Results tagged “Lotus” from ScottandMargo.net

Just in time for Lotusphere, Lotus911 has released BleedYellow as a resource for the Lotus community....those of us that bleed Lotus yellow.

It'll be interesting to watch this evolve. As it is, it's a good way for Lotus software enthusiasts to meet and exchange ideas and learn from each other. I hope that eventually it will become a place where non-Bleeders can come and see that Lotus software isn't as ugly as it used to be and learn about why those of us that do bleed yellow love this software so much (the reactions to the news of Notes coming to the iPhone last week show that Lotus and the Lotus community still have a long way to go with that).

via Chris Whisonant, Chris Blatnick, Ed Brill, Duffbert, the Connections Blog and probably some others that I haven't seen yet.

Next week will be the last week for me to work at my current employer. I have been working at the same org in the same billet for over six years. I've grown a lot since the summer of 2001. So has the environment I worked in. I'm excited and am looking forward to taking my career to the next level in this new opportunity.

While I'm excited about the future, there is one thing about the new job that makes me a little sad. For the first time in almost 10 years, being a Lotus Domino administrator will not be part of my job.

I really love the community that has come up around Lotus as much as I love the products themselves. There's a lot of passion and enthusiasm for the Lotus suite of products that you don't often see for enterprise software. It's almost like the cult of Mac, but I think they party harder at Lotusphere.

I don't know if I'll get to work with Lotus software in my career. Only time will tell.

In the short term, I'm going to be throwing myself into my new job. Once I get settled, I'll spend time figuring out what I'm going to do about Lotus software in the future. Bruce Elgort, with his work on OpenNTF, Taking Notes and IdeaJAM is loving proof that you can be a part of the community and not work with Lotus software in your day job. While I don't expect that I can make the kind of impact that Bruce has, I may be able to find a way to contribute anyway.

I'm not going to tag this as "Show and Tell Thursday" but it this post is somewhat inspired by the phrase.

Sometime in 1998 I got my first taste of working with Lotus Notes and Domino. I was the new guy in the IT department of a biotech services company. The development group was doing some final pre-testing before rolling out a new application, and they asked me to check it out as a set of fresh eyes.

It was an unfamiliar application and at the time I had no idea what the intended users were meant to accomplish with it but I was willing to take up the challenge to see if I could break it...and I broke it. I got a repeatable Red Box of Death error and was able to explain exactly what I did to get it. The developers were able to fix the error and were spared an embarrassing post-lanch showstopper. I was launched into a new career as a Domino administrator.

I think I got a spot award from the department which was nice and always appreciated. The developers gave me the Lotus Notes mug pictured below which I thought was a really cool expression of appreciation. They picked this much specifically because of the tagline under the Notes logo:

"...because information has no value until it's shared.

I still frequently use this cup for my morning coffee. I also try to keep the tagline in mind as I go about my days. I think I'm a lot more valuable to the people around me if I share my knowledge rather than horde it.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Domino, Lotus, Technology

I didn't make it this year, obviously. I did try to keep up with what was going on in Orlando this week but life and work haven't been very helpful in allowing me to keep track of what's going on 862 miles away. I actually haven't seen the OGS stream yet either. Below I'm posting some of the thoughts I'm having about Lotusphere 2007:

Quickr looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on it and start testing. It looks fantastic. It looks like it's going to be a great answer to what Sharepoint gives out of the boxes (because it's hard to have a Sharepoint with only one box, no?). It's providing all of the Quickplace functionality plus blogs, wiki's, RSS feeds and some other stuff, all with a shiny new Web2.0 skin. With its integration into Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer, I'm wondering where Domino Document Manager comes in. I don't think that Quickr will absorb DDM but I can hope that using DDM as Quickr's repository will be easier. I'm glad to see that they're trying to make up for the fact that Quickplace hasn't changed much since 3.0 in 2003.
onnections sounds fantastic in theory, but I wonder about it in practice. It's probably going to be one of those things where some companies would use the hell out of it right away while it won't take in others no matter how much it's marketed. I'd be interested in seeing this in use outside the internal corporate sphere. Something like integrating it into the Notes.net profiles or something similar to allow the Lotus community to come together around.

