Monthly Archives: August 2014

Is the break-through for smart watches almost here?

Posted on by Posted in Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Technology 1 Comment

In a few days, Motorola will present their highly anticipated Moto 360 smart watch, and at the IFA trade show in Berlin next week LG will show off their latest entry in the battle for the hearts (and wrists) of geeks everywhere, the G Watch R. Both watches are round, as opposed to previous entries (including LG’s previous model, the original G Watch) and the Samsung Gear series of smart watches.

Motorola_LG

 

There are some differences between Moto360 (left) and G Watch R (right). LG is going with a more traditional watch look, with a bezel around the edge to hide the small blank section at the bottom of the screen that is more visible on the slightly larger (1.5 inch vs 1.3 inch) screen on Moto360. That blank section is where some of the screen components are located, and this “flaw” has been critized by many, even before the watch has been released.

Both watches are protected against water (so you can wear it in the shower), features a heart rate monitor, a touch screen and running Android Gear. Moto36 will use a wireless charging station and also contains a pedometer, and s expected to cost $249 when it is realeased in the near future. No price have yet been announed for the G Watch R, which is expected to be available later this year.

Samsung is also rumored to present something at IFA, probably a round smart watch as well, but no details about it is known. They are also expected to present a new square model in the Samsung Gear family.

I think we are now getting close to the break-trough for smart watches. They look more like regular watches, with a round shape instead of the boxy square look of the first generations of smart watches. Personally I think that G Watch R is more attractive than Moto360, and to me the slightly smaller size is a plus. I think we have an interesting fall ahead of us, especially with the Apple event coming up on September 9, where their smart watch is expected to be announced. The Android Gear watches from LG, Motorola and Samsung only work with Android phones, not with iPhones.

jQuery – A flexible way to show/hide sections

Posted on by Posted in Javascript, jQuery, Web Development Leave a comment

Yesterday Stephen Gainer blogged about a small Javascript problem he had.

Brilliant!  I gave my customer exactly what he wanted!  No muss no fuss!  I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.  As soon as this was done, my customer came back to me and said he needed four more of these.

My solution, which is terrible, was to duplicate the above four more times (me2Show, me2Hide, me3Show, me3Hide and on and on and …..)  Now I realize how stupid this is, but remember how I said above that there are certain simple things that I never really learned because I never had to?  Well this is one, and this is where I would like YOUR help!

I know there has to be some way to loop through all of my element ID’s with a simple piece of JavaScript, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that.  Can anyone help me out here?

I commented on Stephen’s post and suggested that he use jQuery to easily loop though all elements with a specific class and add a listener function to them to detect a click. Since it is hard to get all information into a comment, I decided to post a simple code sample here instead. My code is easy to expand on, e.g by adding more sections.

There are of course many different ways to do this. You can of course use .toggle(), but I prefer to have better control of when to hide and show the sections. You can break out the lines $(“.mySection”).hide(); into a separate function and call it from the two locations. This is of course not saving anything in this particular code sample, but in more complex code it would make sense to break down the code into separate functions if they are called from multiple lines.

Hopefully this code will help someone, or inspire someone to start playing with jQuery. I like jQuery, as it easily integrates with classic Domino web applications, and even can be used with Xpages.

<html>
<head>
    <title>jQuery hide/show</title>
	<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script> 
	<script>
		$(document).ready(function () {
		// Hide all sections when the page is first loaded
		$(".mySection").hide();
		// Setup all elements with class "myButton" to react on click
		$(".myButton").click( function() {
			// Check if the section is already displayed
			if ($(this).html()=="Hide") {
				// Hide the current section
				var sectionID = $(this).attr("data-showsection");
				$("#"+sectionID).hide();
				// Set the button label to "Show"
				$(this).html("Show");
			} else {
				// Hide all sections, using the class mySection
				$(".mySection").hide();
				// Set all button labels to "Show"
				$(".myButton").html("Show");
				// Show the section we want to display
				var sectionID = $(this).attr("data-showsection");
				$("#"+sectionID).show();
				// Set the button label to "hide"
				$(this).html("Show");
			}
		});
	});	
	</script>
</head>
<body>
    <button id="btnOne" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionOne">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionOne" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnOne">This is the 1st section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnTwo" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionTwo">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionTwo" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnTwo">You are now seeing the 2nd section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnThree" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionThree">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionThree" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnThree">This is the 3rd section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnFour" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionFour">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionFour" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnFour">The 4th and last section.</div>
    <br>
</body>

IBM ConnectED 2015 – registration open

Posted on by Posted in Connect, ConnectED, IBM/Lotus, Lotusphere 1 Comment

Connected

IBM ConnectED, the conference formerly known as Lotusphere and Connect, has now opened the registration for the 2015 event.

The “early bird” conference fee is $1,595 and on October 4 it goes up to the full price, $1,795. This is less than Lotusphere/Connect in the past, but the conference is also 20% shorter at 4 days instead of 5. The cost per day is actually less than previous years, if you look at the full price (if I did the math right).

