DominoKeys.com

Backstory: I posted an entry about how I would have LOVED to see “Lotus Notes/Domino” support listed (by Apple) with the announcements of new iPhone features. I get questioned (a lot) from end-users (and for that matter, others who read this blog) about when that support is coming. — Ed Brill left a comment to that post which made me realize something VERY important: I made it sound like I was blaming IBM/Lotus. I thought correcting that was more important than burring a “comment” response to the post – thus what you’re about to read…

One of THE MOST IMPRESSIVE things that I learned at Lotusphere 2009 didn’t come from a session or presenter… it came from someone who I kept noticing appeared in multiple sessions. I introduced myself to the person only to find out they were from Apple and attending the event as part of the partnership that IBM/Apple have, and will build upon for the future.

That’s a big deal.

IBM and Apple are very different companies. Suits (or at least biz caz) vs. Jeans. PC (-bias) vs. Mac. B2B vs. B2C. — At the core, you have one company (IBM) that needs to produce roadmaps of their software offerings so enterprises can plan ahead. The other  (Apple) wants to keep as many secrets as possible until the very end as part of their marketing/hype strategy.

And in the middle – you have the overlap issues; like getting the iPhone and Notes to work together. Which I learned, isn’t as much of a technical complication as it is a plain complication. (Ed talked briefly about this concept as well during … whatever the Mac-love-fest BOF event was.)

Leaving Lotusphere, I had an appreciation for how much effort both parties need to put into working together in light of some fundamental differences. I also (to Ed’s comment/point) gained a respect for the fact that its not ONE party’s “problem” for why there isn’t iPhone support … its more complicated.

So… back to my original blog post; what I meant to say was: It would have been GREAT to see “Lotus Notes/Domino” support in the Apple keynote presentation – and as I remind people to wait because “a product is coming” I need to also be careful to point out that its not the fault of one of the two parties … its more complicated than that.

Thanks, Ed, for keeping me honest with that! 

Tags: Apple / Mac, iphone, lotus

I posted something about having problems with Quickr Personal Places not showing up after the 8.2 upgrade. The team at my office was able to dig up a fix, which I’ve left as a comment on the original post.

Tags: lotus, notes, quickr

Each year on the day after my birthday I run out to a series of stores and buy myself a (or several) birthday gift(s). This year, I had one store to hit to get them all: Best Buy.

(I’ll spare you the part of the story where it pains me to shop there in the first place because of how poorly they handled an extended warranty issue I had several years ago – but hey, at least I’m supporting a “local” economy; living in the state where the BB HQ is located. — Also, I chose to buy my music in physical format to get the whole experience complete with packaging, etc.)

On the list this year: 2 Def Leppard CDs, 1 Def Leppard / Taylor Swift DVD and 1 Jennifer Paige CD. Pretty simple. I also was anxious to look for a handful of other CDs that would end up being impulse buys, assuming they’d have them in stock.

However after having to hunt someone down to find ANYTHING on my list I soon realized that most of what I was looking for (all released today) weren’t in stock. With half of what I wanted to purchase in hand, I started up my iPhone, opened the Amazon application and was able to add the remainder of my order to a cart in FAR less time than it took to find it on the shelf.

Then I got to thinking… what does Amazon charge for these CDs? I looked. $21. Best Buy wanted $27.99. So by purchasing my entire order from Amazon, I’d get free shipping AND spend less overall … AND I could place the order from my phone before I even exited the doors of the place I was standing in trying to buy stuff. Free shipping made it a no-brainer and suddenly I found myself saying “hey, I can wait 3 days to GET these CDs because I’m saving a lot of money by doing it.”

So I pressed “purchase” in the Amazon app and my order is now in process.

The lesson? Amazon, who can’t compete with the instant gratification that Best Buy offers via a store, got a $120 order from me because they competed on price, offered free shipping and provided a free iPhone application that worked perfectly and easily. They took away every barrier they possibly could between me and taking an order AND they did it with a user experience that made it easy and exciting (hey, I’m blogging about it after all).

Nice work, Amazon … I really feel like I got a best buy with you.

Tags: amazon, best buy, iphone, user experience

THE NUMBER ONE question I’m hearing from people these days is “NOW can I use the iPhone with Notes?!?!”

The question comes on the heels of the WWDC event earlier this month and they are all wanting whatever-the-product-is that I’ve told them to “wait” for (Traveler, but they don’t care what the product is – they just want to use the iPhone in a Notes world). As a shurg my shoulders and begrudgingly say “no… not yet” I get a lot of disappointed and looks.

“But… but Apple announced a new phone! AND a new operating system! And… and they even talked about enterprise support… AND I SAW this…”

“… and ASSUMED that Lotus wouldn’t allow MICROSOFT to be mentioned without Lotus ALSO working with the product?!?!”

Now… in fairness, there are a lot of technologies at play here that are hidden within end-user comments about “Microsoft” and “Exchange” when they really are talking about stuff that’s a bit more complicated. At the same time, it doesn’t matter. Perception is reality and they have the perception that Apple and Microsoft are working well together while Lotus and Apple aren’t.