I didn't see or hear anything about Domino Administrator, the Domino server or Domino Document Manager. They showed Notes and Designer 8 but no Administrator and there wasn't anything that I could find out about changes to the Domino 8 server. That's where I live when I do Domino...the server and Administrator. Lotusphere 2006 had a lot about R7. I hope we get more info before it comes out.

I really appreciate the Taking Notes and IDoNotes podcasts cranking it out at Lotusphere. Bruce and Julian and Chris did a great job at giving us a a good idea of the feel of what's going on at Lotusphere 2007 through their podcasts. With the madness that is Lotusphere, it's hard for those of us that aren't there to get an idea of what's going on down there. I know that blogging is hard down there and I can imagine that getting that many podcasts out with everything else going on has to be exhausting.

Technorati Tags: Jamfest, Lotusphere2007, Technology

Last year was my first Lotusphere. I had a bad plane ride over. Then I had the shuttle ride from hell over to All Star Sports where I was booked. The next five days were one heck of a ride. I learned a lot, walked a lot, had a lot of highs and had some exceptional lows as well. I had no idea how physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting it was going to be.

In the past, I always thought it would be interesting to go to Lotusphere, but never enough to really push to go. Now that I've been, I want to keep going back...I want to have another go and not be so overwhelmed like I was for Lotusphere 2006. This year's a bit different than last year for reasons I might go into later. I'm going to try to get out for Lotusphere 2008 but a lot of things can happen between now and then so I'll have to wait and see.

I'm hoping that more comes out about Domino 8 on the server side this year. A lot has been said about the Notes 8 client but the server is where I get things done. I don't think anything has been said about what's changed in the Admin and Designer clients either so it would be nice to have more information there. I haven't worked for an organization that deployed Notes clients to the end users in many years so, while interesting, the Notes 8 client changes aren't going to affect me much in the short term. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the updates Domino Document Manager and Quickplace which are at least in desperate need of UI updates.

I'll be spending time as I can in the Lotusphere Live site if the office firewall will let me out to it. Either way, I'll be keeping an eye on the usual sources for info of the new and interesting things that come out of Lotusphere 2007.

It's supposed to be an interesting year and I'm looking forward to it.

Technorati Tags: Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2007

By default, the Domino web server supports the HTTP TRACE method. Retina Network Security Scanner (and probably other security vulnerability scanners) treat this as a vulnerability because for some web servers, HTTP TRACE can be used as a point of attack for information disclosure.

IBM has a technote out there called "Are there any known vulnerabilites in the Domino server related to HTTP Trace method?" . The technote states that there are no known vulnerabilities with Domino R6's HTTP TRACE method, but they also include instructions on how to disable it if the system owner wants. This is a good thing since it helps knock another hit off on a network scan by the security folks...it's much faster and easier to make that hit go away if you don't need it than it is to explain why it's there and that it's not necessarily a big deal.

The easy way to disable the TRACE method is to uncheck the TRACE box in the Allowed Methods section in the Configuration tab of the site's Internet Site document if the site is using them. Not all Domino web sites use Internet Site documents and some can't (Quickplaces still can't, nor can Sametime) since there is no Allowed Methods section in a server doc.

For non Internet Site doc Domino sites, you need to add "HTTPDisableMethods=TRACE" to the notes.ini. This will disable the method for all sites on the server, by the way, so you can't pick and choose if you're not using Internet Site docs. You can add other http methods here if you want to as well but that's out of the scope of this SnTT posting.

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Security, show-n-tell thursday, Technology

This blog runs on Movable Type. In its history, it's also been run on Xoops and Post Nuke. Before it was anything like a blog, it was just a hand coded (DreamWeaver and Notepad mostly) web page with information about our wedding (directions, etc for guests that could make it, pictures for those that couldn't). I made the switch to Movable Type sometime in 2003, I think and haven't really spent any time thinking about moving it again since.

I am a Lotus Domino professional (certified and some would say certifiable), so some people find it odd that I'm not using the Dominoblog template or the newly released IBM Blog template. I was asked that a few times from people at Lotusphere 2006 about that as well. At the time, I hadn't really considered a move and hadn't played around with the Dominoblog template.

