In my Sys Admin Tips for December each year I always pick the silliest technology gifts.  I think it is time to get serious too.  I always mentally start making this list but never published it.  Let the tradition begin:

• Flip cameras - they were still a bit in the infancy before and a few geeks had them.  Now they are becoming mainstream and every kid, grandparent and parent that wants to capture every moment should get their hands on one.  With the point and click recording and easy sharing, why not have one.  For those at conferences, how better to get the blackmail material you so desire? Sony, Kodak and more are getting into the game letting you know it is an emerging market.  The leader is still Flip Video in my eyes with a ton of models
• Ebook readers - now this is something I have personally owned for like 10 years and still use constantly.  The same device even.  I started with the RCA Ebook, which used to have it's own store and more.  But it was way ahead of the time and delivery is via sync, still like many of today.  Sony and some others are coming on full steam with readers and agreements with online bookstores, like the Barnes & Noble or the world.  I can't see why we pay full printing costs (meaning reduce the price to eliminate what is paid to the paper supply instead of inflating your profits more) and it would only increase sales in my opinion.  The leader is still the Kindle for the wireless buying power and scheduled daily delivery, but look for more offering this soon enough.  If you are an avid reader, the eInk technology is amazing and you get used to the 1 second delay or so as you turn pages rather quickly.
• Plantronics Calisto Pro headset - holy crap.  This thing rocks from firsthand knowledge.  One bluetooth enabled set to handle VoIP, landline and cellular phones, all at once.  There is a handset and headset (earpiece).  Have a call on your cell, click to answer, a call comes in over Skype while on the phone, just click over.  All integrated at one time.  Try that with your current bluetooth.  It uses DECT 6 so there is no competition or interference with wifi in the house like many 2.5 Ghz systems too.  I love this thing!!!
  
• Pokens and more Pokens - yes I have spoken about them and the impact they can have.  They seem to be the current leader in the space, with some other upcoming contenders, like HelloMyNameIsE.  This takes business cards and social interaction to a new level at events when people have these.  Instead of trading a card with limited space and no living information, you exchange information that can then be tagged, receive updates, show multiple addresses, emails, phone numbers and social networks that the person can be found on.  I create a tag for each conference and assign it to everyone I meet there.  Searching for contacts then goes beyond trying to remember or searching alphabetically.  I can then see their recent updates on networks and a sliding timeline, with picture (if they include this option).  It is a one time purchase that can have multiple business cards created.  So for one event you are your company, another you are your social interaction information.  Heck, want to keep up with the family?  Grab a bunch of these, create a "private" card with home information and take them to the family reunion.  If you do not want the fun little characters, there is a business Poken Pulse and custom ones that can be done as giveaways.
• Motorola Droid - you know it had to be in there.  This is the newest gadget for the geek to show off to his friends.  While you need to consider where they have their phone plans already (as in don't get it if they are not on the right network or changing soon) this is one heck of a geeky gift.  Even accessories are being made by tons of vendors.  Applications are coming out of the woodwork and even some iPhone developers said they are tired of the AppStore and are heading to Droid.  It is a big blow to those that don't want to be locked down and the geek will love you for this.

A few years ago, Lotus gave Business Partners there own Lotus Connections network (announced at PartnerWorld 2007 in IdoNotes Episode 31), based on version 1.0, to launch the product and get partners excited.  Last night the email arrived with some great specifications:

When we started the Lotus Connections for Partners initiative nearly three years ago in conjunction with the launch of Lotus Connections 1.0, who would have thought we'd have over 2000 registered users from 1000+ partners, close to 1400 social bookmarks, nearly 200 blogs, and well over 100 public Communities?  What started as a grassroots effort to provide the IBM partner community with a partner-only social environment has done very, very well.

So the good news is that the site is and was utilized.  While the blogs were closed and not open to the public, and communities were tested and sat idle, the site still had some content.  IBM is now pointing the PaXos users to Partnerworld Communities (IBM ID required to log in) or even over to Greenhouse, MyDeveloperWorks and still in PaXos as a sandbox. ( Read more on the creation of too many Lotus Connections silos)

What was missing from the information received was if your profile and all your content were being migrated across to the site.  Sure, there may be some things you do not want listed, but that would be part of the migration option process right?  I can't see losing 1400 social bookmarks and all the blog content from 200 blogs. (Update at 8:55am - only approved IBM employyes can create blogs on the site according to the warning on the screen.  Oops)

PartnerWorld Communities just launched in Q1 of 2009 and to date has accumulated:

