SOA in Vegas, Lotus in London

SOA / WebSphere at IMPACT

IBM’s customer SOA conference, IMPACT, is taking place in Las Vegas at the beginning of April. IMPACT is the evolution of the annual WebSphere events… actually my first trip to Vegas was back in 2001 when I was an IBM customer, attending the WebSphere conference.

There’s a blog listing some of the details, and you can find out more about the event and register on the IBM site. The event is also on Facebook.

Sadly I’m not expecting to be there myself, but it looks like the B-52s are performing and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is speaking, so I’d love to get along.

LotusSphere comes to you

Like me, you may have missed out on LotusSphere in Florida last month (are we spotting a pattern?). The “roadshow” version of the event is being held in London and Manchester at around the same time as IMPACT at the start of April. Check out the information on the IBM site. Worth going along if you want to learn more about IBM’s social software tools like Lotus Connections.

Lotus plays a Symphony

Following on from the announcement last week that IBM has joined OpenOffice.org… yesterday, Lotus announced Symphony. This is a suite of free productivity editors (Documents, Presentations and Spreadsheets) equivalent to those bundled in Lotus Notes 8.

Symphony is based on Open Document Format and OpenOffice.org, as well as using the Eclipse-based Lotus Expeditor framework. There’s MS Office suport and PDF export in there… and, according to Ed Brill’s write-up, you can also import Lotus SmartSuite files into the new editors.

Nice to see that it is available now for Windows and Linux, with Mac support planned. I need to give it a try.

Technorati tags: Lotus, Lotus Symphony, Symphony, OpenOffice.org, Smartsuite, productivity, free, software, IBM

Windows Live Writer, meet Lotus Connections

The latest Beta of Windows Live Writer is out.

I’ve been trying it out with Lotus Connections – namely, with our internal IBM blogging system which is also known as BlogCentral. I was able to successfully add my blog as a new account… WLW auto-detected all of the connection details, and downloaded the editing style (but not the list of categories).

Why is this important? Well, it means that, as previously hinted, Windows Live Writer now works with with Atom Publishing Protocol. This is goodness.

Update: hmm, maybe not. Looking at some debug traces, it looks like WLW is still hitting the metaWeblogAPI endpoint. So maybe I’m mistaken…

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, blogging, Atom Publishing Protocol, APP, IBM, Lotus, Lotus Connections

Background information on Lotus Connections

In case you interested in the technical foundations of the new Lotus Connections product, James Snell has posted some great facts and figures about the scale of IBM’s internal deployment of blogs, bookmarks, etc.

Here are some numbers: Our BlogCentral environment supports 25k+ registered users with over 3k+ “active” blogs. There are over 100k posts and comments with over 10k+ unique tags. Our dogear server has over 200k+ distinct bookmarks to resources both inside and outside the firewall and is generally more reliable at providing quick access to important resources than our Intranet search servers. Our activities server has over 11k activities with 69k+ entries and has 35k+ registered users.

The point is, this stuff has been road tested.

The more important angle of James’ post is that the adoption of these technologies has been word-of-mouth and organic – not mandated. I’m pretty proud to have been one of the early adopters and advocates. I started using the internal blogs, wikis and podcasts, and discovered I had a much stronger network of contacts. As a result, I told my team. Not everyone has been a convert, and I wouldn’t have expected them to be. However, I think people do recognise how useful these tools can be, given the right amount of time and attention.

[ sorry for the Snell mini-linkathon, but as one of the key players, he's got some useful information over there :-) ]

Technorati tags: Lotus Connections, James Snell, IBM, blogs, bookmarks, dogear, activities, technology adoption, Lotusphere2007

Lotusphere is live

Hanging out in the live blogging channels at Lotusphere Live. It’s kind of like being there, but only textually.

More cool stuff than I can take in… Lotus Connections (Ventura), Lotus Quickr, Google Gadgets running in WebSphere Portal, composite applications…

I’m going to watch the replay of the opening session in Second Life tomorrow…

Some of my favourite comments from the live blog, reporting the announcements live from the conference floor:

Julian Robichaux

Notes 8 supports SmartSuite docs as well as Office and OpenOffice

Ed Brill

integrated RSS feeds in Notes 8 sidebar

Julian Robichaux

(Lotus Connections) has integration with profiles, internal blogs, sametime, dogear, tags, communities, activities

Ed Brill

(…) showing blogs in Connections — blogs becoming a commodity capability in all IBM Lotus products

Chris Byrne

(on Connections) This demo reminds me more of LinkedIn thatn MySpace or FaceBook, which is very good
(…) MySpace and FaceBook, being discussed now, are not good for corporate use, but many corporations scan them for content posted by potential employees, and have retracted job offers based on what they have see.

