Domino Unplugged

Thoughts of Boston - but not there ...

Just a quick note to all those either already in or heading to Boston for the ADMIN/Lotus Developer shows this week ...

First time in ages but I won't be presenting there this year ...

Makes me sad, not only because it's a great conference (conferences?) and so many friends will be there, but because Boston is such a great city and I've always looked forward to my yearly visit.

So, those of you there - enjoy!

Meanwhile, next schedule appearance will be at the Rational Software Developers Conference in about a month - perhaps I'll see you there!

- Rob

Everyone’s Twittering

Okay, maybe not EVERYONE, but it sure is interesting to see the Lotus community alive on Twitter. If you're not aware, Twitter is sort of a micro-blog site. You get 140 characters to answer the question "what are you doing right now." Many of you may have been aware of the extensive Twitter netwokr during Lotusphere - all sorts of "tweets" about great sessions, booths that were 'don't miss', where the parties were.

This is, I'm sure at least in part, to the plug in for the Notes 8 client that brings Twitter right into the client:


Everything you need to know about TwitNotes can be found HERE.

Alan Lepofsky added an entire page devoted to Twitter utilities on his blog a week ago.

And, as of today, I added a twitter badge to my site:



If you're interested, incidentally, this is 'Twitter Balloon' and you can get it HERE.  Whether it will stay is anyone's guess ... but we'll try it out for a while.

If nothing else, do check out Twitter. You can find me at http://twitter.com/rwunder

- Rob

PlanetLotus highlights broken RSS feed

First off, hats off in general to PlanetLotus.org. I assume you've been there and seen the 'blog aggregator' site. If not, please go check it out. I'll wait.

Okay, you're back?? We'll continue ...

I know that Ed Brill had a post recently talking about how much traffic PlanetLotus is driving to his site. If I understood correctly, Ed said that 12% of his traffic comes from PlanetLotus.

Well, 12% ain't nothing!

A recent snapshot of "Traffic Sources" for DominoUnplugged shows that PlanetLotus is the #1 referring site, and it is responsible for 44.75% of the traffic that isn't 'direct' (people coming directly to the site via bookmarks or typing in the address). (Just for the record, PlanetLotus is the #1 referrer, lotus.com is #2, and Ed Brill is #3, with ibm.com and google rounding out the top five ... )

That is, needless to say, a substantial portion of the traffic generated around here. So, thanks PlanetLotus and, specially, thanks to Yancy Lent, the mastermind behind PlanetLotus.

Which brings me to the point - I noticed that user visits here had dropped, and in particular PlanetLotus referrals had dropped significantly. Was curious why. So, I checked with PlanetLotus, and they reported that I hadn't updated the site since March 19th. Obviously, I had, so something was amiss ...

Turns out that there was an "illegal character" in my RSS feed for one entry (the one about the Peeps), so Yancy's site was unable to parse the RSS feed which is what feeds PlanetLotus.

Not entirely clear what was wrong, but I went back to that entry, did some reformatting and some other diddling around, and - poof - suddenly an additional two weeks worth of entries have shown up over at PL.

So, thanks, Yancy, double now.

And, if anyone else was having RSS feed issues ... sorry 'bout that!

- Rob

News Notes XM on your BlackBerry, WinMobile 6.1, MS Surface for Devices

Things in deviceland keep getting more interesting with each passing day.

For example, Windows Mobile 6.1 has officially seen the light of day. It is just a 'point' release, so there's not a tremendously long list of new features, but true, threaded SMS messaging might be worth the upgrade. Engadget has a list of affected devices and supporting carriers ...

But, maybe that's not exciting enough.

Well then, Bunky, maybe XM Radio on your BlackBerry will fit the bill. Gear Diary sums it up nicely:

XM Satellite radio is bringing 20 of their popular music channels to your Blackberry. The service was previously available via AT&T subscription ($8.99/mo). This newest release adds general availability for supported models no matter who your carrier is. For $ 7.99 month ...

The entire press release from XM can be read HERE.

But, maybe you're still thinking this is a slow news week.

Well, remember all the hoopla about Microsoft Surface  back a couple months ago? What if I told you it was coming soon to an AT&T device near you? Read THIS and  THIS (both from the oddballs at Engadget).