• IBM PartnerWorld Community is the #1 (membership) Community on ibm.com
• IBM PartnerWorld Community has over 430 members and continues to grow
•  Since its launch, four new Communities, three new blogs and multiple new Forum topics have been added
• Over 1,150 Blog visits
• Over 4,000 visitors to PW Communities to date

I would still like to see all of these merged together and communities and areas created as needed for Developers, Partners and whomever else gets involved.  I would like to search across profiles and build one network of IBM contacts instead of numerous places.  I would likle to see all the blogs and social bookmarks in one place.  I would like to have the ability to have one Activities panel in my Notes client that would cover one instance.  Currently you can run only one so having Connections internally and 4 other places with Activities just doesn't work.  (Update 9:15a, - I would suggest getting all your files from Activities on PaXos even if ti will be there in Sandbox mode, no guarantees on data storage there)

I have not mentioned Greenhouse as I do think it is a great testing lab for all things beta.   The production site on MyDeveloperWorks should be 'gold" code and in production as it is a front face for IBM.  But let's get rid of all the other disparate installations and actually build a single social network where we can all meet and collaborate n one place.

Don't want to add everyone on PlanetLotus to your followed? Worse yet,  can't find the Twitter id for everyone?  Working with Yancy we pulled everyone that had a Twitter id listed in the public profile on PlanetLotus and made a list for you to add.  This is a great way to keep up with all the bloggers conversation in a channel in your favorite Twitter client (mine is Mixero since many of you ask).

See the above badge to follow via Twitter or email itself.  I would suggest adding it to Twitter personally.

As we talked to a customer about the choice between implementing Sametime Mobile or Enterprise Messenger on the new Storm 2 devices (which will not work right with Sametime Mobile right now), we can across this gem of a demo on the Blackberry site.   We were a bit stunned.



You would think they might update the demo a bit to include new devices and the new features that 2.5 supports.  Plus , with the IBM relationship, possibly update the client they use in the demos.

In order to make it easy to see #ls10 updates from all the Lotusphere 2010 speakers, you can now follow the speaker list via email or Twitter and see when any speaker uses the tag #ls10 in a tweet to keep up with the flow of information without being totally overloaded.

Just use the above subscription or follow along in your favorite Twitter client (like Mixero, TweetDeck or others).  If you do not know what to use on your desktop or mobile device and want suggestions, ping me

In this November 2009 issue I talk about the following, and pay special attention to the "Win the Fight to go to Lotusphere" section:

* From the Editor: Chris' 0.159650 MOP
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Transaction Logging the Notes Client
* Win the Fight To Go To Lotusphere
* Quick Tip: Google On the Hostname Change Game Again
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Deploying Signed Widgets and Plug-ins

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I had the last minute pleasure of participating in the most recent 1352 Report podcast, hosted by Bruce Elgort.  I joined in place of Sean Burgess to the normal cast of characters, Carl Tyler and Jess Stratton.  This is the holiday gadget show, so take a listen.

Apparently Jess has a tiny car that does not have vents due to her demand for gadgets.

Since this works back to Domino 6, I was interested to see what Postini was offering with the Private Outbound DNS.

Change DNS Settings in Domino. IBM Lotus Domino server will use the DNS server listed in notes.ini to send mail. The Domino server will contact the Private DNS Server and route mail to Outbound Services. Since this method affects only IBM Lotus Domino, and requires no changes to the underlying operating system, this is the recommended method to use Private Outbound DNS.

So digging in, you set a reinjection using the Domino server configuration document for your servers that route mail in any way.  You need to register your IP address with the Postini side before setting up the Private Outbound DNS, which cannot use DNS names.  Only IP addresses are allowed.

You are then basically changing the notes.ini for the server to set the DNS servers that the server will use.  Domino will obey the notes.ini DNS server setting before the OS specified one.

Why would you do this?  If you want all mail filtered, protected, scanned and controlled this is an excellent option.  However it is a major change to your infrastructure and also native NRPC routing.  I would be careful before implementing this with any provider, not just Postini

NotesIn9, by David Leedy,  made the early announcement last week, and the official announcement hits today.  Spiked Studio Productions officially launches as a niche podcast network to include a host of shows with more on the way.  While there is two cornerstones of the Lotus podcast community, there is also podcasts around social media and networking.  The upcoming announcements will grow the range of shows even more.

• What does this mean to the listeners?  It means you have a single portal interface to all the best shows and content.  You can subscribe to each show individually or to the entire network all at once.  I would say sample each show and find the right ones for you.  Each show has it's own page with links to recent podcasts.

