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Monthly Archives: March 2010

$190 Netbook for the US market? Why not?

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in Old Blog Post Leave a comment
Ed Brill just wrote about the announcementof a Ubuntu-base Netbook with Symphony and LotusLive for $190.

I wrote a comment, but I want to expand slightly on ithere.
I wonder aboutother markets? I can see some big opportunities in the US and Europe for IBM/Lotus. If I could buy an inexpensive Netbook like that for Erik, my nine year old son, I would get him one tomorrow. He could then bring it between his moms place and my place, just connect to our respectively WiFi networks. He could even use it at school, if his school allows him to use it there.
Erik’s computer at my place is already running Ubuntu 9.10, he have been using Ubuntu on his home computer for almost a year now. He could care less what operating system it has. He play some online games at Nick.com (even ifthere are a handful ofgames not working in Ubuntu/Firefox as they use ActiveX), go on Facebook to play Farmville and watch videos on Youtube.
He also check his webmail accounts (he had one through his old school). Typical Netbook useage.

So, what wouldbringing this to the USand European markets do for IBM and Lotus?

Well, you would get Ubuntu-based laptops with Symphony and LotusLive out among kids and teenagers. They would get used to theLotus products. What do you think will happen when they hit the job market and workplaces in a few years? I think they will be proponents of Ubuntu and Symphony/OpenOffice (and OpenSoftware in general).

A few well-spoken and enthusiastic people, who know the product and what you can do with it, can change the software a workplace is using. I think a lot of the migrations from Notes/Domino to Exchange/Sharepoint/Outlook is driven exactly by that, one or two people coming from the outside and showing a handful of cool applications and talking about the benefits of the MS stack. The CEO’s will listen to them (just like they listen to a consultant but not an internal IT worker saying the same thing). Who will the CEO listen to, the old-timer in the IT department that likes Notes, or the new young go-getter with a fresh MBA talking about all the new things like Enterprise 2.0, cloud computing and other buzzwords he learned in class, at a university or college where every student must use Microsoft Office…

I told the story before, how I came in as a 23 year old fresh employee to a workplace where everyone used WordPerfect. With a background at Microsoft, andseveral years of using Word for Windows, it took me just 6 monthsto exterminate WordPerfect and get everyone to switch to Word, just by showing the advantages (as I saw them) and write a clever macro or two that save the users a lot of time each day.

Ithink getting the products out there ("show the product") is much more important than abstract advertising for Smart Planet or Lotus Knows. Yes, those are ways to get the name/brand out there, but how many car commercials do you see where no vehicle is shown?

 

Lotusscript to rename downloaded files

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in Old Blog Post Leave a comment

Duffbert and Jim Casale bothblogged about the cryptic names on downloaded files from the IBM Passport Advantage site. Jim’s Excel macro inspired me to write something in Lotusscript (I don’t even have Excel on my home computers anymore, I am only using Symphony now).

Belowis my Lotusscript code. Note that I have not been able to test the actual renaming part, since I am atthe officeand I have all the files downloaded at home. But the parsing part works. You may want to either modify the location of dlmgr.pro, or even write some code to let the user select the file to process. But Ijust made a quick-and-dirty hack for now.

Update: Something went wrong earlier when I tried to post this, I got two borked entries. It seems like if I paste certain formatted text (like the code section below) into the entry, and save it while in preview/WYSIWYG mode, it breaks the entry. If I am in HTML code view, it works…
Update 2: Thanks to the guys at Lotus911, they removed the two bad entries. Also, I wanted to clarify, the code is actually copying the files and giving the copy a new name, the original files are still there. If you want to perform a move, un-comment the the line Kill fromfile.

