The Lotus Eater

Mozilla Tab Candy: Notes Workspace revisited - again!

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:57:00 +0000

So, the latest cool Mozilla/Firefox extension is called Tab Candy. Tab Candy addresses the problem of run-away tab inflation in Mozilla. The idea is that you can allocate tabs to ad-hoc arbitrary groupings and view them as tiles in a single flat pane. I'd strongly recommend having a look at the Vimeo presentation on the site (6m40s).

The big pluses of Tab Candy include the following:

Keeps tabs manageable (instead of having 35 different tabs from a day of browsing you might have 5 or 6 "groups" of tabs according to topics).
Group related tabs by topic.
Makes use of Spatial memory - e.g. you always find your Comms tabs (say Gmail, Twitter, Facebook) in a consistent location (e.g. top-left).
Stackable tabs within a grouping.

Tab Candy does look very cool and I hope someone comes up with an equivalent for Chrome (currently my browser of choice). The interface is very intuitive with plenty of drag-and-drop and nice resizing features (you can shrink a grouping and cause the icons to stack - the vid demo proposes doing that with a set of tabs called "Procrastination" ;-). Other concepts include "Persistent" groupings (for - say - web mail, web apps, commonly visited pages) and there are other great ideas in the pipeline (e.g. semantic assessment of Tab Content to facilitate "intelligent" browsing).

However, the thing that struck me from a Notes / Domino perspective was that this is another case where something analagous to the original Notes workspace is resurfacing again. Tab Candy is way slicker than the current Workspace (which is - what? - 18 years old?). However, the key characteristics are very similar:

Flat 2-dimensional space to place tiles that link through to pages/
Arbitrary groupings of tiles.
Drag-and-drop between the groupings.
Use of "Spatial Memory" to facilitate quick access.

So, just like the iPad/iPhone interface we see this concept rising again in another new place. I suspect that there's a lot of the capabilities of Tab Candy (both current and proposed) that could add value to a re-vamped Notes workspace. Things that come to mind include:

Flexible re-sizing of groupings.
Tiles being actual representations of the pages rather than simple icons.
Relating grouping properties (e.g. size of grouping) to importance.
(I'm sure there are others but I want to draw this to a close).

I know that the topic of "reinventing" and "rediscovering" the workspace is something that surfaces regularly in the Yellowverse and Mary-beth Raven and the Notes Design Team have definitely had a bunch of feedback in the past suggesting stuff for the Workspace. So, I guess my key points here are:

Tab Candy provides (yet more) vindication for some of the fundamental principles that can be seen in the Notes Workspace.
But it also shows how much more can be done with this visual approach to grouping links into information.
Both Notes Workspace and Tab Candy have some growing to do but they can definitely make for a great interface into work and browsing.

Loyalty vs. Pragmatism - a Domino Developer's Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:11:00 +0000

It was great (although also a bit strange - I never thought anyone actually read this stuff) to be cited in this very, very interesting (and eloquently put) blog entry. The comments here - like those in Jake's earlier post - tell as much of the story as the blog does - albeit without the beautiful analogy from personal experience. The to-and-fro in the comments starts to sound like a question of whether we should -

Be loyal to the Lotus products that have been our bread-and-butter for so long (and which most acknowledge are as good s they've ever been for development) OR
Acknowledge the declining job-market and the clear strategic moves from IBM that Jon talks about and adjust our skill-set to suit.

In the comments thread this begins to sound like a question of loyalty versus pragmatism. In my world - and I don't think I can be atypical - there is a sliding scale of loyalty. To illustrate the point here's a short subset of items on my personal loyalty scale:

I am devoted to my family.
I follow a sports team.
I drive a battered old Toyota Corolla.
I'm very fond of chocolate.
I listen to the radio in the car.

