My LS10 Speedgeeking Session

Webadmin to the Rescue...had a better name but they made me change it.

So simple question: Why did Lotus create webadmin in the 1st place? Answer during this post. Hint: NO admins got it right.

So in the beginning Iris created a Java client for admins in R5. Let's just say it was a bit raw.
R6 came out with a better more practical client, not quite on par with the admin client itself but a great step in the right direction.
R7 saw a huge jump to be in the 90% range of equality between the 2 versions and R8 has brought us to maybe 95%. I'd say 100 but I am fairly sure something is missing. Someone from Iris give me some insight and I will update this.

Anyway, so now we have webadmin and it is good. Real good. So good you are crazy if you don't use it. It really only takes a minute or 2(for the advanced benefits) to be setup. I did it 12 times in an hour, so no excuses from now on you lazy admins.

So why should you use webadmin? To start the Admin client is not multithreaded. What I mean is one cannot open multiple servers at the same time. After enabling webadmin you can open a browser window, and open as many servers as you need. I know some of you (developers probably) are saying "Why would you want to do that?"

Well, every time I go into a new client site and am asked to analyze the site my first thought is replication problems. How are you going to check each database for different versions and fix it easily. Sure you could check the database catalog, but usually that also is not up to date or running properly. Times have changed over the years and different ways exist to learn about your environment but bad administration continues. Just ask Paul and Bill and see/hear their Worst practices session at Lotusphere.

Also this presumes you want webadmin to be functional (create IDs, certify IDs, etc.) otherwise you could just use it by itself. The steps below will let you work when you are on vacation and don't have a laptop and Notes client handy or from your local pub(yes, I do travel with NOMAD, the Notes on a stick, with admin client, just in case with ID files and VPN software)or in my case from my smartphone.

The Basics:
Webadmin is created, as I was reminded by my attendees the first time HTTP is loaded. You can also create it from a database template (Domino Web administrator)...just in case. Now you may want to adjust the ACL on the database to include you as the admin or your admin group with Manager access, if you are not listed already. It was pointed out to me that Full Access Administrator will let one log in from the web without being listed in the ACL. This of course is impossible as Full Access Administrator is purely an Admin client function/feature, I tested this to make sure just in case with no entry listed and of course was denied access. I was worried for a few minutes.

However what they probably were referring to was this:

IBM® Lotus® Domino® automatically sets up default database security when the IBM® Lotus® Domino® Web Administrator database (WEBADMIN.NSF) is created for the first time. At that time, all names listed in either the Full Access Administrators or Administrators fields of the Server document are given Manager access with all roles to the Web Administrator database.

You should plan on having your cert.id file easily accessible and the password of course. While you are at it, check the expiration date..just..in..case. By adding the cert ID to the webadmin file you as the admin will be able to create IDs, recertify user IDs and a bunch of other fun things.

Oh and you need the Admin client to do the next steps. Sorry Mac and Linux people.
If that didn't spark your brain to answer the question above, yes the webadmin clients were created because some customers of IBM did not use windows and the Admin client is a Win32 client. There are probably some more proper reasons, but I will stick with this one.

Enabling Webadmin:

The webadmin database resides in the data directory as with most databases.
You can adjust the ACL before or after enabling the database as discussed above.

In the Admin client go to the Configuration tab.
Then in the Right column select Migrate certifier.
An amazingly scary popup comes up saying:

you are about to start the ominous Certificate Authority or CA process. Don't get upset, you are doing nothing of the sort. Ok, well, sort of, but ONLY for the Webadmin client, NOTHING else. CA deserves its own session at Lotusphere (I think it has been covered previously), too much to discuss in a 5 minute Speedgeeking session or a blog post. As Douglas Adams wrote about the Earth, this is "Mostly Harmless" and let's continue on.

Now go find your certifier ID file, enter the password and then click next.
When you see the next screen:

you first select the server you want this to administer. A nice drop down shows all your servers.

