Month: October 2013

Early Look at Connect 2014: Drumming Up Interest

If you wanted to generate interest in something, anything, one good, proven method is to show the product.  And so it is with Connect 2014.

The abstracts are pouring in, but here’s an early glimpse of a few that may land on the agenda. The deadline is just around the corner, so put on your thinking caps and sharpen your pencils — so to speak.

Messaging and Collaboration

Messaging and Collaboration Roadmap — A Vision for the Future

What’s New in Notes and INotes 9.0.1 Social Edition

IBM Sametime 9: From On-Premises to Mobile, Cloud and Beyond

IBM SmartCloud

IBM SmartCloud: The Road Ahead for Social, Mobile, Meetings and Mail

Getting Beyond Theory and into Practice: Deploying Mail and Social Business in the Cloud

Growing Your Business with SaaS: Cloud Options for ICS Business Partners

Social Software

What’s New with IBM Connections and Connections Mobile

IBM Connections 4.5 Administration Jumpstart

Customizing and Extending IBM Connections

More >

Okay, we have some session topics. However, if you are a long time delegate at Connect/Lotusphere, you know that those sessions are all presented by IBM. Who, from IBM presents them, is irrelevant.  These are standard, first or second day sessions.

Not what I was expecting, especially in a post that may help decide if you will approach the budget level manager for approval to attend.  Realizing that abstracts haven’t been approved, so that a better agenda could be published, IBM must have an idea of the key sessions/speakers that will be presenting. That seems to me to be the proper items to promote, not the same old sessions (updated with current information).

Finally, it doesn’t look like they have any problems, right now, with hotel space.

LinkedIn Intro – Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

From the LinkedIn blog:

Last year, LinkedIn acquired Rapportive, an email company that I co-founded. Since then, we have been furiously working together to build a groundbreaking mobile product: LinkedIn Intro.

The growth of mobile email is simply staggering. Four years ago, less than 4% of emails were read on mobile. Today, half of all emails are read on a mobile device!

So we set ourselves the challenge: bring the power of LinkedIn, and the technology of Rapportive, straight to the Apple Mail app on your iPhone.

We call it… LinkedIn Intro.

As friendly and useful as that sounds, many security firms are recommending against this new service. One such example is Bishop Fox. From their blog:

Intro reconfigures your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad) so that all of your emails go through LinkedIn’s servers. You read that right. Once you install the Intro app, all of your emails, both sent and received, are transmitted via LinkedIn’s servers. LinkedIn is forcing all your IMAP and SMTP data through their own servers and then analyzing and scraping your emails for data pertaining to…whatever they feel like.

“But that sounds like a man-in-the-middle attack!” I hear you cry. Yes. Yes it does. Because it is. That’s exactly what it is. And this is a bad thing. If your employees are checking their company email, it’s an especially bad thing.

Why is this so bad? Here’s a list of 10 reasons to start:

More >

I think I’ll pass on Intro, thank you very much.

(Thanks for the link, Chris)

Good news: Custom Builder Uses XPages, Wins “Vision Award”

Perhaps most impressive is the fact company owner Eric Rose himself served as the software architect and teamed with a certified Lotus software developer for Project Framework. Using IBM’s Domino Designer, which includes the IBM XPages toolset for creating a Web 2.0 experience across different platforms, Rose can develop Project Framework’s Internet and mobile capabilities.

And for Rose, the customization is never complete. He continues to enhance the application in order to match the changing needs of his project and clients. For example, the use of IBM Notes Traveler enables users to access project documentation on smartphones, with additional pieces of the software being mobilized using XPages.

More >

Open Mic Webcast: External elements that can negatively impact your IBM Domino server

A new Open Mic Webcast on 23 October at 11AM EST.

Join IBM’s Monica Senior, along with several other members of the IBM Domino team as they discuss External elements that can negatively impact your IBM Domino server

During this webcast, we will cover five external elements that can cause your IBM Domino server to crash, prevent the server from starting, and/or affect the server’s performance. These external elements include but are not limited to operating system configurations and applications that are seemingly harmless, but we will cover how their settings negatively impacted IBM Domino servers.

After a presentation attendees will be given an opportunity to ask questions. Throughout the event, attendees will also be encouraged to comment or ask questions through our SmartCloud meeting web chat. Join us for this interactive, educational, lively session.

Follow highlights from these Open Mics live on Twitter using #ICSOpenMic or following us on Twitter @IBM_ICSsupport.

More >

Let’s see if we can guess the “five external elements.” I’ll start:

  1. DNS
  2. Network
  3. Users
  4. Halon
  5. Alcohol (as consumed by either/both the Administrator or the Developer).,

Please, please believe in us. Please.

To our valued customers, partners and fans:

You’ve no doubt seen the headlines about BlackBerry®. You’re probably wondering what they mean for you as one of the tens of millions of users who count on BlackBerry every single day.

We have one important message for you:

You can continue to count on BlackBerry.

More >

Hopefully, for the long run, but I think there may be doubts.

Whirlpool Corporation: Goodbye IBM Notes

Google Apps scored some enterprise street cred on Monday by announcing a huge customer: Whirlpool.

Whirlpool has 68,000 employees and 66 facilities around the world who will standardize on Apps, Google’s cloud email and office productivity suite. Whirlpool did not ditch Microsoft Exchange or Office for Google. It was using IBM’s Lotus Notes, its CIO Michael Heim told the Wall Street Journal.


This news item is very short on details, unless you are interested in the Google versus Microsoft battle. In fact, all of the articles that I could find on this topic only talk about Google and Microsoft. It makes you wonder if IBM even has some sort of cloud service. If it does (and it really does have a cloud service – why don’t you Google it?), it is never mentioned in these types of articles.


Sixty-eight thousand employees is rather significant, meanwhile in Armonk, NY, IBM says that IBM Lotus/Domino is a growing product. It’s really hard to define “growing” as the contribution of IBM Lotus/Domino is rolled into several other products in their portfolio. I’m sure IBM has lined up a company to take Whirlpool’s place, and then some, in order to continue the growth in IBM Lotus/Domino.


As an aside, there once was a great company in North Canton, Ohio, by the name of Hoover. I’m sure you have heard it. Hoover was sold to Whirlpool. But before that, I was fortunate to assist them with a cc:Mail to Notes migration. Along with the migration, I made some friends at Hoover. One of which has become a very good friend. For that, I am extremely grateful to Hoover (and, I suppose, IBM/Lotus).