Fud Buster Friday #42 - Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Of course, how could I pass this one up.

Often forgotten by adults, but 42 far in advance of Douglas Adams who unfortunately left us way too early in life, Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice in Wonderland used it as a rule:

The King invokes rule 42, “All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”

Short week for me, so we will keep it simple.

The bottom line is sometimes you have to wait a long time for an answer.

Happy Shavuout to my readers.

SNTT - Nice Designer Popup I Found

Found this while editing my PNAB. Designer 8.5, maybe earlier ones asked too, but this is the first time I recall seeing the message.

I was editing views to sort by country, state, city for my upcoming UK workation. I also found my PNAB is really not in good order, must update it better.

And the message above is what I found when I pasted a copy of one view.

Choosing no marks the database so replace design doesn't wipe out your personal views.

Another great item in R8 that is one of the little things but it means so much.

Making one user life easier at a time.

SnTT - When your name is no longer your name

Welcome back everyone from the long weekend here in the US, UK and some other places as well.

What we have here is a failure to follow the simplest rule in the book and a little empathy needed by admins until IBM enhances the rename function in Domino.

KISS - Keep it simple, seriously

The Eclipse client, better known as the Standard one in the Lotus R8 stream brought many changes, one of which really bothers me and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe Mary Beth Raven's team can.

I have multiple mail files, corp, private, test user, other customers, etc.

In past versions, and in basic mode, changing the title, in Database properties of the mail file or db in question changes the name in the tab as well when the window is open and that's how I always knew which mail file I was in.

Well no longer and it is really annoying to me in my day to day work.

So why do I bring this up? One of our customers called this morning and was having problems with someone's name showing up incorrectly in their tab using their maiden name.

We walked through how the admin had changed the name(created a new ID insteasd of using rename for some unknown reason, probably lack of knowledge) and they did a good job, we made sure ACL's and location documents got changed. Checked groups and ID and all seemed fine.

They called back a little later and asked how to change the mail tab to get the new name. They had checked the title properties of the db and changed it so what is wrong?

My brain hurt from my recent experience with our ISP, so I asked on Twitter and Andy Donaldson pointed out to me we should check the Mail-Owner under More-preferences.

EDITED 5/27: Marie reminded me to include the ability to set this also when inside DWA if you are using webmail. Sorry, forgot that addition.

Sure enough her old name was still listed.

Ok, that resolves her problem. But who thought this was a good idea? Sometimes people want to provide original titles to their mail files, why does the Eclipse client prevent this?

Something so simple has gone awry. Why can't the tab still call the properties title up and use it?

A secondary aspect of this customer is this.

If someone changes their name, for whatever reason, and wants all references to their previous name erased from what they see why isn't there an option to change the mail file name as well as the user name?

So in true Web 2.0 fashion, there should be an option in the Admin client when performing a user rename to ask if we want the file name changed too. A posting from Paul Davies on ideajam.net has this already and has 90 approvals and is from Jan 2008!

So go vote for it and think about how you can make someone's life easier, especially if they are getting divorced and don't want to get reminded of their previous name and life.

Fud Buster Friday #41 - Governments Can Work Together

And create a Highway to Hell.

Thanks to Marie Scott for her thoughts about some items from this week, it led me to write this post.

And to Pedrorq for agreeing with me on the subtitle.

What if you were a democrat, republican, communist, independent, labor or whatever partisan you want to be part of in your political system?

Every 2,4 or whatever number of years your government changes. Sometimes, like in the US this year in swaps the party in charge, other times the leader stays but their cabinet or staff changes.

What if this is wrong?

If you believe in collaboration and really and truly understand it, you get presented with a few dilemmas. A few like this:

1) If together we can change the world, how will that influence your business?
2) Is collaboration a form of socialism? After all if we should all share...
3) What about privacy and security in a collaborative world?

How can a government or country maintain a solid foundation while changing leadership and staff every few years, sometimes for the 180 degree opposite extreme?

Perhaps because there is so much behind the government that it doesn't matter in the short run who is in charge but the long run matters more.

Perhaps this is what also prevents governments from working together, internally and externally.

The need to strive for a future goal can sometimes sidestep the need to collaborate. It shouldn't, but it does, a sad commentary on the world in general.