The next line displays the name of the database which to be honest you should just leave alone as nothing else has this name with an ICL (Issued Certificate List) extension except for CA process related items. (feel free to add details those of you who are more granular than I or blog about it and link to this)
Then select an ID (more secure) or the server ID (less secure) to run the encryption. If you have a generic admin ID you use to sign databases use that one, else use the server ID, in this case only 2 options exist. Never assign it to your ID as you will create havoc should you move on from your organization.

Next you should see your ID you logged in with in the field at the bottom. Add your server names to this list to ensure all servers are ready to go with this access.

The Web administrator, as well as the server on which the Web Administrator database resides, must be listed as an RA for that certifier.

NOTE: For some unknown reason IBM neglected to put the check box picker here so you will have to go back and forth to add all the servers.

There is another tab where you can add how long you want this to stay in effect. Timing is everything so if that is acceptable fine, if not adjust accordingly.

And then click OK.

That's it. AdminP takes over and after a few minutes of processing you will be good to go.

This was not the end all be all of Webadmin nor CA just to show that it can really be done very easily.

For a simple list of the way to do this, see David Hay's post.

Mail Journaling and Mail Rules Problem...help?

Client which uses Exchange and Domino has mail come into Domino and if it's for the Exchange people forwards to them. No mail is stored in Domino.
Wanted to use Mail Journaling to capture these mails as they think some mails are getting lost in the forwarding.
No problem. I enabled journaling and a configuration document with various other parts and settings and set the mail rule for all documents to journal.
Simple right?
Wrong.
Journal works, but now mail no longer forwards to Exchange.
I found that even if i turn off the mail rules there appears to be a conflict between the existing domain wide configuration and the specific server one. When I rename the server config document to a fake name, mail flows again, but obviously journaling is not working.
Any ideas?
Server is on 8.5 about to go to 851 fp1.

A New Book about Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1.

I was asked to review a new book about 8.5.1. Which means I will be receiving a copy in return for a review of it.

Looking forward to it, been a while since i read something that wasn't purely a tech manual or info center.

The publisher was kind enough to share a chapter on What's new in 8.5 Development. Totally wasted on me, but for those of you trying to get your head around it all, this is a free chapter for download.

Enjoy and look for a review of it in a few weeks, its 10 days away from arriving.

Webadmin Knows How to Make your Day

Webadmin shows this for a Domino server at our client:

"Elapsed up-time:146 days,13:25:30 You have a rock solid server here!Great uptime!"

A preliminary to my post about my Speedgeeking session and why webadmin saves the day.

Don't worry it is going down for servicing this weekend with fp1 out for 851.

LotusLive Notes now starts at 25 people

This is probably the best way to kill off Google attacks.

A 5GB mail file, full calendar, Sametime functions, BES as an option and it's hosted Lotus Notes mail for $9 per user a month(pricing may vary based n size and region).

So is a 500 person company looking to spend $4,500 a month or $54,000 per year to fix any infrastructure issues or upgrades and reduce their IT staff overhead, not to mention Data Center real estate, power consumption et al?

Perhaps.

But by lowering the minimum buy in from 1,000 people to 25 there really is no reason for small customers not to do this.

No more hassles of hardware worries, calling the IT person in the middle of the night, no excess charges, no more downtime for upgrades and it just works. Works just as well as in your own office.

Maybe you had thought about going to Google, after all $50 per user a year is cheap. However, if you wanted your email migrated or really needed something you use, say rooms and resources, then think again. The cost to migrate your user community can be 100's of dollars per person or more. If you could keep what you own but improve your infrastructure and probably save some money too...why wouldn't you?

Those looking at Exchange face the same problem, migration fees will eat up any benefit for years to come. So really, think about LotusLive Notes, if you want to discuss it with me and how it all works, just ask. After all once you are in The Cloud does it matter where your support resides?

What Happens at Lotusphere...

...Should NOT stay at Lotusphere!

Sure, there was no heavy announcement about Rnext or even with regard to some products any details on their futures, at least in the main sessions. Some specific sessions on topic did include roadmaps but let's see what did come out of the 'Sphere and what you should be bringing to customers all year long.