The loyalty I have to any item varies from case to case:

I cannot envisage anything my family could do that would change our relationship (but acknowledge that some, like Jon, have different experiences - someone close to me has a very similar experience to Jon with her father). Total loyalty 10/10.
Supporting a sports team is irrational behaviour - that's the point. You back a team in order to feel the highs and lows. If you didn't go through the lows then the highs would not be so sweet. It doesn't matter if the other team play the better game and have the better players you acknowledge the opponent's victory and cheer your team the next time out - if you just follow whoever happens to winning then watching sport is dull. So - very loyal but I know it doesn't really matter - 8/10.
The Toyota is a great car but it's fifteen years old. I know it can't go on forever. In the meantime we've bought a Mazda for my wife and kids because it was the safest car in it's class (here in NZ anyway). Eventually I'll need to replace the Corolla and when that time comes I'll look at what's around at the time and make a choice. Somewhat loyal 6/10.
A good chocolate bar is great but part of the fun is trying new flavours. Also, it turns out that a lot of chocolate is grown unethically so I have to be a bit more picky. No worries though - Chocolate only costs a few bucks a time. Minimal loyalty 3/10.
If I don't like what the radio's playing I change the channel. If I hear too many ads or too many treacly R&B puke-fests I clear the channel from the pre-sets. No loyalty whatsoever 0/10.

So the question is, where does my loyalty to Lotus Notes lie on this scale. The factors that enter into that include:

I've been a Notes developer and consultant since 1995.
It's my core technical skill and I've had no training or experience with much else.
I'm in a permanent position with an IBM Business Partner - the partner is across all the IBM brands.
I have good relationships with customers I've worked for in this role and in previous roles. Some are still using Notes and Domino - many are not.
I like working with Notes - there are plenty of new challenges and opportunities to learn.
The career opportunities in Notes and Domino are dwindling - rightly or wrongly the skills are either not in demand or are not going to be in demand.

The result, of course, is that my loyalty to Notes and Domino should be like my loyalty to the Corolla but feels more like my loyalty to Celtic FC. The Corolla has been a dogged workhorse. It's done it's work faultlessly, even stylishly on occasion (no, really) but eventually it's time will come - I will not shed a tear. By contrast my work has been central to my day-to-day existence for almost half my life. Inevitably, I have developed the arbitrary (and not necessarily rational) emotional ties to Notes and Domino that go with supporting a sports team. So the question is, do I trade Lotus Notes in like the old Corolla (when it's time comes) or do I back Notes and Domino to rise again and win the next Old-firm derby against Microsoft (or Google or LAMP or Ruby-on-Rails or Flex/Flash or whatever else)?

The answer to this dilemma, of course, lies in the item on the top of the list. I have an on-going obligation to provide for my family and to do what's best for them. What's the best path for doing that remains to be seen. For now I have a good job and plenty of work to do. Yes - Domino development work. My employers are a good company and if at all possible they will provide me with opportunities to do whatever I feel I need to do. It is in their interests to keep me productive. They are across all of the IBM brands so there may be opportunities in other areas - ideally ones I can do without giving up the "day-job" of Domino.

So, fortunately for me, the Loyalty vs Pragmatism questions is, for now, a false dichotomy. I can continue to be loyal to the good things associated with Notes and Domino while still extending my skills to a broader base. Yes - I will stick with this Corolla while it's running well, but at the same time I think I'll drive the Mazda a bit more too and see where that takes me.

Notes and Domino development. Any future in it?

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:56:00 +0000

Well that last Blog entry was cruelly ironic, wasn't it. Captain prolific, that's me. Anyway, no more false-dawns. I vow now to be lackadaisical and lack-lustre with my blogging. It's the safest way. That said, for all that I write so little I sure to read a bit. This blog is about one of the more compelling (if somewhat obvious) issues facing Lotus developers today.

There is an interesting discussion in progress on codestore.net about the long-term future of Domino as a platform for development.

