Just for laughs

Ok, not work related at all but one that really gave me a good Monday morning laugh :-)

Ignore the guy talking in Dutch (he's just talking about the fish).

Recent Contacts - blessing in disguise or admin headache?

In Lotus Notes version 8 the Recent Contacts functionality was added. Users love it but for administrators it can be a bit of headache.

The problem is that it adds all recipient and sender addresses to the Recent Contacts list. Not just external contacts but also internal contacts; those that are in the central organizations Directory (NAB). Now for years I've been hammering my users NOT to add those internal contacts to their personal address book (PAB). Why? Well because deletions, renames and changes to the person documents in the central NAB are not automatically updated into their PAB as well. Causing the risk of addressing outdated addresses.
Anyone that did add names from the NAB into their PAB was fittingly chastised for doing so and got the "I told you so!" response when problems arose.

Not anymore.... Because with the addition of the Recent Contacts users don't have to do anything anymore to get those internal contacts into their PAB. The Recent Contacts is part of the PAB and as soon as you address or receive a message the sender / recipient addresses are automatically added to the list. Causing a major headache for the administrator when he has to do a rename or remove a name from the NAB.

There are some options in the Preferences - Contacts section for the Recent Contacts functionality that influence what is put into it but nothing to exclude names from the NAB or any other central directory (secondary address books, Directory Assistance....).



Another problem is the totally nontransparent way in which Lotus Notes seems to resolve addressing. I've been doing some tests with different scenario's and different settings and I'm still not sure I understand all the nooks and crannies that it has. Documentation on how it all works is scarce, especially when you throw things like secondary address books, directory Assistance and off-line laptop configurations into the mix.

So how to limit the downfall?
For now the best option seems to be to set the  "Recipient name lookup" option in the location document of the client to "Exhaustively check all addressbooks" and the "Mail addressing" option to "Local then Server". This won't eliminate the problem of having wrong addresses in your Recent Contacts list but will make sure the system throws an error indicating it is finding more then one match and giving the user the opportunity to select the correct address.

Secondly it is worth while explaining to users what the Recent contact list is and how they can clean it up.
Luckily the new 8.5.2 version allows users to right click names in their Type ahead list and select 'Delete' right in the list to clean up wrong addresses but this still is far from ideal.

I'm not alone in being frustrated with this new functionality. Check out these suggestions on IdeaJam (idea1, idea2, idea3), Darren Duke's blog and a Wiki on the Recent Contacts functionality for more information and let's hope IBM comes up with some solution to make this function more admin-friendly soon.

Loving Lotus Notes!

Why is it that negative spin always seem to stick longer then positive feedback? Lotus Notes has been here for over 20 years and it's still going strong! How often do you hear of Lotus environments being hacked? Or applications rendered completely useless after an upgrade?? Lotus notes is as strong and vibrant as always and we know it (heck, we LOVE it!) now let's tell the world!

Some sites for Lotus lovers:
Site started by a conglomerate of Dutch IBM Business Partners (in Dutch) trying to get the positive vibe of Lotus products out there.
 LotusLovesPeople

Nice site (English) where everyone can share his/her love for Lotus Notes.
I Love Lotus Notes!




Let's get the word out there!

Firebug Lite makes my day!

Anyone doing web design regularly uses tools to do so. One of the tools I used to used a lot was Firebug. A simple add-in for Firefox that allows you to inspect and debug code, CSS and HTML on websites directly while viewing the site. A lovely tool.

Unfortunately Firebug is not compatible with the Firefox 4.0b6 Beta release I installed a couple of days ago so it didn't work anymore. 
I installed the Firefox Beta because of some other functionalities I wanted and as I'm not currently in a web project I didn't really mind that Firebug wasn't working in the Beta. Until I wanted to change something this morning in my blog design and missed my trusted Firebug icon.

Right. 