 

I am a victim of identity theft

Posted on by Posted in Financial, Life, Personal 6 Comments

This weekend I found out that I am a victim of identity theft. It is very unsettling, and feels like a total violation of my privacy.

My girlfriend Chrissy and I were discussing the potential of me getting a new car in the next few months. I am having some repairs coming up on my current car, like the air conditioning leaking refrigerant, fixing a small oil leak and a few other little but annoying things that will add up. It would be nice to avoid those repairs and getting a new car where I don’t have to worry about service for a few years.

We looked around online for cars that could be interesting and I found some good deals. I started working on a budget to figure out what I could afford and Chrissy asked me what my credit score was. I had to admit to her that I had no idea. After my divorce in 2003 I took some bad hits to my credit, as I was not able to keep up with all the bills for the house by myself plus my car payment, utilities and other expenses in addition to paying child support all of the sudden. So I had been scared of even looking at my credit score.

Chrissy had used Credit Karma before for herself so Sunday I started setting up a new account there. I entered my social security number, address and some other information to setup the account.  I selected a password and submitted the form. To my surprise the reply from the site said that I already had an account, but using another email address. It did not show the address in clear, it was masked so I could only see the domain (@att.net), but I have never had any address in that domain. I sat there shocked for a while and tried to think of what could be going on.  Chrissy and I talked about it and worried that it might be identity theft.  So we called a lawyer who is a relative of hers who also works in this field.  We found out quickly that the act of someone accessing my credit report without my permission is a felony at the state and federal level. If they tried to take out credit or did take out credit in my name it is another felony.  Doing these things over the computer is yet another charge.

So to figure out the truth I had to make copies of my id and fill out a form that we sent through the mail to Credit Karma, to prove my identity and get access to “my” account. This will probably take a little while though.  :-(

But I am furious that someone managed to find out enough about me to be able to setup an account to monitor my credit. The person must have my social security number, my date of birth and probably also my address. A lot of people have this information, actually. This article mention some ways people can get unauthorized access to someones credit report, for example a rogue employee in HR or a company or law firm otherwise allowed to pull a credit report.  It could just be someone who have your social security number, address and knows a little bit about you.

Just a few years ago, both Chrissy and our friend Mark were victims of identity theft. Someone broke into the mailboxes in their neighborhood and stole pre-approved credit cards and other personal information, and were able to take out credit cards in their names.  Before moving here, I know there were a couple of mailbox break-ins at my old place. The persons who stole their identity were caught using the stolen credit and arranged a plea deal that resulted in 40 years in federal prison.  Thought they will likely serve only half of that, 20 years is a long time.

I recently went through surgery, and I was in contact with different medical providers, both in person and on the phone. I had to give out my full social security number and address several times. Seems like there have been a number of cases where nurses or other medical staff have been stealing personal information from patients. I am not saying this is what happened in my case because I don’t know yet, but very few other people should have my social security number so I am looking very carefully at that.

I went to another site and ran my credit report there, and I did not see any unknown accounts taken out in my name. So I put a fraud alert on my credit report, so it should be harder/impossible to setup any accounts in my name without me knowing/being alerted.

So what else do I need to do? I have been doing some research, and one of the first things I had to do is to file a police report. If I didn’t do that, and someone takes out a credit card in my name, I may be responsible for the charges or seen as being part of the crime.

As we were told by the lawyer, it is a federal crime just to access someones credit report:

Under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), any person or organization who knowingly and willfully obtains a credit report under false pretenses (such as getting a credit report on an individual without a permissible purpose as outlined below), is subject to a fine of up to $5,000 or imprisonment of up to 1 year, or both.

So even if no credit cards were taken out in my name, just the act of accessing my credit report is a felony.  And I am still not completely sure that there are no accounts taken out fraudulently.

I live in Texas, and the state laws regarding identity theft is actually stricter than the federal laws. So the person that did this will face a felony charge in one of the two jurisdictions.

We also requested Credit Karma to provide me with the email address was used to sign up for “my” account, as well as what IP address it was done from, as well as the date/time and all the times it was accessed.  The police can then contact the Internet provider that owns that IP address and request to know what customer used it at that specific time. So it should not be too hard for the police to find out who it was.

I am furious. I feel violated and like I am looking over my shoulder all the time. Did my doctor or nurse do this? Did someone break into my mail? Could someone have hacked my computer? It is almost as bad as when my house was broken into back in 2004 and I lost a lot of personal items. I hope this will not affect my credit rating, or cause me not to be able to get the car I want. I am worried about that but it seems like with a police report and cooperating with authorities I can get things cleared up.

From years of tracking down spammers back in 1999-2002, I know how you can find out a lot from electronic tracks left behind. As soon as they have the information from Credit Karma about the account the authorities will have no problem to find out who it was. And then I get to file charges and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. I will enjoy that!

 

Update 2014-08-28: I have found out who did it, and the issue have been dealt with. There was no major financial loss, just some time and money spent driving to several different police departments trying to file in the correct jurisdiction. Thanks everyone who supported me!