The gist of the discussion is that the site-owner/blogger - a Domino Web Developer of very high repute - does not see a long-term future in continuing with Domino development, at least not as his only skill-set. He is a self-employed software-developer who has observed more and more of his customers moving away from the Lotus world. He has to think of his family and their future and so he is looking at alternative technologies with a more steady stream of work - primarily Microsoft solutions, Sharepoint and ASP.NET.

For me the key thing to note is the huge number of assenting opinions in the comments (from countries round the world including Australia) - with few (if any) dissenting views. These commenters are honest professionals who are considering their options. They have no axe to grind and no vested interest but they all see the writing on the wall. Most interestingly, some commenters observe that the Lotus technology is the best it's ever been. So this is not about the product but about how it's perceived and understood - Notes and Domino are seen as yesterday's news.

Personally, I see the same things in the NZ market - and I say that with all due respect and gratitude to the fine sales staff where I work, who have done sterling work carving out new opportunities for us here. However, the reality is that we see more and more customers moving to other platforms. Where we are making new sales it's often despite Notes and Domino not because of them - customers who back us as solution providers and trust us to sort out the platform. Indeed, there have been cases where I know our Sales staff have been deliberately "low-key" about the platform in order to progress the opportunity.

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion and one that all Lotus Notes and Domino developers need to keep in mind. I have a friend who worked for years and years in the UK as a contract developer in a product with a steadily waning popularity. He made hay while the sun shone but as a contractor didn't invest in further training or re-skilling. Eventually his UK contracts ran out and he has now returned to New Zealand and been unable to find work of any kind. I, for one, am not keen to emulate him so I will be looking at where else I can grow my skills. The great thing is that there is much in the Domino world that is transferable - HTML, CSS, Javascript and Java being the obvious ones.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of other developers - especially in the Australia/ NZ Notes Domino world.

Non-New Years Non-resolution

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:21:00 +0000

I've never been much of a New Years resolution kind of guy. I've tended to figure that if I'm going to do something I'll do it and if I'm not then I'm not. The arbitrary temporal artifice of it being a "New Year" shouldn't make a difference. Indeed, I suspect I'd take it further and say that if I ever did resolve to do something just because of the "New Year" then the secret anarchist inside me would deliberately blow the resolution just to show how bogus the whole notion is.

So - no resolutions for me. No faux-guilt at Christmas' impact on my waistline and no resulting exercise regimes or diets. No pretense of an improved disposition or decision to be less sarcastic or more accepting. As the man said "Oy ams what oy ams" and if oy ams that way then I'll damn well take responsibility for being that way and accept that I've decided who I am and why should I change just coz Judeo-Christian tradition has completed it's yearly 365 day cycle.

So, with that little rant safely out of the way and now a good two-weeks into the New Year I did think it might be nice to resurrect the blog from the oblivion of disuse. Not a resolution - I assure you - just a practical attempt to get some value out of the $40/year I'm spending on this domain name.

Idea: Profiles for Lotus Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:51:00 +0000

Vaughan was wondering aboutwhat would be the most useful kinds of Lotus Notes templates to include with a Notes / Domino install.

I was giving the question some thought and it occurred to me that a nice, friendly staff contact list could be a winner. Now I know the Domino Directory is meant to serve this purpose - there are fields for phone numbers and position and good stuff like that - but frankly, the Person Document in the DomDir is just not the right place. Any user in their right mind will be put off by all the "other" stuff like Keys for your Certificates and th eLTPA User-name or Encryption settings. And that's just the forms - you don't even want to think about views of Configuration Parameters or Alternate Languages - Gah!

I think we'd be better off with a clearer separation between the "technical" elements of the Domino Directory and teh "user" elements. What I have in mind is more something that has the organisation and contact fields (department, position, phone, email etc), maybe a photo and a chance to put a wee blurb or Twitter-like message to announce who you are. None of the rest of the person document stuff. The database would have a small number of views - People by Firstname, Lastname, Department etc. and that's it. You could also maybe throw one or two of these views into the Notes 8 sidebar for easy access. If the database could update the Domino Directory, too and write your message to your Sametime status then so much the better.

Now taking off my end-user hat and putting on my developer-hat I have to think that this thing really shouldn't be that hard to build - in fact I've actually developed something similar for a (Notes / Domino 7) customer. For the customer I actually kept all the data in the Domino Directory and the new database was just a frameset that opened special views (with a special dialog-box that popped up when you opened the documents). However, that required a modification of the Domino Directory template. However, you could just as easily keep a separate database and just synch the information back to the Domino Directory.

Ultimately, something like this becomes a bit like the "Profiles" functionality of Connections and I suspect that this is one of the reasons we don't see something like this in Notes already. As Peter proposes in the comments to Vaughan's blog entry - we can also have Blog and Wiki templates in Notes but once you have that then suddenly Connections isn't offering that much more than Notes / Domino.

News Flash: Lotus Notes can still be Cool!

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:52:00 +0000

With all this Google Wave hoo-ha it's very nice to be reminded that Lotus Notes can still be very, very cool. Nathan Freeman at Lotus911 has posted a video showing "Bones" a Kiosk-style Notes App for Doctors that surfaces a Notes App (with the Eclipse Client) on a touch-screen with built-in PC. The PC is running a Notes Client but some Eclipse XML-tweaking has allowed all of the Notes navigation baggage to be hidden. The application runs off a Foundation server (for the individual clinic/surgery) which can then replicate back to a central medical records DB. The whole thing seems to be compliant with a whole bunch of important medical communications standards.

However, the coolest part is the UI which just has to be seen to be believed. Check out the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnYIYHjm1qo&feature=player_embedded

and Nathan's comments about it here:

http://www.lotus911.com/nathan/escape.nsf/d6plinks/NTFN-7SUP3M

Warning: Some over-sensitive YouTube viewers (or possibly someone having a joke at Nathan's expense :) have flagged this video as "Adults-only". I can only assume this is because the screen-shots show a cartoon picture of a naked body (this is so Doctor's can indicate visually the site of any medical issue). I assure you the video is totally SFW - but you will need to Sign-in with your gmail/Google Apps account or else get a YouTube account.

Google Wave - Take 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:31:00 +0000

OK - this is my second blog on Google Wave but that's because my first take was based on screenshots and the product announcement. Now I've seen the YouTube video of the presentation and read Tim O'Reilly's perspective. Frankly, while I thought Google's Wave was a big deal before I think it's much bigger now. I've been spending a little time recently looking at Sametime in relation to the new Telephony/UC2 capabilities and it's all looked kinda cool. Now it's really looking very, very humdrum and "old-hat". I guess I'm just a sucker for the latest shiny-cool thingamajig that comes my way :) However, I do need to make some corrections/clarifications from the previous Blog entry.

First up - because this Blog is meant to be Lotus-oriented - I thought initially that it might be possible to cobble something similar together out of existing Lotus functionality. That still might be the case but it's a much bigger ask. What I failed to grasp initially is that the Wave itself is the central entity of this product - it's both process and product. That means that into the mix of IBM product stack stuff we probably need to also throw Activities - a Wave can become a holding-pen for all of the collaboration (of any type) that goes around a particular idea/process/project/activity.

But, even with every single thing that IBM Lotus could throw at this I still don't think it's going to be able to duplicate the Wave. The reason for this is that the Wave has been imagined from scratch. Anything that IBM Lotus put together is going to have the residue of their existing paradigms - and in the case of most of these products that residue runs deep (just look at some of the stuff that's still in Notes to support older implementations - and don't get me started on Websphere Application Server).

Beyond all of that, there is the question of Google Wave's extremely cool set of Web-widgets (plus the various tie-ins to Google gadgets). Some of the most-impressive were:

Drag-and-drop of images from the desktop straight into the Wave in the browser.
Collaborative document editing with six or more people editing the same document real-time - and each one's edits showing up on all of the others' screens. Gah!
Real-time "live" search results across Waves so that you if you tweaked the spelling on one person's Wave entry it would instantaneously appear in another person's Search Results and then (if you tweaked the spelling back again) it would instantaneously disappear.
Contextual spell-checking - the spell-checker "learned" spelling by looking at web-pages so it understood that while been and bean were both correct spellings they were only correct in certain contexts.
Instant-blogging from a Wave.
Real-time language translation.
Tight integration with Google gadgets.
I could go on (and on, and on) ...

All of this webby goodness brings me to the real clincher for why this couldn't be Notes / Domino / Sametime / Quickr / Activities (with Websphere/Connections/DB2 et al. sitting in the background too). Google are able to do all of this because the (in)famous Cloud - and the promise of HTML 5 - was in their minds from the get-go. Notes / Domino (and the rest) just aren't built that way.

The other change to my thinking is the recognition that this goes well beyond Groove as well. All of the above problems with a Lotus equivalent to Wave equally apply to Groove. Possibly the original, pre-Microsoft Groove is closer to the Wave than a Sametime solution. But I suspect that MS have just spent a bunch of time-and-effort tying Groove closer to the rest of the Office suite (including Sharepoint) and all those tie-ins are going to make it even harder for Microsoft to build any kind of Wave-competitor out of Groove. As this commentator at CNet observed the incumbents are suffering the notorious "Innovator's Dilemma" and are now going to struggle.

Now, I'm totally open to the likelihood that I've just been bowled over by a clever demo and a lot of web hyperbole. I can certainly see the barriers to acceptance of this new paradigm in the enterprise. While the technology and the capabilities of Google Wave are totally cool the reality is that the Wave is a brand new paradigm and whether a new paradigm gets accepted or not is not going to be up to the technology (although that has to be good). Instead, the new paradigm has to be a good fit to how people want to do stuff. It's entirely possible that Google Wave will fall by the wayside and be the next Orkut. My gut feel, though, is that this isn't the case - this one could be here to stay and if that's true then those of us working in the enterprise collaboration space need to think about how we're going to respond - close our eyes and look the other way, work our asses off to build a response out of other technologies or embrace the new paradigm and see how we can work with it.

UPDATE: Nathan Freeman from Lotus911 has a very similar take on things. Nathan is a strong advocate for Notes / Domino (although not slow to criticize either) ... and he sees this as a game-changer that totally outflanks IBM / MS in the collaboration space.

Announced: Google Waves - Groove/Sametime competitor

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 +0000

At the Google I/O Developer conference Google have just announced a new product/protocol/thing-a-majig. The service/product is called "Google Wave" and the idea seems to be to allow real-time collaboration in a web context. The sample app (video to come, apparently) is kind of like a combined Inbox/Instant-messaging/Real-time Rich-media or Document Collaboration. But the key to this offering is that it's really about a service with open protocols and APIS. Web-developers will be able to make their own "Waves".

Apparently, Google plan to make Wave available as a protocol and with APIs. They also plan to open-source a lot of it. At present there is a dependency on Google Gears (the technology to move some web functionality to local processing - a bit like DOLS but better ;-) but they're working to make it portable to other environments. It utilizes the power of HTML 5 so it will be dependent on more recent browsers but that's unlikely to be a problem for long. The delivery time-frame has the product as being available later this year.

Waves reminds me of Groove - the product developed by Ray Ozzie (inventor of Lotus Notes) after he left Lotus and before he joined Microsoft. After sitting on Groove for years, Microsoft recently announced they plan to deliver Groove inside Office / Sharepoint.

Potentially, both these capabilities (Waves and Groove) could be in competition with Notes / Domino / Sametime (although Wave doesn't yet really look like an "enterprise" offering). From the little I can see Google Waves doesn't seem to offer much that couldn't be done with Sametime and Domino in a web-context. But we all know it's not about what "could" be done. It's about what is actually done. If these capabilities are made freely available - even with all the privacy-busting, ad-serving fish-hooks inherent to a Google offering - then that makes them even more compelling for end-users. Google's good track-record on usability is also a selling-point (although the ongoing unreliability of their "Cloud" is a potential bugbear).

To compete IBM need to package up some capabilities that will sit nicely as a direct Lotus equivalent to these offerings. LotusLive seems the obvious place to do this (although an Enterprise equivalent - a kind of combined Notes/Sametime/Quickr hosted on Domino servers - would also be nice). Pricing will be critical as Wave seems likely to be free and Groove will be bundled into agressivly priced Office/Sharepoint licenses. The alternative, I guess, is that we - as Domino developers - could start looking to implement "Waves" in our web-applications but that's not such a great option for IBM/Sametime.

Anyway, I'm loathe to say more as I'm probably just talking up a product that hasn't even been released yet. It just strikes me that this is an interesting service and it fits into the broad scope of this Blog.

First Taste - X-pages for Web Development

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:12:00 +0000

OK - so I've been giving X-Pages the once-over. I had to rapidly web-enable our internal Customers database for a CRM demo to a customer. This has been my first chance to try this stuff because - so far - none of our customers have gone to Domino 8.5 (they're a conservative bunch her in New Zealand).

Like many others I had recourse to Declan Lynch's excellent set of online tutorials. I'm still working my way through the process so the following is just not intended as any kind of considered response or detailed analysis - more my unordered thoughts as I deal with this stuff.

Something to get your head around is that your web-app really needs to be "All X-pages" or "No X-pages". There's not really any room for a half-way house (without massive duplication of effort).
X-pages are built up from Controls. There are a bunch of standard Controls and you can also build your own "Custom Controls". This gives you your modular, reusable code (similar to the way we'd use Sub-forms in "old-school" Domino web development).
There's been a bit of work to tie the page to a consistent CSS model - there are even some re-usable CSS "Themes" you can use. The OneUI theme (used in the tutorials) is OK but it will be an interesting exercise to see how easy it is to work up your own Theme for appropriate corporate branding.
X-Pages let you cobble together web-pages using these controls: Views and forms can be wrapped up as data-sources and then used wherever you need to pull some piece of data. It's a lot like JSP.
There's a palate of web-widgets (standard Controls) that you can drag into the X-page - tabbed tables, panels (effectively Divs), Repeats (iterators) and paging controls - that kind of thing . These are quite cool but if you've been doing web-apps for a while you probably have a similar set of web-components that you use anyway - already sitting in sub-forms or Script-libraries/Style-sheets etc.
X-pages conform to the DOM much better than traditional Domino Forms/Pages. You're able to write values to the attributes of all of the DOM objects. What's more, almost all of those attributes can be computed - generally using Server-side Javascript.
All of the above is assembled sort-of behind the scenes (but you can view the source) into an XML schema that defines the page.
X-pages seem to be an attempt to pull together and "normalise" a lot of those Web 2.0 "hacks" that Domino developers have been doing with Pass-thru for a while now.
The IDE can be kinda clunky - the auto-complete was forever catching me out (I'd end up with lots of extra close-quotes and close-brackets). You alternate a lot between "Design" and "Source" tabs but neither one is quite as useful as it should be. When you maximize the X-Pages window you can't see (or drag up) the pane with the Properties/Events areas (where you write the attributes or the computed bits-and-bobs).
The idea of SessionScope variables (variables that span the entire web-session) seems like one of the most powerful tools with X-pages.
The server-side Javascript is exceedingly cool. It's kind of like a funky hybrid of the best of Javascript, @Formula and LotusScript. If you're familiar with the Domino Object Model then you'll probably get the notion very fast. As far as I can make out there's about a 100% match with LotusScript (if a method exists in LS then it'll be in the Server-side Javascript).

