Ports Thoughts

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. An...

Cats are inscrutable

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...

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.

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 foll...

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?

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