Anyway, on with the story. Back in September I was invited to speak at DanNotes, the Danish Notes User Group event – not about Notes, but about Lotus Connections. Of course I accepted, and wasn’t put off in the least when I discovered that the event was taking place in a town called Korsør (pronounced ‘Korsur’ because of that ‘ø’ character) which is half-way across Denmark from Copenhagen. I also discovered that my good friend and God-like genius Paul Mooney was also on the agenda, so it was shaping up to be an excellent prospect of a trip. But how does one get from Copenhagen to the far and distant Korsør? By train of course.

My first experience of Danish trains was pretty good. In August I made my first ever trip to Denmark and had to make my way to Lyngby, which is north of Copenhagen… a very easy journey thanks to a short train ride to Copenhagen Central and then another fairly quick hop to Lyngby. As I said at the time it was efficient, on-time, clean and reasonably good value. So without much fuss I discovered that a train went directly from Copenhagen lufthaven (sorry, airport) directly to Korsør in eighty-eight minutes. I arrived in Copenhagen, I purchased my return ticket, the train turned up and left on time, and even arrived at Korsør a few minutes early. I had a comfortable seat and there was even a power socket above my head. On arriving at the Grand Park Hotel I had no hesitation in telling people that I was impressed by the Danish train service. When they scoffed at this notion, I assumed it was merely because they’d never encountered the English trains and were therefore a little spoilt.

Whoever said that irony is a fickle mistress was more correct than they’ll ever know.

The delegates and speakers enjoyed an excellent dinner. I found Mr Mooney and we chewed the fat and laughed until tiredness caught up with me and I caved in for the evening. The next morning I did my talk on Connections, and also a half-hour slot on composite applications which was a late addition to the agenda. Paul was on his way home, and already Google Latitude was showing me that he was in the bar at Copenhagen airport. After lunch I ordered a taxi, leaving plenty of time to catch the train back to Copenhagen, my plans leaving me lots of time to check in at the airport before continuing on to Stockholm. Mrs A is reading this over my shoulder and said “that’s where it started to go wrong”. And she’s right.

According to the train timetable on the Interweb, my train back to Copenhagen airport was supposed to depart at 14:50. But arriving at the station at 14:20 I found that the next train direct (I mean with no changes) to the airport was at 15:14. This wasn’t a big problem as there was a train to Copenhagen Central at 14:43, and I could change there and continue to the airport with enough time to check in for the 18:10 flight.

However, a couple of stations from Copenhagen Central the train stopped for nearly half an hour. Someone was kind enough to translate the announcement which said that the train would terminate at the next station and then we’d have to change over to a local line (with more stops) to continue the journey. So I got off at Høje Taastrup station and waited seven minutes for the next B line train. Time was now becoming rather tight.

A number of stops later, things took a turn for the worse. At Danshøj the train stopped and minutes ticked away until an announcement told the passengers that the train was terminating and they should get off. Someone told me that a person had been hit by a train at Copenhagen Central and there were going to be delays reaching the station. By now it was 16:45, and I had half an hour left to check in. After getting off, another train came to the platform quickly. But two stops later, at Enghave, the train stopped again, and the ticket lady on the train said that we were stopping and they had no idea for how long. It was now 16:57. A train from Copenhagen Central to the airport takes around fifteen minutes, and I could wait up to twenty minutes for that train. I wasn’t even at Copenhagen Central yet. At this point I realised that if I stayed on the train I would miss the flight and the implications started whirring through my head and stomach.

Maybe fortune does favour the brave – I left the train, ran up the steps, and was just in time to see a taxi about to leave after dropping someone off. I banged on the window, the driver stopped and beckoned me in. It was 17:00. I asked how long it would take to get to the airport and the words were music to my ears… “it’s rush hour, so maybe fifteen minutes”. And he was spot on, the cab stopped outside Copenhagen airport Terminal 3 at 17:15. During the journey he said there’s nowhere for taxis to wait at Enghave station so I was lucky to catch him.

