Real World Computing

Collaboration is the main buzzword in the computer industry these days and there are offerings from all the major vendors; IBM/Lotus, Microsoft and Google. Their collaboration bundles have all recently leapt from the desktop into the web 2.0 cloud and seem to be the answer to all our business problems - but are they? I think that the answer is very industry specific. I have no doubt that collaboration is a boon for the computing industry and I can see how the sharing of code and the discussion of bugs and product features can provide huge benefits. I can see similar benefits for project management in other industries such as mining and manufacturing too. The benefits for big business, particularly big "distributed" businesses with offices all around the world are obvious but it's one thing to look at collaboration within the business. External business-to-business collaboration however is a whole new ballgame. It's what collaboration is really all about. Who doesn...

I love Google Chat As a strong Lotus supporter, I know that I should be shouting "Sametime" but the fact is that I secretly love Google chat. Sure, there's no way it's as powerful as sametime and it's not as useful in the corporate sense of the word but as a family and friends tool, it's unbeatable. So, wouldn't it be nice to be able to put a "presence-aware" link to google chat on your blog or web page? The way to do this is surprisingly simple; You need to already have a google chat account (a gmail account). Go to this site http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New Play around with the settings on this page - there are several different types of "badges" When finished, copy the HTML Code from this page to your blog or website. Group Chats One thing that google chat didn't do until recently was group chats. It's all changed now and there are plenty of articles about how to start a group chat with Google Talk. The problem...

I've just added a bunch of social bookmarking links to my blogs. Since it took me a while to figure out how to do it, I thought I'd share my wisdom. Note that this method supports Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress and others. At this stage, I don't know if it supports Domino Blogsphere - Any Domino people want to provide an update? Getting the Link Information 1. Go to the Site: http://www.addthis.com 2. Click Get your Button 3. Choose Bookmarking Widget and select the type of Widget, where you want it and the blogging platform. 4. Click the button marked Get Your Free Button 5. You'll be prompted to Login / Become a Member 6. After this you'll be supplied with some code, copy the code for pasting into your Blog (see step 7 below). and here's a picture to show how simple the selection is. Making the Code Change (Blogger Only) Note: The web site ( http://www.addthis.com ) gives you pointers for blogger, and I presume for the other platforms too, so if you use a differ...

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 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...