79: Why Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 definitely ain’t no Turkey!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:45 — 58.5MB)

Episode 79, recorded on Thursday, 22nd November 2011.  We discuss the new Sametime iOS client, Sametime 8.5.2IFR1, DanNotes, XSnippets and much more

[We’re releasing early this week as it is Thanksgiving in the US, also as the Sametime content is so timely.  Music this week in by Julia Nunes.]

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Gab DavisGab Davis (twitter | company) is Technical Director for the Turtle Partnership in London.  Working with infrastructure, design and support for Lotus collaborative products, especially the WAS based ones and this week is an official writer as co-author of the Sametime Admin Guide, available at Amazon and all discerning locations 🙂
Per Henrik LaustenPer Henrik Lausten (blog | twitter | company) is an independent consultant with his own one-man company in Denmark. He is working with Lotus Notes, Domino, and XPages development and administration based on experience with Lotus Notes/Domino since 1997.

Topics

New mobile clients for Sametime

  • Clients for iOS (now on App Store) and Android (coming soon).  BB client is already there has been since May.
  • Same model as Connections (builds on Mobile web and adds native features). Requires ST Proxy server (WAS based)
  • Needs new version of ST – 8.5.2IFR1 only downloadable today (not yet on public servers it seems)
  • Supports SUT as well

SUT & SUT Lite

  • What are they, and how do they differ?

Sametime 8.5.2 IFR 1

  • Interesting nomenclature – why not 8.5.2.1 or 8.5.3
  • Whats in it?
    • Support for mobile clients
    • Support for Lion, FF6/7, IE9 (not Chrome yet though)
    • Offline Messaging
    • Organisational view of contacts (links to Connections)
    • Firefox 6 and 7 and IE9 support as well as Domino 8.5.3
    • Ability to send entire folders of files in file transfer
    • New browser-based meeting participation on Google Android tablets and Apple iPads
    • New Sametime meeting room features and options such as Active Speaker indication
    • Sametime Advanced 8.5.2 IFR 1 also includes:
      • Offline messaging (doesn’t require server install, just license)
      • Multi-file and folder transfer to individuals (doesn’t require server install, just license)
      • File transfers to multiple people simultaneously
      • Organizational tree view (is all this new?) Yep all new. and all tied to ST Adv licensing

XSnippets

  • Goals:
    • Provide a good looking and easy to use next generation of the OpenNTF code bin
    • Make the code available as open source as learning resource and for internal code bin libraries
    • Document not only what we’ve done but also how we’ve done certain things (project management, design, implementation, code control, etc.)
    • Efforts ongoing to make it easy to add XSnippets into Designer

XPageswiki.com on iOS

OpenNTF dev contest

  • submissions due next week (December 2nd)
  • win an iPad 2, iPhone 5 or Amazon voucher
  • ask participants to contribute XPages source code to help building either 1. mobile and/or 2. social applications. These contributions can either be full applications which can be customized or extended or they can be reusable XPages controls as in the first contest.

DanNotes

  • What is it? When?
  • How is DanNotes different to other LUGs/conferences?
  • What are you hoping for this year?
  • Will any of the content be shared/streamed?
  • What hashtag(s) should people look out for? Is there a conference twitter ID?

Lotusphere 2012 and Connect 2012

  • Gab, what’s your role this year?
  • Anything different in what is expected/desired from sessions this time?
  • Connect in Swan, does that mean fewer ‘traditional’LS sessions?
  • Who’s submitted sessions?
  • Great Geek Challenge is confirmed – we’ll be looking for sponsors 🙂 We have some already

Tips

Darren:
So, Sametime. If you are not using Sametime Limited and are entitled to it then install it and give it to your users.
Gab:
On the Packt website there will be / is a free downloadable chapter of the Sametime Admin Guide on Mobile clients and deployment
Per:
If you’re into XPages, have a look at 8.5.3 and the latest extension library on OpenNTF. Easy deployment on the server using updatesite method (I’m sure your admin will approve this form of deployment) – and plenty of features in the library to speed up XPages development. Also check the upgraded doclib and teamroom templates (that now include OneUI 2.1 and mobile interfaces)
Stuart:
Twitter Widget from Just Nudge

55: You can’t say ‘people are going to shoplift anyway, let’s get rid of the tills’

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:45 — 56.6MB)

