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!
For YEARS I’ve wanted something that allows me to see my work calendar, my home calendar, my wife’s calendar, my kid’s calendar and … well… the schedule of the Denver Broncos, on one screen. With the combination of Notes 8.5 and Apple’s Me.com (formerly MobileMe) service, I can.
First, open Apple’s iCal application and right-click on the calendar(s) you want to subscribe to. Select “Publish” and make note (either copy/paste or use the “email” option) of the locations of your published calendar.
When the calendar is published, you’ll se a “broadcast” icon appear letting you know its available. In the “Publish…” dialog box, you may also want to select some of the options available. 
For example, I leave the defaults and select “Publish changes automatically” and “Publish To Do items” but do not “Publish alarms” (I don’t need to be alerted to when their appointments will occur, I just need to see them on the schedule).
Back in Lotus Notes, open your calendar and select “Show Calendars” from the navigation on the left. Use the “Add a Calendar…” feature to enter the location of your .ics feed. Give the calendar a name (can’t use hyphens for some reason) and select any custom icons or colors to make it stand out. I use the same color scheme as I’ve got set up in Apple’s iCal to keep the instant corellation of “who’s calendar is what color” straight in my head.
The new calendar will appear automatically on your Lotus Notes calendar. To toggle on/off, just use the appropriate check mark.
Pretty easy stuff and extremely handy!
I spent some time (OK, a lot of time) in the usability lab at LS09. One of the things I got to see was Sametime 8.5, running on an iPhone.
This isn’t inteded to be a full blown application – just a web version. The UI is really shapping up nicely. Its very intuitive and they’ve come up with a few handy tricks to make it even easier to use. There’s just one problem: its a website. The second you close your iPhone you no longer will get messages.
Now… the intended use isn’t to be a mobile Sametime client that goes with you (which I would use the heck out of, if I had it), rather a way to access IM services while mobile. That’s still handy.
I haven’t spent a lot of time with other IM apps for the iPhone – mainly because none of them support Sametime and that’s really the only IM software I use anymore; so I’m not sure how those applications handle getting messages when you’re phone is “closed.” I know that a lot of the opportunity to provide a good way of handling this lies on Apple. By their own admission, there needs to be a way to deliver IM alerts to you as simply and efficiently (saving battery life, etc.) as text messages happen on the device today. I honestly don’t know how well other apps are doing that today – but can certainly understand that it would be a HUGE incumbrance to Lotus’ deployment of a true Sametime client app on the iPhone as well.
But they’re smart guys and gals – they’ll figure it out.
As recent as last night, I found myself talking with a group of people from Lotusphere about when true iPhone support would come for Notes/Domino users. It is safe to say that by Tuesday, most everyone interested in the topic had heard Ed Brill say something about future support for ActiveSync (and my favorite quote from him was something like ‘… we said we’d support ActiveSync in a future Traveler release… I guess you could use that to connect an iPhone’).
I’m thrilled about this news – even if there is no ETA. Now, I’ve been… eh… let’s say “challenged” … by people at IBM in the past about my strong stance on the need for iPhone support beyond uber-lite. Various persons from IBM that I’ve talked to have often reminded me about the dominance of BlackBerry in the enterprise and the long list of other perfectly good (notice I didn’t say “great”) mobile phones. Those are good points. However, Lotus is doing something incredibly smart with this announcement… something I didn’t expect, think of, or request… they’re adding ActiveSync support to Travler.
My organization uses GOOD for mobile PIM connectivity. We’ve tried lots of other solutions and that’s the one that fit the best. We also have an interest in Traveler, but, while its a very strong product, we stay committed to GOOD because we can’t justify the transition on any feature improvements (infact, we’re still trying to figure out the final answer on wether or not Traveler supports global address books). But this announcement changes that perspective completely.
Beyond the sheer power the iPhone offers through its ease of use and outstanding applications, its use of a full featured (sans flash) web browser means that I can get to nearly any website I need. Including web-faced Domino apps, Quickr, etc. Sure, some optimization would be nice — but doing that development work for ONE platform (iPhone) is much easier. And doing it with a head start (the rendering ability of a full Safari web browser) means it doesn’t take the entire IT staff to deliver mobile applications.
Couple this huge benefit of using the iPhone vs. other devices with the now upcoming Notes support – and the value proposition of using Traveler vs. anything else suddenly is a no-brainer. AND I can transition existing users/devices to Traveler first if needed, then to an iPhone (to help manage cash flow for buying new devices).