See Ed’s Flickr set for some screenshots

Technorati tags: Lotus, IBM, Lotusphere2007, Orlando, Quickr, Ventura, Lotus Connections, blogging, Second Life, Lotusphere_07

Lotus makes Connections

… and on the day I can’t make use of my normal connectivity, comes the news I’ve been waiting to talk about!

Ed Brill is the first blogger I’ve found who mentions one of the major Lotusphere 2007 announcements: Lotus Connections. This is a culmination of a lot of the work we’ve been doing internally around collaborative “Web 2.0″ tools such as blogs, social bookmarking, and social networks (I talked about it briefly before, in a post about Ventura).

The International Herald Tribune likens the release to MySpace for corporations. Some people might feel that MySpace is a bit frivolous, and I’d agree – in my opinion, it is largely aimed at teens. However, the technology and trends that it (and other social networking sites) represents are enormously important to business, and several of us have been evangelising this message for some time now. When I’ve talked about it with colleagues, I’ve sometimes encountered the reaction “where’s the value?” or “surely this is all going to eat into my time…” – both perfectly valid points, but I think they are answered quite straightforwardly.

A recent BBC News report mentioned that over half of American teenagers were familiar with social networking sites. The next generation of workers are already beginning to absorb these technologies into their lifestyles. Businesses can now start to build these kinds of networks internally, and there is real value in doing so.

If you’re not sure about the power of these kinds of tools within a company, witness my own blogging network. To pick individuals from my blogroll at random, without having an internal blogging platform, I simply would never have communicated with people such as Ed, Per, Cesar or Dan… or worked with Hannah, Andrew, Chris, Kelly or the eightbar crowd. These tools have transformed the way that we work, and the way in which I see the world.

More links:

• IBM Validates Social Networking for the Office
• IBM to introduce workers’ networking software

Incidentally, there’s a Lotusphere location in Second Life, too… again, I’m unable to go and check it out for myself right now due to connectivity issues. See Per’s post for more. I’ll be online later.

Technorati tags: Lotus, IBM, Lotusphere2007, Orlando, Ventura, Lotus Connections, blogging, Second Life, Lotusphere_07

Lotusphere 2007 – anticipation building

Sadly I won’t be in Orlando for next week’s big event, Lotusphere 2007… but I know a lot of people who will be there.

How can they trump last year’s Sametime 7.5 buzz? I don’t know, but if you follow celebrity Lotus bloggers such as Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Steve Castledine and Mary Beth Raven, you know you will be able to keep up with all the news.

I think there may be some very nice announcements to look forward to, so I shall be following the news avidly.

Good to see that James Governor is excited, too.

Technorati tags: Lotus, IBM, Lotusphere2007, Lotusphere_07

Lotus Notes security and access

I’ve been using Notes for nearly 10 years, and I never knew / realised this:

Open any Notes database, and you should see the icon on the Security button display either  for Manager,  for Editor,  for Author, or  for reader.

More on Alan Lepofsky’s ever-useful IBM Lotus Notes Hints, Tips and Tricks blog.

Technorati tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, user interface, security, permissions

Ventura is revealed

A number of posts emerged yesterday which (publically) surface some information about the forhcoming Lotus Ventura platform:

• IBM SWG: Lotus “Ventura”!
• chmod 777 ventura
• A New Ventura

I’ve been a user of IBM’s internal blogging platform – known as BlogCentral, and based off of Roller - for well over a year now. Several people (my customers, our salespeople, friends) have asked me about whether IBM has product in this area in the past. Well, it’s coming – and it is going to be integrated with a lot more good stuff, like our directory service, communities, and our social bookmarking system called Dogear.

As ”the ATOM dude” aka James Snell says:

The really cool part is that Ventura is 100% derived from stuff IBM has been using internally for quite some time. Blogging, social bookmarking, activities, bluepages, communities… these aren’t brand new shelfware things we’re not sure anyone will use.; thousands of IBMers are using these tools every day. Cool, eh?

This is the culmination of a lot of work, and having been part of our internal community in this space, I’m really excited to see it beginning to go public.

Technorati tags: Lotus, Lotus Ventura, Dogear, blogging, social bookmarking, IBM, social networking, Ventura, James Snell, Elias Torres

Podcasts and music on a Saturday morning

On the (lengthy) drive in to work this morning, I was able to catch up on some podcasts, courtesy of the TomTom 910 MP3 player.

