Oct 20, 2010
Flowers soaking up the fall sun at my parent’s house in Iowa. Even though the leaves have fallen and most flowers have long since died, these were still brilliant.
Oct 18, 2010
Over the past year or so, I’ve been trying really hard to not let little things bother me. Part of that whole mentality came about with my epiphany post after a rather tumultuous summer.
Since then, life has been much better. That said, that doesn’t mean everything is roses all the time, far from it. I’ve had some really trying weeks where it became increasingly more difficult to just “let go” of the small stuff. Add to that the fact that I’m ending my thirties at the end of this week, and I’ve been a little more grumpy than I need to be. So I decided to remind myself to let go by getting it inked into my body.
The picture you see at the upper right translates to “Let Go” or to some folks as “Forget it.” This is what I need to continue to do. I need to let go of all of the crap I cannot change, and forget about the poison people and things that just bring you down. Getting rid of those bad influences make me a much happier person, and make my life a much better thing to live. It’s hard to do sometimes, but now I have a little reminder for when I need it. I’m really looking forward to letting go more often.
I turn 40 later this week, and it’s hit me a lot harder than I imagined it would. That said, one thing that it IS spurring in me, is to get a bunch of meaningful ink. “Let go” was the first of what I hope will be many to come.
Oct 5, 2010
Please excuse the sex-ay title, but the 13 year old me had to chuckle at it, and with the all the other “LotusLive” posts you are going to see letting us know about the new feature announcements, I figured I’d have some fun with my post.
Yesterday I had the privilege of joining a blogger conference call in which Sean Poulley, Brendan Crotty and Ed Brill went over some new announcements for LotusLive. First off if you couldn’t tell by my rapier wit with the title, LotusLive announced support for Tungle calendaring integration, as well as integration with Vondle Live. Vondle is an online doc viewer that supports over 70 formats and allows you to annotate them from within the browser. So those two integration points were very nice, all configurable from within the admin side of things, and I think will add a lot to the experience.
For those unaware, LotusLive Notes can be had for $5 a month, and can be accessed via the web client, or a Lotus Notes client itself. It allows for a 25GB mailbox as well. In addition, if you want Traveler mobile email support, that will be an additional $2 a user per month. So for a total of $7 a month, you can have a pretty kick ass email solution you can access via web, mobile device or Notes client. Right now the Traveler support only is for iOS devices, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Blackberry support is supposedly coming soon, and I don’t see any mention of Android support yet. I imagine that once the beta of Android is done on the Domino side, that it will make it’s way into LotusLive.
Lotus also announced a new $10 a month offering called the LotusLive Collaboration Suite that includes the LotusLive Notes above as well as IM, file sharing, social networking and web conferencing. It’s a pretty full offering for only $10 a month.
As for the social networking aspect, Lotus added Communities as a feature within LotusLive Engage and LotusLive Connections. So now you can create community areas to share activities, bookmarks, discussion areas and tags. Which means you’ll see that in the collaboration suite as well. Lastly, LotusLive Notes added 21 additional languages, Engage and Connections added 5 languages and Meetings and iNotes added 7 new languages, while Meetings also added app sharing support for the Mac OS.
So in all, LotusLive continues to grow, expand and integrate. They are being pretty nimble in this space, so I’m excited to see how it is received in the marketplace, and to see how much more they’ll unveil in the months to come. Lotusphere should be very interesting.
Oct 4, 2010
Last month, Packt Publishing gave me a free review copy of the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide by Karen Hooper. Finally, someone had put out a book for the end user to really utilize to be able to learn how to use the Lotus Notes client. Would it be good enough to really help a user without overwhelming them in detail?
The book starts out with an overview of the Lotus Notes interface, and does a wonderful job pointing out all the nuance in the Lotus Notes client. Clearly labeled screenshots are backed by explanation on how everything works. This chapter is essential for new users or those of you that are upgrading from the older interfaces found in version 7 of the client and earlier. You learn all about the open button, sidebar, and even the more familiar elements like toolbars and tabs. That said, many users tend to miss these details, and this chapter will really fill in the gaps of understanding they might be missing.
Next the book delves into Sametime in Chapter 2, the RSS Feed Reader in Chapter 3, and Widgets in Chapter 4. All of these chapters are very well written and give a lot of detail, but I may have shifted them around myself, as chapters 5 and 6 are really where a user is going to get the most bang for the buck. Chapter 5 goes over mastering the basics of Lotus Notes email, while chapter 6 goes more in-depth with all of the email tools (colors and recipient icons, spell check, message recall, out of office etc.)