Damage control: I consistently remind people that IBM is a large company and that I’m sure they have no shortage of people working on the product. I remind them that its in beta testing at Greenhouse and that there’s a new release of Domino around the corner which, hopefully, will have support for the iPhone in it.

Still. It would have been nice to see “Lotus Notes/Domino” as the third bullet point to the slide above.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine told me he was getting a Mac (for the first time ever). The primary reason he cited was that “Mac’s don’t get viruses.”

Sure, Mac’s are less “virus” prone (using that term broadly) however they can get a virus … especially when you introduce virtualized Windows environments onto the machine. A point I was reminded of yesterday when seeing this:

Doh!

That is the single most frequently asked question I get at work. It has been since the day the original iPhone came out. The frequency increased once the 3G phone came out. It increased again when people saw “iPhone” on Lotus websites (most of whom didn’t realize that it was talking about a web experience, not an integrated application). And now that the most recent Apple event has concluded, the question is very much back on the radar screen.

The answer: no.

Yes, you can see the beta in Greenhouse. Yes, “its coming” is the official answer. No, no one has a date that they are willing to share.

Patience, grasshopper.

Tags: iphone, lotus notes, waiting

We just updated to the latest version of Quickr and WOW is it an improvement. It is noticably faster and its clear that a lot of it has been cleaned up. There’s also a bit more Ajax goodness floating throughout it. Longstoryshort: a strong upgrade for the product.

I’d still LOVE to have the ability to have folders in my personal Quickr place and Mac support. Oh, Mac support… that would be GRAND!

Which brings me to this question: anyone else having problems adding their personal place via Quickr connectors? It looks like you can only add team places, not personal places (which were previously an option to add).

Anyone else found this? Just me? Work arounds?

Meanwhile… this is promising: Pandabear @ Snapps. Its beta so there’s still plenty that I’m sure they’re working on. I’d like to see something different for uploading files (dragging files onto a Panda is fun, but not as business-like as I need it to be) and more functionality added throughout. But its a great concept… especially for those of us who work in a world of multiple OS’s.

Tags: adobe air, lotus, panda, quickr

The presentation below is a great overview of the Quickr product. It covers the need, concept, key features and much more. I especially like how it speaks to the need for a utility like this in organizations that have employees spread across a wide range of experience, age range, etc.

It’s so good that I found myself wishing I would have started to talk about the concept at my company now (since this presentation is available) vs. over a year ago when I actually did begin talking about it.

Tags: lotus, presentations, quickr

I’ve been unusually quiet around here lately. Its not for a lack of things to discuss; rather its because I wasn’t sure how to even go about explaining them with any value. Then I realized this is a blog – valuable comments are purely optional on blogs.

First off, we’ve begun the formal launch of Lotus Notes 8.5 in the organization. Its going quite well. We’re using the automatic upgrade, some policies and a home-grown training course (which I’ll post once we’re done with it) in mandatory sessions that last about an hour and a half. User response has been positive. Favorite features include the ability to show other calendars ontop of your own (yet no one is using it with calendars other than internal users) and Sametime IM. I think the later is more of a result of bringing it to the front sidebar than anything else. However, the “preview” of some of the planned Cisco-Sametime integration helped too… people really seem to be excited about that.

Next, Quickr. We came “this close” (put your finger and thumb together spaced about 1cm apart) to jumping ship to SharePoint based largely on user interface. That’s a huge factor. For whatever reason, SharePoint seems instantly more intuitive to our users than Quickr does, despite the fact that we use so little Microsoft-anything its almost unbelievable.

I think some key users toughed it out long enough to make it seem (at the moment) like Quickr will stick around. However it made me seriously think about developing (and then selling, or at least posting for download) a Quickr template that looks like a mirror image of SharePoint. (hint hint – to any enterprising Quickr fan out there looking to make a buck on the side)

Lastly, Sametime. This one is still a product that is suddenly on the fence for us. Don’t get me wrong, its a great tool, looks fantastic and is easy to use. However it has two big “flaws.” It requires some Java stuff to download before the first use (which I’m told changes in 8.5) which is hit-or-miss with how well it works (or how likely the end user is to screw it up by not waiting or paying attention to warning messages).

The second big flaw is in how it renders the screen. Its essentially square blocks which get refreshed based on changes. We see more and more lag with this as we have Sametime meetings around 3D CAD designs, engineering simulations or even screens that require some modest “scrolling” during the meeting. Sametime has a tough time keeping up despite some big internet connections between all parties involved and a dedicated server that’s plenty big.

We’ve looked into Fuze as of late which is a promising tool (and has an iPhone app – bonus!). There is a fair amount of pressure to make a change in our committment to Sametime based largely on these performance issues – however I’m keeping the faith and waiting out the storm for some first hand experience with the 8.5 release. Hopefully that’ll just fix all of my problems.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the iPhone stuff. Still waiting. Patiently. Its coming – I know. And when it does, I anticipate some floodgates opening in the form of people wanting it and then wanting our applications to work closely with it.

Tags: iphone, notes, quickr, sametime, sharepoint