So I searched the Firebug site for a compatible Beta. There wasn't any but I did see something else. a Firebug Lite version that opens as a website instead of a full blown add-on and can be used in other browsers as well.
Ok, this is interesting because I've wanted the Firebug functionality to work in Internet Explorer for ages (don't like the IE tools, to complex for what I need and I'm used to working with Firebug). But as Firebug is a Firefox add-on I just never even considered it as something I could use in IE.
Here was a lite version however that simply calls a javascript making it Browser compatible with most larger browsers. You just add a bookmark (Firefox) / Favorite (IE) to the Firebug Lite Javascript and when you want to inspect a site you simply click the bookmark, presto! Now I have Firebug in both my Firefox as well as IE!

Ok, it might be total geek mode but this makes my day!

Smart ways to use Twitter commercially

Twitter is a lovely tool to keep in touch with your friends, customers and contacts and learn what they are doing. But how can you use it for business purposes? I had a discussion with some of my colleagues and a fellow Business Partner recently about this. Because there certainly are opportunities!

Ok, yes I know. There are some nitwits out there that think that blasting spam-like tweets across their networks with advertisements links is a good way of using Twitter commercially but I block those immediately and so do most of the people I know. Not interested in those and in my opinion certainly not a good use of twitter! If anything, those tweets put me of from using that companies products or services at all. So how can you use twitter then? Well you can use it to interact with your users. Don't forget: With hundreds of millions of people on twitter this is is an amazing channel to use for name building and branding.

I love twitter and use it regularly in my own personal and business life. So I tend to tweet about the things that happen to me. I recently installed a Beta release of Firefox because I wanted to try out a cool new feature that was in it (Tab Candy but that is a totally different story). While doing so I found out that my favorite Firefox add-in "Yoono" wouldn't support the Beta release causing it to cease working. Bummed out by this I tweeted the following:

 This was just an observation. I wasn't actually addressing anyone. I took it for what it was and thought I'd have to use an alternative tool in the mean time and was tweeting this. But within 10min I got the following tweet:

"Well, nice" you might say but at that moment I was seriously contemplating to use an alternative which would have meant I would have ditched the Yoono tool all together and installed a competitors product. By simply tweeting me a link though, they helped me with my problem, gave me the feeling I mattered to them as a customer and kept me on their product. Effectively they gave me the 'warm, fuzzy feeling' that ensures I will not forsake their product any time soon!
Commercial? I would say so, I'm even writing this blog about it!

A second way of using Twitter is by letting your users do the talking. This example is again taken from my personal experience.

Earlier this week I did a session on social plugins for Lotus Notes including a product called Gist at the NLLUG event. One of the attendees tweeted about this:

A couple of hours later this was retweeted by one of the engineers at Gist:

Very clever. They simply retweet a tweet from a user that is appreciative about the product and that mentions it is being talked about at an official event. This gives the product an objective credibility outside of the Gist companies claims. Again, is this commercial? Well I think so! Customer loyalty and credibility ensure people stay with your product and might even recommend it to their contacts and getting your customers to talk positive about you in their network is the best advertisement there is!

Tips on using Twitter for your product/company:

1. Have a company Twitter account (company or product name) and post on it regularly. Mention updates, enhancement, future developments, etc.
2. Obey twitter etiquettes, this is important!!
3. Follow what is said about your product on twitter. They might not always directly mention your twitter account or hashtag so use filters and search tools to search for variations of your products name. In the Gist example above for instance the @Gist name tag or #Gist hashtag aren't used at all but the name 'Gist' and in this case even the site 'www.gist.com' are. Both should be included in your search filters.
4. Retweet positive feedback about your product but don't overdo it. If you retweet every mention of your product your followers might get annoyed. Try to limit it to one positive tweet every couple of days. That will keep the good vibe without it looking arrogant or becoming spam like.
5. Answer tweet questions on your product if you can and think they could be relevant to others. It shows goodwill and commitment and your network is assured you take them seriously. At the same time, don't try to answer all. Your network is following you, not every user that might tweet a question or remark about your product. So they will only see what you answer, not what is being asked/said (unless you retweet them). Answering tweet questions shouldn't become a day job in itself, you probably have some formal support channels for that.
6. Use DM (Direct Messages) to communicate with people if you don't want the rest of your network to see a certain conversation.
7. Use personalized or support accounts for answering questions. In the above example Gist has a company Twitter account for general messages and updates but the retweet was done by an actual employee called Greg whose twitter account conveniantly is GregAtGist ensuring the link with the company. In the Yoono example a YoonoSupport account was used. So split support tweets from marketing tweets in this way and give your responses a personal feel (people like that).
8. Be appreciative and generous. Thank people for their compliments (which in itself is a way of retweeting the message) and suggestions (if they are valid and on your roadmap).