Episode 55, recorded on Thursday 9th June 2011, discussing the new IBM Sametime 8.5.2, Domino Express licensing, Quickr connectors and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Gab DavisGabriella Davis (blog | twitter | email | company) is Technical Director of The Turtle Partnership, an IBM Lotus Advanced Busines Partner. Originally a ccMail Administrator, Gabriella has been working with Lotus Collaboration software since 1993 and today works extensively with the WAS-based Lotus products including Connections. Sametime and Quickr. In addition, she and her company act as primary Domino Administrator for customers worldwide covering more than 400 servers, 30,000 users, and 60 domains.  When she can, she lives in London in a house stocked with 5000+ books, 14 ip addresses and 1 neglected television.
Adam BrownAdam Brown (blog | twitter | company ) is a Director at ISW, a focused IBM Premier Partner in Australia that operates across the full IBM Software Portfolio including Lotus, WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, IM, and Business Analytics (Cognos). Adam is the Technical Director for the company and is responsible for helping our clients understand where IBM solutions can help them meet their business objectives. Specifically Adam is personally focused around Connections/Portal/Forms/Notes/Domino/TDI/TIM/TAM/Cognos.

Topics

Sametime 8.5.2

  • Shipped last week, a whole week early
  • What’s new?
    • Audio and video through the firewall
    • Audio and video in a browser too
    • Mute your mic in a meeting! (switches camera to the person speaking)
    • Control how much bandwidth is taken up by audio and video
  • How is the upgrade from 8.5.0 or 8.5.1?
    • Can upgrade from 8.5.1 but Gab’s advice would be to build a new environment
    • In 8.5.1 you needed a deployment manager for each server, now have just one for all servers.
  • What issues does it solve?
    • NAT traversal
    • Multiple deployment managers
  • What’s the experience been like so far?
    • Gab has done 4.5 upgrades so far, have worked really well
  • How many boxes are needed now?
    • Can get all servers on one 4way-4GB box now (for pilot purposes)
  • Has Sametime Advanced been updated?
    • Yes, same four features as previously
    • Can connect a Sametime persistant chatroom to a Connections community
    • Now runs on WAS 7
    • Expecting Advanced to be more popular now
  • How about Sametime Gateway?
    • Now runs on WAS 7 and connects to the System Console
    • Dropped the Lotus name, now IBM Sametime

The state of ‘Lotus’ in Australia

  • Some high profile customers migrating from IBM in Aus lately.  Is there still plenty of demand for Lotus development in the geography?

Ed says there’s been issues with the change to the Express licensing

  • Is the PVU/CAL model still relevant?
  • Is it fair that partners and customers try to ‘exploit’the licensing to minimise costs?
  • Could IBM make it easier to transition from one license model to another?

iWildfire has launched

Quickr Connectors for Windows x64 and Office 2010 support!

Announcing ‘Social Connections’

  • The first IBM Connections user group
  • Based in the UK initially, but would love to do events in Europe and even further afield, perhaps tacked on to national LUGs
  • Thanks to The Salvation Army for providing the location and to all those that have helped so far.

Tips

Darren:
Completely off topic (and non-controversial) an excellent non-technical book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser. Saw him interviewed on the Daily Show a while back. Has some interesting plays on why cities are “greener”
Adam:
Xmarks. If you work across multiple computers/devices/vm’s etc then Xmarks is awesome way of synching your browser bookmarks. Very neat.
Stuart:
Pixelmator – Photoshop lite for the Mac. Great app, layers work well, much more intuitive than PhotoShop, and much much cheaper! 17.99GBP in the App Store.

52: Squishy Peas

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17:43 — 71.3MB)

Episode 52, recorded Thursday 19th May 2011, discussing a year of this show, Sametime 8.5.2, UKLUG, the Exceptional Web Experience conference, new XPages Application Server license and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Lisa DukeLisa Duke (twitter | company) is Business Development Manager for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc. (also known as STS), an IBM Lotus business partner specializing in collaboration, mobility, and virtualization.  STS also resells IBM System X hardware and related storage.

Topics

This Week in Lotus is a year old:

