Microsoft has done its own thing without seeking or responding to feedback from their customers.

But I don't think Service Pack 1 is going to be able to do much about that.

One comment on the Slashdot thread that I particularly liked was from Johannesg who writes; "And one day, someone will ask "what operating system are you running that on?", and despite being a card-carrying geek with a 4-digit slashdot ID, you will be forced to admit "Uhm, I'm not actually sure." Because it won't matter anymore."

Getting your gun off

For my 40 birthday present my brother in law Stew took me and a couple of mates for my first experience of clay pigeon shooting.

The ear plugs aren't particularly attractive - but very necessary.

I shot 19 out of 50 clays. Apparently that is "rubbish". It was a cracking day out though. Maybe these toffs aren't so stupid after all.

Demilitarised Zone

Some time ago I wrote about the dilemma I had making our main living room safe for Lucy. The fact is that we have a environment that is virtually impossible to make child friendly. 3 computers, loads of wires and cables, loads of plugs and sockets, bookcases, rubbish bins, guitars. Basically - carnage. So I decided on a rather orthogonal solution. Rather than make the whole room baby safe - why not divide the room into the safe side and the dodgy side. For a divider I found the Summer Infant Super Wide Safety Gate. So on Lucy's side she has sofas, toys and a big TV to watch "In the Night Garden" on.

And then on the other side of the fence is Ali and my Office. The sad thing is that Lucy's safe side if far bigger so it make us feel like the cages ones :-(

Trinitron Gone

A sad day - Sony has announced the end of their Trinitron line of televisions. Here is an Obituary on Slashdot. The first Trinitron I used was around 30 years ago when my mate Matt had one as a monitor for his BBC Model B Micro computer. The last one I had was a 32 inch widescreen which I bought in 2000 with the money I received for working in Lotus Support on the night of the Millennium (incidentally - money for old rope - nothing went wrong apart from a minor problem with an unsupported cc:Mail X400 gateway).

I say the last one that I had - but actually I still have it. For various reasons I have upgraded to a new Sony Bravia flat screen LCD. It is actually about the same size as the old Trinitron - the difference is that the new Baravia is all picture. The problem is that the old Tele is still in perfect working order with a brilliant picture - but you can hardly give them away. I can't stand the thought of just throwing such a loyal old friend in a skip - so if anyone out there is willing to give it a good home then you can enjoy owning a bit Trinitron history.

Which Greek God are you?

Haven't seen one of these for a while. I'm still basking in the fact that my Muppet was Kermit. Anyway - this is a little more high brow.

You are the god: Ares

Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera and is the God of (savage) war. Ares is one of the gods that takes no sides regarding the battles of mortal man. He readily takes human life and is driven by bloodshed without remorse. Wielding a spear and associated to animals like the dog and the vulture, Ares is feared by men and envied by other gods. He was fearless, good-looking and impulsive. Interestingly, he was secretly making love to Aphrodite, Hephaestus' wife at the time. This was soon discovered by Helios and revealed to the other gods residing on Mount Olympus in aims to humiliate the adulterers. Ares has never married, and although his real love and passion is war, he still gets around. Homer references Ares in the Illiad, whereby Ares sided with the Trojans as they fought against the Achaeans. He was wounded by a spear from Athena, and later Ares flipped sides after discovering his child, Ascalaphus. Ares cried at this moment.

I am the Ancient Greek God:

Ares

Greek Gods Quiz

Matt's Domesday

I got a phone call from my best pal Matt a few days ago. He said "I'm sorry I can't come round tonight - I'm on Richard and Judy." For the few people who don't know, Richard and Judy are a bickering married couple who have risen to national treasure status on the back of their daytime and early evening cheesy chat shows. Matt making an apperence on their show was, to put it mildly, unexpected.

However, it turns out that the invitation came becasue of Matt's long involvement in the Domesday Online project with his Dad, Prof. John. (Incidentally trivia fans, you should refer to Domesday Book and not The Doomsday Book). Channel five is not noted for it's coverage of medievil history so it was very refreshing to see a piece that was both interesting and educational.

It was also very nice that Matt gave such a brilliant performance given how potentially nervous one could get appearing on live national TV. Although I'm pretty sure that he is still wearing the makup.

Awesome and frustrating

My lovely wife kindly got me a Sanyo Xacti HD1000 digital movie camera for my 40th birthday. Now that our baby is just about to turn one year old and has started moving about and doing funny things it will be nice to capture some of them. And there is always the chance of getting on You've Been Framed if she falls over.

Unlike many movie cameras the Xacti is tiny and has a docking bay making it just as easy to synchronise with the PC as a stills camera. Until recently video cameras used tapes which were heavy and awkward. Re writable DVD's were also popular but their size and shape adversely affected the shape of the camera. Some even feature a built in hard disk. But the Xacti uses SD cards for storage. This is great because they are cheap, small and use minimal power which in turn allows the camera to be so little despite still being very capable.

As you can see it has a reasonably large 2.7 inch screen and supports full HD at 1920 x 1080. If you have a 8Gb SD card it can store about and hour and a half at top quality or 5 hours of standard TV quality. Pretty impressive.

The problem is that Ali ordered the camera and the 8Gb SD card at the same time - but so far only the camera has arrived. And the only spare SD card I have is 128Mb which can only record about one and a half minutes. So I have Smallest and Lightest full HD camera in the world with nothing to record onto! How frustrating. Hopefully the 8 gig card will arrive soon.