And a final one that might be out of your hands already..... Make sure your company or product name is unique because otherwise following it on twitter becomes a whole lot more difficult!

NLLUG Social Plugins Tungle & Gist - UPDATED -

Session slides from my Social Plugin (Tungle & Gist) session for NLLUG (translated into ENGLISH!!):

The original slides (in Dutch) can be found on Slideshare

Other useful links:
- Tungle website: here
- Gist website: here
- Taking Notes podcast with interview with Tungle executive
- link to podcast on Tungle form IdoNotes
- link to podcast on Gist from IdoNotes
- Webcast on deployment of widgets & plugins

NLLUG

Second day at NLLUG, the Silverside crew is ready to go!

(Kasia, Effy, Robbert)

Little gem of 8.5.2

I love exploring the new features the new Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client offers, especially the small and quirky ones that you overlook so easy. One of them, I find particularly nice. The option to save mail messages to uniform mail standard files (*.eml) that include formatting and attachments and saves to the file system or hard drive.

Why do we need this? Well, you'll be surprised how many people needed this. Customers for instance that work with non-Lotus Digital Filing, Archiving and or Document Management systems. Before they would often have to have either a middleware product or add-on to be able to input Lotus Notes messages directly into their other systems. Or worse; save the message to a word or a txt file before adding it as a file. This meant a lot of extra work and costs so they will definitely welcome this new option.

To use it simply open the message and from the [File]  menu select [Save as…], select the location where to store it and select the .eml extension.
 or...
Open the view or folder that contains the mail message(s), select the message(s) you want to save to .eml and drag them to a folder on your hard diks/file system (e.g. using Windows explorer for instance). Each selected message will be saved as an individual file.

It works great! There is just one thing I find inconsistent....

Why isn’t there a [File] – [Save as…]  option in the view as well?!?

Thanks to Vincent Schuurman for blogging about the Drag&Drop option

Additional Update:

One more thing to keep in mind is that in the in the [User Preferences] - [Basic Notes Client Configuration] - [Additional Options] there is a setting that needs to be activated for this to work. Otherwise drag&drop will only create links, not .eml files.

Tungle Me

When confronted with some questions about an application a couple of weeks ago I was asked to "Tungle a meeting".

Now I didn't know what it was but when I opened the accompanying link it became clear quite soon. An online calendaring tool allowing me to find an available time in the support engineers calendar. I could simply check a few available dates/times that would suit me and complete the form. Lovely feature and I felt right at home as the Lotus Notes scheduler principal isn't that much different.

Still I didn't think much more of it. I'm really content with my Lotus Calendar and wasn't about to start logging everything in both my Lotus as well as in an online agenda. Little did I know (or investigate!), but a plugin to synchronize your Lotus Notes calendar to Tungle is already available and better even: It works both ways!

So now I can schedule in either my Notes or Tungle calendar and it will be updated automatically to the other calendar. But why do this? I mean, I can schedule in my Lotus calendar and for now not many of my contacts (3 out of an initial 200) seem to have found Tungle and shared their availability online yet. So why would I share mine? 

Well because even though people haven't shared their availability they can still view mine and use that to schedule an appropriate meeting time with me. Saving me valuable time on calling or mailing back and forth about suitable dates. And by doing so I hope eventually more people in my network will become enthusiastic about this way of working and start sharing their availability as well. Creating something like an overall Scheduling network that isn't depending on company borders, administrators and network restrictions and makes scheduling a lot more effective!

• Check out Ed Brills post about Tungle and the future of calendaring.

• Also check out the cool little Tungle widget they've provided (example in the right hand menu of this blog) that allows you to display your availability and schedule a meeting right within your blog or site!

For those coming to NLLUG in Amsterdam: I will be discussing Tungle as well during my session on Social Plugins on September 9th!

IBM Lotus Quickr V8.5 for Domino shipping data announced!

