DominoKeys.com

A few weeks ago I posted an entry asking (begging?) GM to consider an iPhone app that would allow me to start my car from my iPhone. I don’t want it because its cool (well, that’s part of it) but because their basic and advanced remotes have horrible range … and I live in MN, where its cold and the last thing I want to walk within 25 feet of my car, start it, then go back inside to wait for it to warm.

Moving on … this week I noticed a post about an iPhone app Mercedes is working on as a additional remote for their cars. That’s perfect considering my other car is a C-class. Here’s the down-side of this app: no remote start. It simple mimics the functionality you have on your existing key fob. Let’s take a look at the steps needed to start your car for a moment (as I illustrate my point to this entry):

With current key/fob:

1. Remove remote from pocket
2. Press button – car opens

With proposed iPhone app:

1. Remove iPhone from pocket
2. Press button to activate iPhone
3. Slide finger to unlock iPhone
4. Swipe to screen containing your MB remote application
5. Press icon to start app
6. Wait a moment
7. Press button to open car – car opens (I’m just going to assume that it does it as quickly as well – which I somehow don’t think will be true.)

So there you go, GM. Simply hurry up and build the app I talked about and you’ll have a GREAT new feature Mercedes doesn’t even have! Again, I’m available for beta testing. 

Tags: cars, iphone, remotes

As Ed Brill points out, today Lotus Notes turns 20! I didn’t start using Notes until it was on version 3.something but I feel like I’ve been in on the sort of “ground floor” of Notes for some time now. I’ve used it at several different companies including an IBM business partner consulting firm.

The things I’ve been able to do with Notes over the course of my professional career have been quite amazing. The best part is that MANY (read: nearly all) of the applications I personally developed (back when I wasn’t “management” and actually knew how to develop well) are still in use today. That’s impressive when you consider they were developed in 4.5, 4.6, R5, etc. and running (in most cases) under Notes 8.5.1 today!

I firmly believe that Lotus Notes has been the secret sauce to many of the successes I’ve been a part of in a wide range of IT projects. I also get just as frustrated today as I did “back in the day” when people who don’t use Notes ask if its still around.

So this week’s birthday makes an article that I wrote for theinfoBOOM.com (posting Dec. 8, 2009) perfect timing to help explain why Lotus Notes is still stronger than ever as it turns into its 20’s.

Tags: happy_birthday, notes

Dear GM,

I recently purchased a new Buick Enclave from you and LOVE it! I’ve owned many (MANY!) cars and this one easily makes it into my “top 3″ favorite cars of all time. You really did an outstanding job on the vehicle. Oh, and you’ll be happy to note that this vehicle replaced a Lexus RX, which we opted to not re-purchase in lieu of getting the Enclave. So your ad campaign targeting the Buick brand against Lexus is working (and in my estimation, accurate).

I have only two complaints about the vehicle:
1. The side-view mirrors are far too small for a vehicle that big
2. The range of the auto-start (even the “enhanced” one with the key fab larger than a Motorola Razr cell phone) sucks. A lot.

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but Viper has built a great iPhone app that allows people to start up their cars (among other things) by using their iPhone. Its a great app and I’m quite confident its translating into some nice sales.

That got me to thinking… why don’t YOU do it? You already have the infrastructure in place in the form of the OnStar system which can remotely do all sorts of stuff to a GM vehicle. Why not build an iPhone app that allows us, the owners of those cars, to remotely start/stop the vehicles? You could charge for the app (I suggest “free” but if you’d like to make some money, I’d pay as much as $29.99 for the app) and require an OnStar service contract to be in place (of which, I’m on the fence about anyway – this would throw me over that fence).

Beyond being a forward thinking product, this would also solve the problem of how poorly the range is on your key fabs, including the advanced one which I have purchased for the $200+ price and yet seen only a 3 foot range improvement (exaggeration – but not by a whole lot).

If you’re looking for someone to help test it, I humbly offer my services.

Sincerely,

Me.

Tags: buick, cars, gm, great ideas, iphone

I was on a conference call today with other IT executives when I heard one say (summarizing) “… the name ‘Lotus’ needs to go – its a tarnished brand that conjures up images of ‘1-2-3′ and ‘Lotus Notes’…” he went on to suggest that Lotus software isn’t relevant or even worth talking about in IT departments.

OUCH!!!

First – I don’t agree with him at all! Second – it still bugs me that I didn’t speak up to defend Lotus, however it wasn’t the purpose of the call and would have gotten us way off track; so out of respect for the meeting chairperson, I shut my mouth.

But it got me thinking about how many other IT professionals are out there who think the same thing. And that inspired me with the topic I had been searching for on an upcoming piece I’m doing for infoBOOM! all about why this comment is not at all true! Stay tuned (until about Dec. 8th).

Tags: infoboom, lotus, ouch

I realized that Microsoft was hurting. The Vista launch didn’t do them any favors. Apple’s been a pain in the rear lately. Windows Mobile has some solid competition. Hey, even Office has problems with companies like Lotus giving away the same (essentially) thing for free. But I had no idea it was this bad…

Poor Microsoft has to resort to getting revenue by putting up ads on web pages that are themselves ads. Almost makes me want to buy something from them. Almost.

Tags: ads, microsoft

This is one of the funniest, most clever things I’ve seen IBM do! There are a few other examples of this concept out there (Disney had a great one last year, too) but the idea is that you enter someone’s name and it is inserted into what appears to be a news report personalized to be all about them.