I've been thinking about it more recently, and below I'm listing the barriers that I currently have for making the move. I only have a couple hours worth of time invested in messing with the Dominoblog template so far and none with the 7.0.2 template. There's a lot that I like about the template, and I'll drop that in another post after I have more time to play.

Cheap Hosting:
At the time that I was shopping around for a a host for my site (2001 sometime), I was considering Domino-based hosting providers. Most of the ones that I found had free options that were insufficient. I'm currently using about 80MB of space for my site between the content directories and the database. I don't get enough traffic to worry about hitting the limit in most hosting arrangements.

Importing of content from MovaleType:
In the past, I hadn't really worried about losing content on the site when moving platforms. The amount of actual content was pretty light. In the past year or so, it's picked up a lot, and I kinda care about the old stuff now. Anything I move to in the future must be able to import the Movable Type data that I already have. Probably doesn't really have to be Movable Type specific, if I can point it at an RSS/ATOM feed that has everything on the site, then import that.

Trackbacks
I've been fiddling around with the Dominoblog 3.0.2 template, and I don't see how/if trackbacks actually work. I haven't seen any Dominoblog based blogs that accept trackbacks. I'm wondering if that's a trackback spam thing or not. A robust anti-spam configuration is a must. I've been plugged into Akismet for my blog for a while and it's a beautiful thing.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Domino, Lotus, Technology

Julian Robichaux came up with an interesting idea for an advertising campaign for Lotus Notes and Domino the other day. I like it.

"Need e-mail? Yeah, it can do that. Client and web applications? Yeah, that too. Portal? Yeah. Blog, wiki, RSS reader? Yes, yes, yes. Web services? Yes, we could do this all day..."

Where I'm working, I'm pretty well known at this point as the guy who says that a lot. When I started where I'm working, if I saw a problem that could be relatively simply solved by using Domino, I'll point it out and explain as well as I can. Eventually somehow it became a cliche....problem stated, "you can do that with Domino", eye roll. Sometimes a lone admin isn't a great candidate for a technology advocate, but I try...

So what I'm saying is that while I think "yeah, it can do that too" is true and a good idea, I would hate to see it turn out like my efforts have turned out.

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Marketing, Technology

I finally got around to listening to the Taking Notes Podcast number 27 about the upcoming release of Quickplace 8.

I'm glad to hear that IBM is putting a lot of thought and work into this release. Really, from my point of view there wasn't much new or of interest in the Team Workplace 8 over Quickplace 3 (I believe that the update changed the name and there was a bug fix or two, Extended Membership too). I haven't had a chance to really work Quickplace 7 out much yet. There's some good tweaks in there...the Editor access was definitely needed and I'm getting impatient about being able to use it, the doc type icons is a nice tweak too.

In the podcast, they mentioned a lot of new interesting features, and it sounds like they're holding a lot back. The standouts for me are the improved management interface, both for the system admin and for the managers of the individual Places. I'm really looking forward to hearing what info comes out at Collaboration University and if I get to Lotusphere 2007, maybe getting close-up hands-on time with it.

I haven't heard anything yet about something I've been wishing for since I started running Quickplace servers in 2.something (2.06 I think):

A user-accessuible/friendly listing of all of the Places on the server and some way to request access to the Place.

We've had the Place Catalog for a while now which has the info on all of the Places, but the database itself is a dirty tool for admins and developers and the server itself. There isn't even anything in OpenNTF or the Sandbox that addresses this functionality (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Some orgs don't have access to their own Domino developers to write stuff like that...and frankly, I always thought it should have been part of the product all along. Sharepoint has it. :D

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Collaboration, Technology

I should have expected it.

Sametime 7.5 dropped on Friday the 18th, as reported by Ed Brill and others. I downloaded the server, client and dev kit this morning and will try to get a test server up this week. Started the process of getting the client into the software testing/approval cycle.

Looks like the first test accounts started getting issued for testing NCES' Sametime installation while I was gone too. I pre-registerest for the testing and they're rolling the accounts in small groups, and I didn't get one on the first set.