Project Vulcan? no, not a product yet, more an idea and while we can discuss it, I prefer to see it as a truly universal inbox for email, videos, sametime, twitter and more with internal and external feeds seamlessly integrated. I may be wrong and it may turn into something completely different.

Traveler, especially for iPhone users, and soon Android, remains a key reason why customers are upgrading from R6,R7 even R8 (I have one going from R5 even)! My discussions with some IBM execs showed that IBM really does see the future is mobile and will work very hard to be more up to date with the latest and greatest toys, I mean phones.

Mobile is not only critical but cool too. Finally.

LotusLive is the future and IBM is really expanding the offer for LotusLive Notes to include a full Notes client with sameitme, calendaring, etc.., and even BES options and dropped the minimum down to 25 from 1,000 users. This should stop any customers looking at going to Exchange or Google, if for no other reason than the fear of migration and the lack of infrastructure required to have it this way. The Cloud may still be a ways off for some, but others I think will jump at this chance and they probably should.

Websphere is out in the public and IBM did an excellent job of not making a big deal about it. It should be this way. You as the customer want a solution, the back end should really not matter. Besides that is what we as business partners are here for.

Quickr is evolving further, 8.5 is in beta and I have it up and running but I can't tell you where without NDA from IBM. So if you have questions let me know. The plus side RIM has made a client available for Quickr and Connections which will cost a little money and looks really good. I still don't have a copy so don't ask, I will review it once I get a copy.

Windows Mobile as a device OS is dying so don't get it unless you have no choice.

Linux is growing, my netbook is solely Ubuntu as is a server on the rack. An excellent idea from Joe Litton and Bill Machilsky to help people go to Linux was done on the last day of Lotusphere and hopefully will become something bigger next year. My personal view of Linux has become much more favorable since using the Ubuntu version. Not my primary device but it is really nice to do everything there just like on Windows, but it's all free and for those non-IT geeks, mostly graphical.

So Lotusphere is done, but you can carry it on all year long. Attend events, comment on blogs, post requests, answer questions, host a proof of technology or a lunch and learn at your office, do a webinar on how to use the Notes client for the other 85% of what it can do aside from email and calendar/scheduling.

If you need help, just ask, some Lotus user groups have asked me to speak or submit sessions for their events this year and if I can help you with yours, I will too.

Mobile Computing Interview

IBM provided me with an opportunity to interview David Isenhour Strategic Alliance Executive Mobile Computing.

My immediate questions were around the RIM Quickr and Connections clients. Price is probably under $50 per client and to be available from the IBM sofwtare entitlement sites.

The RIM Sametime client will still be free.

Joined by Andy and Jack we had a great conversation around what influenced our respective upgrades, device choices, business decisions around devices.

As I posted back in October, the iPhone at the time was forcing companies to upgrade because executive management had one and expected it to work with the office email, etc.

With Android support coming, the recent addition of encryption support for iPhones and a Traveler server that will run on Linux(someday perhaps?) the case for the future of mobile devices looks strong and IBM is working on making these things easier(within their capability) and faster to market, if they have the capability to do so.

If I learned one thing from Lotusphere this year it's that this last year or 2 will continue, IBM is producing pieces we all need and use at a much faster pace than nearly anyone else.

Domino.Doc Informal Roundtable

I participated in a discussion with other Business Partners who are working on migrating all of you running Domino.doc to Quickr, Filenet, ECM, Alfresco or Domino or anything else.

Jelan Heidelberg of IBM helped facilitate the meeting. I may have been the only BP at the table running the Lotus Quickr 8.5 latest beta, aside from Daniel Lieber and company.

Meeting some of the others brought out how international Doc is in usage, although I believe there are more Doc installations outside the US, our questions were all helpful to everyone.

One thing we asked about and will get is a specific forum for us to discuss various information with each other. Collaboration at it's best level. Competitors and partners sharing data, just the way it should be.