Lotus Notes and Domino make it easy to share, but secure, information and extend capabilities beyond the scope of the primary organization. This is a leading reason why many government organizations use it, not necessarily for their email which in general is NOT a collaborative function, but for their processes and working methodology. It ensures the checks and balances exist to keep everyone moving forward with appropriate goals in mind.

Until your organization, or government, stops looking at themselves as THE ONE, or in a silo or binary way, your organization can not truly exceed it's potential.

So if you are on the Highway to Hell, Don't Pay the Ferryman, till he gets you to the other side.

SNTT - When BES OTA is DOA

One of our partners asked if we could test their Blackberry application for them.

Sure, send the files we will put it out there.

I do not have a Blackberry as readers will know, so I tend to fly blind a little bit and ask some nice people to let me know when they get the apps. Problem was no one got them. Historically I had to troll logs and other files, but that was in the past.

You see around the time of BES 4.1.5 a new column appeared in the BES Manager which was next to Software Configurations and is called Software Config Status which makes life much easier when trying to troubleshoot what went wrong with the OTA.

In this case 2 errors appeared, one asked for a new device.xml which I posted to Twitter looking for a file link which I couldn't find initially, and a second one which I thought could be useful since had recently changed physical servers.

See these 2 technotes about clearing the apploader cache and replacing the xml files:

Cannot push applications to a BlackBerry smartphone over the wireless network

How to update the device.xml and vendor.xml files

The last one was updated a month ago as of this writing.

And there is a configuration change, but you should have been using it anyway, policies for the software configuration are pretty much required now otherwise the apps do not get sent.

Sales pitch coming(he's gnawing at my feet I never ask for business, so here you go):
We monitor and maintain BES for a number of companies throughout the world, and keep them up to date, so if this is of interest, inquire within. For a small fee we maintain, monitor and upgrade your BES(including the Domino part) when available in addition to helping secure and distribute applications for your staff and clients.

Quickr for Domino 64 and Windows 64....MIA

And I do not mean it is hanging out at Terminal 2 in Miami International Airport.

According to the Lotus Quickr 8.1 Technote 64 bit is not an approved version. A discussion ensued as to IF it will install at all. Based on our tests, not in our environment.

Our offices and some of our clients are asking about Quickr on 64 bit Domino running on Windows 64 bit.

All new machines are running 64 bit Windows 2008, usually.

Naturally one wants to put on Domino 64 but if you are or will be doing Lotus Quickr installs you are best to install Domino 32 bit on the Windows 64 bit server.

Maybe a VM is the answer, if hardware is not in your budget or you already started your project and ran into a problem, as one client found last week.

There was a posting about how to use the Lotus Quickr Connectors on a 64 bit OS and here is the forum link if you need it.


And a Technote of an FAQ on 64 bit Domino

My findings have led me to discuss this with the IBM product management for consideration in the future. If this is important to you, post here so we can bring it back to them.

Marc Pagnier PM for Quickr had this to say:

yes, it is always a question of priorities. We tried to support 64-bit in 8.2 but this would have taken some work, non negligeable, and we had so many other critical items on the list. Not all Domino apps will be 64 bit right away. Quickr should run on its own Domino server (part of the package)

Stuart Mcintyre assisted with some of the details on this post. Cheers, Stuart.

Time it was and What a Time it Was, It Was

NOT!

I missed an appointment this morning, well a phone call actually, with a person I want to do some business with when I am in London this summer.

By mistake, mine, I entered it in the wrong time period.

Oddly enough I have another meeting soon and Google sent me a reminder about it as well, but their reminder shows the wrong time. It's is 4 hours off, not 5.

This one I have properly, we both used Lotus Notes.

So if you are going to Gmail, better watch yourself on those across time zone schedules.

Microsoft Sells Quickr

Under the Vista compatibility site you can see it on offer, although they are showing a Quickplace box.

Probably because there is no boxed software anymore from IBM.

Lotus Wordpro is smarter than Lotus Symphony?

The letter, addressed to partners, and customers, presumably, was not able to be read using Lotus Symphony on my laptop for some unknown reason.

It was however read using Lotus Wordpro straight from the open or save dialog box in Firefox.

Yes that trusty word processing powerhouse alternative from another century opened it with no problem.

So now I was intrigued, what was the problem.

Upon further review the file was named SW, no extension.
I then logged back in to download the letter and saved it this time and gave it a .doc extension.

