I may not use MyDefrag every day, but almost daily, so I place it in the category "Stuff I Use Every Day". I use it at work, at home and I also install this small and free program on every computer I build/rebuild for my friends.

As the name indicate, it is a harddisk defragmentation program. It is, like most other free and commercial defragmentation programs, using the Windows defragmentation API, so it should be quite safe.

The program is simple to you. It comes with a number of scripts that are sufficient for most users, but the advanced user can write his/her own scripts.The user interface is minimalistic as well. You select the kind of defragmentation you want and then select one or more drives to process:

The screen displaying the progress of the defragmentation is simple. You can hover over files and see their names and what part of the harddisk they occupy. You can also zoom in and out, making it easier to see the files.

In short, a very capable and easy to use free program.

The other day I went to my local Fry’s store (a chain similar to Best Buy, but with much fewer locations and many more products/components in stock), and I saw the case I want for my new server at home. Not only is it quiet (according to the reviews), but it also looks good:

 
It also is sale for $39.95 right now!

I have been thinking a while about building a new server at home, to host my personal Domino server and possibly a few other servers (Sametime? BES Express?), just so I can play around with new technology. The network admin here at work suggested that I use the free XenServer. So I might just do that. It is always fun to learn new things.

I have been writing Notes applications since late 1996/early 1997, and been a full time Notes developer since December 1997. But I still find out new things.
I have been using lists for several years now, and as you may know, the easiest way to loop though a list is to use the ForAll statement:

Dim mylist List As String 
mylist("1st") = "First list item" 

mylist("2nd") = "Second list item" 

ForAll

m In mylist 

Print ListTag(m) & " is " & m 

End ForAll 

Sometimes I have to loop through an array of unknown size, and in the past I would have done something like this:

Dim

myarray(1) As String 

Dim

i As integer 

myarray(0

) = "First array item"

myarray(1

) = "Second array item" 

For i = LBound(myarray) To UBound(myarray) 

Print i & " is " & myarray(i) 

Next 

But just a couple of weeks ago, I was wondering if perhaps I could use ForAll statement to koop through an array as well. I looked in the online help, and sure think, the help indicated that it was indeed possible:

Dim

myarray(1) As String 

myarray(0

) = "First array item" 

myarray(1

) = "Second array item" 

ForAll

m In myarray 

Print m 

End ForAll 

Shorter and you save a variable and a couple of function calls. I doubt it does much for actual code execution, but the code is cleaner and easier to read.

Hope this little tip can help someone!

Recently I blogged about using N2PDF to create PDF documents in the background from Notes documents. I mentioned that Softvision does not have a developer license, forcing me to either pay 5,200 ($7,000) for another server license (which my employer will not do), or to download the demo version every 30 days and register with a new email account (which costs me time and aggravation).
It would have been so easy to create a special non-expiring version, but which still display the water mark that prevent you from using it in production. Or why could the water mark not display "N2PDF Developer License" and the company name instead of just "N2PDF Demo Version"? I think my company would even been willing to pay $500 for a developer license like that.

The second example of a bad license is from NotesMedic from Cassetica. It’s a good tool (if somewhat bloated in the latest version), and it is free for home users. If I would use it at work, I need a Enterprise license. There are no single license for corporate customers, I have to pay the full $15,999 (yes, almost 16 thousand dollar!) to be allowed to put it on my work computer. If we would install it for every single user at my work, that’s about $50/user, which is not too bad. But we only need it on a handful computers. Why not have an inexpensive license for corporate single users, without support, that can be purchased using a credit card or PayPal?

In both cases, the customer get hurt (can’t get the functionality needed) as well as the manufacturer (who is missing out on a sale). I just don’t get it.

On several blogs there have been postings and discussions about Notes development and if someone not embracing Xpages is "Amish". I know there are some people in the Lotus community who work with several different technologies, and even some who have switched to other platforms for different reasons.

Personally I echo what Eric Mack said. Lotus Notes is just a tool. It is what you make of it. But from what I have seen, Notes is an extremely powerful tool in comparison with other development tools. The other evening I sat down with a good friend of mine. She is a web and graphics designer (working with Flash, PHP, MySQL, etc), and she have developed her fair share of websites. I pulled up Domino Designer and created a very quick and simple application. Just one form with a few fields, then three views, categorized on different fields in the documents. I added Save and Close buttons to the form, a New button in the view, and then created a couple of sample documents. I then showed her how I could modify the design of the form, and all existing documents now had that change. Fin ally I opened a web browser, navigated to the database and showed her how it worked in two different clients with no additional changes. Things that we Notes developers take for granted and use every day.