If you utilized Workflow in Domino.Doc or did some more advanced tuning to Domino.Doc, you may want to see how your app converts now. If you have some issues, some updates in Quickr 8.5 may help with this but that's all I can say as I am not a developer.

Daniel mentioned that Doc is really resilient, part of the reason many chose it to start, but your data is not. Although all looks good, the migration might fail due to a bad attachment. Resave the file and try again.

We are looking at a few new migration projects since January 1 and that is a great sign that customers recognize the value of their data and infrastructure of which Domino.Doc is a part.

Topika: Collaboration Through Email from the Innovation Lab

Another stop along the way in the Innovation lab was Topika. From Jalal Mahmud of IBM.

Topika integrates email with social and collaborative tools.

When you write an email this tool suggests a place or activity or site, in Quickr or Connections for example, to store it or place it. It searches your details and provides ideas of where to put the email. It has 2 lines added into the mail form that provides details about the site/place and location/folder.

This does not however work in reverse. It leaves the email in your inbox or sent mail folder. I would like to see it also auto file the email and/or opt for a delete this once stored.

Inbox management still needs help as people do not care about disk space or performance, or in some cases just basic order. If this can work on both ends at once it could be really helpful.

Of course this presumes people will still be using email as we know it in the future.

Blog Muse an idea from The Innovation Lab

On my travels at Lotusphere I try to get into the Innovation lab to see what is coming down the road. One program I saw was Blog Muse. Expertly presented by Casey Dugan of IBM.

Blog Muse provides a way for someone to submit a request for a blog post on a topic, to no one in particular or to a specific person.

There is also the ability to vote on an idea, in a way, for those who use it, it's like Ideajam but for Bloggers.

And the results which were measured, not surprising, showed those blogs using the Blog Muse system had more readers and comments than those not using Blog Muse. Also more postings were posted by those using Blog Muse.

Hopefully someone in IBM will let Business Partners test this out....or Elguji could you provide Blogjam? hint hint

It's not that as a blogger I need ideas to post, but the ability to have readers or employees suggest topics is very appealing. Or on the flip side I can post an idea and get feedback on it. Something we all could use sometimes.

LotusLive Executive Interview

I was invited with some other bloggers to interview Susan Oblak, Program Director of GTM Strategy and Satwik Seshasai.

One of my questions was around Quickr and LotusLive and Quickr is not part of it but if you can compare private communities to places and that works for you or your client then this might be the way to go for you.

There are some new offerings coming:
Labs - for testing, playing and other apps sort of like the sandbox
Integration of a full notes client and other pieces like traveler and BES

Great news about LotusLive Notes is the only one with 50 minimum, down from 1,000 users. This will certainly speed up adoption as it prevented many BPs from offering it.

The other LotusLive offerings start from 1 person.

I asked about the uptake on Meetings vs. installs of Sametime 8.5 and IBM feels it is complementary in such a way that some customers want the different options in each package. It should be noted that Sametime works with LotusLive so you can create an efficient hybrid. And some of our customers are doing this already.

The goal is to provide a way to work in context more in the future than the way most organizations work today.

In some cases IBM suggested LotusLive Connections might be an option for those not willing to invest in a whole infrastructure but want all the benefits.

LotusLive Notes with admin interface is to be generally available in 2nd half of 2010 and for an open API to come out in beta in Q2 2010.

Skype is being added to enable click to call with it, Prolific and Silanis are the 1st 3 partners and premier global will be a reseller as well.

Lotuslive is available to all Business partners free of charge for 12 months when registering at the site as a BP. Go here to do this.

What will you get as a BP?
LotusLive Engage Trial
User Accounts: 1 Admin Account (can add up to 99 more)
Meeting Size: Up to 14 participants per Web conference
Term: 30-day no-cost trial (Really 12 months don't worry, they know to fix this typo)
Storage Space: 1.0 GB per user

LotusLive Labs is ONLY available to LotusLive subscribers. It is free with your subscription. Labs will allow you to experience and use code coming out of the IBM labs that should enhance your experience as time goes forward.