Score one for Lotus! This is an exciting announcement and a brilliant plan. Well done!
I just sat through Ed Brill’s session on the future direction of Notes. I’ve kept up with his blog and shared a few spirited (in a positive way) emails with him over the year – but it dawned on my today that I had never seen him speak at Lotusphere. I set out to change that and I’m glad I did. He did an excellent job presenting and is one of those rare speakers you enjoy listening to for a long period of time.
The session was really what I thought was missing out of the OGS. They covered details about where Notes/Domino is going; highlighted features in 8.5; talked about some specifics in the next release; etc. They also talked about IBM/Lotus’ overall vision and philosophy – which really helps explain a lot of what they’ve been doing lately. He talked about how they are working to sort of “pop up” in unusual places, like Macworld. Its a good plan because it gets Lotus in front of end-users with their message (which has been something I’ve said would be a great idea for years now). IBM/Lotus is very happy with their results so far (Ed cited a few articles from a variety of sources that covered product announcements in the last several months). That’s all really positive stuff and frame their mindset as they go to market.
But by far THE MOST EXCITING thing they SHOWED was an iPhone using ActiveSync to connect with a Domino server. The demo was almost lackluster because it worked so well. They opened mail, calendar and contacts – all of which were connected to a Domino source using ActiveSync. VERY impressive!
They said that they weren’t in a position to make an announcement, which means no ETA has been established. Still, it was increadibly exciting to see that its being worked on (and appears to look VERY close to usable!)
Update: I attended a session this afternoon which provided the components of the OGS which I thought were missing. The two together have prompted me to change my opinion here. I now have a better understanding of why the OGS was structured the way it was (although they probably could have lifted 5 minutes of content about the direction of Notes/Domino from the INV102 session). I suggest reading that entry first, and then coming back to this one with the understanding that I’ve eased up a bit on my original thoughts. -KH 1.19.2008 @ 2:45PM EST
The Lotusphere 2009 Opening General Session just finished and, as much as I honestly hate to say this, I can sum it up with one word: disappointing.
Normally, I have 8-12 pages of notes after this session; I want to redo my schedule selection because I’m so excited about new announcements; and I’m just so completely excited and enthusiastic that I start to “get” why people wear those “I bleed yellow” t-shirts. This year? Not so much.
I think Lotus was really trying to shift the OGS from being a demo session “lite” (which we all actually like) and be something that tells the story about their product portfolio. They also talked very little about the direction of Notes/Domino. Infact, hardly anything was mentioned about the Domino server at all.
Some of the highlights:
One other item that’s worth noting is the use of Twitter. The “#LS09″ flag allowed people to tweet realtime throughout the event. I can’t imagine being a presenter and getting instant feedback like that. When its good feedback, I’m sure it helps the energy build – when its not, its got to make things that much worse.
Overall, the feedback I’ve been hearing from people has been surprisingly split. IBM/Lotus employees and business partners seem to be saying that it was the best OGS in a long time. Nearly all of the other people I’ve talked to who are customers completely disagree. I’m hearing people complain about the lack of new announcements for the Notes Client, Domino and Administrator. I’m hearing positive things about Sametime, but a mixed interest in Connections and disappointment in improvements for Quickr. Even the Mac crowd seems to be subdued … most likely largely due to the fact that they now have a great Notes client (and can shut up about wanting one – myself included, btw) and the disappointment about NOT hearing an announcement about an iPhone PIM application (and the repetition of “BlackBerry” throughout the morning didn’t help.)
So there you have it — I’m anxious to hear what others thought as the week goes on. So far (yesterday and the one I’m in now), the sessions have been outstanding. I’d also offer that I had my hopes up for the OGS since the decision was made to announce 8.5 at MacWorld … I assumed Lotus had more surprises up their sleve for their own conference.
After being pulled due to some bugs, the LS09 app is back on the iTunes app store. It’s a nice app for checking up on sessions, speakers and abstracts. A nice mobile companion to the quick guide in your badge kit.
Below are a few screen shots. It’s also worth noting that my battery life indicator would suggest that I’m using my iPhone a bit too much if I expect to get through the day. Must be the GPS tracking with BrightKite (”Netcot” if you want to follow).