And this time symphony read it.

Evidently we have become so detailed to ONLY read files with an extension that makes sense, unlike the earlier heyday of Office suites that had to look at a file and just try to read it, no matter what the format.

So Wordpro is smarter than Symphony?

Absolutely Last Thing We need on a Friday

See the message below.

IBM Partnerworld (the download area) is down until Sunday, when Fix Central goes down evidently.
Thanks IBM, for letting me go home early today.

Fud Buster Friday #40A - Exchange costs less to implement

Read David's blog entries from Thursday about his trek in an Exchange migration away from Domino.

Part 6
Part 7
Part 8 which has final review

Some quotes:

Before Domino servers 38 including 3 BES servers (15 sites) after Exchange users(presuming he means servers here) 105 (14 sites)

I can’t stress enough how much more bandwidth you will need compared to a Domino infrastructure.

Microsoft Sales team promises a lot that they can’t deliver.
If you use Microsoft Engineering team to implement what the Microsoft Sales team has sold you, you will get proof positive on the previous point. Even the Engineering team will admit that they’ve oversold you.

Fud Buster Friday #40 - If It's Free, It's For Me

Free as a bird
Free to do as I want
Freebird
I'm Free

In this economy, Free, is getting people excited. But what is it doing for your business? You can't make money by giving away everything for free...or can you?

If you could attend a conference for free, or pay for it, which would you choose? Most people would say free is for me.

So what happens when Google says Gmail is free and also has a built in size of at least 7GB, what's wrong with that? Companies who only use email and no calendar connectivity or anything else but pure phone book, this works for them.

Similarly when Google Apps is free(and their new Blackberry software is coming), or Lotus Symphony or OpenOffice, why doesn't everyone or anyone use them?

If Ubuntu Linux is free and could run your day to day life, would don't you use it?

If an iPhone were free, would everyone be using one?

RIM offers a handful of clients for free for Blackberry users to run Lotus Sametime, Connections and soon Quickr and Symphony among other apps they offer, so why isn't everyone using them?

Openntf.org has free templates for Domino applications, why doesn't every organization use them?

Even this blog and most others are free.

So the choice is not about free, is it? It is really about change and maybe eye candy. Or is it about resources?

Change hurts. Change costs money. Change is pain.

BUT

Change can also make you smarter, faster, lighter, wealthier and a leader.

Sometimes you must feed the seed of change with free products or services to show your better side and gain more traction in the marketplace, like Microsoft does or did, until you can charge someone for your product. The problem now is if everything from Twitter to TV is free, where does everyone make money?

Reputation. You can and will make money, based on you, the product, you the brand, and your reputation in an industry or a niche of your choosing.

So which will you be and which way will you lead your customers, employees and vendors?

We are an approved Super Bowl Vendor

We found out last night that we have been approved as an emerging vendor for the NFL, Super Bowl and Pro Bowl this year!

We are very excited by this opportunity and look forward to providing the NFL with our services.

Updated May 18 - We are now listed under technology vendors and Waste removal(for e-waste recycling)

Forgot to include the website link:
http://www.southfloridasuperbowl.com/

Tuesday Afternoon (Applets List of updates) You WILL need this

Something....calls to me....Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.

42 years ago or so The Moody Blues predicted this day would come.

So since we keep getting asked and the list grows by the day, here is what we know and where to find it. I have listed the versions for each as well.

Lotus Domino 6.5.x, 7.0.x, 8.0.x, 8.5 Technote Which explains it all in detail but some of the files, when I went to get them, were not on Fix Central so go to this Technote with the FTP for these files

Lotus Quickr for Domino 8.0.0.2 and 8.1 Technote
Lotus Quickr services for WebSphere Portal is not affected by this certificate expiration.

Lotus Quickplace 7.0, QuickPlace(Team Workplace)6.5.1 Technote

Lotus Sametime 7.0, 7.5.1 CF1 and CF2, 8.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2 Technote
If you are on Sametime earlier than 7.0 you are out of luck, you must upgrade or keep getting pop up warnings forever.

So how do you fix it or what can you do to mitigate your call center and help desk people from staging a walk out on Thursday?

1. Instruct users to select "Always Trust" content from IBM, as the applets are still valid. The warning message is only to notify users that the certificate used to sign the applet has expired. The expiration does not affect an applet's security or functionality. In most cases, the user can click to "Always Trust" content from IBM to stop the message from appearing in the future.