The fun wasn’t over yet – inside Terminal 3 I looked at the check-in board and the instructions for SAS flight 1426 were… wait for it… go to Terminal 2. You’re kidding me. So I ran to Terminal 2, where the check-in board said – I’m not making this up – go to Terminal 3. I grabbed someone who looked like they worked there and they said yes, check-in for my flight was at Terminal 2. So at 17:23 I was at the check-in desk where a lovely young lady calmly told me there was no hurry because they hadn’t even assigned a gate yet.

And then I picked the slowest-moving queue for security. But by then I was serenely calm. Maybe even delirious.

But actually there was an easier option… just go to the Update Manager in the Ubuntu System Administration, check for updates and then let it do it’s thing. And that’s what I did. It took a couple of hours, but only because I was doing other things (it was a day off work) and there were some OK buttons that were required to be pressed. The process said the final part would take about four hours but actually completed in about fifteen minutes… not a terribly good estimation, but better than estimating fifteen minutes and taking four hours I guess.

Overall impressions… excellent, a big improvement on version 9.04. It doesn’t really look any different, but the performance is much better, especially things like the screen redraw which were awful with 9.04 because of the display drivers for the ThinkPad W500. Now the display performance is great (better than Windows XP on the same laptop) and I can use the advanced wobbling screen effects. Suspend and resume (always previously unreliable) seem to work fine. Overall 9.10 feels much more polished.

So what about the Canonical claim that configuring via the command prompt is a thing of the past? I think if you properly understand the Synaptic Package Manager then you are very likely to avoid the dreaded Terminal. Although I did resort to the command prompt to upgrade Notes to version 8.5.1 I could actually have avoided it. My Linux knowledge let me down, but doesn’t that tell us that it’s still not as user-friendly as it could be? I never had any such issues with the Apple Mac which I felt at home with instantaneously.

The other negative is that the ThinkPad’s trackpad is permanently on (aarrrggh, I hate the thing) and there’s no way in Ubuntu to turn it off. I tried creating a configuration file (following advice from a tip on the Interweb), but that didn’t work. So I’ll have to turn the trackpad off at the BIOS level.

On the positive side Ubuntu 9.10 is packed with great utilities, the WiFi is a doddle to configure, and time from cold boot to ready is extremely quick. Both navigation and the customisation to get your own comfortable look and feel are very easy. It seems like a very viable client platform growing in maturity, and I hope it gets some serious consideration from companies who are looking at the costs of upgrading to Windows 7.

Ten months later the two haven’t waved at each other as they passed in opposite vertical directions, but the gap has closed a bit. According to The Register, Firefox now claims 23.75% while Internet Explorer has lost more ground and sits at 65.71%. Those of you who boast impressive mental arithmetic will see that Internet Explorer’s fall is only 0.03% larger than Firefox’s gain. Where that missing 0.03% went is anyone’s guess, but I’d put my money on Apple’s Safari. Or maybe Google’s Chrome.

To add to Mozilla’s chest-beating, their CEO John Lilly claimed that Firefox gained over 30 million unique users in a recent eight weeks period. Since then (if you haven’t heard), Windows 7 has been released – so it’ll be interesting to see whether the glacial-like erosion of Internet Explorer’s share continues to take place.

Being a BBC reporter, Gary Parkinson does of course take the opportunity to see everything from a Windows point of view, but I suppose this is understandable. He homes in on the fact that iTunes isn’t available on Linux operating systems, and then discusses the fact that Linux (even Ubuntu) hasn’t always been seen as user-friendly. Windows, irrespective of what you think of it, has been honed to be pretty user-friendly over the years… rarely (if ever) do home users have to go to a command prompt to configure things. Thankfully Canonical’s Chris Kenyon says the new release puts a stop to all of that (I’ll tell you later in the week if it really is true).