It's finally there! The announcement was made today that IBM Lotus Quickr V8.5 will be released on September 13th. This release was long anticipated!

Early 2009, on the eve of the Quickr 8.2 release the DomDoc redbook team I was on describing a migration path from the DomDoc platform to Quickr was already told some of the features likely to be in the 8.5 release. One (folder security) even made it into the Redbook itself as an announcement for the next (8.5) release.

At that moment, we didn't know it would take until September 2010 to actually get that release. So it feels really good that it's here now and I can't wait to start working with it!

Business Partner Locator

Was entering IBM Partnerworld today when I noticed the link to the Business Partner Locator. As I had heard someone complain about the fact that finding BP's through the IBM site was rather laborious and outdated and that they couldn't even find all BP's in there, I decided to check it out and clicked the link.

"Business Partner Connections has been replaced by the new and enhanced Business Partner Locator. You will be redirected in a moment, please update your bookmarks"

Mmm, ok, apparently this site recently changed. Not that I'm interested in knowing that, I'm clicking a direct link so just forward me to the new site. It would be different if I was using a bookmark, but I'm not! I'm directly clicking a link on the IBM Partnerworld homepage so how difficult is it to change that link itself?

The site opens and the first thing I see there is:

"Finding the right Business Partner just got simpler!"

Good! Apparently someone figured it needed some updating as well and decided to spruce it up.

The site itself seems relatively easy. A dropdown box on the left  to select a country, some text helping Customers & BP's  and a demo link on the right.

Now, I'm a visually oriented person. So when I see something like this and I'm trying to orient myself, my eyes automatically draw to the Demo link. It's big, it's in an important spot and looks as if it's a video. I love vids, so I click it..... and regret it

It turns out to be a full length demo in 13 stages. Illustrated by the impressive Table of Contents on the left.....  My god how difficult is this tool?
So I start and let the video go through the first four screens. Now I'm not a native English speaker but in my ears this guy is articulating as if I'm a three year old and still I find my mind wandering of. Keep it short, please!

I end up at screen 5. "Demo 1: ......". Again the guy starts talking, welcoming me at the demo part of the video and explaining we will start with a demo about Search criteria.

And then it stops

Yes it actually stops without any explanation. I wonder why. Is it broken? Is my browser crashing??? Is this a demo that would normally be done live and where the guy giving the demo would now switch to his live environment to show something?
No it turns out it's suppose to do that. I have to scroll down (apparently my 1280*800 screen resolution is not big enough to fit the whole video on one screen) and in the bottom of the screen, below the copyright footer I find a button that I need to click to start the demo part of the demonstration.

??? Am I the only one not finding this very logical? I mean this is why I was actually watching this video in the first place, so why stop it and make me manually restart it to see the most interesting part?!?

So I start the demo and it all got a bit corny by then. I mean listen to the guy and watch the screen and count the amount of times the word 'Business Partner' is used either in the text balloons or in the text he's reading. I'm not listening to what he's saying at all anymore at this point. Just wondering where this will end up.

Well, at another stop it turns out. Because as soon as this part of the demo ends and the video goes over to screen 6 "Demo 2:......" the same happens again.

Needless to say I didn't actually watch the whole thing after that. No clue how long it is but I'd say about 20-25 min at least. And all this to explain how to select a country, define some criteria using dropdown boxes and watch the details of a business partner.

So I ditch the video and even though I'm ready to simply chuck it all away and return to the Yellow pages by now, I decide to actually open the tool itself. I must admit: It works and looks pretty nice.

Nice....nice!?! Is that all you have to say after all that?!?

Yes, that's all. So IBM please drop that video, correct the link, take out that irritating redirect (according to the video it's been up for weeks anyway) and trust your users. We're not that stupid.

ps. If you want a real good laugh than please click the "Thank you" entry in the video's Table of Content after having tried to watch some if not most of the very elaborate video..... Apparently they do know how to be short. :-)

NerdGirls in Amsterdam

In two weeks time NLLUG the biggest Lotus event of the year in The Netherlands will  take place in the Amsterdam Arena. There is a real buzz surrounding the NLLUG already if you follow twitter and several of the blogs and for good reason! The line up is pretty impressive and the diversity of topics and speakers makes it interesting for almost anyone involved in Lotus products.