2. Upgrade Domino 7.x servers to Domino 7.0.4. Domino 7.0.4 servers that are accessed via browsers that are using JRE 1.5.0 or later will not experience the issue.

3. IBM recommends correcting this issue through the replacement of the .jar files affected. You can currently download .zip files containing re-signed applets either from Fix Central or the IBM Support FTP site, as described in Technote #4022981 - Download re-signed Java applets for Lotus Domino (May 18, 2009).The re-signed .jar files are applicable to any supported release of Notes/Domino for any 6.5x, 7.0.x, 8.0.x, or 8.5 release.

4. IBM recommends option #3, which allows customers to replace files manually without needing a specific hotfix. Additionally, an interim fix (hotfix) will be provided via Fix Central starting May 11th for the latest MR/Fix Pack levels. This interim fix can be applied on Domino servers that do not currently have a hotfix applied.

Hotfix postings to Fix Central will start May 11, 2009. These releases include the following platforms and releases:
Platforms: W32, AIX, IBM i (iSeries), & Linux
Releases:
- Domino 6.5.6 FP3
- Domino 7.0.3 FP1
- Domino 7.0.4
- Domino 8.0.2 FP1
- Domino 8.5.0

That is all....for now.

Consumer Applications and Domino

My post from the other day received one comment.

And Ben Poole had this to say:

Who or what Business Partner has written anything to sell to someone at home?Who uses Lotus Notes at home?? A BP would only code such an app if there were demand for it, surely?

I say developers only code what they get asked for, usually, not always.

You never know when the next one will pop up, but ideas happen all over the place.

I keep a notepad, an old Lotus one of course, by my bed for late night ideas that hit me because by morning I forget them or the details sometimes.

So sometimes the ideas go far, sometimes short, but it's always interesting to read.

So some ideas for consumer ideas have been shown to be found at the iPhone Apps store.

What makes a consumer idea for an iPhone, exempted from being a Domino app?

One example to think about. And this is real life, everyday usage millions of people do every day. To be fair one(from my basic searches on iTunes) exists to do this in some fashion. Go lookup Bon Appetit from InovvaDev,LLC ($2.99)

Lunch menu's for kids in school.

Not only could you track the lunch's and potentially the costs to justify if you should pay for lunch at school or not, but imagine the opportunity for change or boredom by your kids...that's 30 days in a row of PBJ(Peanut butter & jelly)?!

Imagine the feedback the school cafeteria could have if they saw these menus?

I possibly see a bunch of parents buy one app. For $1(or $2.99) it would be worth it if they understand how it helps them too.

How many students are there in the US? Or the world? And parents that need to make them lunch? This wouldn't even be a dent in IBM's revenue stream, but imagine it as a BP, like I do.

Sure it could be done using Excel or any other database but outside of the yellow bubble and general IT people, the rest of the world doesn't do this normally, really they don't as I find out more and more I work with my kids school.

One Domino server synching all these menu's and providing quick lookups or reports to be emailed to parents or schools?

Just because there aren't any apps, doesn't mean there can't be or won't be.

We only have ourselves to blame if we don't change the way we see opportunities, not IBM.

Fud Buster Friday #39 - Apple makes everything easier

I preface this with the following caveat:

I do not personally own or use an iPod, iPhone, Mac, Apple or anything else, although I support them some times and really don't mind them. But think about this from a newbie perspective while you read.

So iPhone apps are everywhere on TV and I figured, let's see what one can do with an iPhone. Should be easy, right? Like finding Lotus on the IBM website, www.ibm.com/lotus go to www.iphone.com/apps, but you see this instead:



Hmm, ok, lets try the front end. Click on iPhone. That's better.
But wait...where is the app Store?

There is an icon for the App store. Now we are getting somewhere.
Hold on a sec, what's this:

Browse the App Store in iTunes

WHY? I now have to download a 70-80MB file and install it on my machine and it probably invades my startup files too?(it did)

Nice, how friendly.

No way to search or browse the apps from the website, you can see the top 10 items but that's not much of a help really is it when you want to find an app that converts tefachs(old talmudic length of measurement) to feet.

So I download it and install it. Evidently I had to wait for a bunch of updates since my first searches were limited in answers.

