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Just before Lotusphere, IBM contacted me about talking to “a reporter or two” about using Notes on a Mac. I said “sure!” I’m always happy to promote Macs and Notes, this seemed like a perfect way to do both.

SEVERAL calls later from more trade magazines than I can remember, I started to wonder if my comments “made the cut.” Then the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Turns out that some of my comments were published … and now a flood of sales reps felt compeled to call me and solver problems I didn’t know I had.

I’d suggest taking a moment to check out the article. Its an interesting look at how people are finding ways to bring Macs into the office, with or without support from Apple.

I also have a PDF verision of it here.

Update: Apparently, I’m mentioned in MacWorld too. Which is cool, but a bit confusing since I’m quoted saying the same thing even though a different person interviewed me (and I recall having more interesting things to say to them). Whatever. Still, its cool to see your name in print.

As I’m trying to complete a bunch of updates for the next version of “Help Center” I thought I’d list out some of the improvements that are in the upcoming version:

• Auto-Close agent. Gives you the ability to automatically close out issues that the ticket creator hasn’t confirmed are closed. (Easy to enable/disable. Based on # of days since it was closed by the Tech).
• New UI Elements. The whole thing has a similar look, but is much more “Web 2.0″ looking.
• Navigation icons (and titles) take you to the default view. I really should have put it in the last version … since the “portal” screen had that functionality.
• New “Tech Stats” Views. A few new handy views that let you see performance of the Techs.
• Better view descriptions. You may have noticed that the last version had an optional page hidden in it to choose a different style of navigation. Clearly, navigation style and view titles are something I struggled with. The next version still supports the “hidden” style of navigation, but also has more clear (easier to understand) view titles.
• CC People on Issues. You can now enter the names of other people you want to be notified about communications (questions, updates, etc.) with the issue so they get CC’d on any messages.
• Expand/Collapse Buttons on Views A funny thing happens in Notes when you use frames … unless you click IN the view, the smarticons for expand/collapse don’t show. This seems to confuse many users. To compensate, I’ve added buttons in the view’s button bar to do this. Redundant, yes, but I’ve seen people pleased that they can suddenly expand/collapse.
• Web Redirect Page. Allows you to point the database to a page that redirects users to another site or URL if they open the database. (A web enabled version is coming!)
• Hidden Web Features. Yes, a web-enabled version is on the “to do” list, but its won’t be ready by the end of the month. I am, however, going to include some of the web elements in the database that may help you expose at least some of the database to your own intranet.

… and I’m still on-track for posting it in March, 2007.

Last week, a co-worker (a VP, to be exact) made a comment to me that I instantly disagreed with. He said “I don’t think IM has any place as a business communication tool and email should never be used unless its a C.Y.A. (cover your “rear”) situation.”

Since then, I’ve gotten no less than 8 emails from him. None about “CYA” topics; all about typical business subjects. Clearly, he’s had a change of heart on the topic of email.

But the IM comment still haunts me. I use IM a lot and have for a long time in business. Its a great way to keep in touch with people who are on-line at the same time as you and not located nearby. Its also a great way to get short answers to questions when you’re busy (most commonly for me, when I’m on the phone with someone else or in a meeting … a short IM can save a lot of email time and give you a quick answer to keep the meeting moving).

There are some people who use it as a sort of “while you were out” feature to leave messages to others about phone calls, visitors who were looking for them, etc. Its a great way to quickly ask a question that doesn’t require an urgent response and to do so in a very unobtrusive way.

Now, unless you have the new Sametime 7.5 client (or another IM client) there are no emoticons … so base “Sametime IM” can be kind of cold since its just plain, boring, non-rich text. So you have to be careful with that, depending on your message.

So that made me realize: IM does have a very solid place in business communications and it is a valid medium. And then I stumbled on a quote from one of my favorite people about communication mediums that gave an even better reason for why we should at least try to use IM in business. (Keep in mind that he said it when IM, email, cell phones, texting, SMS and the internet weren’t even around.)

“All of us who use the implements of mass communications have tremendous responsibility to utilize them more fully in the interest of common humanity in the light of present world conditions.”

- Walt Disney

Fridays at my office are always interesting. They usually involve more meetings than you’d expect (and usually some that START at 4:30pm) and always involve people stopping by my office to chat about very random things. In short, Friday’s are an odd blend of hyper-productivity followed by immediate unproductive times.

Yesterday (which was a Friday, incase you missed it), I had 4 people stop by my office and ask to be part of a beta test we are doing. In each case, I found myself explaining that “beta” means something different than what they thought.

