Could you Survive 2 weeks without a SmartPhone?

From the looks and messages from people, I would think that it was impossible for some of you to live without your phones.

Imagine you had to revert back to a Blackberry Bold or Curve, I used both but more on that in a minute, could you do it? Sure for a day or 2 maybe but 2 weeks?

The problem started the day before we left for vacation to Israel, the Thursday of Thanksgiving. I dropped my HTC Vivid Android phone and it landed smack on a rock and shattered the glass. Yeah that sucked, but it was still useful, so I made do on our trip.

Either while away or shortly after we returned I ordered a new digitizer off of eBay. When that came in, I proceeded to replace my glass and put it all back together. Powered it on and saw a line cracked and just a shade of red or blue or green and nothing else. Yes, I had damaged the LCD at some step along the way. Back to eBay. Ordered a new LCD which came today.

Took it all apart, replaced the LCD and put it back together and happy to say it is good to go again.

I learned a lot about how I work and how useful or useless a smartphone is to me.

The BB Curve was the slower device I had laying around which is unlocked and I could get all my emails but web browsing was useless and apps were iffy. My friend Paul gave me his old BB Bold which was MUCH faster but still locked down by a BES and so I only had phone service. I decided I would learn to live with my office's iPad but use the BB Bold because at least the browser worked efficiently.

I now know that the Bold had a crappy keyboard with the weird left/right slanted keys, but since I rarely used a BB over the years, despite managing numerous BES environments, I figured I could live with this. But now I was a 3 device person, including the laptop. When my phone is working, I rarely need to use the iPad. I prefer typing on my phone over the iPad.

The iPad, while an excellent reader device, really is lacking in keyboard intelligence or ease of use. In this day and age of alpha-numeric passwords is it so much to ask apple to let me just hold a key down to get to the alternate key or number? Or to hold it down to get a capital letter? My old Nokia phones always did this and that was in 1999.

It is nice to keep so many screens open on an iPad and the battery life is awesome, shame it is such a PITA to type. I could never type this blog post on it without a bluetooth keyboard. But I could go 2-3 days without needing to recharge it.

I did not exactly survive 2 weeks without my phone because I had the iPad by proxy. But my postings or photos from the holidays and trips were limiting and that was a shame. The iPad has a lousy still camera option. It could record sound and video but not great quality. I missed the simplicity of opening one of many apps and take photo and post it. I did not miss seeing my email, not one bit. I did miss my contacts and phone numbers but that also was interesting. I had few calls, thanks to the holidays, and did not need to call too many people either.

So I went semi-cold turkey on social media and came out of it with an interest to do more and looking forward to this year.

For everyone that wondered where I was or why I replied in short or cryptic ways the last 2 weeks, now you know the reason.

Sametime Classic Installation for iPads

This post is about how to enable iPad, iPhone and Android users to CHAT within your classic Sametime environment. This means for those that held off to go to WAS(more on Websphere in a minute) and stayed on Domino and have kept up to date with Sametime, they now face the "why can't my iPad connect to Sametime" discussion.

There are some excellent posts and slidedecks about installing ST from Zero to Hero from Frank start here and Gotcha's from Gab and of course various LUG and Lotusphere presentations. But little on  this topic.

You need to be running the Sametime Proxy Server for these devices to connect. No problem, download the file, run it and done....right? Not exactly in our case.

As it turns out, the requirements are a little more detailed. You need the following:
an instance of DB2 running (a limited use version for Sametime is available for Download)
The Sametime System Console to be installed as well
Sametime Proxy server
And check your Firewall ports to the Proxy Server (IBM Technote f# 1097949 for ST Ports is here)
And make sure you enabled all the clients to connect to Sametime, see this IBM Technote #1114318.

So here is a quick and simple guide:
 PRESTEPS: Download the 8.5.2 ST files you need, then download the 8.5.2IF1 files because these are what enable the iPad/iPhone etc. to work with Sametime.
1) Install DB2 first, make sure when prompted for the db2admin password you keep it to NO MORE THAN 8 CHARACTERS!
2) Now you need to create the STSC database. You do this by opening a command prompt with the runas db2admin login and password. (Note if you get an error message that says "the directory name is invalid" change the properties for your command prompt icon to %windir% instead of what is shown more details from MS on this here.) Change directories to the location of the extracted files for the System Console ZIP file. Under this directory \SametimeSystemConsole\DatabaseScripts\SystemConsole you will find the batch file you need to run by typing this command:

createSCDb.bat STSC db2admin

And wait for the completed successfully messages before moving on.

3) Next install the System Console make sure when prompted for the wasadmin password you keep it to NO MORE THAN 8 CHARACTERS! By the way, THIS is where WAS gets installed. So now you have an in to the customer for the rest of ST hopefully.
4) Install the Proxy Server. Note at the Install Packages Features screen which asks if you want to install the Proxy Server, UNCHECK the use Lotus Sametime System Console to install.
5) Use Sametime installed WAS on the next screen.
6) The next screen asks for your WASADMIN login.
7) The following screen asks for your Sametime server, your Domino Sametime server FQDN.
8) It is now installing the proxy server
9) While this is going on, go to your Domino configuration file, stconfig.nsf on the Sametime Domino server and make sure to add the IP address of the Proxy Server to the Trusted IP Addresses list under the section marked Community Connectivity per this IBM Technote #1287327 which also discusses opening it up to any servers. Reboot the Domino Sametime server after making this change.
10) Check the services on Windows if you want the IBM Websphere ones to start automatically. Otherwise you will have to start them manually every time.
11) Once done, reboot it all.

Download the Sametime mobile apps to your Android, iPhone or iPad.

Configuration is server name of the proxy server
Port by default is 9080 but in my case it was 9081. If you reinstall and don't clean up enough registry entries I guess it just adds a number. You may also want to try 9082,9083,9084, etc.
 Normal login and password.
If the client does not connect, send yourself the log file from the device in email, or read it on your device and check for error messages.

Done....enjoy chatting. Meetings are only if you do the full WAS stack.

The funny thing is we could load it all on one box now so most likely they will want meetings on their iPad and we will create a new installation.