It was an interesting discussion and one which to be honest as a BP I have reservations about. However after today the future of LotusLive looks much better than before and after all 18 million users can't be wrong.

Linux help from IBM

I brought my netbook to LS10 and did not realize that some updates killed my installation. EDITED: I was on ubuntu 9.04 but didn't disable the autoupdates and ended up at 9.10.

Lucky for me there was an IBM lab, on the 6th floor of the Dolphin which was for IBMers looking to turn their laptops over to Linux. Lucky for me, they worked with me to resolve the issue I had as well.

A technote was issued to resolve this but you might need some help.

Thanks to Evy Torres of IBM for her help. See the IBM Linux team at their Ped and take the Linux challenge.

Also thanks to Bill Machilsky for his help as well in answering my numerous questions.

Review of Day 1 of Lotusphere 2010

You probably saw some of this in Twitter or other sites, but here is my take on day !.

The opening session included a background of past lotus videos, ads, speakers, products etc.the last 20 years, hopefully someone inside IBM will publish that video for all of us. It was nice to see where we were and where we got to do today.

The violinist from last year and orchestra did not return, but we did have some excellent drum beaters reminiscent of the R5 era ads. Plus a pair of excellent violinists and a drummer with a great afro.

In his opening, Bob says "our partners will play a huge part" in the growth of IBM this year and so far, it has been a great 2010, for us, and hopefully for you as well.

Then the guest speaker was the one, the only, not sure who we can have to beat him next year, William Shatner. He was everything we always wanted of him and possibly more. Sadly he was not available for autographs or photos to the bloggers or anyone else(aside from probably those back stage).

Shatner said "remakes are great.. but only remind you of how great the original was". How true,
He spoke on ideas, Tekwar, the search for God/Spock an alien who thinks he's god and how collaboration makes the impossible possible and ultimately provides a better finished product.

Then back to Bob and Alistair and how we are Beating the competition.

We have the right tech, people, strategy but we needed a profile and Lotus Knows puts Lotus in front of everyone.

Announced 18,378 new notes since R8 came out.

One quote also was "Sometimes I almost feel sorry for our competition. We can't all be leaders."

The RIM CTO described their mission as "taking your desk to your hip" and it is true today and will only expand over time.

The Zurich COO mentioned fighting old terms, like software in a box, because after all when was last time it was shipped in a box.

There are 380,000 Panasonic cloud users going to LotusLive and NOT because of messaging but because of a broader view of collaboration and efficiency across regions and business lines.
Panasonic didn't come to IBM for mail but for a business idea how to grow their top line.

There also was a beautiful yellow Corvette brought in for the GM speaker. The Corvette is the model HZH which was a special run of yellow with black stinger designed for Hertz, the car rental company.

Much applause for Quickr calendar integrated with personal calendar when that was discussed and demonstrated.

Alfresco has more than 1,000 enterprise customers and all of which can now be integrated with Quickr, another partnership that IBM can leverage.

Notes 851 is twice as fast in the pickup than any other version in Lotus history and no wonder with DAOS, ID Vaulty, iPhone support, Traveler, Xpages and numerous other benefits. It was also the most expensive product yet.

An excellent line, "Customers have changed their Outlook on collaboration and Exchanged it for something better".

Announced another sidebar application, this one from Gist, it streams news and events in your social networks.

LotusLive will be expanding in Spring with 5gb and 1gb file store, options for BES, traveler and full notes client functionality coming soon too.

LotusLive Labs is available today and include slide library, event maps and more. See my next post on my interview around this topic.

Never mind buying new servers, just expand out to LotusLive, you will probably get more for doing so then you can imagine.

Ed expands on LotusLive on his blog.

"These printer people are pretty feisty." -- Alistair Renne to Xerox Partner on stage.

The big announcement was about Project Vulcan which is a vision of evolution for Lotus products.

The key points about it are it is easy to use and deploy, consistent UI across all platforms including mobile devices.

As you can see a busy session and that was just 2.5 hours.

More posts about my interviews with IBM executives coming soon. On to day 2.