Dim dlmgrfile As StringDim dirname As StringDim filename As StringDim filecode As StringDim filedescription As StringDim temp As StringDim newitem As IntegerDim fromfile As StringDim tofile As Stringdlmgrfile = "c:dlmgr.pro" Open dlmgrfile For Input As #1Do While Not Eof(1) Line Input #1, temp If Left$(temp,6)=".file=" Then filecode = Right$(temp,Len(temp)-6) newitem = True Elseif Left$(temp,2) = ".." Then newitem = False End If If Left$(temp,7) = "..path=" Then dirname = Right$(temp,Len(temp)-7) End If If Left$(temp,8)="..title=" Then filedescription = Right$(temp,Len(temp)-8) End If If Left$(temp,7)="..name=" Then filename = Right$(temp,Len(temp)-7) End If If newitem = False Then If filename<>"" Then If dirname<>"" Then If filedescription<>"" Then fromfile = dirname & "" & filename tofile = dirname & "" & filedescription & Right$(filename,4) Print "Copying " & fromfile & " to " & tofile Filecopy fromfile, tofile ' Kill fromfile dirname = "" filename = "" filedescription = "" filecode = "" End If End If End If End IfLoopClose #1
This LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine,
provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com.

 

"Lotus Notes Home Edition" – my thoughts

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in Old Blog Post Leave a comment

The concept ofNotes@Home ({link} and {link}),or "Notes Home Edition" as I like to call it,is very interesting, and I think it would be a great way to increase the visibility of Notes. The people who initially would install it would probably be the more technical kind of users, some of them probably the same kind of users we see bashing Notes on /. and similar sites, basically because they haven’t seen the current version, or the product at all.

The second group I believe would install Notes Home Edition would be members of the Notes community. But not on their own systems, most of us probably already use Notes at work and at home. No, I think it would be family members and friends who would get it installed.
Last weekend I formatted my ex-father-in-law’s laptop and re-installed Windows on it for him. I also downloaded and installed Symphony. Would it not have been nice if I would been able to download a limited Notes client as well, so he would use "Notes 8 Home Edition" for his mail? I could have setup a mailbox on my server and given him access to Sametime (if I had a Sametime server).

I understand the issues Ed have with cost (there have to be some development/testing associated with creating a new client, even if it is built on an existing one). But initially make just an english language version, perhaps a spanish, french and german version as well. That should cover a large part of the western world. Start there first, before spending any more money.

The client need to be able to do the following:

  • access mail on a Domino server
  • download/syncronize with POP/IMAP mail

If there could be syncronisation with Gmail and perhaps Yahoo mail, that would be even better. I am sure the Gmail API is published somewhere….
There are many things that can be dropped from "Notes Home Edition", like activities, composite applications, etc. Make it a stripped down version with the most important features, and a few ones that "regular" users actually might use, like the RSS reader.

Also, in order to show the power of Notes, there should be some way to run either local applications, or even applications on a server. Here we have the tricky question, and it is related to licensing… How do IBM avoid a company from getting the free "Notes Home Edition" clients and using in the business? On the other hand, the Domino Express offering works on a honor system already.

I would love to setup a small server at home (or actually open up the one I have) and let my sister, her boyfriend, and some other friends use it for mail and some applications. I can also see consultants setting up a server for their clients, offering not only mail but also discussions, IM and some shared applications. Perhaps the blog template?

What about this:

  • Domino Enthusiast Edition – up to 25 (50?) clients/IDs allowed, all must be using Notes Home Edition, except the administrator who can use a full client. Also allow web access. This one should be free. Charge for support.
  • Domino Consultant Edition [1] – up to 25 (50?) clients/IDs allowed, can be a mix of full client and Home Edition. Webaccess is also allowed. This one could cost a little bit, say $200 or something, with support extra. Must be able to purchase it directly from IBM online, since business partners probably won’t bother about selling it for that price.

The Consultant Edition would however be a great tool for small consultants to get Domino in the door at some clients. They can use the Notes client for free for a while, access mail and a few simple applications, perhaps even a custom built application by the consultant. When they are ready to jump to hosting their own server, they are already used to Notes, and "locked in" to the Notes application they use. Another win for Lotus.

[1] Someone in marketing can surely come up with a better name. "IBM Lotus Domino Restricted Commercial Version with Collaboration and Instant Messaging for Small Businesses"? ;-)

 

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