A team from Lotus was on-site at the MacWorld conference this week with an exciting announcement: Lotus Notes 8.5 is available! I was expecting this to be the big announcement at Lotusphere but was excited to see it announced early. I think it goes a long way to show their commitment to the Mac platform … which is great!
There’s only one problem: with the exception of a few trade rags and Lotus blogs, NONE of the Mac-based sites & blogs I read up on were talking about it. That’s incredible unfortunate because its a big announcement and worth mentioning (especially since some of those Mac-based sites picked up stories about iNotes uber-lite when that was announced). However, I realize that *I* maintain one of these Mac-based blog sites, so I’m doing my part to help spread the word!
I’m sure I’ll have lots to comment on over the next several days, but for now, let’s talk about the installation of the Notes 8.5 client for the Mac. The first big piece of news is that there is a “full” and “basic” client available. I didn’t see that coming – what a nice surprise!
My install started with the unpackaging of the tar file, which took some time.
After an hour (thankfully I had a meeting in my office during that time where I could see the screen, but didn’t need to use my computer), the program decided that it didn’t actually want to do the install, so it backed out of the idea:
I decided to try again first thing this morning. To my surprise, it ran through this step VERY quickly (I’m now assuming that something didn’t shut down correctly yesterday when I stopped Notes 7.0.2 before the install). One helpful screen I noticed during the install was an information screen telling me where it would install the program and data files. I rarely need this information, but always have trouble finding it when I do.
Another surprising screen was the options for installing Sametime and the Composite Application Editor – which I’m anxious to check out.
I was also suprised to see some defaulting options for mail, calendar and contacts. I left these checked, but I’ll admit, I’m a bit nervous about NOT using iCal and Mac’s address book as the defaults.
The most entertaining portion of the install is the confirmation screens. As you can see, Lotus REALLY wants you to know that things are done. The first display…
… and then…
… and finally:
You’re done. I got it! 
The other “trick” that I noticed was a “starting up” screen when loading. This is something Windows users have seen for a while now and I wondered when it would make it to the Mac. Reminded me of the old story about a building with a slow elevator that was expensive to replace and caused everyone to complain while waiting impatiently. What did the building owner do? Install mirrors. People were so preoccupied looking at themselves, they assumed the elevators were faster. This screen is the software version of that concept:
Now that the software is loaded and running I can say its a BIG improvement over the 8.5 beta. The team has clearly spent a lot of time working and refining this product and deserve much credit for doing so. It gives me renewed hope in the idea that Lotus is taking Mac users seriously.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll blog more about new features, etc. But one I have to mention now is the dock icon with a count of unread mail messages. This is something Mail.App has had for some time and its GREAT to see Lotus adopt it!
I don’t get very error messages on my Mac – which is great! Oddly enough, I’ve observed that when I do get error messages its usually caused by Adobe (there seems to be a new Adobe update or problem each time I open one of their products) and Microsoft. However, I’m still scratching my head on what this one was supposed to mean:
I guess I share something in common with “Microsoft Software Installation,” I don’t understand that either!
My frustrations with trying to get the iPhone to work well with my Lotus Notes based life are well documented here. But I will soy, things are getting better.
The update to Domino 8.0.2 on our core mail server (the one my file is on) meant that suddenly I gained delete functionality over my mail again (previously unavailable via my IMAP setup). However, the ball is now back in the iPhone’s corner as the iPhone has no “delete right now” option – thus I have to wait a minimum of one day before the message actually removes itself from my inbox.
I’ve also gotten into the habit of using DWA uberlite more often. I like the UI of this, but hate the fact that I have to be connected. Still, with a 3G network and WiFi all over the place – its not as bad as I imagined (or perhaps my standards have just lowered – either way, its working better).
Finally, the latest Mac OSX update (10.5.6) brought in some much needed improvements for MobileMe (their service which sync’s your address book, calendar, etc.). Each time I get a Notes calendar invite, I export it and drag the file into Apple’s iCal. Yes, its a pain, but it ensures my Notes and iCal (and thus iPhone) calendars are always synchronized. However, MobileMe replicates sporadically, at best. So I would often miss the replication window and forget to attend a meeting the following day, because it had yet to replicate.
However, 10.5.6 fixes that. Within a minute (in most cases, less) my Mac has sent off every calendar update to my iPhone. A BIG improvement.
While none of these user experiences are ideal, the fact is that I’ve dealt with manu-matically getting my iPhone/Notes worlds to integrate for so long, that even the smallest of improvements feel like a big deal.