System i Addict

So while I am working out tonight I listened to the Taking Notes Pod Cast, thanks guys for doing this for the community, and it was talking about XPages.

I am really interrested in Design work, and while it’s my weakness, it is one of the things I am trying to learn more about. The podcast is a must listen to for anyone talking about 8.5 and the new Domino Designer stuff along with XPages.

Keep up the good work!

Taking Notes Pod Cast Site

Thought I would share:

To power businesses and consumers with mobile Web computing capabilities, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it has expanded its relationship with AT&T, Inc (NYSE:T),  Sprint (NYSE:S), and other wireless carriers to provide broader e-mail access  to their customers who use IBM Lotus Notes and Domino software on their hand-held devices.

AT&T and Sprint have certified for use by their customers, IBM’s Lotus Notes Traveler software which enables wireless replication of Lotus Notes e-mail, calendaring, and personal information management (PIM) data on select smartphones.

IBM’s Lotus Notes Traveler software can be loaded with all of the set up information pre-configured. This means it is now “wireless replication-ready” as soon as the customer starts using his new device.  Standard data usage charges apply.

The devices from AT&T that have this capability are the AT&T 8525, AT&T Tilt, Moto Q Global, Palm Treo 750, PantechDuo (Mustang C810), Samsung Blackjack, and Samsung Blackjack II (i617). The devices from Sprint to include it are the Touch by HTC™, Samsung ACETM, Palm® Treo™ 700wx and Palm® Treo™ 800w.  There are more than 140 million Lotus Notes and Domino licensed users worldwide.

IBM Embedded Software Gives AT&T and Sprint Customers Access to Lotus E-mail

Link to Article

“This announcement puts IBM under severe pressure. Lotus maven, Ed Brill is valiantly defending the line, but with the iPhone now becoming a legitimate Enterprise device some of the bastions of Notes will come under pressure from senior Executives to deliver an ‘integrated’ messaging solution.”

Alright so you are looking now and I really don’t have much to say. I read or cruise PLANET LOTUS.org all the time trying to keep up and I can’t stop clicking on what Vowe posts (Volker Weber), I know it’s going to be very Vowe but It’s not always anything I would read int eh wild but it’s always interesting to see. Thanks Vowe or Volker Weber for making the Lotus part of the internet interesting. Now go back to his site, I know the visits are short lived.

Volker Weber’s 5 day hit count right now is over 1100 and mine is like 7 or 8, yeap 7. So I just wanted to casue a little trouble on Friday. Have a great weekend y’all.

Also I wanted to see how many links I could get on PlanetLotus.org too. Just as a Friday experiment.

Proof: The post about Lotus 8.5 and Ubuntu has 20 Hits and this one has 16 and is on the rise. Just more proof Vowe is more popular than Lotus Notes!

I have a standard updated as of today version of Ubuntu 8.04 running on a DELL Optiplex 755. It’s a pretty good little second machine. I have installed the Lotus Notes client on the Ubuntu desktop and have take a few screen shots to share with all of you.

As for the install, it’s easy and that is how you do software. There are a few things out of place in the client but all seems to be working. Still tinkering but I wanted to get these posted.

Installing from DEBs that came right from IBM. I didn’t have to make them!

Part of the Wizard

Lotus Notes Wizard looking for the ID file

Lotus 8.5 DB properties. Sorry for the black outs. Had to for my purposes.

FIle Menu

Lotus 8.5 Open Menu

Lotus 8.5 displaying an Image and it worked first time. No problems there.

A little image of what you get when you download the TAR files from IBM. Hope that all makes sense. Looks like a football play?

Side Notes: I am excited as to the future of Lotus Notes. I really am. A Linux/Ubuntu install and the new Mac client is well and good, but when am I going to be able to trash my Windows desktop as an Administrator or a Designer? How far out is that? I know I can use the Web Administration but that creates overhead on my servers and if one of them is down it spoils the works. I really want IBM to build a Lotus Administration Client for Linux and if you are felling cheeky a MacOSX version too. I would also like to see a clear path to Eclipse and how that is coming. IMHO it should have been out years ago, but again it’s not here and we are all kind of stuck in the middle again with Notes 8.5 for Linux and for Mac but no way to build new applications or administer them. If Microsoft wants to take pot shots at you this is the way they are going to do it. Point out that Lotus is only delivering some of the tools on some of the OSes and playing favorites. It may be FUD but it’s what they have to work with.