The joy of programming

Posted on by Posted in Life, Personal, Programming Leave a comment

I have been programming since the beginning of 1983. I started over 30 years ago with Basic, then went to Pascal after about 3 years. I then in fairly quick succession went to C, Visual Basic, VBA and then a few years later (in 1996) to Lotusscript. Along the way I also picked up Javascript, as well as web design with HTML and CSS (even if it may be questionable to call the latter two “programming languages”).

During June and most of July this year, I did not do much/any programming, due to me recovering from surgery. At work I also do more administration work and research, leaving less time for actual programming and even less time to pick up new skills like XPages.  Coming back and starting writing code again made me realize how much I enjoy programming.

I miss writing code and solving problems by writing a program that help our users (or me) accomplish something faster and better than before. I enjoy posting code here on my blog, as well as on Stack Overflow and in the developerWorks forums. If I can help someone, like so many have been helping me in the past, at the same time as I get to write code and have fun, that is a double whammy.

But even writing code for myself, just for fun and to learn new things is enjoyable to me even after all these years. In a way it is me against the computer. I get to make the machine do what I want by taking a problem or process and breaking it down in smaller and smaller pieces until I have a working solution. Every time I come up with a smarter or more clever way to do something, I get excited and happy.

I love learning new things, and in the field of programming (as in the rest of IT), learning never ends. Hopefully I soon will have time to sit down and view some courses at Lynda.com as well as watch some of David Leedy’s excellent Notes-in-9 tutorials, to improve my skills and add more/new tools to my toolbox. And to have fun.

Happy coding!

Lotus Notes at my work threatened by Microsoft bug

Posted on by Posted in Administration, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino 7 Comments

 

The company I work for is owned by a large multinational corporation, and we are one of the few places not using Outlook/Exchange, but Lotus Notes. We have a substantial investment in custom applications written for the Notes platform, and with the deep integration between applications and email, we want to stay on the platform.

However, earlier this year, a threat against Lotus Notes reared it’s ugly head. Executives at my company were sent meeting invitations from Outlook by other executives in other companies in the group. Some executives received the invitatiosn fine, and could accept/decline, while other got just a plain text email or even blank email. I was tasked to research this, and it seems to be an issue on the sending side. If the sender have the recipients address in their Outlook contacts, the invitation is sent in one format (rich text), if the recipient is not found, it is sent as MIME. So the mail with the invitation is sent in different format by Exchange, with different MIME types (text/calendar vs. text/plain).

It is actually easy to replicate the issue. Send a meeting invitation from Outlook to a Notes user not/never listed in the Outllok contacts. It comes across perfectly:

MeetingInvitationSuccess

Then add that same address to the Outlook contacts and send another invitation. It comes across as a balnk mail, with only the message disclaimer from Exchange visible:

MeetingInvitationFailed

There is an IBM technote about this, but there is no solution listed. IBM simply suggest contacting Microsoft. There is a workaround, but that involves all Outlook users changing the default outgoing mail format from rich text to plain text, or to edit this on each single contact. I even had a couple of users here (who also had Outlook mail accounts) try that. It worked in some cases, but not always. And this is not going to work, thousands of users (or at least several dozen executives) will not make all those changes just to accomodate a small Lotus Notes shop like us…

I am continuing to look for a solution, but it has to be one that we can implement on the Domino mail server(s) here. I found a suggestion to add TNEFEnableConversion=1 to notes.ini, I am having my administrator implement that right now, so we will see if that helps. But if that does not fix it, or I can’t come up with some way to process the incoming meeting invitations and fix the MIME type, I can see a number of executives working really hard on getting rid of Notes (at least for mail) here. And that will happen soon…

So, anyone got any ideas?

 

Update 08/07/2014: I found out that TNEFEnableConversion=1 was already enabled on our mail server, and had been for several years. It seems to also be related to winmail.dat being attached to incoming Outlook mail. I have opened a support ticket with IBM as well.

Update 2 08/07/2014: Within a couple of hours I got the following response from IBM regarding my support ticket (PMR 91606,004,000):

The TNEFEnableConversion=1 parameter was created to extract attachments from a winmail.dat file using the conversion process.  However, this is only used to extract attachments within emails.  This parameter is not intended to extract calendaring information.  The TNEF converter detaches the winmail.dat file, scans it looking for object types that indicate there is file attachment data present, and extracts the data as needed.

According to the RFC standards for SMTP calendaring (icalendar), messages must be formatted in MIME and not MS Rich Text.  As such, this issue is considered a third party bug by our development team because the
MS Rich Text format generates winmail.dat attachments which do not comply with the RFC standards for calendaring.

 At this time, there is no way to address this issue on the Domino side. However, the development is considering in creating an enhancement request not a fix because the issue relies on Exchange/Outlook. The functionality is expected to be in the next release of Domino version 9.0.2.

Meeting invites sent in an HTML or Plain text format work just fine with external applications such as Notes/Domino.

 This sounds promising, now it is just a question how long we have to wait, and if the executives are going to want to wait.