  • Have we enjoyed it?
  • What have been the main topics:
    • May 2010: LUGs and the launch of the iPad
    • June: decline of RIM, Radicati – Notes/Domino to have 266m seats by 2015, Notes App Store
    • July: IBM Named Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Platforms Software, Lotus Protector, Project Northstar
    • August: Death of Google Wave, Directory Independence, Notes/Domino 8.5.2
    • September: Quickr 8.5, NLLUG, IBM Customer Experience Suite, a world without email, XPages Extension Library
    • October: ExtST, new LotusLive, Symphony 3, virtual conferences, Cognos integration
    • November: XPages source control, Connections 3, ILUG, BES Express, Transformer, XPages performance
    • December: Social (inside firewall and Twitter), leadup to Lotusphere, Higher Education
    • January: Live show, lots of Lotusphere! Sandy Carter
    • February: Lotus rebranding, Social Business, Mastering XPages, DDE on the Mac, Design process
    • March: Analysts and developers, User Groups (Australia), Business Inteligence and Social software, RAD
    • April: WCM renaming, RAD again, IBM Champions, Connections 3.0.1, iWildfire
    • May: ISVs, Management of Connections, LotusLive new release
  • Highlights of the year:
    • Episode 7 – Darren admits to enjoying being Rick Rolled (I think I said I liked Rick Astley)…..
    • Episode 6 – Michael Sampson & User Adoption – this is only going to be more important as social software comes into business – I would love to see IT take a lead in bringing in technology and be seen as thought leaders, not as “server janitors”
    • Live show at Lotusphere
  • Guest Stats
  • What did you learn from a year of doing the podcast?
    • Lisa – found out about Dogear Nation & have been keeping up on robot news
    • Stuart – how many great people there are in this community
    • Stuart – how tough it is to keep audio quality high
    • Stuart – how many IBMers are willing to reach out
  • What surprised you most?
    • Stuart & Darren still in shock they got the location of the Lotusphere Party
  • What were some of your favourite moments?
  • Running jokes/themes
    • Stuart asked Darren to be his co-host because he can pronounce Duke? Stuart getting all non-UK surnames wrong
    • Darren panicking about tips
    • RIM on the slide
  • What do you want to change/do differently in Year 2?
    • More people volunteering to be on
    • More customers, analysts and journalists
  • If you could ask listeners for one favour, what would it be?
    • More feedback!!
  • Plan for This Week in Lotus at UKLUGOther News:
  • Stuart & Lisa presenting end of day Monday at UKLUG on social business – if there are no chairs left in Mary Beth and Mat’s session come see us
  • Sametime 8.5.2 released, loses IBM moniker, solves NAT traversal issues
    • New Sametime Unified Telephony Lite
  • Exceptional Web Experience conference in Orlando
    • Shocked at how small compared to Lotusphere
    • No major announcements
    • Previews of Portal 8
  • Ed just announced new XPages Application Server license at DNUG, coming later in the year…

Tips

Lisa: If there are managers & line of business people in your office who don’t “get”social, let them know about the Get Social Do Business podcast I host – fairly non-technical discussion of how people are using social tools to transform business
Darren: Matrox M9120 Plus LP graphics card. You can never have enough monitors, this puppy drives 4!
Stuart: Audio Hijack Pro for the Mac $32, free trial available. ‘Record any audio – three simple words to explain Audio Hijack Pro. Record from applications like iTunes, Skype or DVD Player. Record from microphones, Radiosharks and other hardware. If you hear it, you can record it.’Used on This Week in Lotus!

20: IBM’s reputation, connecting via Sametime and following Tiger’s women

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:34 — 65.7MB)

Episode 20, recorded Friday 1st October 2010, discussing the IBM’s reputation for social software, contacting IBM employees via Sametime and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company)  & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Luis Benitez (blog | twitter) is one of the Social Software Product Managers for IBM effective today.  Prior to this new role Luis was the Lotus Social Software evangelist for the Americas and leads the internal Lotus Social Software community with over 2000 members.
Matt Simpson (blog/podcast | twitter | company | profile) is an Initiative Leader in the IBM CIO Organization, responsible for Sametime deployments in IBM.  His background is socio-technical, especially focusing on collaboration and knowledge management.

Topics

IBM could be bigger than Facebook – Luis Benitez post 

  • Fast Company article ‘Fathoming a new product from IBM via a launch event is like trying to understand the ocean by watching a wave. Nonetheless that was my task, swimming through the presentations and ultimately landing an interview with Jeffrey Schick, IBM’s VP of Social Software. Drenched in the vision Schick shared for the IBM Customer Experience Suite, it occurred to me that IBM could end up being more important to the business use and monetization of social media than Facebook.’
  • ‘Long before Mark Zuckerberg aggregated his Harvard friends online, IBM’ers could find their colleagues in a similar manner. According to Schick, “at IBM 15 years ago, we had a way to look up people to create a globally connected enterprise.” “Today we have approximately 500,000 people within IBM and we do about 6 million look ups a day on pages that look strikingly similar to other social network profile pages with features like blogging and photo posting,” added Schick.’
  • What does the article mean? Is IBM cool now? 😉

Jon Mell is back at IBM 

  • From Headshift to be North IOT Sales lead for Portal, Connections etc.
  • First notable name to rejoin IBM/Lotus after lots of folks have left (Alan Lepofsky, Gia Lyons, Rocky Oliver, Bob Balaban etc)
  • Does IBM need to hire more big industry names?

