For a LONG time, I’ve been a huge fan of the RSS reader program (for the Mac) NewsFire. Its such a simple, elegant application. In a world of complicated software layouts, this one was only as complicated as it absolutely needed to be. It was also fast and well designed. Considering the number of RSS feeds I follow, I never felt overwhelmed when using this application - which is pretty impressive!

A couple of years ago, a friend tried to get me to switch to NetNewsWire. I tried it for a few days but felt that everything was the opposite of what I loved about NewsFire. This tool had a busier layout, too many panes and suddenly left me feeling like I was following way too many RSS feeds, despite the fact that I exported the list from NewsFire and deleted the default set that comes with NetNewsWire when you install it.

However, there’s been a tipping point: iPhone compatibility. This application not only gives you a great iPhone optimized version of the software, but also uses their synchronization services to keep your iPhone and Mac versions of the software in sync with each other. That one piece of functionality has been the tipping point that has caused me to now exclusively use this software over the other (NewsFire).

What’s more, if you read the reviews of it in the App Store in iTunes, you’ll see that people have complained about its performance and limited functionality (compared to the full-blown application). I understand those comments, but the sync utility it provides makes me simply not care.

Its a great tool. I suggest trying it for yourself!

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I probably don’t need to tell you that yesterday was the launch of the new 3G iPhone. If that’s a surprise, may I suggest moving on to your next random blog.

Ah, you’re still here. Great.

Yes, I did go to the AT&T store near me Friday morning. No, I didn’t wait in line (like I did last year). Infact, I got there about 30 minutes after the store opened and saw a line that was nearly twice the line I stood in when the original iPhone launched a year ago.

As I called various friends to catch up on their iPhone experiences, everyone had the same report: more people in line this time, the line moved slower and their store of choice ran out of phones sooner.

Sounds like a good launch for an Apple product. Plenty of interest. More people that expected. Taking orders for the next round of deliveries. All par for the course.

But blogs suggested another key point to this story: a tough day for Apple/AT&T. I lost track of the official answer to “does everyone need to have the phone registered in the store?” Some said yes, some said no, others said they did, but were told to just go home and do it themselves.

It wasn’t just the 3G iPhone, either. The 2.0 software was “found” ahead of its launch (by the way - its awesome - I already have found applications that are suddenly “must have’s” for my phone) and MobileMe has been plagued with startup problems. The brief bit I was able to get into MobileMe looked really impressive. I can certainly see the value of having all my contacts, calendars (home, work, subscription calendars, etc.), bookmarks, pictures, files, etc. all on-line.

And yet, access to MobileMe wasn’t given until I did an update in iTunes which allowed Safari to see the service. What?!?!

Regardless, it looks great but is clearly still having some difficulty. This morning, my RSS reader showed that there’s already an update required on my Mac for the service. Its been very un-Apple thus far.

Now, I’m chalking all this up to the fact that they’ve got a lot launching right now. But, as I reflect on the level of which I’m usually critical of Lotus/IBM for similar “growing pains” I felt compelled to take a moment and recognize the 3G iPhone and MobileMe situation for what it really has been in the last 24 hours: promising, but troubled through the early launch.

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Before leaving for vacation, I had the chance to attend an IBM event all about Sametime. Two years ago, during Lotusphere a colleague of mine said (after seeing a similar demo): “you know, I can see a world where internal email almost entirely goes away - everything is based in Sametime, Activities, Quickr or some combination - we simply… collaborate, anywhere on any device.”

I have to admit: I see it too!

First, let’s review what Sametime has to offer. — Wait, better idea: let’s review what it DOESN’T have to offer. The answer: not much. Its really a very complete tool. The only thing I’d like to see (of course) is iPhone support - but that IS (at least at the moment) Apple’s hold up. By their own admission, they’re working on a way to improve an IM-type application so it doesn’t have to stay in memory the same way others do today.

For a more complete list of what Sametime has to offer, check out the graphic. It’ll do a much better job than I did in the paragraph above.

Here’s what else I love about Sametime - its one product that really does have the same experience on Macs. We’ve been hearing about Eclipse for a while now and Sametime is where it really is clear why IBM is committed to that. My Sametime client on my Mac (pictured) is nearly identical to its Windows counterpart.