• What does this mean to advertisers?  It means you now have reach across numerous podcasts in one package, finding more customers from trusted podcast hosts.  Please get in contact if you want to participate early before Lotusphere hits.

SWAN will be your email answer place for all your software questions, according to this:

Get your software, pre-sales questions answered on SWAN, the IBM Software Answer Network. You can ask sales, strategy and technical questions. When you submit the question, SWAN automatically routes it to one of our 1,200 IBM Software Group experts. Once the question is answered, you are promptly notified by e-mail.

The IBM tool that provides simple search against a wide variety of published technical resources across over 70 data sources is known as Business Partner Q&A (BPQA)

Now, I tried to log in and you do need an IBM id first.  You are directed to the BPQA (Business Partner Q&A) first.  You must search first befire you can submit any question, which actually make sense.  Acronym lookups are available to help in understanding what you are searching for or what they are requiring. Here is a sample screenshot of the Q&A busy busy page.




I hope I didn't forget to mention:

Some eligibility criteria apply.  Entitled Business Partners can ask a new question using Software Answer Network, or SWAN. SWAN is available to Advanced and Premier level Business Partners and Value Added Distributors. Member level Business Partners who have purchased the Value Package can also ask a new question using SWAN.

I received this tiny bit of mail today from the postal service.  Now that fast approaches direct marketing doesn't it?  



The inside was even more interesting.  The first thing you get when you open it is a flap that reads:

Replicating yet again made me go to Google

From there the inside goes into cost figures, administration and how intuitive it is.

For $50 a year, each user gets 25GB inboxes, built-in disaster recovery, and integrated anti-spam/anti-virus protection.  Google Apps Premier Edition is an email, calendaring, IM, online document sharing, and Web publishing suite..

When I put out the blog posting for TriStateLUG a few of you listened and brought along a Poken of your own to share contact data faster, easier and updateable.  To further prove my point I brought along a few Poken giveaways for those that did not have one.  As I use it more and more, here is what I learned:

• Those that gave me a "high four" (term for sharing info across devices) I am instantly connected to, no business cards laying around
• I was able to tag you with the conference and any other pertinent information
• I am able to see your network updates as they happen now
• I can download your vcard and place it into systems like Gist for full management and interaction (I hope they integrate something like this later)
• I get your picture along with your card, strengthening my recognition of you again later
• No more freakin paper business cards laying around in stacks with no good way to quickly input

After using the device (and E via web at another) I am finding that I am happier and making more meaningful connections since I get all of your social context.  Most people carry a business card for where they work, not a personal card showing their blog and other information that I can better associate with.  For example Jim, who I had known by name and some of previous work,  shared his info and now I see his Twitter stream, LinkedIn, mobile #, location, tags, instant messaging accounts and more.  I was not connected to him before and got this instantly instead of poking around the social networks.

This is the type of connectivity we need for Lotusphere and more to better connect.  So since we can guess Lotus is not tossing one of these in every bag (let me know if they want to and I know the right people), I am giving you a discount code and link to get your hands on one or many.  Imagine handing some of these out pre-populated with your company information?  Yeah, catch up, that is what I did to those at TriState LUG

You can visit the whole "Zoo" right here.  There is also the possibility to brand and find more customized ones I found out.  Jim brought along a USB one that was sleek and had a simple logo.

So use the coupon code for another 10% off right here  -------> PWUODPALWTJCMTCPOO4O

 

IBM internally has BlueTwit, an internal microblogging network.  Add on Twitter itself and the new capabilities in Lotus Connections, you needed a consolidated client.  A while ago, Bluto was pointed out on the web by Luis and I never took the time to play with it.  By all means it is a fair Adobe Air application for doing the basics in Twitter and seeing the stream for Connections.  It in no way competes with a client for power users of Twitter, like Mixero, but for a normal user that also has Lotus Connections, this might be for you.  A great way to test this is with your Twitter account and the public Lotus Greenhouse.

Bluto has a few capabilities and can be downloaded here:

• customizable pop-ups
• cross posting to both services, or one at a time
• retweet and reply in both services
• Follow and Unfollow Twitter usersFriend and Unfriend Connections users

Things like lists, groups and more don't exist, but this was not meant to be that type of client.  Just an open project that turned out nicely done.  Did I forget to mention it is free?

As Paul Mooney does his song and dance on DAOS (yes he does ding, but not dance very well), he mentioned the new estimator version 1.5 that was released.  Due to lack of Internet where he was standing, 20 feet away, I am blogging it for you.

Dan Silva did a fantastic drive explaining it, so I would visit his posting while it downloads.

