DominoKeys.com

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.

One gripe though … the “enter” key works randomly on dialog boxes. For example, we have a policy that forces people to decide if they want to save a message before it’ll actually send it off. It takes an extra 1/2-second of your time, but saves us tons of disk space (mostly from people that used to save everything without thinking or caring about how big their mail files were getting). — If I want to accept the default answer, I try to hit “enter” and Notes just sits there  … waiting for me to click the option with my mouse. — Which is nice in that it causes me to REALLY think about what I’m doing.

I also created a new database and was able to hit “enter” to confirm my settings and generate the database off a template. Odd that “enter” would be allowed there, but not in some more common dialog boxes.

Again, its beta, so there’s room for improvement. Now I gotta figure out where to leave that feedback!
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This. Is. Hilarious.

Microsoft wants you to remember that you’re not alone when you’re having problems with your computer. That’s true. If you have a Windows machine, chances are you’ve had it crash, stop responding or had it boot into Safe Mode. Actually, chances are you’ve probably had all three happen … quarterly, at least.

But again, you’re not alone. There are tons of people running Windows who have the same thing happen. Really, you should think of it like a membership to a community. You’re part of the group when you see those things happen. Just like the guy in Spain who’s cursing in Spanish at his Windows computer for doing the same thing. Or the guy in France who’s flicking his cigarette on his computer as Windows boots into Safe Mode.

To commemorate these events, Microsoft wants you to remember that it really is a small world after all. — That’s why a known “feature” of Safe Mode is that it will randomly plat “It’s a Small World” while its in safe mode.

Seriously.

This applies to NT4, 98SE, 95, 2000pro and 2000 server. You can check out the KB article for yourself here.

How nice of them. — At least they didn’t use the theme song to the Twilight Zone, which probably would have been more appropriate.

Here’s a run-down of some of the cool things I’ve noticed that IBM totally got right with this version:

• More right-click support (or CTRL-Click, if you’re old-school)
• GREAT fonts … they look like they belong on a Mac (and that’s without the help of Silk … infact, its much better than Notes 6.5.4 w/ Silk)
• Scolling! — I’ve lived without it for so long, I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
• Icons for To/CC status of emails and for Sametime presence awareness
• The Tools\Preference window looks very nice. A big improvement over the previous version.
• Drag-n-Drop for file attachments feels less buggy.
• Support for right double-click
• Opt + Return (Enter) brings up the Property’s box!

I have run into a few problems, though. Again, this is a BETA, so these are to be expected to some degree.

First, the desktop6.ndk file seems to get corrupt during the install. I tried a few different ways to save this file on both my primary machine and a home Mac, but the first time you fire up Notes after the install, it gives you an error and you’re only option is to recreate all your icons on your Workspace. — This really could have been a pain, but it gave me the incentive I needed to re-organize my icons, so I’m not going to complain (too much).

Also, Sametime is integrated into the client which is very nice. It feels a bit buggy and doesn’t even come close to having the same awesome UI that Adium has (which is what I’ve been using to get IM functionality up unil now).

Sametime also didn’t connect when I was on my Internet connection. I realize ..]]>

Everyone gets calls from telemarketers, students (or so they say) doing surveys or calls from Sales Reps. Talk about a time-waster! I mean, I get that the cold-call is an important part of getting new sales but I do question just how effective it is.

Regardless, I find that most of the calls I get during the day at the office are from one of these three groups of people. I rarely call them back. After all, I get paid to get things done, not return phone calls from these people. (I’m amazed how many attempts people make to try to reach me after getting voicemail … one guy is up to 12 voicemail messages … and that’s just from the time I started counting! )

Nonetheless, you can’t avoid these people forever and will eventually answer the phone and have to talk to one of them live. You know the instant they start talking that you’re committed to call that’s going to waste 3-10 minutes of your time. Here’s some things I like to do/say in these situations:

• “I’m sorry, we have a corporate policy that prohibits us from taking part in surveys.”
• “I’m sorry, we have a corporate policy that prohibits us from giving out ANY information about our systems” (or networks, servers, PCs, … anything really).
• “Instead of me telling you what I use, how about you tell me in 3 minutes or less, what makes your product/service/company so great.”
• (Follow-up to the one above if they say they need more than 3 minutes): “Really? I ask this of everyone who calls and no one has ever had a problem doing it. — Its often the best way for me to learn what your company is all about … I think we’re done here.” (hang up)

Notes 7.0.2 is now available on a Mac!
(sort of.)