Lotus needs to step it up and stop playing delivery man all the time and just give me what I have been requesting going on five or nine years now. I want my Administration Client and my Designer Client on Mac and Linux (Ubuntu) and I want it now. I don’t want crying about numbers or statistics, I just want it delivered and I expect it from a company as large as IBM who cries all the time about how poor Windows is and then forces it’s customer base to keep using it. You can’t have it both ways.

Hello,

I am not one to bring by the Girl Scout cookies to your desk or ask people to sponsor me, my church or other things at work, but I think as Lotus people we all have a community bond that is both technical and personal. Yancy Lent, the owner of PlanetLotus.com, has posted a request of sorts and needs our help.

I hate it when kids get cancer, it’s just not fair. Kids should have to worry about bumps and scraps but not about who is going to donate bone marrow to them or if they are going to die. So if you feel so inclined please donate, if not I understand. Make sure to you end the amount in 8 to let the cancer fighting community that there is a Lotus Community behind them!

http://charity.planetlotus.org/

Also share this with anyone you think would want to help out. Someday soon I think we are going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the families it effects now need our help.

-Thanks,
David

I have two questions: Have you seen this problem (YES I HAVE)? and Have you tested the fix?

Your right Vitor Andy has been covering it and I should have posted that as well. Here are some links to Andy Blog. I respect his work and thank him for covering it:

Andy Reports the Problem
IBM Fix Post

From the SPR:

I have some buddies up in Mass. and wanted to make sure the folks from Lotus in the Boston area know we all like 8.0.1, it’s Wicked Nice!

I have been using it for the past 24 hours and I can tell you now, this is what we all have been complaining asking for in this version of Lotus 8. Lots of the features we wanted back are there. I am really impressed with it and have shown it to a few end users and they want it NOW!

So way to go IBM and LOTUS, it’s a job well done. Now all we have to do as Lotus people is leverage it properly and everything in the universe will be perfect, at least until we find a bug.

Link to my post on my ITKE site. LINK

The cat is out of the bag. Lotus anno0ucned today that they will be supporting Ubuntu and Lotus Notes. This is great. Thank you, thank you , thank you Lotus Team!Also Lotus Notes 8.5 for MacOSX is on the way as well.LINK

Ed Brill Comments on Notes for Ubuntu. Thanks Ed - I knew you knew and couldn’t let us know! 

Had some trouble with the last post. Sorry about that. Sure hope everyone finds this one. The other post was jacking up the blog. Some kind of formatting problem.

So if your a Lotus Domino/Notes shop and your running R7 or even R6 you need to stop all the other crap you are doing and watch this video and upgrade this weekend, or at least come up with a plan. The Lotus you had yesterday is nothing like R8 of Lotus Notes. Your users will thank you doe the next year. If you using Outlook/Exchange then first of all I am sorry your company loves to waste money and you need to call IBM and have them give you “a talking to” as some of the boys down south would say.

Things to do this week:

1. Plan the upgrade
2. Test the R8 Notes Client
3. Educate your users
4. Upgrade
5. Take a year off for changing the world! You deserve it.

Here is an excellent new video showing some of the various ways you can access Lotus Notes in the upcoming 8.0.1 release. You get to see the new Domino Web Access, Domino Web Access Lite, Lotus Notes Traveler (push email/calendar/contacts to mobile devices), as well as Lotus Notes on a Blackberry.

So for all of you out there I have been on Notes 8 now and testing it. Lets just say it still have some issues, but they do not out-weight the significance of Notes 8. It is truly a damn good looking and well done client. I am going to give a 40K foot over view of some of the things I think need to be looked at.