I'm looking forward to a couple different things with the NCES Sametime setup. With the 7.5 client, I should be able to connect to my local community and the DISA one at the same time. I'm also hoping that there will be the possibility of connecting existing Sametime communities to the main NCES community. Some orgs in the DoD prefer to own their services, so something like registering their users with NCES and only using that might not be doable, but if they can connect the Communities the the collaboration is still there without making the local IA guys too nervous.

Technorati Tags: Lotus, Sametime, Travel

Adam Gartenberg posted last Saturday on his blog that they were going to update the Sametime 7.5 demo site with beta 4 code this week. He also mentioned that they were pulling the Mac version of the client from the initial release. Bummer, but if it isn't ready, it isn't ready and I'd rather see IBM delay something than pug it out half-baked. I went to check the site this morning to see if they updated it yet and they did. Unfortunately, they seem to have removed the Mac client from the beta 4 code. That bites. Would have hoped that they'd want to keep testing the Mac client while it's being delayed. But then again the beta probably needs to be tested without the links to the Mac client too. Oh well. So much for ST at home for me. I'll work harder on the beta update when they bring the Mac client back, I promise! :)

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Technology

MAKE: Blog: HOW TO - Make a domino cuff/bracelet:
A little bit of fashion for future Lotuspheres? Might go well with the CULT shirt to show your Lotus pride, no? I wonder how it would look using the stainless dominos that HADSL gave away at Lotusphere 2006?

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotusphere, Marketing

Back in April, I did a post that was only half joking about what I was doing to prepare for the next Lotusphere JAMfest. Here's the follow-up post that I mentioned. First, a little story:

Back when I was packing for Lotusphere 2006, one of the things I packed is an M-Audio Oxygen 8. It's a small portable MIDI controller for use with some of the software I have on my Powerbook. The intent was to use then time I had between the last session of the night and the first session of the morning to work on music. It didn't end up working out that way, because in transit, the USB connector broke and I don't own a MIDI-to-USB converter...so the musical hermit routine was done and I had to find other things to do at night. Fortunately, there's a lot of that in Orlando (rather, Lake Buena Vista) during Lotusphere.

Here's what I've been working on since then:

I spent some time looking for a replacement USB connector for the Oxygen 8 when I came across an inexpensive Edirol PCR-50 on eBay. That solved most of my problems with having a broken USB connector so I bought it. I'll still get the Oxygen 8 fixed, but it's not as urgent these days. Yes, there's no external audio hookup in the picture, and there's no power line. I set this up for the picture and then put the Powerbook back where it normally lives. When I'm playing around, I either have headphones or have it hooked into the 5.1 surround system that's not in the picture.

I'm doing two things with this setup. I'm learning how to use the software and I'm learning how to play a keyboard. I'm hoping that this will give me the vocabulary I need to find and express what will eventually become my music. I'm also looking ahead to Lotusphere and JAMfest. I'm thinking of ways to fit into how that whole thing goes down both in terms of songs that I'd be able to play that other people might want to play there, and also figuring out how to improv and follow the rest of the band as it starts really jamming.

I may or may not make it to Lotusphere 2007, and it's possible that none of the above ends up working whether I do make it there or not. But I've been thinking about it for a while and I'm not going to be happy til I do what I need to do to find out if it'll work out. Who knows? It could be a wonderful thing.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Jamfest, Lotusphere, Music, Technology

This would probably ideally be a Show and Tell Thursday thing but I din't have the answers so it'll have to be worked out with whoever has the answers...

Is anyone out there willing to talk about running Domino as an applications hosting platform for other organizations but not using the xSP install? There are a few companies out there that sell Domino but there's only so much I can figure out about how they manage the back end from digging around with a free account ID.

My background is more in the area of running Domino servers that are dedicated to the organization that owns the applications that they're supporting. I don't have any experience with situtaitons where you're potentially hosting applications and databases from different organizations on the same servers that don't necessarily trust each other. It's pretty simple to isolate the users and managers of different databases in SQL but you don't have to deal with certifiers and ID files and NAB access and other Domino-ish things like that. I don't see a lot of documentation out there either from IBM/Lotus or from anyone out there that's actually doing it with Domino.

Anything would help, but I'm really looking to see how people are doing it from end to end...ID/cert management, Permissions management, code updates, user/customer/application isolation, etc.

