What? No gutter in 8.0.1? And why unread is Bold Black

I can confirm from a high level IBM Executive I met very briefly today that the gutter which I and many so wanted to return and were told it would return in 8.0.1 is not.
It will be in 8.0.2 which is due in Q3 most likely. Of course by then 8.5 is expected(well Dec 32nd)so just wrap the code together get the developers to stop overlapping and get 8.5 out sooner.
Oh and it will be an option and UNABLED by default.

In a 2nd question I asked him why we went to a bold black line for unread emails after the red and I was told because that was a Windows(Outlook) I presume he meant standard.
That is NOT a good reason to do anything. While I admit Microsoft has some nice UI work from their team(although consistency in toolbars/ribbons and function keys still has a long way to go)I do not consider bold black part of that UI work.

Sure, red is a bad color in some cultures and if I was so interested in changing it I could track down the .css file 8 levels down in a some directory and change the color.

Would it be so hard to add a simnple 8 color check box into preferences to accomplish this for the END USERS who want to change it without bothering the poor overworked developers?

R8 Addressing, You Worked Where?

As some of you know, Lotus Notes R8 is all about you/me... the user.
Make life better. And it does, it is and Outlook clients want to see it in action.

Now a part which I like is you can now retain email addresses from every email you send or receive in a sort of indexed view. So the email you deleted, you might find the person's email address still there. Thank the Lotus God.

On the other hand you may find yourself amazed at the email addresses you have in your history. I have about 15 that come up now. Cool, but weird since some are 12 years old.

Some users may find this odd that 6 years after the Lotus/IBM merger for instance, you can still come up as joe bloggs/sta/lotus as well as joe bloggs/sta/ibm.

The answer my friend is delving in deeper and you will need to wait for 801 to resolve this in a simpler manner.

In Notes 8, a view is created in the Personal Address Book (names.nsf) which stores up to 2000 contacts to which mail has been addressed. When you address a memo, the client will automatically provide entries from this view which correspond to the text being entered.

But if this is an issue for you or your client and they just can not be bothered to check who they are emailing, then you need to follow this tech note I have copied the text for those unable to link to the file:

The contents of the Recent Contacts view can be reset by shutting down the Notes client, and moving or deleting the contents of the directory,\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\com.ibm.notes.dip\...

where is the path to your Notes Data directory, such as C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Data.

Note: The previous contents of the Recent Contacts view may still display until a new message is sent, which populates an entry in the Recent Contacts view and causes the dipTable.ser file in the com.ibm.notes.dip directory to be re-created.

In the end, moving ahead brings about more possibilities than previously known or thought of, so it is here too.

I look forward to where the 801 and later versions take us for the contacts/pnab/pnames.nsf/personal address book which so rarely gets a 2nd look by so many in the industry.

Domino.Doc, the end is nigh!

So it is with much sadness we must presume the end is in sight!
Yes, after some valid attempts, IBM/Lotus is probably going to deep six, EOL the DOmino.Doc application otherwise known today as Lotus Domino Document Manager(LDDM).
While a quick read of the agenda at Lotusphere shows not 1 session devoted to it, I recall seeing some reference in a list recently, so maybe there is a "best practices for moving off .Doc" session.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Find me the PM who has responsibility for it to say what it's future is.
The forum has this to say about it, read all the posts to understand, or not, the direction. Especially Jelan's.
NOTE: Doc is not yet certified to Domino R8, nor is it fully compatible with Vista, although I use it and do not have any issues with Vista.

My clients need to know the future.

We go way back, I taught EMEA IBmers how to install and configure .Doc and I was on the early beta testing of it.
Sure it had some issues in the early days as do most 1.0 versions but in it's simplest form(maybe too simple since Quickr now does basic checkin/out) it handled files and access quite well.

The Quickr monitor as it is called is an updated desktop enabler, of course without the ODMA issues. Lotus produced "Connectors" for Quickr so it hooks into Sametime, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer(sorry firefox, not 100%) and the Quickr Monitor.

How amazing it would be to have all that as part of .Doc, but not gonna happen right now, down the road maybe, but does IBM see the value in it over other pieces of the puzzle?

Symantec Support for Domino R8

As a BP, and previous manager of alliance partners, I have some understanding for Lotus partners.
But, sometimes in our madness for efficiency, we neglect the simple premise:
The customer deserves to be helped first and foremost.

All I need to know is does Symantec support R8 yet in their Anti-virus program and backup-exec agent program. Simple right? NOT!

Having loved Norton Utilities and products since before Peter sold them, I tend to give Symantec the benfit of the doubt and still use their products in various forms.

One of my clients uses backup exec(I used to use this 4 mergers back before Veritas had it). And while planning for the migration to 8.0.1 we were checking if the backup agents, and server AV work with it.
Normally simple enough but as I could not find the informationm on the Syamntec website, I tried their online chat.

Ok so I was #11 or something in queue, took about 20 minutes to a half hour to chat with someone.

As they could not help me or had no idea what Lotus Domino was or if they support it(Thanks Samson of Symantec Chat) he sent me to their SMB sales line.

Called the 800# and spoke to somoene who I could barely understand and I have worked with many people around the world, evidently not all of them.

She told me she could not help me, on the sales line, I should call tech support, gave me the number.

Called tech support 800 #. No product no support. Huh? Without a licence code or some other method they are unable to log a call for me, even though all I want is to know the R8 support.
Tried to send me back to sales. I reminded him they sent me to him.
He apologized but could not help me.

I suggested I would have to seek a new vendor. After that statement I was sent to some one named Shann who was very helpful, but alas, could only confirm what was on the site, namely 6.x and 7.x.

And told me to check when it would be available at their site with a URL of http://www.symantec.com/business/support/

Thanked her and hung up.

Now, maybe if I was a Symantec BP I could get more insight, but to be honest R8 has been out a for a few months now and their site should let people know it supports it or it will in Q1? Hopefully?

See you in Orlando and you can bet who I am going to see in the product showcase.