Normally, when I say that, its followed by an “except that it doesn’t have…” but with Sametime, I’ve got none of that! I can even integrate side-shelf applications into the Mac Sametime client. Shown in the graphic is my Cisco Voicemail application.

I shouldn’t need to explain to anyone how powerful it is to have one utility that shows all of my contacts, their contact information, their picture, their on-line or meeting status, my voicemail and lots of other tools all in one easy, intuitive application.

Nice work, Lotus! I’m anxious to see what’s next because this application is so complete - its almost hard to envision room for improvement!

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My iPhone continues to amaze me. I’ve had it literally since “day 1″ and I still discover new uses for it. For example, I learned this week that it can be used as a boarding pass.

I also learned something it can’t do: send address book entries via bluetooth. My new car will store these entries in its memory and allow me to call them through the car’s interface (including voice command). However, the iPhone doesn’t support this.

No worries though… my contacts are in my Mac address book and sync’d via .Mac, which also syncs to my wife’s computer, which syncs to her phone, which is also connected to the car. So… in an extremely roundabout way… I’ll still get that info into the car without typing it all in!

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I’ve finally started to get sick of the standard Mac desktop backgrounds (probably because I set them to cycle every 30 minutes). Today I wanted to add some new ones and had a tough time finding where/how to do this.

If you want to pull pictures from iPhoto, then you can easily do this through the System Preferences menu. However, I store my photos on an external drive that isn’t always connected. So, to put new images into my Mac’s default image folder:

1. Open Finder
2. Open the “Library” directory off your hard drive root
3. Find the folder called “Desktop Pictures” and drop in the new stuff
4. Go back to System Preferences, then Displays and choose which one(s) you want.

———-

I also noticed this extremely handy new tip from TUAW today.  To open multiple tabs on inspector windows, simply hold down the Option key when clicking on the tab!

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Wow. Long title.

Since day 3 of Lotusphere 2008, I’ve been running the Notes 8.5 Mac client beta. Its really nice to have the “8″ experience on my Mac without starting Windows, but it is very much a beta client. There are a number of odd bugs (most of which hover around the Sametime integration for some reason). And my favorite is that when it crashes you get an eclipse error message… that can’t easily be closed. It runs off the bottom of my monitor and there isn’t a “quit” option in my menu. Hmm… maybe if I had that 30″ Apple Cinema display?!

The 8.5beta experience takes a dramatic turn for the worse when you connect to an 8.0.1 server running a current version of your mail file. In short: Notes becomes unusable. The amount of bugs and extremely slow performance means you just can’t get anything done in the client.

So… for the last week, I’ve been spending A LOT of time back in “Paradows.” (Parallels+Windows — can I do that? Can I start a “thing” there?)

The 8.0.1 client is much better and I really like the new UI. I’m still not crazy about the speed. It really seems to be noticeably slower and I worry if our user community will tolerate that in exchange for stuff that’s new. What’s more, there’s just something … wrong with telling them that a benefit is the Exchange-esque 3-pane vertical arrangement of their mail.

But the single most annoying thing thus far is the lack of the selection gutter in my mail and calendar. I’ve always thought that the ability to “check” a bunch of documents easily without using “control” or “shift” keys in the process was an awesome idea that made Notes unique … and now its gone!

That problem is amplified by the fact that, today, the only way I can sync my Notes & iPhone calendar is by selecting multiple calendar entries in Notes and exporting them to an iCal file. Its quite hard to do that in 8.x.

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Over at Ed Brill’s place, there’s a link to a video from Sybase showing the iPhone being used to connect to corporate messaging system (Domino or Exchange).

I’ve fallen into this trap lately of being instantly enamored with anything that holds the promise of connecting my Notes email and iPhone. However, even the support team at PocketMac admitted that they’re having trouble understanding and fixing why I can’t sync Notes and the iPhone (I get a number of calendar errors and it apparently takes much longer than it should). The Sybase solution looks like another alternative, but its still not as slick as the MS Exchange demo Apple did a few weeks ago at the iPhone SDK event.