First, some background. Meriam Webster defines beta as “a nearly complete prototype of a product.” As you might expect, WikiPedia gives a bit more in depth description of the word which can be paraphrased as “meets the initial requirement analysis; is locked and won’t be changed unless it is to fix codes or major components that are lacking; (and most importantly) there ARE bugs in it – the testing group’s job is to find them and live with them until they are fixed by the developer(s).”

So let’s recap some of the “is” and “is not’s” of beta software:

• IS: Close to what the finished product will look and operate like.
• IS NOT: The finished product, nor is it ready to be used and relied upon like a “production” application would be.
• IS: Similar in Look & Feel and User Interface to the final release.
• IS NOT: Set in stone (it may change completely).
• IS: Full of bugs.
• IS: Your job to find them, report them and wait for them to be fixed.
• IS NOT: Free. Many people think “beta” means “free” — it may mean “free during beta” but it doesn’t mean you won’t have to own up some $ once its released.

Sure, I’m venting a bit. But I think its important for people to be clear about what they are getting themselves into when they offer to beta test. Its possible that whatever you are beta testing could work perfectly, its also possible it’ll ruin your entire computer and leave you helpless AND that your IT group won’t really feel compelled to help get to it ASAP since it was “beta.” (And believe me, IT professionals understand what this word means – they see it and get excited and scared.)

Perhaps the best way to approach a beta is to avoid it altogether. Example: the NetNewsWire “preview” (not a beta). I like their approach and I may just institute a ban on beta altogether and replace it with this instead:

NetNewsWire

I’m going to give out two free pieces of press on this post. One for the website/podcast where I found the other.

While watching the GeekBrief.tv podcast, I discovered a new must-see site for Mac-aholics. The site is called Mactactic and its a sort of buyers guide rating system for all things Apple. Its brilliant because as a Mac-fan, my biggest fear is buying a new Mac product the day before an even newer one comes out.

Seriously … we stay up worring about that kinda thing on the eve of a purchase.

As you can clearly see in the first section of the site, they “estimate” when to buy stuff. I haven’t found anything about their estimation method, but it looks about where I’d rate things if I were to do it.

Today is turning out to be a most extreme day for a lot of reasons. Near the top of the list of reasons why is the fact that my Apple AirPort Extreme finally arrived.

This little device supports the new (pre-) 802.11n standard that allows for much faster WiFi speed (approximately 5x faster than 802.11g, with an update from Apple on my current Mac hardware systems) and has a really cool Mac-Mini-esque form factor that will make my WiFi hub something that goes from being burried in a storage space out of sight to proudly taking a decorative place in my office as an uber-cool piece of tech.

The thing I’m most exctied about, however, is the ability to have network storage (built-in 40GB hard drive, with USB connections to add more). I’ll blog more about it once its installed.

… is how to call for help. No, not a phone call, exactly. Here’s the deal…

I’m playing around with the Nokia SCCP client which (in theory) should allow me to connect my Nokia E61 to my Cisco call manager (VoIP) system to get phone calls from my office extension (which, obviously, uses a Cisco VoIP system) right on my cell phone. I’ve seen it demo’d by our Cisco BP and it looks COOL!

So last night I attempted to perform the installation. Against my better judgement, I did it when I was out of the office (getting a car wash – in MN, which was really my first lack of good judgement) and when I didn’t have a WiFi connection. The install worked fine but when I went to reboot the phone, it just showed the Nokia startup screen and the phone wouldn’t enter into the O/S. I said outloud “uh oh.”

I fought it for a bit last night and decided to leave it off for the evening (thinking it might work again when I was connected to our office WiFi, since it needs that to operate correctly … based on how I initially configured it during the install). That didn’t work either. So I went to my GoTo phone (Moto Razr V3i) and stuck a different SIM into the E61 and headed straight to Google to find someone who could bail me out.

The problem is that Nokia phones reset (hard or soft) in the O/S. Since I couldn’t get IN to the O/S, that posed a problem. Until I found this post which showed me exactly what I needed.

So, if you found this via Google search, don’t worry. Just click the link above and check out the section on holding down the Green key, the “3″ and the star (“*”) key all at once to get your phone back. The article says you will get a prompt, I didn’t. I waited until I saw the opening animation and then let go and was fine.

Doing this does take a while and it also will delete everything on your phone. But if you’ve gotten to this point, that’s better than the idea of forking out a few hundred dollars (US) for a replacement phone.