The Lotus Notes Conspiracy
Okay, sometimes I am just amazed at some people. Chris Pirillo runs a tech site called LockerGnome. He also used to be a host on Tech TV’s Call For Help. Anyway, on his site, he’s had several users complain that the LockerGnome email newsletters don’t render properly in the R6 and 6.5 Notes Client. So, what does Chris suggest? Don’t use Notes. You can read his rant here, but this guy lost any credibility he’s ever had with me.
Here’s a quote:
I do, indeed, have a fix for the Lotus Notes rendering problem: stop using Lotus Notes. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the backend may be supreme champion of the intranet universe, but the frontend (read: UI) is anything but user friendly. Stop it, drop it!
It’s true that the client sometimes has some buggy behavior on HTML, but most of the time it’s badly formed HTML. To completely disregard the tens of millions of Notes users is idiotic in my book. What do you all think, is Pirillo an idiot, or is he right? Personally I’d like to see Ed Brill and Alan get a hold of him!
April 8, 2004 @ 6:13 pm
My first response to this was rapidly devolving into an ad hominem attack on Chris Pirillo and that would have been wrong of me.
Let’s just say that I’m sure that most people who use Notes (as with users of other mail clients) have absolutely no control of what they can use at work, and I doubt there are many home Notes users. I’d have thought that ole Chris fully understands this, so is he talking out of his arse or just plain uninformed?
(As for me, I’m a Luddite who’s still squarely in the Internet mail should be text only camp. When I open up HTML emails in whichever mail client I’m using, my tendency is to hit delete first, and ask questions later.)
April 8, 2004 @ 6:46 pm
Same here, Colin. If you’re going to be viewing HTML based emails, then the Lotus Notes client is a very safe viewer! Yeah, not the best, but you know nothing bad will happen, like buffer-overflow mail-bombs that target Outlook. And also, you can safely view file attachments, like MSWord, without launching what could be a bad file.
April 12, 2004 @ 1:41 pm
I was reading Chris Miller and this came up with him too. Looks like he actually talked to Pirillo about it directly. I’ll attach a trackback!
Take Care,
Grey