Yeah, I knew you'd be excited about that!

- Rob

RIM adds BlackBerry support forum

Just to make official note ...

Yesterday, RIM announced a new  Blackberry online forum: The Blackberry Support Community Forum. Will be interesting to watch as the forum evolves - one of the interesting elements is that forum entries can be 'tagged' - and you can do a typical search or click on the tag cloud.

This 'official' forum (which is apparently going to be a peer-to-peer support forum, although RIM employees will "participate from time to time") will join several long-eastablished BlackBerry online forums:

• Blackberryforums.com
• CrackBerry.com
• Howardforums.com
• Pinstack.com  

and our personal favorite: NotesBerry.

And this is NOT an April Fools joke ...

-  Rob

April Fools Redux: Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks

A final note for April 1, 2008 ...

Lifehacker has published the Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks.



Personal favorite (above): customizing your printer's console message so it says "insert coins."

- Rob

April Fools Spoofs: HandSolo and more

There were a number of pretty good April Fools pranks today - among them the "Custom Time" feature that GMail was offering (where you could 'turn back' the timestamp on mail you'd sent so you could still be in time for something you were already late for [e.g., submit by midnight when it's already the next day]).

I think my personal favorite was the HandSolo mobile phone: there's no device, no nothing. Just your hand. This spoof was very elaborate - Qualcomm (we think) even created a special domain and web site for the 'new device'.

Another major technology spoof that circulated today - Sprint introduced wireless electricity: WiJuice.

Ahhhh, springtime ....

- Rob

Wow - THIS is a BlackBerry

The gadget blogosphere has been buzzing the past two days with 'spy shots' of the BlackBerry 9000.

You can see details at a variety of places like Engadget or Gear Diary, but take a look at this:



Looks like some really interesting stuff coming down from Waterloo ....

- Rob

Off Topic: Worst Foods of the Year

Having nothing to do with Notes or anything else (even Peeps) -

Stumbled across this today:

10 Worst Foods of the Year

Just for the record, several of these are old friends here in Unplugged Manor, but kinda scary to know that the KFC "Chicken & Biscuit Bowl" has 870 calories - and it only made #5 on the list. Number one? The Carls Jr Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger. A whopping 1,130 calories ...

Yikes!

Holy carrots and celery sticks, Batman!

- Rob

Brill does Motown

Ed Brill hit the Motor City Wednesday, paying a visit to the Detroit Notes Professionals.

The meeting, even aside from Ed's visit, was great.

The one and (thank God) the only Brian O'Curran, back with Lotus sales after "a tour of duty" with the Rational brand, brought his unique presentation style to the whole matter of the Notes 8.0.1 client ("can I get an Amen!?!"). He was hilarious - yet managed to convey a ton of information about the changes in the new client release.

Quote of the hour - at one point, making a statement about how you could now do practically everything you might need to do within the notes client itself (presentations, Sametime, email, activities, etc.), Brian declared himself "deliciously Microsoft Free."  Brought down the house ...

Obviously having grabbed the short straw in following Brian was Intier's Margaret Callaghan, who borrowed a few pages from the Alan Lepofsky playbook and did a number of Alan's favorite tips and tricks. (My personal favorite was the "map address" trick for the address book which Alan had mentioned quite some time ago on his site and which I 'borrowed' more than once ...)

Well done, Margaret - Brian was a tough act to follow.

Then right after lunch, Ed came and did a great presentation that dovetailed nicely with Brian's - Ed talked philosophy and roadmap - where the products have been and where they're going, and closed with a number of competitive examples that will probably come in handy to a number of those in attendance. It was interesting to hear him talk about the $81 Million USD that IBM hopes to save by not renewing Microsoft Office licenses for everyone in the corporation ...

You may have noticed that Ed gave only a passing note of having been at the user group meeting in his blog. He deferred to "Twitterings" that Ray Bilyk and I were doing as Ed (and Brian and Margaret, for that matter) were presenting. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's sort of a 'mini blog' tool ... and Ray and I were sort of doing a play by play. You can check Ray's Twitters out HERE, and mine out HERE. In both cases, looks for the "Tweets" from Wednesday, March 26th, 2008.

Thanks for coming to town, Ed - look forward to your next visit!