So now I can search and find things and found something really interesting so it does work after all. But I am still not very happy about what I had to do to find it.

You may ask, Why would you search for iPhone apps if you don't have an iPhone.

For the same reason why would someone search for a Lotus Domino application if they don't have Domino. And if they wanted to, how would they? Which option from that www.ibm.com/lotus page leads to actual applications which run on Domino?

Competitive purposes? Business ideas? Gift? Helping a business work smarter?

Perhaps because you want to see if there is any interest in a product.

It didn't make me want to be an iPhone, although I may one day, but it showed me a different view of proprietary or as some might say exclusivity.

LCTY Tampa, Florida June 9th

If you are in the neighborhood and want to drop in to listen, meet with me or learn about mobilizing your applications(one of the topics I will be discussing) let me know so I can plan my day accordingly.

Or better yet let other people know and come visit as a group.

From the Flyer:

The best of IBM Lotusphere 2009 is coming to Tampa,to help you take collaboration to the next level. Here's a second chance to find out how the latest collaboration tools and technologies can help you achieve better business outcomes.

Get sneak previews and the latest information on Software Analytical Solutions and IBM Software and solutions. And attend key sessions on:

*Messaging and Collaboration
*Social Networking
*Going Paperless
*Mobile Options
*and more...

We cordially invite you to join us for our interactive sessions. During this time you will be able to ask questions while interacting with other local executives. This will be a great time to hear the latest and greatest solutions from IBM while gaining insight into how other local companies are moving forward with collaboration.

This is a no-charge event.

Continental breakfast and lunch will be served.

Tuesday June 9, 2009
Registration: 8:30am
Start Time: 9:00am
End Time: 1:00pm

IBM Tampa Office, Rm: 539
3031 North Rocky Point Dr.
Tampa, FL 33607

RSVP and questions: email or IM me or Mike Davis at: mdavis@sasgroup-us.com

Oracle is clearly the Collaboration Leader

From a CIO magazine unified Collaboration Webcast email I just received:

The "Collaboration Convergence" taking place in today's enterprise is creating high stakes opportunities and serious risks that can profoundly transform your organization for better or worse. Learn how real businesses are using a new generation of unified collaboration solutions from Oracle to improve productivity and competitiveness.

Understand why your existing collaboration technology may be exposing you to runaway infrastructure costs, regulatory risk and organizational chaos.

Oracle Beehive, the only unified collaboration system built for the enterprise, can help you master the "Collaboration Convergence" , cut your hard dollar costs and foster the best-in-class performance your organization needs to cope with these challenging times.

Larry's ego never stops, does anyone know or use Beehive, the Oracle version? Does anyone care? Maybe the SUN customers? And you thought Connections was quiet.

How is Lotus Quickr better than Domino.Doc?

This was asked of me in a blog comment and I decided it needed it's own post.

LAST MINUTE UPDATE: See these slides which are from Lotsuphere 2009 for a detailed overview of how these products complement, differ and will go forward. I found this searching Google, so if IBM wants it not published, let me know.

The simple answer of course is progress. In this case Domino.Doc or IBM's Lotus Domino Document Manager(LDDM) as it is called now, has not been updated in over 2 years, is NOT R8 certified(some do run it under R8 but not advisable unless you know what you are doing) and currently lacks support for Office 2007 with it's ribbon(you can resolve the crashes by swapping the normal.dot template or reinstalling office for Excel and other issues). Some report Vista issues but I run the .Doc enablers fine on my machine, but then I use Lotus Symphony exclusively, which LDDM also doesn't integrate too, naturally as this is a newer program as well.

Quickr is not better than LDDM in one primary way, and this is where most people fall into 2 camps. Document management needs vs. basic group documentation or usage.

For almost all other reasons you use LDDM, you could use Quickr, but you still have the options to use Filenet or ECM as well.

If your company uses LDDM and has heavily customized your LDDM implementation or integrated Lotus Workflow, as an example, you probably are a heavy using document management company. Usual industryies for this are governments, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, some technical vendors, medical companies, law firms and I worked on a co-op farming group even, as well as many others as well.

You might require rigorous check-in/out options, multiple document tracking, and strong customization for your file cabinets and folders with highly detailed security as well. Quickr is not likely going to meet your needs, although it does provide other practical items that may override your needs as I will discuss in a minute.