The Shortcuts series from IBM is very good. It is easy to digest, interesting and engaging – recommended. I also listened to an old-ish episode of Taking Notes from earlier in the year, featuring Ed Brill; a couple of developerWorks podcasts; and some stuff from IBM’s internal podcasting site.

When I felt like some music, I had a spin through some tracks I found on Fred Wilson’s excellent AVC blog, which I’ve followed for a long time. A particular revelation was the Ray Lamontagne cover of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. Unlike Fred, I can’t stand the original: I hate the musical style.This version let me listen to the lyrics and enjoy the lazy guitar – it was great.

Incidentally, if you feel like exploring Fred’s blog further, I also love the song George Romero by the Sprites that he featured back in May. A little silly, but also quite a grower.

Finally, combining the IBM and music themes – you really should check out some of my favourite musical IBMers. Lisa Swain and Seven Ender were both featured in our internal Battle of the Bands podcast earlier in the year, and I am completely hooked on their sounds. You can hear both of them via their sites, so it is fairly easy to dip in and see what you think.

Technorati tags: podcast, IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, developerworks, MP3, music, TomTom, Seven Ender, Lisa Swain, Sprites, Ray Lamontagne, AVC

Notes goes all Web 2.0 and stuff

Ed Brill and Rob Evans comment that Notes and Domino 7.0.2 just came out.

There’s a feature on the IBM website.

You can now blog from within Notes (like Ed and Alan do); subscribe to ATOM and RSS feeds; and even carry Notes around on a USB stick. And there’s much, much more besides.

Update: the latest Talking Notes podcast is all about Notes 7.0.2 – worth listening, especially if you want to catch up with the news on-the-move

Technorati tags: Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Domino, Lotus Domino, IBM, RSS, Web 2.0, blogging, feeds, collaboration, podcast, Talking Notes

Analysing blog search hits

One of the nice features that WordPress provides me as a blog owner is the ability to find out what search terms people have been using to find my blog. I check these fairly frequently, as they serve as a good guide to what the world finds interesting in my writing!

Here are some examples from the past seven days, and my comments on the search terms where relevant.

downloads for tomtom 910 This, or or some similar phrase about the TomTom GO 910, seems to appear in my search hits regularly. Clearly the fact that I have one is of great interest. I do have posts about my experiences with it, but the most popular post on my blog appears to be TomTom 910, still waiting – which dates from before I even owned one.

www.direct.gov.car tax / car tax online These are related to my second most popular post, from months and months ago, when I happened to mention that I thought the online renewal system for UK car tax appeared to work. I find it remarkable that I get so many hits from this single post.

sametime 7.5 messages truncate Fantastic to see that Sametime 7.5 has generated so much buzz, and that people have been coming to my blog to find out more. This particular search is somewhat worrying, as it implies that someone was having a problem with it. I’d love to know more about that.

Talking of Sametime 7.5, have you checked out the new developerWorks article on the location awareness feature?

marwellzoo pics and photos to copy Hmm. I’m not sure that I want people copying my photos, especially without asking. Presumably whoever ran this search will have found my photos. I wonder if they have used them in some way.

eclipse websphere message flows esql tut I assume that the last word was “tutorial”. I don’t have an ESQL tutorial here. Perhaps I should write one.

blue screen vmware Amazing, I only posted about my VMWare problems last weekend. Good to see search engines are keeping up.

amqsput source code For future reference, the source code for the amqsput program is in the C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere MQ\Tools\samples\c directory on Windows, or /opt/mqm/samp (or /usr/mqm/samp) on UNIX platforms. Assuming that you installed the samples, of course.

mq broker esb lacking Again, I would love to know what issues the person who ran this search was having. I wish they had commented somewhere to explain – sounds like the kind of dialogue that I’d be interested in engaging in. Just what did they feel that WebSphere Message Broker was lacking?

who has a bank holiday on 11th september I have no idea. Do I? No that was going to be the train drivers, but the strike has been called off.

photography for newsprint Hmm, this person will have been disappointed, nothing about photography there.

These represent just a tiny sample. I’m continually fascinated by the ways in which the content of my blog is being used. I could have made this post much longer. In general though, I’m satisfied that the majority of my posts – particularly the technical ones – seem to attract interest. Lots of interest in MQ and Broker related posts, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m here.

I should note that WordPress doesn’t provide me with any visibility of which search engines were actually used – just the terms. This is fine, but again sometimes I’m nosy and just want to know! I’ve sometimes gone as far as running the searches through the search engines to see how high up the list my posts come – I’m impressed when people have had to go reasonably far down the list (second or third page) and still visited my site!