My personal favorite: The "NerdGirls: Get social!" session. An informal social session for any girls out there involved in Lotus. A possibility to meet and mingle with other NerdGirls and learn how to connect through Twitter, Skype or LinkedIn. Sharing information with a worldwide network of women within the Lotus community.


 So join us on Thursday September 9th and tell your (female) coworkers to come!

As with all NerdGirls events, men are welcome to join as well!

Captcha

Did you now what a Captcha was? I didn't until I started writing this blog. Searched for it and found out it's actually a term, not a product or company. 

Oh well.  This wasn't my reason for writing this blog, I just found the below Captcha quite funny. I mean they are a pain in the ... without having to use specific diacritic symbols so this one really makes the difference.

And no, it did not work without the Umlaut on the 'o'.

The ultimate women's lifesaver......

Yesterday while waiting for a customer a colleague asked about my laptop case. I've got one of those with wheels that you can pull around in stead of carry. Hé! It's my mobile office, I don't see you carrying your desk on your back, right! According to him it was more acceptable for women to have one with wheels as they tend to carry around a lot more stuff.

Mmm...... that got me thinking so later that evening I unpacked my bag to see what was actually in it.

I think I'm pretty organized! Ok, I've got two mouses, about 7 pens and two emergency sewing sets (?!?) in there which is a bit much....

But in general I don't think I carry around excessive amounts of stuff.  Especially if I compare it to some of these!

What's in a name

I hate those flaky terminologies that are used to describe certain ICT phenomena's without actually defining them. Everyone is talking about it but nobody really knows what it entails. The term 'Web 2.0' is a good example of that.
Ask anyone and they will either come up with some elaborate but non-descriptive explanation or simply say it is the new thing out there. Even Wikipedia keeps it about as vague as possible:

"(Web 2.0) ...does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web." 

Yeah right. That explains it......

The problem is that the more flaky it is the more popular it starts to become so I wasn't surprised to hear someone talk about  'PR 2.0' today at all. It is clearly catching on. Just stick '2.0' to the end of it and it's a whole new ball game!

At least '....2.0' is relatively save. I couldn't help but chuckle when I read some tweets that speculated about the name of the next Lotus Notes release and that it shouldn't be called Lotus Notes 9 as it sounds like 'Lotus Notes Nein' (Nein being German for 'No'). Look hard enough and you'll find an alternative meaning for almost any term in some other language some where.

I mean, SOA still can be kind of a tricky subject for any self respecting Dutch account manager to bring up in a conversation. Not because customers are weary of thinking about the concept of using 'services' but simply because the term is actually widely known as the acronym for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). And say Flickr to someone in The Netherlands and people won't think you're talking about sharing photos on the web but think you're actually calling them a faggot.

But hey, what's in a name!

Silly Season - Breaking news

The one thing that Social Media has tought us is that you can never predict what is hot or not. Even the most trivial thing can be made into a straight out hype on the Internet within a day.

Take the infamous "Blumenkübel". Now you might think 'What?' and yes I thought that as well. But still this word made it into the WorldWide Trending list on Twitter, has a Facebook page with thousands of followers and was mentioned on major news sites. It has been one of the topics for the last two days on the internet.

So what is it all about then?
Well simply put Nothing really. It's a non-story, something to talk about in the absence of serious topics (summer recess). 'Blumenkübel' means flowerpot in German and refers to an article in an obscure local German magazine two days ago about a flower pot outside an elderly home that got broken by vandals.

Someone started twittering about it and within hours this story just got totally hyped. Worldwide people were twittering about....... a broken flower pot.
Some of them not even knowing what the word meant at all. Al thanks to social media. Would you have predicted that a broken flower pot would have gotten that much attention??

Funny detail, the author of the article just started and this was one of her first articles. Now that's a way to make an entrance!

Car

Heard a co-worker's company car got stolen today. Wouldn't have minded if it was mine, would solve some Personal Liability problems.....

Like the unexplainable scratches ("No I didn't do that! The wall just ran into my door, than ran around the car and did it again......twice!") or the sticky carpet caused by the fact that I only saw this brilliant solution after I spilled a full cup of diet coke over the carpet.....

dttp://thereifixedit.com

sigh....