Parkinson talks about recommending Linux to older family members or friends, but is that really where Ubuntu wants to sit, with the home user? Certainly I’d have no bones about recommending Lotus Symphony or OpenOffice to home users, and indeed I have. But I see Linux as something that needs to be properly rolled out, supported and maintained within organisations, like those named in the Beeb’s article. A lack of support for iTunes isn’t really going to matter there. Home users (in my humble opinion) should buy an Apple Mac… it’s businesses that have the potential to decrease costs through properly maintained open-source software. Whatever your opinion, it’s very important that Microsoft have competitors in this space, and thus improvements to Ubuntu can only be a good thing.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather this week, so Mrs A gave me a day off from working down her usual long list of Saturday must-dos. After getting my hair cut and cleaning out the hamster house I decided to take time out to watch ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ which I recorded some time ago – a movie which I promised myself I’d watch on the big screen at home, not on the mini-screen of the Archos while at an airport or on a flight to somewhere.

The first concern was whether the aged Harrison Ford could still hack it as the adventurous archaeologist… yes, but only just, and to be fair they made reference to his advancing years a few times. At least they didn’t pass him off as some spring chicken. But then there’s the bad news. Cate Blanchett’s delivery came straight out of Russian Accent 101 classes and made me cringe every time she spoke. If we’re supposed to hate the villain, then that worked. I was sorry that she wasn’t polished off within the first ten minutes… instead she nearly made it through to the end credits.

On the whole the story was an Indiana Jones check-list. Underground tombs… check. Ancient mechanical devices…check. Ancient legends setting up the story… check. Chases, guns and jumping from one vehicle to another… check. And so on.

Now, let’s think about the subjects of the earlier Indiana Jones movies… finding the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt, a brutish Indian cult, and a hunt for the Holy Grail. Great movies, even if that old knight at the end of ‘The Last Crusade’ was a bit daft. So here’s the next problem with ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ – it’s about the skull of an alien. Yes, an alien. Aliens in an Indiana Jones movie. Okay, it’s an ancient artefact… but it’s the skull of an alien. And there’s thirteen alien skeletons sitting in a space ship. No no no no no no no no. What were they thinking?

In summary, it was okay. It entertained me for two hours. But the next time I watch ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (which is still one of the best movies ever made) I’m going to try to forget that this final instalment ever happened.

However, then you get a lack of consistency at the same airport… Heathrow for example. Some days you do have to remove your shoes, some days you don’t. I’ve even been there on days when one queue has to remove their shoes while the others don’t. So Mr Security, don’t get annoyed with me if I don’t follow the rules of the day immediately.

With all this in mind, I was interested in this article on the Beeb’s news site covering Manchester Airport’s trial body scanner. Like a scene from Total Recall (great movie) it provides an image revealing details down to a naked level (okay, not quite down to the skeletal level). It’s heralded as a breakthrough to please people who don’t like the traditional ‘pat down’. But judging by the sample images, it looks like it’s important to be confident about your choice of underpants.

Spokesperson Sarah Barrett says that passengers concerned about the revealing images could refuse to be scanned. That would seem to defeat the object… any potential wrong-doer concealing a weapon, or Wile E. Coyote (no doubt carrying something from the Acme Bomb Company), would immediately exercise that right. You’d hope that they’d then be subjected to the normal rigorous searches.

Reading on, I think I’ve experienced one of these scanners.

They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth

New York, 2005 – the 9/11 atrocities still fresh in their minds – I’m sure I went through one of these scanners to get up to the base of the Statue of Liberty. It surprised me at the time that the security checks to get onto the ferry, onto the island and then into the statue complex were more rigorous than the checks to go up the Empire State Building. Why surprised? Well the Statue of Liberty is out on an island while the Empire State Building is slap-bang in the middle of Manhattan. Whatever the reason, I can sleep safe knowing that I wasn’t wearing y-fronts that day.

Many other blogs and news sources are covering this today, so I’ll be brief. As you’d expect you can get more detailed coverage at edbrill.com and if you’re feeling really brave you can wade through the full announcement letter. For those of you with less time to spare, here’s an overview…

• Oodles of new features in the Lotus Notes client
• Lotus Traveler now supports the Apple iPhone
• Many improvements to Domino Designer, including new LotusScript and Java editors
• Significant improvements to the process of building composite applications
• Simplification of the licensing model, down to two Client Access Licenses (Messaging and Enterprise)
• Domino Designer is now a FREE DOWNLOAD

Notes / Domino 8.5.1 is scheduled to be available for electronic general availability on Monday 12th October 2009. My general advice to anyone is ‘upgrade’.

