Real World Computing

As rightly pointed out by Bruce Elgort in a comment on my last post, IdeaJam is actually an IBM/Lotus developer community initiative. I did know that, but somehow I accidentally wound up giving credit to IBM/Lotus anyway. (sorry). The IBM/Lotus systems are blessed with IMHO, the best developer community in the world. Sure, a lot of praise is due IBM/Lotus for their commitment to the community and to their evangelists, Ed Brill , Alan Lepofsky , Mary Beth Raven , Adam Gartenberg and Bob Balaban among others. But the real credit has got to go to the generally unsung heroes of the Lotus Community... The people behind initiatives like IdeaJam , OpenNTF and regular submitters to the IBM Lotus Sandbox . I could rattle off a huge list of names and linked blogs, but then I'd be competing with the likes of Facebook and Orkut. If the measure of an application's success is at least partially determined by the quality of the people it attracts, then there can be no doubt in my min...

I've been looking at this site for a while now and am quite impressed. This concept might not seem complex at first but the business possibilities for this type of Web 2.0 app are endless. Idea Jam ( http://ideajam.net/ ) The idea behind this site is to let people submit ideas, in this case for improvements to the Notes/Domino product, then allow others to comment and vote on them. The best ideas gradually move to the top. Well done IBM !! Also, today they announced code to allow you to embed your ideas on your web page or blog (though it doesn't seem to work in blogger yet) so... Please vote my ideas :-) Obviously I want them to progress Can we have a Code Wiki near the Forums Clipboard access in LotusScript without API's

Continuing with my implementation of BlogSphere, I feel sadly let down, not by the product, which seems to be very good but by the documentation - sorry, lack of documentation. At any rate, pressing on... Configuring BlogSphere You can't configure blogsphere without the ACL being set correctly. As far as I can tell, you can only be a member of one role (ie: not in multiple groups with multiple roles). This could be completely wrong but so far it's working for me. I put myself directly into the ACL with Manager rights and the [UI-Admin] role. Logging out and then back in gave me access to the configuration options. Configuration can be selected by clicking the BlogSphere config button in the top left hand corner of the Navigator. Side Blocks The initial web view of BlogSphere V3 is much better than V2, cleaner and nicer. That said, I'm sure you'll want to add some content to the sides. In this example, I'm going to do a calendar because that one works - I haven...

I know I was going to continue on Domino's BlogSphere but I just had to mention this... Google Blogger just keeps on getting better and better. Today, my RSS feeds gave me a post on Blogger's New Slideshow tool entitled Show off your photos with the new Slideshow . This is very impressive. It allows you to add a layout element that will display your photos from a given folder in Picasa Web Albums . The integration between Google's applications is spectacular. What's more, it's not limited to Google - It works with Flickr and Photobucket too as well as other sites supporting Media RSS. Add this to features like the ability to publish RSS entries of interest directly from your feeds in Google Reader and (sorry IBM/Lotus BlogSphere) Google Blogger is, at least for the moment IMHO, the untouchable king of Blog tools. IBM - If you're reading, this sort of integration is the main reason why you should be putting more effort into integrating your systems (and oth...

These instructions use Notes 7. Getting hold of the Template Go to OpenNTF.org and login. If you don't have a login, you should register for one. It's free, but you can't download without being logged in. Download the BlogSphere Template . At the time of writing, the current version was 3.0 Documentation Documentation for BlogSphere is at the BlogSphere Wiki . It's obviously going to be a better source of information than this blog. I'm only writing this because I want to keep my notes somewhere and I want to show how easy the product is. [Note: Sadly, I've just had a look at the documentation and, at present, I'm not sure if it is actually better than this blog entry. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong - I hope so]. Save the Template on your Domino Server and Sign it with an appropriate ID. Creating a New Blog From the Notes Client select File, Database New . Specify the Correct Server, Path and Filename to the Database (whatever you like really). C...

I've been a little busy lately with all sorts of family issues (including an outbreak of chicken pox at home). Sorry about the lack of posts - this will be a short one too. There's a few new tools coming out from Google to help migrate things from Exchange and Domino to Gmail solutions. http://karteek.selfdabba.com/2007/11/18/google-apps-a-challenge/ This is great for a mail-only solution. I don't begrudge Lotus people on simple mail only systems moving to gmail. It's only people who are using Lotus Notes (properly?) for databases who shouldn't consider this option. One thing I noticed about the article though was the nice comparison of TCO's. Lotus Notes comes in much cheaper than exchange in all categories - well done IBM Lotus.

About a week ago, Ask the Admin ran a feature called What the Heck is Filling Up My Server? . The article was quite a good one and covered several products. I tried a few of these out. IMHO, the best of these is WinDirStat . This utility is free and quite fast. There's also some amusing pacman-like activity when you start it scanning a drive. One of the really cool things about this app is that it recognises the extensions of a lot of file formats - including less common ones like .NSF for notes. An extension that many expensive programs of this type often miss. If it finds a few files of an unknown type, it lists their extension as well (see DES at the bottom of the colour code map). The other exciting thing about this tool is that it creates a colour-map showing all files in relation to eachother. You can quickly spot the big files. If you click on a patch of colour, the name and path of the relevant file will be displayed in the status bar. Imagine my horror at finding ...

For Notes 7 (possibly 6.5) and above. This blog entry covers my installation of Domino Wiki from a business rather than a techncial perspective. What is a wiki? Wiki's have been around for years and probably the best known of these is the wikipedia . The simplest description would be a hyperlinked online encyclopaedia which allows web-based editing. Ideally, wiki's aren't centrally updated in-house but could be updated by certain categories of users on the web. There's still a bit of debate over whether or not this is a good idea but I'm not going to spend time worrying about this, it's simply an ACL change for domino. There's obviously better definitions of wiki's elsewhere but I'd guess that the best way to find out what one is, is to use one. Why would my organization need a wiki? At first, this may seem like a difficult question to answer. After all, if IT is meant to be a technology enabler rather than a business driver, there needs to be s...

I don't think I've ever worked in an IT environment where the server room wasn't plagued by air conditioning issues. We have two in our computer room, a. The standard building air conditioner b. An extra unit They draw their power from different circuits, so they have a degree of redundancy but... ...both draw their water from the same source, a water tank on the roof of our building. Late last night I got a warning from our security company about the air conditioning. They report when it hits 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F). I live quite a distance from the city and while I have keys to the building, our floor and the computer room, I don't have keys to the air conditioner reset itself. I decided that since I only had a few hours to go, I'd finish sleeping and arrive at my usual time 6.30am. By the time I got there, the room temperature was 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 F). I left the computer room door open and it cooled to 27C (80.6 F) within 30 minutes. I'm obvi...