I am Speedgeeking again this year

Rocky was kind enough to let me do it again and my topic this year is one which hopefully you all know and have done, but nonetheless gets little attention at times.

Topic: Web Administrator to the Rescue!

Watch and learn the basics of setting up Webadmin(you really can do it in 5 minutes) and why it is important to your daily life as an admin and how it will save your hide sometimes.

Speedgeeking is done on the Dolphin where we usually have lunch.
TUESDAY, 19 JAN 2010; and remember it is 6:15 - 7:30PM in the Dolphin Pacific Hall.

see you all there!

I will post how to do it, in case anyone needs it, after Tuesday.

Lotusphere Sunday Update

Checked in, got my packet, bag et al. So far sessions have been packed, but I am in the BD day for business partners. Competitive sessions of course and they are full.
Good news if you missed it, they will be available to BD attendees online soon, check the Quickr site.

My interview schedule includes lotuslive, Lotus Notes and Symphony, Strategy, UCC, Mobile and Portals. Plus various IBM mini keynotes and the like.

Only problem is some of these conflict with some sessions I really wanted to go to. But looking forward to all of them and of course tomorrow's OGS.

Between 2-2:30 and 3:30-5 Monday I am doing interviews so catch me earlier or later.
Skype is up usually.

Speednetworking for Partners tongiht, as well as Turtle's session and the what appears to be futuristic beach reception party coupled with the Tweetup. See you all there.

1st Lotus Connections Discussion

Today is the 1st Lotus Connections discussion, of a serious nature, we have had all year since last Lotusphere. We walked through the Lotus Greenhouse version as it is well populated. Why not our own? Well, no one built one. I started to, but always got sidetracked. Nothing like a client to kick everyone into gear!

I spent part of Thursday building a Lotus Connections box. It's up and running but a bit light on profiles for now. Still some tweaking to do but it's up, now to see what we can do with it.

We expect to fill it with internal and external people's details at some point. Clients, friends and of course dead rock stars (my personal favorite demo people) and for my kids Star Wars people(they get to add them).

But for now it's available for demonstrations, weddings and bar mitzvahs as a point of interest and guider of all that is sociable.

Word of warning if you are doing the install, the info center is a bit sketchy at parts but DON'T PANIC, there is a session at Lotusphere on it:

BP112 Twelve Things Your Mother Never Told You About Installing IBM Lotus Connections
Speakers: Rob Wunderlich, Stuart McIntyre
DL S. Hemisphere III - Monday 1:00pm - 2:00pm

More on this will be posted I have no doubt as we play with this further just a shame it took all year to do it.

S10e on Linux is Coming with Me to Lotusphere

After a year without Microsoft Office and only using Lotus Symphony I decided for Lotusphere to build my Ideapad on Linux.

Ubuntu distribution. Only thing I might not be able to do is use the client VPNs. Otherwise it's a Linux Lotusphere for me.

Notes, Sametime and a handful of other pieces all to go inside by Sunday.

Go on, you know you want to do it also.

Thanks again to Darren Duke for pushing me to do it a few weeks back when I posted how to do it.

What is running on your Sidebar?

Or how many Sidebar items can you fit on your screen?

On Twitter today I had asked about sorting my Sidebar apps. This elicited an interesting flurry of messages.

My main question was if I can sort them alphabetically and the answer was no straight from the source. Ideajam to the rescue, go vote for it. Sure it's a minor thing, but one of those nice things to do for the person using it.

Keep in mind, one can make the Sidebar apps into icons instead of taking up screen real estate, but then you need to know what the icon means and wait for the hover of a mouse to tell you.

So what do I have on mine? I will try to let you know where to find them, if anyone can fill in the gaps, or recommend anything else, let me know. The name has the link to get to it aside from IBM product related items.

Don't forget there are sidebar/widget catalogs out there in a few places.
One comes from the Turtle Partnership. Thanks to Gabriella, Tim and team for being one of the first out there and maintaining it. The basics are there like USPS, FEDEX among others.