Orange!!

D-Day! Tonight is the night when Holland is going to win the world cup or get another national trauma (we're still not over the '74 World cup final defeat by Germany). The internet is ready for it! even buienradar.nl (weather prediction site) is in the mood and has literally turned Holland 'Orange'!

An accurate predicition of todays weather, as the dominant color today will absolutely be ORANGE!

HOLLAND BEAT BRASIL! (and twitter!)

Ok, nobody can have missed it but the Dutch lions have beaten the Brasil canaries in South-Africa's Worldcup quarter final. :-) Something that is cause for a lot of celebrations here in The Netherlands! And the one thing that Dutch like to do when they celebrate is to involve anything and everyone in their party. So what happened when they won? The Dutch started Twittering!

courtosy of CNN

146,933 Tweets per half hour mentioning the #Ned tag alone..... No  wonder Twitters 'whale' was up most of the time!

Wonder what will happen if when they win the title!
;-))

Youtube goes Vuvuzela??

Was watching a very funny movie tonight on Youtube when I noticed a new icon in the bottom. A small soccer ball in the lower right hand corner of the video screen:

Now it is World cup time but this particular video had nothing to do with that at all so I was a bit puzzled. A mouse-over had no result, there was no help text so I simply clicked it. It turned out to dish out a loud recording of the Vuvuzela horns that are so popular right now in the Soccer World cup in South-Africa. No clue why!

Some googling resulted in a lot of similarly confused reactions and a lot of guessing.
I think it could very well be a kind of rebellious act on Youtube's part. With all the television networks filtering out the Vuvuzela sounds from the matches Youtube is doing the exact opposite. They are actually giving you an option to turn it on! Sort of an Reverse-Anti-Vuvuzela-Filter. 

Curious to see what they come up with next!

Nerd humor at its finest!

I'm loving twitter. It's giving me information, contacts but most of all a lot of humor! Check this one out that was tweeted last night (thanks SKellyOnline!).

Ok, yes you need to be an absolute nerd to get the humor of it but then again...... I guess I am! (NerdGirl)

My fifth limb

This week it became painfully clear how much I am attached addicted to my laptop. I attended a training course and as it was all theoretical I didn't have to bring my laptop. In fact they told us not to bring one as the classroom wasn't closed off and they didn't want the responsibility of one being stolen. And so it came to be that I left mine at home.

I felt completely uncomfortable! As if I had run out of the door forgetting to put on my clothes. I felt naked. Now of course I know that that is really unrealistic and slightly 'workaholic' like. But it's the truth. My laptop is the first thing I power on in the morning and the last thing I power down at night. I'm totally addicted to mail and social media and I Google everything. I'm the kind of person that has to deliberately plan active holidays to prevent myself from spending my holiday behind the screen. My worst nightmare? that it is stolen!

Ok, so I've got a problem there (AA for laptop addicts anywhere?) but luckily for me I got a new toy recently to obsess over. After not having a smart phone for two years I finally decided to get a Blackberry again. Now I can even check my mail, twitter, etc. in bed!

Yeah right, even for me that was just a bit to neurotic. So now I leave my Blackberry next to my laptop when I go to bed...... and dream about it being stolen......

I really desperately need a hobby!

Has Google gone beserk?

Yikes! Have you've seen those new background images Google put in yesterday?!? My God, here I was opening my trusted Google page to do a search and instead of the simple white page with search bar and funny but discrete picture I got this:

What the .....?! Do the want to make me color blind???

Now, I don't mind a bit of color but this is insane. It lacks all sense of proportion and balance and you can hardly read the text below the search box anymore because of the white lettering on a multi colored background. It looks as if some starter designer has gone wild and nobody discovered it (He, it's only the most used page on the web.....dôh).

Luckily for my sake this morning they turned of the imagery and returned to the trusted old white page. An option in the bottom (which I only noticed today as it completely falls away against the colored background) still allows you to change it to the image background but the default is back to plain old white again. I really hope they keep that novice designer in check from now on. Change is good but with all the resources and money Google has they should be able to do better than this!

ps. I'm clearly not alone in this.......!  link