• The Workspace Area is still dull and boring. Lotus needs to make it look shiny and new. I am tired of the old workspace look and feel. Please fix that up.
• Lotus Notes 8 and Blackberry do not play well together. The BES does not know what to do with the Notes 8 mail box either. There is a fix slated for next month and this may be why so many are not moving to Notes 8. I don’t know who was dragging their feet but the fact that both IBM and RIM knew this was coming and did nothing is sad.
• The Notes 8 template is nice but really not as feature rich as I would like it out of the box. I expected to be blown away and was not. in order to make Outlook cry “uncle” you have to step up to the template.
• Sametime is great I just want a way to use short names with one click not having to edit each person.
• I want the ability in Domino 8 NAB to be able to add a picture to the NAB entry and it show up in Sametime and in the NAB too. I don’t like the idea of editing the NAB to make the faces in Sametime work. Make this simple
• Please Lotus, and I know you have it on the table, get rid of the .id file. I knwo why you use it, but I do not know why you continue to use it.

I think that is all for now. I will post more as I find it.

So for all of you Lotus Fans out there, IBM and the Lotus Group have now shipped Lotus Version 8. I sure want to know more about this and what it can do for small biz.

Cambridge, MA - 17 Aug 2007: IBM announced that after two years in development and testing by more than 25,000 businesses around the world, Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8 (www.ibm.com/lotus/nd8) will be generally available today, Friday, August 17.    IBM Lotus Notes 8 and IBM Lotus Domino 8 represents the industry’s first enterprise collaboration solution largely designed with input from its customers.

Research and insight gained from IBM R&D Laboratories and businesses worldwide indicate overall collaboration has superceded email as the key characteristic of their desktop experience.   Consequently, Lotus Notes 8 is designed to transform the inbox into an integrated workspace that brings together email, calendar, instant messaging, office productivity tools and custom applications.

You can try to read it if you like, but I would just admire the coolness!

LINK

I guess this is a big deal.

The last version of Notes 6.5 for MacOSX was in my opinion a problem at best and on IBM’s best day the support for it did leave a lot to be desired. I had 2 Macs in my last enviroment running Lotus Notes 6.5 and they both had plenty of issued that IBM support had no real good answer for and in most cases never fixed.

It was one of those moments when you think to yourself? Why does no one at IBM understand the Mac and how can they get away with not really supporting it? Reloading was the ussuall course of action with support. I think after a while you just give up, and that is what I did.

So if you have a Mac running MacOSX 10.4 you can now have the latest Notes Client. Yeah? Does that include Sametime intergration too?

Why is there no Sametime Client for MacOSX? Same goes for Linux? Don’t get me started or we will never get out of here.
Read all about the release here 

I know this is going to sound a bit harsh, but IBM and Lotus need to get Hannover out ahead of schedule and get rid of what is called Notes today. It’s ugly and boring and so over developed it’s hard to use. Now in the same breath so it Outlook but at least it’s got a nice look to it and the every day tasks are easy to use. Lotus Notes’ problem right now is Lotus Notes. Everyone at Lotus knows this but is afraid to say it out loud in fear of someone actually saying what every user is thinking.

Ed if you are reading this. I know you really probably could live without me and I know I am a pain in your ass, but you know what needs to be done. Stop tinkering around and stop making more bad Notes releases and get every developer who can say C++ on Hannover. It’s the only way to stop the problems with your current client.

Oh VISTAR is moving from Domino on iSeries (one of the most stable Mail and Application platforms) to Exchange. That’s over 5000 Employees and about 2000 Clients who are ditching Notes to move to Outlook/Exchange. The only reason I think they have not moved sooner with this plan is me, yep me, being the single Domino Admin, I gave Chris so much crap he preferred not to even deal with me on the subject of Lotus and that discussion and just wait until I either left or he could get AD installed and then Exchange would have been a “no brainier” according to Chris and Tim.

The other sad part is I think Lotus could stop the move but no one has knocked on the door over there in so long that they get the feeling IBM does not give a rats you know what about them. VISTAR spends millions with IBM every 3 years and no one except one person (iSeries Tech) darkens their doorstep more than once a year to see how things are going……badly if you company name is IBM.

Oh well that is all for now. Yeah IBM is thinking about Macs again….what about Lotus?