1) Doodle - Just got a link to their beta of the widget. Not sure how much I will use it, but I'll try it.

2) Twitnotes - Although it does not work for me or anyone switching locations and ID regularly, similar to Sametime, if you are at home so to speak all day, you got to love it. And thank Mikkel for his great work!

3) Sametime, Quickr, Activities, Feeds, Day at a Glance any other native IBM pieces obviously as well.

4) Linkedin - For me and my nearly 5,000 connections this has been really helpful, especially when working with Livetext. You do know about Livetext don't you?

5) Sidebar Chart - (Quoted directly from the about this app)This is the Sidebar Chart application for the Lotus Notes 8.x Standard client, first demoed at Lotusphere 2009 in session BP111 by Rob McDonagh and Julian Robichaux of SNAPPS. This plugin displays a graphical representation of either (A) how many documents are selected in the active view versus how many docs are in the view, or (B) a comparison of values for selected docs in the view based on columns chosen for values and categories.

6) Recon - Another Julian app. This one you can not live without if you are an Admin. ReCon is short for Remote Console.

7) SNAPPS Calculator - Doesn't everyone need on in their Sidebar? Thanks SNAPPS.

8) Scrapple - Drag and Drop place that makes it easier in life. Again from the genius Mr. Robichaux.

9) Learning Plugin for Lotus Notes/Lotus Learning Widget - 2 slightly different versions of same information. Excellent videos, documents, PDFs and other how to help and such for Notes, Sametime, Symphony etc.

10) Lotus Learning widget for Symphony - Similar to #9 but Symphony focused. By the way, the Symphony website has a bunch of add-ins for Symphony and Notes.

11)Status Updater/ - Sametime, got it, Connections? got it. Twitter? got it. A Must if you are IBM/Twitter centric (until the release of Wildfire yesterday) but I haven't played with Wildfire yet but Wildfire extends to Facebook, GTalk, PingFm, Plurk, Tumblr, Twitter, Wordpress and more! Thank you to Andrew Welch; Adam Brown for wildfire and Jessica W Ramirez for Status Updater.

12) Openntf Widgets - You aren't really using your Lotus infrastructure if you are not using Openntf's goodies. There are a few different options in the download. Thank you to Niklas Heidloff; Steve Castledine.

13) File Navigator - By far THE most wanted and used and installed Sidebar app. Bring your directories and files and folders easily into Lotus Notes. HUGE Thank you to Xiao Lei; Jian Kang; Rene Winkelmeyer.

14) Tripit - Travel much? Like to with friends? Get it use it to find everyone coming to Orlando this week.

15) Google Maps(from the turtle Partnership site) - No explanation needed, in conjunction with Livetext a big winner especially when locating new clients.

I also have about half dozen or so personal/corporate widgets there, like my Gotcha database(which I may post one of these days), billing app db, UK post code lookups, partners time card reporting for our subcontracts. You can do a lot in a Sidebar.

And don't forget, you can undock ALL of them. So those of you with multiple monitors go crazy and keep them open everywhere. Try doing this in Outlook.

So there you have it the top 25+ on my Sidebar not including bits and pieces.

Happy Lotusphere to all and share this list with your clients and friends.

And let me know what else I am missing that I just MUST have.

How cold does it have to get to freeze your laptop

Rarely comes to play in South Florida, but after the cold this week, and some people who had some problems with hard drives, just wondering...
How cold is too cold to keep your laptop in your car?

Excellent Domino Customer Service via Twitter

I just saw a tweet on Twitter from the UNLV IT department. You guys are doing a great job if you can be this upfront about your work. Most Fortune 500 companies aren't this good.

What a great way to communicate services. The only problem is people have to be following you. So before you go run out and do this for your clients, find out if they use Twitter.

If they do, introduce them to Twitnotes from Mikkel and teach them how to use the sidebar at the same time.

Wonder if they have the server send this automatic on startup/shutdown from the server doc or some other means. Anyone have a way to do this now, let me know as I would like to do this for my servers.