That’s really the only misstep the book ever makes in my opinion. Users are really more likely to utilize mail, calendaring and contacts than the Feed reader or Widgets. I mean, the third chapter is devoted to the Feed reader, which no one I know utilizes as it’s functionality is so limited. But by surfacing it in the book prior to email, it seems to give it more prominence than I would have liked to see. Once again, those early chapters are well written and give tons of detail, I’d just like to see them pushed to the back of the book.
Initially I had been disappointed that there wasn’t a chapter dedicated to the vast amount of Preferences you can set in the client, but as I read the book, I found that Karen added preference sections to each of the chapters, detailing each set of preferences along with the section she was explaining. This is actually the best way to go about it, as it doesn’t overwhelm the reader with so many pages in a row dedicated to all of the settings you can configure in the client. Once again, this is perfect for the end user to get the information they need right away.
To wrap up the book, Karen included chapters on working with Notes applications, working remotely, and utilizing Lotus Symphony. Working remotely and utilizing Notes applications are two of the differentiators of Lotus Notes when comparing the client to others on the market. As such, I was thrilled to see these each get their own detailed chapter. As for Symphony, the chapter gives a brief overview how to utilize Symphony from within the Lotus Notes client, but doesn’t try to teach you anything about how a spreadsheet or word processor works. Obviously, each application could have it’s own book written detailing how to use it, so the overview did a good job not trying to cram too much of that information in. The book did include URL links pointing to information at IBM, but that was annoying to me. They should have included shortened URLs instead of something like the following: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/gallery.nsf/GallerySpreadsheets?OpenView&Count=15. Are we SURE that link isn’t going to change? Is any user going to type that behemoth in? I don’t really think so, but that’s really a minor annoyance for an otherwise really good book.
That’s the thing, there’s not much to criticize here. For many years, there wasn’t a clear, concise book showing users how to use Lotus Notes. It’s a market that has been completely lacking, and Packt Publishing and Karen Hooper have done a killer job in coming up with a book that’s easy to read, gives the appropriate amount of detail, and touches on the right things. I would have moved the chapters around a bit, and fixed the links, but if that’s all I had to criticize, you know you are in for a good read. If you have users that need some education on the Lotus Notes client, this book is just the thing. Snag your copy today!
Sep 24, 2010
Wow. Time flies when you are having fun I guess, and I’ve definitely had a lot of fun here over the last seven years. On Sept. 24th, 2003 I posted here for the first time, and it really changed a lot of things for me.
Blogging has obviously always been a personal creative outlet for me, but even more than that, it allowed me to join a community of professionals centered around Lotus Notes and the companion products. I’ve made so many friends through this medium, and for that I am eternally grateful.
My blogging has slowed down this last year as I’ve been sharpening my pointy hair, but I’m not ready to let the blog go by the wayside just yet. It’s been too good to me to abandon any time soon.
So thanks to all of you that still subscribe, or who continue to show up here on a regular basis. I’m honored to have you around…
Sep 9, 2010
Sep 8, 2010
A commissioned piece by my wife. She likes to change the scenery in the house with each season, and as fall sets in, we were looking for large print photos to put in frames in our living room.
Those frames generally house some signed movie posters, but as the orange pillows and other fall decorations permeate the house, we needed some photos for the frames.
That’s where this shot and week 25 come in. This will be a 20 in X 28 in print in my living room. I like it a lot, and I hope you do too…
Sep 8, 2010
Packt Publishing has a new book out. It’s called the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide. I’ll be reviewing it soon, but in the meantime, you can download Chapter 2 : To Chat or Not to Chat and check it out for yourself.
The book promises the following:
Check it out, and I’ll try to have a review for you a little quicker than last time 
Aug 25, 2010
I’ve always loved xkcd, and this comic reminded me of my wife. Thanks for being my rock honey…
Aug 16, 2010
The smoke rolls across my lips
Fading like the days
Spreading wings through darkness
The night clings to me
Like an embrace in the rain
It all feels so heavy sometimes
So yet another drag
So intent on the flames
So often I want to burn this whole world down
The last notes trail off
And the silence remains
“you’re welcome” seems so empty today
Another grain tumbles down
And the coastline trails on for miles
It seems so vast sometimes
So strike another match
So intent on the flame
Solace engulfs me as the world comes down
Copyright John A. Roling 2010 – All Rights Reserved