I’m speaking as someone who recently had to concede that, after more than 10 years with a 150 megabyte mail box quota, I could no longer keep it within the limit every day – I was spending too much time managing the volume, so I had to apply to go up to the next level, 250 mb. Why, in an organisation with a rich collaborative infrastructure, was this necessary? I put it down purely to my change in role – suddenly I was communicating with many more people and there was an increase in data flying around. It reminded me of a slide I sometimes use on less serious occasions, such as the recent keynote at Collaboration University. Entitled ‘about me as an e-mail user’ it explains that I don’t like having a scroll bar in my inbox and I resent anyone who…

• Forces me over my mail quota
• Sends me two e-mails when only one was required
• Marks everything they send as high priority (yes, I know who you are)
• Starts an e-mail with “I know you’re busy but…” – but what?
• Sends me an e-mail and then immediately Samtimes me or phones me to ask if I’ve read the e-mail
• Continues to reply-to-all way past the point where I’ve ceased to be involved or interested
• Only knows how to use PrtSc rather than Alt-PrtSc

So in summary, just about anyone who sends me an e-mail.

A couple of years ago I did a small survey of some of our customers, not big enough or detailed enough to draw any great conclusions from, and asked the question…

In terms of e-mail efficiency what would benefit your organisation the most – improvement in user practises around e-mail, or operational improvements?

71% said user practises, 29% said both, but no-one (0%) said operational improvements alone. So the conclusion is that end users need to be given the tools in order to become more efficient with how they disseminate information, but they also need some clarity about the right tools to use and when.

I believe that we’ve added the right things to the Lotus portfolio to help end users to realise better collaboration and knowledge management – simple things that make a difference. Firstly, think how your typical e-mail user would share a spreadsheet, document or presentation with a colleague (or group of)… we all know the right thing to do is to post it to a collaborative space (which hopefully supports the business activity associated with the content) and then notify people of the content via e-mail. However, most e-mail users have escaped from Utopia via a small hole in the fence, so they’re just going to shove that file attachment in the e-mail regardless of the storage or content revision issues.

That’s why I love the Quickr approach – because it supports the users’ long-ingrained behaviour (shove in the attachment) but at the point of sending it offers to place the file in a document repository. The recipient sees a set of links, and they click to navigate to the content. Simple. So collaboratively we’re doing the right thing, but we haven’t interrupted the user’s normal pattern of work (in my head I’m picturing people grunting like Cro Magnon man did when he spotted a bison wandering across the Paleolithic plains, but instead they’re saying “ugg, file attachment”). The added bonus with Quickr is that you can also take existing file attachments that Cro Magnon man sent to you in the past and offload them to a Quickr place – you can retain the e-mail with the link replacing the attachment.

The other thing I love telling people about is Connections Files. To fully embrace the idea of Connections Files you do have to discard the caveman instincts and post that file… no, not in an e-mail, in your Connections file-space. Yes, I know this goes against years of bad habits, so the important thing is for users to realise the benefits. The first benefit is to other people – you are not contributing to ruining their day by sending that quota-busting spreadsheet. Okay, so you don’t care about their quota, how about a benefit for yourself? Have you ever sent an e-mail with a file attachment and then later someone else wants the file? And then someone else a bit later? This used to happen to me all of the time, but not any more. Rather than having to repeat the process of create another e-mail, type in the subject, find the file attachment in a folder (hmmm, which folder), add an explanation – I just share the file. The file in question is posted in Connections Files and I add another name to the share list. An e-mail is automatically sent, and the recipient grabs the content but doesn’t have to worry about the volume of data. If the file is updated, I simply add the update as a new version and note the changes.

Another great way to share content, in the context of a business activity, is Lotus Connections Activities, but I’ve already covered that in an earlier post.

