Real World Computing

I was originally hoping to produce a single list of all of my (so far) collected resources. Of course, the problem with that is that I have to review the sites to make sure that they're still relevant -- and provide at least some added value.   I've decided, that in the short term, I'll just point out some useful groups of sites. This is the first of a bunch of posts on the topic. This time, I'm covering LinkedIN.  LinkedIN If you're not a member of LinkedIN, it's well worth signing up (it's free anyway). LinkedIN has matured over the years and while people are usually still "too serious" on the site, It's no longer just a place for jobs.  There's some great technical discussions and articles that come up on there. LinkedIN isn't the best resource for connections but it's one of the easiest ones to engage. IBM Messaging & Collaboration Professionals https://www.linkedin.com/groups/37836 This group has 29,000 ...

My iPhone has been driving me crazy these last few weeks. The power has been draining so fast that I need to recharge by lunch time if I still want a phone (and not a brick) by the afternoon. I'd been blaming my iPhone for being old but as it turns out, the problem was much simpler than that - It was location settings.  When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. After all, you have to assume that if your phone is going to communicate with the satellites (and other receivers), it's probably going to need a bit of power to get up there. Then of course you factor in the number of apps which are using location services (it's exploded since I last looked in there).... and of course, many of the apps use location services "always". Yep, that's right... even when you're not using the phone. So, how do you turn these things off? First, you need to get to Location Services. The easiest way is via these three icons; Settings Privacy Location ...

Today's world is all about cloud.  We have email in the cloud, document storage in the cloud, data, applications and even development in the cloud. Why Cloud is Best From one point of view, cloud is an excellent choice. You no longer need to worry about; Physical servers which can suffer hardware failures. Storage and rack space for servers Local services, such as Air Conditioning and the Water Supply in the computer room. Local environmental factors, such as storms which can directly impact your infrastructure. Local backups, which can take hours and require special software Tape management (or streaming backup services) Server failover -- this is managed by the cloud sites. Hotfixes and patches to operating systems and applications. Most of the cloud systems offer some pretty good restore functionality too. For example; IBM Connections has some great version control tools which allow you to roll back to previous versions of your file.  This means that if...

We've recently rolled out IBM Verse and we're trying to get our staff members to use it (willingly) rather than mandating the change.  One of the issues that we've come up against is the humble Mailto link.  If you go to any web page that has a mailto link and click it, it goes to Notes. Obviously we want those links to go to Verse. It's a simple fix, here's how to do it. How To Open IBM Verse in Google Chrome (it might be possible to use other browser but I haven't tested them). Click on the Service Handler Icon in the Address Bar (Right hand side) A dialog box will appear asking if you want to allow Verse to open all Email links. Choose Allow. Click Finished. That's all there is to it.  Now you can browse around and find a mailto link like this one and click it.   and here's a picture (click on it if it's too small).

There seems to have been quite a bit of press lately about “Shadow IT” and it gives the impression that it's a new thing. Perhaps having a formally recognised name is new but shadow IT has been around throughout my (so far 28 year) career in IT and I suspect that it's much older than that. What is Shadow IT? Shadow IT is what happens when someone, not associated with the IT department, starts offering IT services to other parts of the business. Shadow IT can take the form of someone bringing in software from home, downloading software or even writing their own. Sometimes hardware is involved too with work PCs being opened, repaired, upgraded or otherwise "enhanced". In particular, since the emergence of cheap network hardware and the explosive growth of USB, its become very common to find users trying to plug their own hardware into work systems and networks. Sometimes new systems are developed. In one place I worked, a marketing employee rolled out a La...

Everybody loves video but while IBM Connections allows you to upload images, for some reason it doesn't have a simple "video upload" function. No problems though... just add your own code. Attaching your MP4 File If you're referencing an external public video, for example something on Youtube, then you can simply copy the embed codes from there.  If you want to host your own video (privately) on connections, you'll need to follow these instructions; Open your IBM Connections Wiki and go to attachments.  Upload your MP4 file as an attachment. Once it's uploaded, right mouse click on it and copy the URL to the Clipboard. Figuring out How Big Your Video Is You'll probably have seen your video playing somewhere already, so if you can, screenshot it and put it into a graphics package.  Crop the edges so that just your video is showing and then attempt to do a resize.  The original dimensions shown, should give you an indication of the size....

Two of the most critical factors in the success or failure of your intranet are the ease of use and the degree to which it catches the eye.  Unfortunately, there's not a lot of choices you can make with regards to IBM Connections Community design past the front page. Once you hit a forum or a library of files and folders, every single community starts to look the same.  Luckily though, there's a fair bit of flexibility on the  opening page and on the Wiki Pages.  I've already covered how to make your community look more appealing in other posts (See Part 1 and Part 2 ) but I recently created an internal community that I thought might be useful as a design exercise. A Tiled Community Example This is an internal "social" community which uses a style similar to the Microsoft Windows 10 tiles. I chose that look because I thought it would be both "fun" and "familiar" to our users. To build this, I simply made a 4 x 3 table and set it to 1...