DominoKeys.com

I can’t remember how I stumbled onto this site, but I’m sure its because I got webtangled earlier this morning. The site is FutureMe.org and it allows you to send yourself a message … in the future.

Its a great idea! There’s stuff I know now that I’ll need in the future, so I can just pop over there and setup a reminder now for myself later … um, yeah.

The reality is that I really don’t need this site … because Lotus Notes is FutureMe-compatible!

In Notes, I can simply setup a Reminder in my calendar, click the “Notify Me” button and enter my email address (or my phone # @ cingularme.com, in my case) and get a reminder of whatever FutureMe needs to know. This is especially handy, now that I’ve converted to my own (slightly modified) version of the David Allen way of getting things done in Notes.

Now … if only I can find a way to tell PastMe stuff. Like who to bet on in the 1992 Kentucky Derby, or that Microsoft was a good stock to buy back in the day, or that I’d really regret selling my convertible two years ago. Now that i think about it, there’s more stuff I need to tell PastMe than FutureMe.

[ratings]

I finally found the place on the IBM Passport Advantage site where I could download the gold code for Notes 7.0.2 on the Mac … the real thing, not the beta version I’ve been running for a while. Here are some early thoughts:

• Faster. So. Much. Faster! — I figured that the beta code wasn’t totally compiled like a gold app would be, but I can’t believe how much faster the real thing is!
• More stable. — I didn’t really feel like the beta version was unstable, but some of the Java-ness about it felt like it wasn’t all there (particularly whenever you did anything related to instant messaging). This version is much quicker and feels more stable.
• Enter works. — So far the “enter” key works more like you’d expect on dialog boxes. This was one of my biggest gripes with the beta version and it really seems to be cleaned up nicely.
• The install is much more aware of … itself. — When I first installed the beta, I blog’d about some odd behavior during the install which left me without my database icons. This one is much more aware of previous installs and adjusts itself accordingly (see image below – click for a larger version).

[ratings]

I think a word needs to be invented. Something to describe what happens to you when you start browsing the web for one thing and realize about 20 minutes later you’ve got 11 tabs open and have gone so far off topic, you’ve almost forgotten completely why you sat down at your computer in the first place.

I decided that I would come up with that word. I give you: “webtangled.”

Its not official yet, but as you can see from the screen shot, I’m working on it!

[ratings]

Yesterday I had a very interesting experience.

My family (parents, grandparents, wife, one of my brothers and my sister) all tried to be helpful within finding flight information at some point during the day. It was interesting to take note of their perspectives on how to get flight info:

• My Grandparents: Told me you need to call the airline 48 hours in advance to confirm your reservation and then again at 24 hours before and then again at 2-4 hours before. The good news is that they “have 1-800 numbers, so it won’t cost you to call.”
• My Parents (my dad, specifically, who’s been an uber-Platinum elite member since before I could walk): “Yeah, technically, you’re s’posed to do that. I check on-line 48 hours ahead to see the status (which we all think means: to confirm he got a first class upgrade) and then check it once more a few hours before I leave on-line.”
• Me: “The on-line thing is probably a good idea, but when I make the reservation, I set up notifications to be sent to my email, which I get on my phone.”
• My Sister (who’s 14): “… or you could just check it on your way there on your phone, or probably text them … but you guys all have laptops, so why don’t one of you drive there and the other can check it from your laptop in the car?!”

I absolutely love that progression of technology! Its important to note that my sister also assumed that since I had a WiFi card, I could get a WiFi signal in the car. She doesn’t live in a city where they have free WiFi (yet) but she does consider it to be somewhat of a ubiquitous utility.

Oh, and incase you were wondering, we did all of those things … because my family is also a bit hyper when it comes to traveling.

(The “laptop in the car” thing was accomplished with the help of a bluetooth cell phone connection.)

[ratings]

I often get asked why my blog is running off WordPress and not Domino. I have a two part answer: 1) Domino hosting is expensive … and I already pay too much money to maintain my websites — and — 2) because it gives me a chance to play with WordPress, which I don’t get to use at the office.

Now, in all fairness, I don’t dive into Domino that much at the office either … but that’s “being management” for you.

However, my DominoKeys.com site has really become a nice playground for me. In the last month, I’ve spent a lot of time getting into the depths of the code to make changes that are in preparation for a big overall site change.

Some of these include:

• Installation of Sociable plug-in. This is a great little plugin but I found that it took up a lot of real-estate on the screen (especially since I didn’t want to limit the buttons to just a few social bookmarking sites). So I’ve recently removed it and replaced it with…
• Installation of Share This plugin. This tool does the same thing as the Sociable plugin and it allows users to forward links to articles via email. The best part is that takes up a minimal amount of space until its needed.
• Ratings. This is something I really want to play around with for my Netcot.com site so I thought I’d start using it here. So far, so good.

More changes are coming to the site in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!!!

I decided I’d start this Christmas by catching up on some blogs … mostly because no one else is awake yet. When doing this, I stumbled on a little something I’m going to consider to be IBM’s Christmas Present to me over at Ed Brill’s site.

I haven’t been able to download it on the Passport Advantage site just yet, but I’m going to keep trying. Ed’s site has a few people who commented on how to download it, but each time I try I can’t seem to find it. I’ll keep looking because I can’t wait to unwrap my Christmas present!!!

I think Adobe wants to remind you that they are committed to the Mac platform but also that they can design great interfaces too. The installer for the CS3 beta (now on adobe.com) immediately looks different than any other installer I’ve seen on Mac or Windows. And it looks great!

If the install UI is any indication of what might be inside, this could be a really nice looking release. Let’s hope it works well … although, I’m sure it’ll work better than CS2 under Rosetta or CS2 in Windows in Parallels.

My new and improved DominoKeys blog is now on-line!

There’s still some tweaking to be done on it, which will happen over the next several days (probably “months”). But I’m now powered by WordPress and ready to go!

This is a big step forward for me. I’ve always really liked the bMachine blog template but it just hasn’t been updated in a while and has a few goofy features. In the last few months, I’ve really struggled with it as I worked on redoing the DominoKey’s site (stay tuned for that) and I kept finding things that would intermittently work (like searching).

I still would have liked to try out the new 7.0.2 Domino blog and I feel kinda like I’m cheating on Lotus by not doing that. But the fact is that WordPress has a TON of people doing development for it and there’s lots of things I want to take advantage of because of that.

So … the new blog is up. The new site is on its way and I’m looking forward to some more frequent posting!

(Oh, and almost all of the old articles have been uploaded to the site, sans comments, sorry. A few stories are missing … mostly the “this is what I’m doing right now” type stuff that doesn’t matter 6+ months after the posting.)

[ratings]

Hey all. — If you’re here and wondering where my blog went, you’ve caught me during an “upgrade.” The blog engine I was using (bMachine) just isn’t being updated anymore and its really caused me some headaches trying to get it to do more stuff. So, as I searched around I found two options:

1. Use the new Domino blog — or –

2. Use WordPress, the defacto standard

For now, I’m choosing #2 because I can’t find a good place to (cheaply) host my Domino stuff and I refuse to put it on the office’s web server. So … hold tight and everything around here will be back online shortly.