What makes Quickr better is the connectors which integrate into anything you use on your PC(Windows usually) from Explorer, to IE to Sametime to Office 2007. There is also the group interaction for notifications of documents and more easily customizable look/feel, simpler user interface which is always welcome especially by your younger employees.

Quickr does include a number of security access levels for your sites and even private areas within your sites that only defined users can work with and see. In LDDM you would have had to create separate folders.

Quickr does have a basic check-in/out option, although not as detailed as LDDM.

Quickr also provides a built-in option to save attachments in a Quickr file and not your email file which allows for better record consolidation and file management as well.

Quickr is a wholly Web based product which means you no longer need to maintain 2 sides of the program for access, like you do in LDDM and everything is done from a browser including 95% of all administration. The other 5% is at a server console level or qpconfig.xml file editing.

Quickr 8.2(ETA Q2 2009) will integrate with Lotus Domino 8.5 and benefit from the DAOS option of saving attachments in one location and providing doclinks to everyone receiving it. Saving you space, time and if you use mail quota's, headaches about this as well.

Lastly, Quickr comes in 2 flavors, Domino and J2EE. A personal edition is also provided which extends its benefits to the individual users which do not require a full server for smaller or more specific group related projects.

You may find yourself wondering about the different versions of Quickr, namely the J2EE or Quickr for Domino version. You can read this post about my discussion with Dave Kajmo, the Quickr Product manager or this more detailed explanation of comparisons or some examples of how our clients use it here.

As of May 12, 2009, the LDDM software will not be available for purchase; end of support will take effect on September 30, 2012. So if you need to make sure you have the software, go download it for what will be the last time.

When I'm Mobile....Beep,Beep

Continuing on recent discussions from WES, RIM has a bunch of clients for you and your Blackberry friends. Not all available yet, but Sametime has been for a while(I am updating my install doc for it, look for the post this week).

Go to this page for all the details and then get in on the notification or beta for each of the mobile clients.

1) Sametime - You always remember your first..and still advancing.

See this IBM PRESS Room Announcement:

The new BlackBerry Client for Lotus Sametime extends real-time collaboration from the desktop computer to the BlackBerry smartphone, including instant messaging (IM), presence awareness, contacts, broadcasts, file transfer, click-to-call and other features. Traditional landline phones become obsolete through the combination of voice-over-IP with presence awareness via IBM Lotus Sametime and corporate network and wireless routing with the BlackBerry® Bold® smartphone. In addition to IM, presence is seen throughout the smartphone applications. For example, a customer can use instant messaging within their calendar or an email to get an urgent answer in the moment without breaking the work flow. If instant messages aren't fast enough, the click-to-call feature is one button away.

2) Connections - The next generation BlackBerry Client for Lotus Connections, developed by RIM and available May 8!

3) Quickr - Coming soon? But not fast enough for me and my clients

4) Symphony - Coming soon?

Of course you need to move to BES 5.0 for some of these to work with all the benefits. We can help you if you need it.

By the way if you were looking to mobilize your applications and work force to leverage your investment in Lotus and RIM technology, let me know as I will be doing a LCTY event on this topic soon, look for slides.

SnTM - Fix the Brick!

My wife's Curve from the previous post an 8310 from AT&T was ceremoniously dropped on me at 11PM Sunday night.

"Fix the Brick"

Of course my warnings NOT to do this at night but wait for daytime(service hours) went unheeded.

The life of an computer person is NEVER over at home.

So like any good husband, and IT person I asked:
How do you know it is dead?
Maybe it's just mostly dead.
She said "It's blinking red lights twice in a row and nothing else, no screen, no anything."

A-ha I said, it's mostly dead. S. Morgenstern would be so excited, if he were a real person. So maybe William Goldman reads my blog. A man can dream, can't he?

I asked was the battery charged. Yes.
Did you remove the battery, chip, memory card and try again? Triple Yes.
Kiss it and throw it over her right shoulder(on to the couch) as you pray to the Gods of Waterloo? No, should I.....

So evidently the new desktop software isn't quite ready for prime time to just "Upgrade one's phone".

Quick Google finds this thread about blinking red lights.

Which takes you to this thread which discusses how to "Spoof" the device to reinstall the OS.

Hacking time!

What is really nice was being pointed to this list:
BlackBerry Operating System Downloads which basically provides links to all carriers and then to the device and OS versions.