Every Saturday morning, I try to wake myself up early by having a bowl of cereal (Sat. is the only day I eat breakfast) and checking through various RSS feeds as I attempt to catch up on the world and wake up at the same time. Meanwhile, my wife is usually doing about 10 things at once. That’s the difference between a night person (me) and a morning person (her). — But this morning was different. This morning I did the same routine and saw a post about Notes 7.0.2 being available on the Mac!

I threw my bowl of cereal on the ground (not really, but I did spill some moving it out of the way) and went straight for my IBM beta program URL to login. After 3 excited (failed) attempts, I finally got in and started downloading the software. I couldn’t wait! I’ve been using 7.0.2 for a while, but always inside the dark world of Parallels/Windows NOW it’d be totally Mac-a-fied.

As it downloaded, I tried to get a firm answer on if it was a Universal app or not. I didn’t find a firm answer on that, but I’m lead to believe that the reason it wasn’t out sooner is because it IS a universal app. Again, not sure.

And then installed the software. Recklessly. No saving anything here. No final system backups. I couldn’t wait! The install moves along quickly. It found the old version, upgraded and finished neatly.

I clicked the icon to open it for the first time. Error: not found. — Hmm… I guess its not so much of an upgrade as a replacement of some type. Not a problem, I’ll just remove the icon from the dock and add a new one.

Again, I clicked the icon. Right off the bat, it looks more like 7.0.2. I log in and it does its business, upgrading databas…. woops…. uh-oh…. “deskt ..]]>

To do this, the process seems to be something like:

1. Get Notes
2. Get a digital camera
3. Get a Mac (not needed, but never a bad idea)
4. Take everyone’s picture (keep a list of the name of the person and the number of the photo, you’ll ned that later)
   Optional: Pay a real photographer to do this … the pictures will look MUCH better.
5. Upload the pictures to your computer and label them
6. Import into Notes

Here’s the problem. I had no clue how to do #6. I mean … where does Sametime (for example) look for these pictures? Each time we’ve done this in the past, we’ve had a seperate database that we created, web-enabled and agentized to sync to our Domino Directory to the database to keep all the employee information correct. But, do I really need to figure out how to integrate all that into Sametime?

No. A quick notes.net search turned up this document which tells you exactly how to do it (in your main Domino Directory). Now … let’s just do a little File\Database\Delete on that other one I worked so hard on a few years ago…
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I intend to use it for:

• Users who don’t have a laptop, but travel or work from home/remotely
• Users who use multiple computers (aka: everyone in our plants, part-time users, temporary staff, etc.)
• Everyone not in our office (that way we can configure Notes from here, send them a USB stick and not have to worry about all the messy desktop configuration stuff like local address books or what to do when they get a new computer)

This is probably the single biggest advancement in Lotus Notes for my company in many years. But you do need to know a few things before you do the install. Here’s the most comprehensive link I’ve found about those details:
Link: Chris Whisonant: Lotus Notes 7.0.2 – NOMAD Review
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While catching up on some of the blogs I follow, I stumbled onto a new website that’s very clever, but I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to use it just yet. The site is SlideShare.net and it allows you to post your PowerPoint (or similar variety) presentation to a website for others to easily see.

Its kinda a Flickr meets YouTube meets PowerPoint kinda thing. But its very clever.

As a side note, the presentation I was looking at had the type IBM-ness to it (lots of studies and predictions of where things are going, assumptions that you’re already 1/2-way there, lots of acronyms, etc.) but was one of the more interesting presentations I’ve seen from IBM of this type.

Good & Motorola announced that Good will be acquired by Motorola on Friday (Nov. 10, 2006). Details are in this press release.

Its a very interesting announcement considering Good runs on many platforms, but few Motorola ones. Maybe I’ll be able to get Good on my next Razr? I won’t hold my breath … still, I can dream, can’t I?

As a side bar … I’ve played around with Good on a few more devices including the Nokia E61/62 and the Cingular (HTC) 3125. The first is a Symbian device and the second is Windows Mobile. — Good continues to impress me with its ease of setup, quick email/calendar replication and consistent user interface. And it continues to royally bum me out with the way it handles contacts, especially contacts that come from Notes (rather, the Notes address book that’s embeded/sync’d to your email file, not the one in your address book).