In short, it appears to require a server on your DMZ that acts as a go-between to your device and Domino server. Contacts are delivered via a web page optimized for the iPhone. And some contact information can be pulled from whatever is cached when you’re working off-line (although I’ve noticed that the web pages “blank out” after a period of time, meaning there’s just a white page instead of whatever content was there the last time you accessed  the page on the iPhone while connected to a network). But here’s what I found amusing about the video:

If you look closely, you’ll see the battery level is very low. Now, this could simply be that it took the guy A LOT of takes to shoot the video OR it could be a reflection on the battery life needed for the product. Our company used to use Sybase’s iAnywhere product for a variety of smart phone devices and the number one reason we replaced it with GOOD’s product was the effect it had on battery life. I found it funny to see that problem exist on the iPhone video demo.

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Today, Apple announced their new SDK for the iPhone. They also announced the availability of integration between the iPhone and Microsoft Exchange. Here’s the rundown of what it does:

• Push email.
• Push contacts.
• Push calendar.
• Access to global address books.
• Remote administration (including a remote lock-out feature).
• Fast. Easy. Instant.

I honestly believe that what we’ve witnessed today is the beginning of the end for the Blackberry. And I’ve witnessed is the most compelling reason I’ve ever seen to consider jumping off the Lotus Notes/Domino wagon.

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I have a post draft all about the PocketSync application that should, in theory, sync my Mac, Notes and iPhone worlds perfectly. Its a detailed post and yet, its not complete for one reason: it doesn’t work … yet.

I say “yet” because I hope that my 3 open support tickets will be answered by something better than “make sure you have admin rights to install software.” Perhaps my hope should be much less than it is.

And then there’s the promise of some announcement at the upcoming Apple event that the SDK will help bring my iPhone into the enterprise world. I hope so … but I fell for that at Lotusphere and wasn’t all that impressed with the way you have to access the content via the web (and the fact that even though 8.0.1 is out, we don’t have that tool, yet).

But … the next event is an Apple one. And those guys know how to hype and deliver. In the mean time, I’ll keep hoping until I have something more tangible.

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I’ve now been using the Notes beta 8.5 client for the Mac for one week at the office (I took a week after Lotusphere to stay in Disney for vacation … after all, one of my other websites is Disney related). After one week of normal use, I have some thoughts (again, I’m keeping in mind that this IS a beta product and I have tried to participate in the forum to be helpful with my comments):

• The program icon for Notes doesn’t bounce in the dock when loading, which is only annoying because there have been some times when I can’t get it to start at all.
• When loaded, Notes has a 2nd icon that shows the number of unread messages: AWESOME!
• When loaded, Notes has an icon at the top of your menu bar (by the Mac clock) when new messages arrive: AWESOME.
• There’s also an icon for your Sametime status up there: very cool!
• The side-bar shelf calendar thing ROCKS! I didn’t realize how handy this was … and now I want MANY more side shelf options - which I hear are coming at some point.
• I crave Symphony - especially since I’m seriously considering uninstalling my brand new Microsoft Office 2008 … blagh!
• If you try to have a VoIP call with someone in your sametime list, nothing will happen. Until you close your IM window and they decide to open one with you again … you’ll then hear the most annoying sound ever come from your Mac. Try it, its fun. (You’ll have to reboot to get it to stop … or ask the person to never IM you again. Your choice.)
• Trying to chat with someone from in your Notes Sametime list doesn’t always work. I’m not sure why.
• The Java/Eclipse/Notes combo doesn’t seem to take up as many resources as I once thought. However, it seems to be just as flaky-feeling as I thought. I realize that’s hard to quantify, but its my perception.

All that being said, I’m still on a high from the ID105 session at Lotusphere about all the new Mac stuff coming soon. I just need to work on being patient. Which I don’t do well at all.

Meanwhile, in the week since I’ve been back, two people at my company have requested Mac’s. One in IT and our CEO. That’s awesome and I really think both are going to enjoy using a Mac and feel like they get more done (and more easily). However, for both of those people (and the existing Mac users) I really think that they’re best off with Notes 7.0.3 even though the rest of the company will be on Notes 8 before too long.

Again … its beta, I get it.

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