This link is for the Desktop versions, but you probably knew that already.

Usually I work on BES issues which have similar but different routes to information.

Download the OS, follow directions, wait for the process to finish.

And Wait.
And Wait.
And Wait.

Took long enough for me to write this post!

It took the updates and was reconfiguring itself for a least a 1/2 hour. Finally it woke up and we started the reconfiguration of the device. And then resynching.

Research in Motion, and they really are too!

Gregg Eldred posted this over the weekend and it was mildly interesting to me, on many levels.

Basically, RIM now has a public blog, http://blogs.blackberry.com/. Interesting because last I knew, officially, this was a no-no(and possibly in some cases why you as a blogger may not have been hired by RIM).

I am very glad to see this is out there, although yet to be seen what direction it takes, the initial posts are of interest, especially if you have a Curve.
My wife will finally be happy her phone does what mine does.

Now if we can just get them to blog on Lotus specifics...

So my wife had an issue with her Curve not synching calendars properly. Anything she would write in Lotus Notes would not get synched or crash during synch.

We dealt with this a few times, but the bottom line is it came back and is not funny...to her of course.

My immediate thought was to update the desktop software which she had on her PC and oddly enough there was a release of 4.7 on April 23, 2009.

Excellent!

Download the 200MB+ program, which includes the Roxio(Bad Memory Usage IMHO) Media Manager.

Installed it, waited almost an hour for it to finish, watched the Ascendant/South Park Impact video, and their Lotusphere 2009 video too which includes my image of a Lotus hat at 0:58.

In any event upon restarting the PC the new desktop software now asks to upgrade my wife's Curve. It NEVER did this before. And shows that her device uses 4.3 or earlier versions and can go to 4.5. COOL!

Decided to wait on the update until daytime hours, just in case I fry her phone. Having had a horrible Friday, and I thought best to hold off on the update another day. Posting on that next.

So while waiting for the install as well, I luckily found this post, on the Blackberry support forum site details how to fix the synch failure for her phone.

There seems to be an issue with the Attendee reference in the mapping fields. While I understand why this would create a problem, in theory, none of my wife's appointments include attendees. Well, either way, it's resolved now.

So RIM is NOT dead, I still believe IBM should buy them and am thinking more and more I want 2 phones, an iPhone(once you have clients using it, it begs the necessity) and a Blackberry as my HTC8125(WMD) is just dying a slow and painful, for me, death.

Now to figure out how to use both of these with one chip and one data plan.

Keep up the good work everyone in Ft. Lauderdale and Waterloo and wherever else development gets done.

Fud Buster #38 - Who has time for the MSMB anyway?

Who's with me?

It's all the rage, everyone is doing it, how about you?
Are your sales people getting it?
What have you done to work with them?
Where are they?
How do you engage nearly 50 million customers?

Right now, in this country there are nearly 50 million elementary and high school students, they are or will be tomorrow's buyers, owners and creators of products and programs you can not even imagine.

So what can we offer these Micro Small or Medium Businesses?

Why should you care?

If one iPhone app was required by all schools, imagine the revenue....annually.
So, after my posting from the other day, what have you go to offer the consumer, personal side of Lotus software...that everyone needs?

And remember, have some fun this weekend.

See Me..Feel Me..Touch Me..HEAR ME

Carl Tyler's blog post about an ad he saw had me thinking about something.

Where are all the Lotus Notes applications for you, me and the kid down the block on his skateboard?

Who or what Business Partner has written anything to sell to someone at home?
LotusLive and web enabled apps, The Cloud, iPhones and who or what is working on ANY app for these consumers?

If people can't see it in an ad or a commercial, why would they ask for it?

If someone can't feel connected to a device or it's software, why would they want to use it?

If you are the type of Admin that doesn't want people to do too much in your network, get out of the way. Meet the New Boss, it's not the same as the Old Boss.

If they want to run Webmail on their Wii let them, and let everyone know about it.

If no one you knew at work or on a plane or train or at a bar uses Lotus Notes, it's not because they don't want to. It's because they never hear you talk about it(or hopefully they are tired of you talking about it).

I'm the Lotus guy to many people and if I had something for them to use on their own that made their life better I'd make some good money I bet.

So listen to everyone around you and HEAR them and think about it.