IBM can! Pretty much everyone has stopped using Office and has moved to Symphony. There are still rare cases but for the most part I only get Symphony files in my email now.

Interesting article on InfoWorld.

Lotus Symphony, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. It has three well-designed applications, but the suite as a whole is not as capable as OpenOffice or Zoho because it doesn't provide database, communications, or collaboration capabilities. If you handle those in some other way, Symphony could ably take on the big functions of personal productivity: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Symphony Write is especially capable at creating and organizing complex documents -- with a more comprehensive supporting cast, it could be a real competitor in this market.

They seem to put too much weight on database (MS Access), who really uses MS Access on a day to day basis?

I have gotten this request many times to pull the different videos I have posted into one easy to reference posting. I will keep this up to date with the list as I drop them on my blog.

SAP Web application integration video
Lotus Notes and Excel container video
How the Excel component was created
Web and Excel applications integrated
Live Text integration with Lotus Notes
Another Live Text integration with Lotus Notes

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

Composites are a great way to re-use existing assets in your enterprise. In this demonstration I show how composites are used to take three web applications and share data between them. I use some of the new tooling in the Composite Application Editor to have things like side shelf wiring.

I integrate a sample SAP application with eBay search and our internal IBM Blue Pages application (our corporate directory with employee profiles).

It's not rocket science but it should give you some ideas of how applications in your enterprise could be used together.



*Of course any of the tooling or UI is subject to change in the general availability release.
**Remember, I am no George Lucas so don't expect an Oscar for editing or narration.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

I have been playing around with different burger recipes and find it to be pretty fun. One difficulty is making a burger that tastes great but doesn't cross the line and end up tasting like meat loaf. If anyone cares to share their burger recipe with me respond here or send me an email.

Thanks,
Bob

Yes, I am still alive! What a great time off. I should be back to blogging soon. I am working on a cool new demonstration video of the new Notes 8.5 stuff.

That's all I have to say.

It's not often you get to see a hole-in-one in your life time - I have only personally witnessed two. The first one was my cousin Patrick hit a 3 Wood at Pinehaven Country Club in Guilderland New York - it was 222 yards long and it was amazing.

The second one is very special to me because it happened today on the 17th hole at the Skenandoa Country Club in Clinton NY. It was 180 yards and I hit an easy four iron. The hardest par three on the course and I hit what seemed to be an absolutely straight shot to the hole - which in the end I realized it was. The ball hit about 8 feet short, bounced once and rolled in. I was so shocked, my father says "it's in!", and my immediate response was "yeah right". I still have the entire flight of the ball ingrained in my head. I am still amazed with my new Ping Raptures and hitting a Titleist Pro V1 just made it all better - a hole-in-one with style.

To anyone who golfs this is up there with the greatest achievements for a casual player. Given this was the 17th hole and it was my second worse round of the year, I still can't believe it even happened. It was so fun sharing this with all the members and the pro in the club house after. Oh yeah, Billy - thanks for lunch!

If you use Firefox you can install the XPather plugin to see how it can be used to figure out the xpath for a text selection.



Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

One of the things we have in the new Web Application Container in Notes 8.5 is xpath support. I think people should start getting familiar with it (if they aren't already). This makes web application integration with other kinds of components very powerful. You can now define output properties for just about any text on the screen.

Check out this tutorial Brett D. McLaughlin wrote:

Locate specific sections of your XML documents with XPath, Part 1


Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

I love it. Celtics up 2 games to none.

I try to read almost every post on PlanetLotus but lately it has gotten hard to get to all of them. So I now rely on the title of the post and the tool-tip to see if it is something worth my time. I also look at the number of eyes that have clicked the link. Anyway, Theo has a pretty good posting and I don't think many will disagree with him. One comment he made:

I have nothing against composite apps, mind you, but you should use them when needed, not because its the 'new' way of doing things.
Notes is RAD, so let's keep it that way !

You might think since I am the lead for comp apps that I would disagree with him but I don't! I completely agree with him. The bottom line is, composite applications are for integration of components from different technologies and components from different databases. If you do not need this then don't do it! The only thing I would recommend is if you want to think about the future then you might want to consider making your views, docs, etc accessible by other comp apps by making them components up front. Otherwise, design your applications in Designer. If you have god access (designer) to the databases in question then you might want to question whether composites are worth it.

I get this exact question all of the time. My recommendation is to use composites when it makes sense - otherwise use the normal Notes design architecture. Comp Apps give you an easy way to get your new Java plugin components working with and speaking to Notes components.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

Ok, let me preface by stating this Excel container did not ship in the Notes 8.5 beta. If you seriously want it in the end product please let me know because I think it is slated as a web delivery for the moment.

This is a very basic demo and it still uses the POC landmark editing UI, however I think you will get the point in the end. It shows you how you can define properties and map those properties to cells and cell ranges in a spreadsheet.

Once again, no programming!

click image for video



Tags: Lotus Expeditor : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications