Lotus Knows how much geography matters

I was very excited when I read the announcements by IBM Lotus at the IamLUG event last week about the Lotus Knows marketing initiative being kicked off soon (late summer). I have been outright about the lack of initiatives from IBM previously (Lotus: We’ll give you the air cover you need! Humbug, I say! Humbug!) so I’m going to hold my breath and see what actually comes out of the campaign and what the message is going to be. The announcement mentioned it was going to be a global campaign which us here in non-USA would love to see. Besides living in non-USA I’m unfortunately also in a small market if you take Denmark alone. The Nordics is probably easier to spot on a map but hopefully by addressing Europe some of it will affect us here. I’m for sure going to do what I can to make sure the campaigns stops by Northern Europe as well.

Will IBM and Lotus ever turn into stealth bombers flying in perfect formation? I’m not sure and I’m not even sure that’s the desired goal. I would however love to see more awareness brought to the Lotus brand and maybe make sure the analogy is a Hercules transport plane rather than the Hindenburg. It may not be lean and advanced and maybe we don’t have an full fighter wing but we know we can trust it and it’s there to help us with air cover and at least call in some guys that can help us win the battle.

If you do not get the reference check this post out: LMAO – Air cover as provided by leading software companies

LotusScript.doc v2 beta is eminent

Just a quick note to inform you who are interested that a LotusScript.doc v2 beta is eminent. It’s currently out at two select people who are stress testing it and feedback is great. Performance seems to be a major selling points among a brand new engine entirely in Java. A few more adjustments and a public beta should be ready. Follow @lsdoc on Twitter for updates.

Domino Server Extensions: RunJava or Eclipse Plugins? – PLEASE GO VOTE!!

A little while back I mentioned that Bob Balfe was inquiring about Domino server extensions in Java and whether it was of interest to us as developers (JavaAPI for Servertasks – Documented and Supported). Interesting? Are you kidding me? It would be VERY interesting.

Now Bob in his blog post “Domino Server Extensions: RunJava or Eclipse Plugins?” is asking which extension mechanism we would prefer so PLEASE GO VOTE! This is really important and would make the Domino server much more approachable and much easier extensible.

JavaAPI for Servertasks – Documented and Supported

It is very seldom that I feel so strongly about ideas in IdeaJam that I feel they are worth promoting further but this time I have to make an exception. I read a post on Bob Balfes blog about writing server addins and Domino server extensions as Eclipse plug-ins. How crazy and exciting would that be!! The possibility of developing truly cross platform extensions would be beyond words. And coming from a company that actually develop server tasks I can attest to the problems incurred by having to compile for Win32, Win64, AIX, Linux, Solaris, iSeries and zSeries. It’s inzane!

So head on over to IdeaJam and wrote for it – please!!

JavaAPI for Servertasks – Documented and Supported (login required)

Calendar-Driven News Feed and Routing Service

Found the Calendar-Driven News Feed and Routing Service on alphaWork and it looks interesting though it requires some infrastructure to try out (“For installation, user needs to deploy the BPEL process and other service modules to a process server such as IBM WebSphere Process Server on the server side; and Calendar, Map and UI modules to a Web server such as Tomcat on the client side.”)

[Calendar-Driven News Feed and Routing Service is] an intelligent life assistant tool driven by Lotus Notes Calendar that provides various services that ease business life.

Calendar-Driven News Feed and Routing Service serves as your personal assistant tool to integrate the following services that ease everyday business life.

  • Google Map Service: When you have an appointment, it will draw a map of your destination, as well as a driving route.
  • News Service: It will retrieve various kinds of latest news based on RSS feeds. Weather Forecast Service: It will retrieve the weather information of your preferred cities.
  • Stock News Service: If you are interested in several stocks, it will retrieve real-time detailed information about the stocks such as the current price, then generate reports, and provide updates at intervals.
  • Notes Calendar Service: It will retrieve and display your daily calendar entries from Lotus Notes.