You can check out the one I put together for my alter-ego by clicking the screen shot below. You can also create your own for your team’s IT superstars.

Tags: funny, ibm, team-building

On the heels of my excitement about the Lotus Traveler support for the iPhone (which is an AWESOME implementation, btw … I can’t stress that enough) I now found that my iPhone is doing something very annoying suddenly: telling me when I have email.

Let me explain. The first “smart phone” device I ever used was the Treo 650, which was great at the time. It changed my life by doing something the IT industry would later call “blurring free and work time.” Every 15 minutes (30 if I knew I wasn’t going to be near a charger all day) the phone would replicate and buzz me with an alert about a new email message.

I then moved to using the GOOD service on a Windows Mobile device and the blur got much more hazy. With GOOD my phone was aware of new emails instantaneously (even before my Notes client in most cases) and immediately called my attention to them. It felt like two years of having a hybrid of texting, instant messaging and email.

Enter: the iPhone, and my pseudo-clumsy method of getting it to check my corporate email. I now went back to a replication schedule and the contrast was stark – so much so that I actually stopped paying attention to the iPhone’s email alerts altogether and only checked email when *I* wanted to. That’s good and bad, for a variety of reasons.

I have now been using Traveler on my iPhone for a whole 24 (almost) hours and my iPhone has become much more annoying (or helpful, depending on the email) about alerting me to email. Why? Its alerting me in the exact same method (sound & buzz). However, there must be a Pavlovian response to the iPhone’s former replication SCHEDULE that I must have not been aware of. I must have subconsciously dismissed alerts about new email since they were coming every 15 minutes based on the schedule I setup.

Now that Traveler delivers emails near-instantly, the iPhone is buzzing on its own schedule and drawing my attention to it. Which, all in all, is a good thing. I had previously said that the iPhone was the easiest email notification system to ignore. I see now that was due to a replication schedule that was predictable on a subconscious level.

If any of you are psychology students looking for a great thesis idea… you’re welcome.

I firmly believe that part of delivering GREAT IT solutions is making them “cool.” That’s not nearly as easy as you might think it is… I mean, what is “cool?” How do you create cool? What does cool look like?!

And yet, Apple clearly does it. Pick a product they make … its cool. If its not, its quickly replaced with something that is cool.

Go to an Apple store … very cool.

I try to inject at least some amount of cool into any new application or system my team creates at the office. Sometimes an app can be cool by making less work for people. Sometimes its cool because of a clever feature. Sometimes its cool because we’ve hyped it to be cool (which only works if you consistently crank out technology that is truly cool to begin with).

Cool is never enough to justify deploying an IT system. There also has to be a legitimate need. However, since you have a need, why not make the thing that addresses that need… cool.

If you are truly cool, then “cool” should show up in some unlikely places. For example, this post about a job offer from Apple. Even the paperwork, packaging, etc. is really cool. Its got a style, an attitude and a look that reflects the image of the company … and that makes it cool!

This all makes me think that I should start looking to inject cool in some unlikely places. I’ll start looking around for those opportunities immediately.

I am really getting into the new ABC show “Defying Gravity.” If you haven’t seen it, its part “Lost,” part “ER” and part space. I think the show is well done, the actors are great and the “future” they propose isn’t far off from what is likely to happen approximately a half century from now.

So… why am I talking about it here?

The first episode I saw was #5. I caught it by accident when I turned on the TV. I stuck around to watch the last 15 minutes because I noticed it had the guy from “Office Space” and the girl from a season of “24.” I liked the last moments I saw, so I used my DVR to go back to the stored hour it had automatically captured and watched the rest. I then used my iPhone’s “DirecTV” app to set my DVR to have a season pass recorder for the show.

A week went by and I caught episode #6 and still liked it. So this week, I decided to go back for the other episodes I missed. Neither Hulu.com nor ABC.com, however, have the full episode list posted for all episodes. I could only get #4-7, the pilot and episode #3 if I hurry up and do watch it in the next 2 days.

Why?!

I WANT to get into this show. I WANT to tell others about it (hey, I’m blogging about it, aren’t I?). I’m even cool with watching it on a smaller screen, on my computer and with mandatory commercials – all of which I’d gladly tolerate if they’d show the missing episodes.

So why am I talking about it here?

Simple. I think that in a time when I can stumble across a show, watch the last hour of something I didn’t know I wanted to watch ahead of time and set up a system to record the rest of the series from my phone — that I should be able to catch up on the episodes I’ve missed on-line. Ideally, it would be on-demand through my TV, but I’d settle for on-line.

The lesson (one of many that media outlets seem to be learning with varying degrees of success) is that in a new age with new technologies, many of our old habits and paradigms must be changed in order to sustain the end goal. In this case, the goal is to acquire advertising revenue by getting me hooked on a show. I can’t get hooked, if I can’t watch the show.

(Despite all that – it really is a promising show. Go check it out… if you can find the episodes.)

Tags: abc, hulu, tv

I’ve often wondered what one of these Google cars looked like. You know, the ones that drive around cities taking pictures to provide the street view on Google maps. If you’ve wondered as well, this picture might clear it up.

… or prompt more questions. This is QUITE the contraption! Looks like what I imagined the camera setup did for Disney’s 360 Circle-Vision attractions back in the day.

Tags: cars, disney, google