I had been testing this new version internally during it's "beta" and all I can say is that it improves VASTLY the performance.  I had run this one a very large mail server, with around 3,500 mail files (~900GB of data).

You can download the new version right here

Smarter Planet is about recognizing the need to see how we are interconnected, how it is instrumented the intelligence contained within.

Bob P - "There is never a better time to be involved with collaboration"

If something meaningful happens it affects people, companies, institutions and man and nature systems.  IBM is driving Smarter Planet thorugh four categories:

• New Intelligence - data exploding and in silos
• Green and Beyond - efficiency
• Smart Work - helping people work smarter together
• Dynamic Infrastructure - responding faster with cheaper and more flexible infrastructure

Investment was needed to let people know what the Lotus brand stands for.  It was iportant to have a top level cmapaign to let people know what Lotus has to offer.  The backdrop of the campaign is LotusKnows.  Some of us were the behind the scenes ideas of what went into the campaign.

Bob gave examples of what the LotusKnows ad showed and what it meant in their marketing thoughts.  Like situation awareness when the LotusKnows campaign talks about knowing about recent news event.  

Me - Does the public get this message however? I saw this in the cab on the tiny screen and while it was a cool ad the message was lost as to what I would get

This campaign is being invested in for multiple years in multiple markets.  

me - It is agreed that the general business partner reaction is high to have marketing surrounding LotusKnows.

You can now obtain and modify LotusKnows marketing for your own needs through Partnerworld.  Drive your message and customized collateral for internal company needs and business partners.  1439 new customers were added in 4th quarter. with 16,859 new customers since Domino 8 was launched.  Lotus Connections is the fastest growing software product in Lotus history.

The solution delivery strategy is cloud/online and on premise/appliance for all of messaging, communication, connecting and integrating.  Whether that is plug-in, mashups or a portal.

LotusLive is the launchpad of the cloud strategy.  it began with web conferencing, into collaboration and now email.  Click-to-cloud is being offered for not only company to company collaboration, but as ways to create support for communities to include file sharing, meetings and activities.  The goal is to be able to integrate services, such as Sametime in the Click-2-Cloud services to maximize value and consumability.

me - It will be difficult to offer provisioning, integration and policy management between the two worlds.

Email is coming back to being the collaboration console.  With the future of email being Lotus Notes.

Bob P - Panasonic is a recent announcement of a full migration from Exchange to Notes.  They are starting with a few thousand users and then moving down the migration path. The largest company has 2 million mailboxes on LotusLive and grow by 20k a day?

The press is loving the movement and showing it off in press articles and covering the movement.

me - but isn't that largest customer actually an ISP that was purchased as part of Outblaze and not a Lotus collaboration customer in general with each person being unique and not as a single organization?

Lotus Foundations is a growing market as a solution.  Xerox is on board, as seen at Lotusphere, in integrating services and layers on top of Foundations.
Current customers moving to Lotus - Bank of NY Mellon, KBC, Continental, PNC, Ineos

The current product pipeline before we move to live demo by Chris Crummey - Sametime 8.5 (coming shortly), Notes 8.5.1 and Quickr 8.5.  In plans is Connections Next with more netowrk building, compliance, deeper integration and LotusLive integration.  Portal 6.1.5 and Mashups 2.0 with more customization, analytics, Connections portlets and end user page creation.

We will see some new paradigms in collaboration at Lotusphere 2010 (we can't ruin any surprises though)  Bob did a great whirlwind job of running through the strategy and handed off to Chris Crummey for live demos.  Copies of the presentation will be available.

Chris starts out by focusing on the Business Card feature.  This is showing across al of the products and shows more than just a name and picture.  it drives self service with title, location, phone (Sametime UC), microblog status and links to all of your Connections information.  The person can go to your items through your card instead of having you interact.  For example knowing you keep files on Connections, clicking your card and going right to your shared files.

Chris jumped into the unified phone book and phone/ip audio connections.  You don't know how the end user wanted to be contacted, the system uses their current preference and makes the connection.  You can then transfer the call to one of your other numbers or another not in the system.

Chris moves on to widgets, sidebars and the coolness of how they can work together before how IBM does customization.  Of course, Ron Sebastian made a cameo in the demos via VOIP and a business card.

In this October 2009 issue I talk about the following, and pay special attention to the editor comments section:

* From the Editor: CHRIS' 8.86624 XOF
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: The ID Vault and Lotus Notes 7.0.2
* To Package or Not Package My Client Deployments
* Quick Tip: Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Calendar Drag
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sametime Gateway Sizing

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