She was very impressed. It took me about 6-7 minutes to do everything above (I did it slow and explained all the steps to her, and answered some questions along the way). I then challenged her to do the same simple application using any tools of her choice in less than 60 minutes (ten times what I needed in Notes). She will make an attempt later this week, she said.

So Notes makes me very efficient as a developer. It is truly a RAD tool. Both as in "Rapid Application Development" and as in the slang expression.

But as Volker writes: "It’s all about the people, not the software". This is very true. Over the years I have met a large number of great people from the Lotus community, mostly at Lotusphere, but also at IamLUG. I consider many of them my friends, even if we just meet once a year in Orlando. During the year I keep up with them by reading their blogs, following them on twitter and Facebook and occasionally message them on Sametime if I have some question. Lotus Notes and Domino would simply not be the same thing without the community.

I am the only Notes developer in my organization, and it is hard. I don’t really have any peers to talk to, something I think is true for many Notes developers in small or medium size companies. Because we are so efficient at building applications using Domino Designer, there is not a need for huge staffs of Notes developers. So Lotusphere is the time of year I can talk shop with people who know the product, and where I can absorb ideas and new ways to approach development. Every year I come back to work with my head full of new ideas, things I can improve or add to existing applications and even brand new applications that would help our users. All thanks to the Lotus community. So I consider the community something that makes Notes an even more powerful tool.

Now to the bad news. I may not be able to go to Orlando in January. It is still up in the air, but I heard rumors that the $3,600 it would cost (conference fee, airfare and hotel) is considered too much by some people at my work. I guess we will see what happens.

I just watched a video from CBS (see below) about Facebook Messages (formerly "Project Titan"), which was presented yesterday. From the description it sounds very much like what IBM said about "Project Vulcan" back in January at Lotusphere. One single stream where all your email, IM, SMS and other communication shows up. Perhaps they will support RSS feeds as well? Just hopeFarmville and all those other games and annoying tests can be filtered out…
What do you think? Sounds like Project Vulcan to you?

More links:

Mashable’s walkthrough with screenshots

Gizmondo article

This panorama of central London is most impressive. The amount of detail is astounding!

360cities.net have more panoramas like this, if not as big.

For several years, we wanted to create PDF documents from documents stored in several Notes databases/applications. I created a solution using a PDF printer driver, but as Lotusscript can only print using the frontend classes, this required the printing agent to be launched manually by a user. Several of the agents also had to print to a physical printer in addition to creating a PDF, meaning that my agent had to switch printers. I was using Win32 API calls to do this, as the clients were on 5.0.12 initially, then 7.0.2. Specifying a printer in uidoc.Print() did not come until 7.0.3…

This system worked, but took a lot of time, and required some spare desktops to be setup just to process all those documents. For several years I had been researching products that could help us, and the only one I found that looked really promising was N2PDF from SoftVision in Germany. The only issue was the price, EUR 5,200 ($7,100) per server. We only needed this on one server, and eventually we were able to get approval for this, after I calculated that we would save about 80 hours of work/waiting each month by getting this product.

I downloaded the 30 day trial version of N2PDF and tested it, and I was amazed at how easy it was. Just a few lines of code added to my agents and the PDF files were created. The documentation shipped with the product (in PDF format, of course) is good. We purchased the software and I started rewriting a number of agents designed to run using frontend classes on the client to run using backend classes on the server.
I created a simple class as a wrapper around the N2PDF functionality I needed. I also added code in that class to print a PDF file directly to a physical printer. I will do a write-up of this here later today.

I ran into some issues with the product, though. N2PDF supposedly read the Notes document and convert it into RTF format (according to SoftVision tech support), and items that are invisible in the Notes client (e.g. the space before and after a table) are rendered by N2PDF. Also things like having a small centered table inside a table cell in another table will not work, the centering will not be honored. Therefore I had to modify several forms to produce identical results in N2PDF and in Notes.

SoftVision seems to have a very competent tech support, I talked to Marcus there, and he was on the issue, did his investigations and got back to me very quickly when he had to find something out.

I know there are other ways to create PDF files, but those involve writing your own code, using Java libraries, etc. But N2PDF was perfect for our purpose. The only issues were the rendering problems mentioned above, and that they do not have a developer license. In order to avoid having to purchase a full EUR 5,200 license for my development server, SoftVision suggested that I download the 30 day trial once a month (when it expires) and register for new demo keys. The demo version put a water mark on the files created, why could there not be a developer licence for say $250 or $500 that also put a water mark on each file. Basically a non-expiring demo version. I can’t be the only Notes developer working on a development and/or test server before putting code in production…

Disclaimer: Product purchased by work.

Yesterday I took a walk along a nature trail close to where I live. I brought my camera, and here are a couple of the pictures.
The color as not as great as in New England or in my native Sweden, but it was still nice to see the bright yellow leaves.