Luis also has a new role – moving into product management 

  • What prompted the change?
  • What did you learn from doing it in the real world that will now help in product management?
  • There’s a few IBM social software product managers, where will you fit?

Sametime ExtST service 

  • What is it?  http://ibm.com/collaboration is a site on ibm.com through which people can access many ways to collaborate with IBMers.  Within that service, there is a pilot of a way to Sametime with IBMers.  Today, it is an as-is service with minimal support.  Soon, it will be upgraded with refreshed hardware and software as well as full-production support.
  • Some history…
  • So what’s IBM doing about it?  In Q3, we recognized the priority for this service and included it into our Fall Plan for 2010 funding.  This year, we have launched a project to upgrade the service.  We have developed an environment with the latest Sametime 8.5.1 software, and plan to deploy it in Q4.
  • What’s been done so far?  For several years, a pilot / as-is best-effort service has been in place.  Priority to deploy a production service was established in late 2009.  A project has kicked off in 2010 to deploy the new service by end of year.
  • What’s planned?  When will it be launched?  A new service will be online in Q4 2010 which will include a help desk and the ability to use the latest Sametime clients.
  • What does this mean for customers and BPs?  Once deployed, this means that BPs will be able to use the latest code to Sametime with IBMers.
  • Lotus Notes Traveler the “fastest-growing business mobile email platform”- Ed Brill

Lotus Symphony 3 beta 4 pimped on BNET – Ed Brill 

  • Where’s Oracle?
  • How will the forking affect this?
  • What’s next Symphony IdeaJam launched
  • Looking forward to a TWiL episode focused on Symphony 3 launch

Lotusphere Registration has opened 

ILoveLotusNotes.net launch

Tips

Darren: TriStateLUG (October 11, New York City, Keven Cavanaugh doing keynote)

Luis:  Lotus Connections Plug-ins for Symphony: (Org Chart generator, wiki editor, LotusLive Files connector.. and readily available for Symphony 3)

Matthew: Lotus Connections Status Alerts Plug-In for Lotus Notes, available from the Lotus Catalog.

Stuart: Self-registration database for Lotus Quickr and Connections. Enables the request, provision, authorisation and management of accounts for external users of on-premise deployments of IBM Social tools.

11: No offense to techie people, but you are not good at social interaction

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:13:44 — 67.6MB)

Episode 11, recorded Friday 6th August 2010, with a focus on Sametime 8.5.1, IamLUG and Google Wave.

Hosts

Darren Duke (blog | twitter) and Lisa Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Lisa Duke – guest host.  Lisa Duke is the Business Development Manager for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc., where she leads the sales and marketing teams.  She is a frequent contributor to Tips in Two, a website that hosts free training videos for users of Lotus products.  She also is a great supporter of user groups in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Greenville, South Carolina.

Carl Tyler – is the director and founder of IBM Advanced Business Partner Epilio, which delivers applications and turn-key solutions to users of collaboration software such as IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server. Carl has over 20 years of experience with collaboration software, including over 9 years at Lotus Development and 2-plus years at IBM Development UK. At Lotus, Carl was the worldwide knowledge management manager and Lotus Notes R5 international launch manager and various other positions.

Chris Miller – is the Director of Messaging and Collaboration at Connectria, one of Lotus’ largest hosting and management providers for over ten years now.  Chris covers administration across the Lotus portfolio, whatever….  Chris is better known as IdoNotes across every site, even ones not in existence yet.

This podcast is 67.5MB and runs for 74 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants’ own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Topics

Sametime 8.5.1 released – pros, what is better. Is it worth the upgrade?

Post IamLUG “rumor” coverage and news

Google Wave killed

ILUG is a go

Directory Independence in Domino

The technote mentioned as “Chinese” right at the end of the podcast by Carl : http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21442262

Tips

Chris: The Consultant in your pocket screen cast series, new ones coming soon…..

Carl : If you smash your screen on your iPhone, a screen protector will make if useful again until the screen is replaced

Lisa : Attend your local Lotus User Group (LUG). Find them at LotusUserGroup.org and the Planet Lotus events page.

Darren : If you are looking for a job, get on Twitter and follow LotusWatch from Duffbert : since August 1 there have been over 10 jobs listed.