Firstly, the weather forecast from Kirsty McCabe. Earlier this week she speculated that we would have a mild Winter with no chance of a white Christmas – a pretty safe bet, given the last one was thirty-nine years ago. This morning she said that October and November would be mild with temperatures slightly above average (I suppose that’s what mild means). Given that the forecast for today now differs from what she said it would be on Monday, how much faith do we have in her ability (or that of any weather forecaster) to tell us what the weather will be like in eight weeks time? As Paul Daniels used to say, ‘not a lot’.

And then we have the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. You have to applaud Gordon Brown and his gang for not treating it like an early wake, and for keeping up the pretence that they’ll still be in power this time next year. Mrs Brown, there’s no point in looking at the interior of 10 Downing Street and thinking “we could do with new curtains”. Mrs Cameron will take care of that next year. So I was amused by the comments of the sprightly little political bunny David Miliband who this morning said something to the effect of…

Britain loves an underdog, and sometimes Britain wants the underdog to win.

Let’s put this into context Mr Miliband… Britain loves an underdog when Luxembourg are playing Germany in a World Cup qualifier. We love the underdog when a British player other than Andy Murray reaches the third day of Wimbledon. We’ll cheer for the British guy who turns up for a skiing competition and stands alongside Swiss and Austrian competitors. Labour’s position is rather different – the reason that they’re the underdogs in the polls is that hardly anyone thinks they’re doing a good job or intends to vote for them. So come the general election next year, we’re hardly likely to cheer them past the finishing post like some marathon runner dressed as a smurf who’s taken seven hours but has raised £2 million for a cancer charity. Being an underdog, trying your best and valiantly failing with respect and dignity in a sport is one thing… making a hash of running a country is another.

First thing to do is create a blank composite application. Then go into Domino Designer and add a simple form containing three fields – Following, Followers and Tweets. Yes, we’re going to grab some information from Twitter (at this point IdoNotes, also known as Chris Miller, has become extremely interested).

Open the composite application for editing and drag a Managed Browser component into the empty page. We’ll come back and configure the component later. Then drag in a Notes Document Container, and configure it to open the Twitter details form you created earlier – this is done by editing the component properties, going to the Component Settings tab, and hitting the Browse button next to the Notes URL field. Select Form as the object kind, the current database, and then the name of your form. Click OK to complete the configuration.

Now let’s head back to the web browser component. We’re going to grab details from a Twitter account – you can use your own or anyone else’s, but for this example let’s start with Stephen Fry. Enter http://twitter.com/stephenfry into the address bar and retrieve the page.

On the toolbar above the web page you’ll see a small finger-pointing hand – the tooltip says ‘Toggle DOM element inspection’. Click this on to reveal the elements declared in the document object model, and you’ll then find that moving your mouse around the web page places a blue box around the available elements. Select the number of people that Stephen Fry is following, and the element (id:following_count) will appear in the toolbar. Ensure the action is set to Publish and in the next box declare a new landmark – call it something like sourceFollowing – and click on the cog icon. Repeat this for the number of followers and the number of tweets.

The next part is important – go into the browser component properties and select the Landmarks tab. You’ll see the landmark is set to http://twitter.com/stephenfry – change this to http://twitter.com/* – this will ensure that the data transfer works on everyone’s Twitter page, not just Mr Fry’s. Click OK.

Now head over to the Notes Document Container which contains your form. Click in the first field (named ‘Following’ in my example) and use the toolbar to set the landmarks. Ensure the action is set to Recieve, enter a new landmark name (something like targetFollowing) and click the cog icon. Repeat for the other two fields. You can inspect the generated landmarks by looking at the component properties, but it’s not necessary.

Now you just need to wire the two components together – this can be done by clicking the yellow plug icon of the browser component and using the dialog box to set the wires, but it’s easier to go into the wiring view and drag from browser component to the Notes Document Container component.

As in the previous examples, you can now tidy up, name the components, set the application icon and set the dimensions of the two components. To see this simple and quite frankly rather pointless application (but hey, it’s a proof of the technology) working, simply change the Twitter URL and watch the figures change. Yes, that’s all it does, but I’m sure you can take the basic principle and come up with better uses. Click on the image to see a full-size example.