As I said at the beginning, I think that the idea form for this information would be a blog post, especially for Show and Tell Thursday, but I understand that some may not be so eager to post how their company does what it does. I won't talk about my employer on the blog here but I think I can make a pretty good case that what I'm working on isn't going to be competing with any other organizations and their products/services out there. If we have to keep the discussion by email or something, that's fine. I won't talk about my employer on the blog here but if competition is a concern, I think I can make a pretty good case that what I'm working on isn't likely to compete with anyone else out there.

Thanks

Technorati Tags: Lotus, Domino, Hosting, Best Practices

I'm about two thirds of the way through the hard level. Some days I'm better than others but I'm getting better at it all the time. Won't help me with most of what I'd expect to see at Jamfest now (though Spanish Castle Magic and Crossroads, maybe Godzilla could be close). I'm having a hell of a time with Guitar Hero. It's loads of fun, and has a very playable learning curve. It's actually kind of seductive...when you start getting good you're almost left feeling that you could pick up a real guitar and play it on that too. The music's good too if you're into guitar rock.

There's a conversion out there where you can plug these controllers into USB and use it as a MIDI controller. That could be fun.

I have some other ideas for Jamfest next time. Will post on that when I have it more fleshed out. It might work out, but it might not. Will see.

Technorati Tags: Lotusphere, Review, Music, Jamfest, GuitarHero

I was skimming through technotes on the Lotus Support site and came across a technote (193337) that I hadn't noticed before, and since it's Thursday I figured I'd share because I haven't seen it anywhere else:

Does Sametime scan files for transferred viruses?

Without posting the whole content of the technote, what it's saying is that this functionality will be in Sametime 7.5. When I deployed Sametime in my current environment, lacking the ability to scan files in transit is the reason why I wasn't allowed to enable the file transfer functionality.

This feature is going to be as big for me as the new pretty UI on the client. Thank you IBM!

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Show and Tell Thursday, Software, Technology

Here's the opinion piece.

I have mixed feelings on Show and Tell Thursdays. There's a lot of great information out there. The sharing of code tips and tricks is fantastic, but genereally not useful to me as an admin. Best case for development tips is that I'll see something I recognize and pass it along to a developer I know. Reading positive news and "I was able to accomplish X in my company with Domino" stories is always great too.

Maybe I'm just not seeing them but I don't see a lot of admin SnTT writing. It's hard to make admin interesting. There's a lot of things I do during the day that may be interesting or useful to other people but it's hard to pull it out of the context of my day job and put it out there in a way that's understandable and useful to other people in their environment.

If I think of something that I can write about I'll try to get it out for Show and Tell Thursdays in the future (like I did this week). What I have decided to do in the spirit of SnTT when I don't have anything blogworthy to post is spend more time in the Notes.net forums and answer whatever questions I can in there. That way at least I'm contributing something back to the community on a regular basis. I'm trying to make it a habit because I know that the more I give back in finding answers to people's issues, the more I'll be prepared to deal with new issues of my own.

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Show and Tell Thursday, Software, Technology

I'll put my thoughts on Show and Tell Thursday in a different post. Look for it (or not) soon. :P Here's an admin thing that popped up again recently for someone I know. It took me a while to remember what the fix was and it takes some digging in Notes.net or Google to find it so it sounded to me like a good SnTT post. This is for Sametime 6.5.1 on Windows. I can't vouch for other platforms. I haven't done this in R7 yet so I don't know if it has the same issue. If you do a lot of partitioned Domino servers like I do, you tend to try to keep all of your server-specific files in the server's data directory. Even servers that aren't partitioned I always put the notes.ini and the server.id in the data directory. It's one less step I need to do later if I need to migrate the server into a partitioned configuration. There's a problem when you do this with Sametime 6.5.1 servers on the install. You get throught the first part of the installation OK, but the second section of the install when it runs stsetup.exe, after you choose your directory type, the installer comes back with a "File does not exist" error. There are probably several conditions that can cause stsetup to throw this error, but in the environments I deal with, it's always been the same thing: stsetup is looking for notes.ini and the server id file in the program directory instead of the data directory. The fix is to just copy those files into the program directory before the Sametime install and then copy them back to the data directory when it's done.

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Show and Tell Thursday, Software, Technology