So, the guts is that X-Pages are cool and probably where Domino web-development is going to go. However, for experienced Domino Web developers its potentially a solution looking for a problem. I've yet to see the key piece of functionality that X-pages solve that I previously had no answer for (although session variables and Server-side Javascript both come close). The IDE needs a bit of work but that's probably coming. The biggest problem for me is that I've got no-one using Domino 8.5 so in the meantime I'm commited to doing web-development in my traditional manner. Every time I do that I'm entrenching my old techniques further because that customer isn't going to pay to get the whole thing re-done in X-pages when they upgrade to 8.5 (no matter how much I want them to).

I know that X-pages are coming for the Notes client - is this slated for 8.5.1 or a later relase? When that happens things will start to get very interesting. Will there be total fidelity between X-pages for Notes and for the web? Can we finally just develop one app that's going to work seamlessly across both paradigms? (seems unlikely). Interesting times are definitely ahead.

Once I've completed the exercise and gotten my head around this stuff better I'd like to post a more reasoned response. That said, just getting all my thoughts out there (well most of 'em) has still been a useful exercise for me.

This is my blog ...

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon Inkson) — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:21:00 +0000

Hi People (real or imaginary),

My name is Gordon and I'm an alcoholic a Lotus Software specialist. More specifically, I am an IT professional working predominantly in the Lotus collaboration space as a consultant for New Zealand's largest IBM Software-specialist Business Partner.

Let's face it - I'm a Lotus Notes guy. Sure, I know a bit about all that other great stuff - Sametime, Quickr, Connections, LotusLive and the rest of it (even portal, dare I say it) - but my background has always been Lotus Notes and Domino (all the way back to R3). I can (and do) cut code for lotus applications for the client and for the browser. I use LotusScript. I write @Formulas. I do a fair-bit of CSS/HTML/Javascript. I've been known to develop with AJAX, dabble in the Java world and write database-integration code. Don't tell my boss but I even know a smidgeon-ette or two about Domino Administration. Lotus Notes (and Domino) is what I do.

Over the years I've learned some stuff (though not nearly enough I hear my customers thinking) and more importantly I try to stay up-to-date with what's happening - with Notes/Domino, with Lotus, with IBM, with collaboration generally, with the industry, with the world and the WholeSortOfGeneralMishmash (WSOGMM). All of this leads me to have what I can only call "opinions" and "ideas". I don't like 'em - heck, I'd rather be thinking about my kids or Celtic's prospects in the Scottish Premier League - but there they are and nothing's gonna shake them (short of six-to-eight shots of medicinal single-malt).

This blog, then, is a marginal attempt to find a vaguely useful outlet for those terrifyingly banal thoughts and concepts that pop, uninvited, into my mind in the course of my job as an IT guy. If it's any use to you (if you even exist) then all well and good - if not, well tough-cheese - no-one made you read this. Worst case it gets my thoughts down on t'web. Some likely topics for upcoming blogs include the following:

Why I love Lotus Notes and Domino
Why I hate Lotus Notes and Domino
X-pages - love 'em or loathe 'em you can't escape 'em
Microsoft described in just six words - Microsoft. Microsoft-microsoft-microsoft. Microsoft? Mirosoft!!!
What if there were no Lotus Notes and Domino

(But don't hold me to those - I may not be able to think of anything ;-)

If I come up with anything useful like tips and tricks I'll try and pop them down here but hells bells almost everything I know came from other people's blogs (look to your right - they're all listed there. Thanks Jake, Nathan, Andre and Bob). However, I'll let you know if anything crops up. I thinks that's all for now - hopefully the next post will have had a little thought behind it and not be such a meandering ramble. Toodle-pip!

Why do I blog? My boss said I should (Thanks, Ant :) - reason enough, I think you'll agree.