Thanks for the post. I have really lost interest in/. over the past year or two because of the bias that shows through slashdotters posts with regards to Notes. Knowing how open Notes is and how it has expanded since IBM bought it, and how much IBM is dedicated to Open Standards, most slashdotters come across as uninformed sheep following the lead and repeating the rhetoric they've heard from others.
Personally, I'll stick to using my setup implementing Domino on Gentoo servers with LTSP clients using Firefox and OpenOffice with their apps served up and replicated via Notes between offices. You can't beat the RAD you get in Notes and the fact that we're serving up the same applications to Notes, web and mobile clients. I'll continue building my environment where anyone in the company can get to their information from anywhere with an internet connection. And/.'ers can repeat the same uninformed, uninspired rhetoric about how bad Notes sucks.
I've always had a fondness for Above & Beyond from www.1soft.com. It's best feature is a dynamic workload balancing tool that prioritizes the items and allows me to give realistic estimates of WHEN I will likely get something complete. It's not free, but you can download a free trial... It's worth a look to understand how nice that feature is.
Osterman Research Surveys
on
Enterprise IM?
·
· Score: 1
Osterman Research has published several studies on this topic. One of their studies from September 2002 indicates that "Among organizations that have adopted a corporate standard, 61% have adopted Lotus Sametime; among these organizations with more than 1,000 email users, 73% have adopted Lotus Sametime." More recent surveys have been conducted, but I haven't seen those results.
Harlene Hayne recently published some of her research that theorizes memory is limited by the vocabulary one has at the time of the event. In essence, when you recall something from your past, you use the words you knew at the time to describe the memory. Pretty interesting stuff. Further description of the work is here.
Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards, but guess what? As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like! While the backend code of Lotus Notes/Domino may be closed, the front end is fully customizable. It supports POP, IMAP, HTTP, SSL, NNTP, LDAP, SOAP, XML, COM, CORBA and more. You can write code against it in scripting languages like Lotus' Function language and JavaScript, a VB like language (LotusScript) that is more OO than VB6 (supports classes and inheritance for example), or write code against it with Java or C. You've got API's into just about everything in Notes as well so you can change whatever it is you dislike.
If you can't give up the Outlook client, Domino supports using the Outlook client against a Domino backend. Granted, native Notes features such as document links do not work in Outlook (because it has no equivalent functionality), but the majority of the features work seamlessly and some are also improved by running against Domino instead of Exchange (security and better support for remote users are two that immediately come to mind).
If you don't want to run an Exchange server or a cluster of NT boxes for messaging, run Domino on practically whatever you want, from big iron to Linux. Let everyone keep the Outlook clients they're used to if it meets everyone's needs, or customize the Notes UI to look and act like Outlook, like the OS Notes developers at www.openntf.org did with Lookout Express.
If you don't like the UI, change it. If a button doesn't work the way you think it should, or you wish it had a different feature, change it. You can.
There is a good argument to purchase computers without any OS and then pay Microsoft for a Windows license so that the license you own obligates Microsoft for support, not an OEM. Guess that option will now be limited only to custom built systems now.
I find this news very disturbing given the recent news that Microsoft was implementing some of the terms of the DOJ settlement prior to being forced. I continue to view this as a PR "good faith gesture" to try to sway judgement in the pending case with the holdout states. Hopefully the judge will keep pure objectivity and not be influenced by these moves.
No. Microsoft and the DOJ have already agreed to settlement terms. Nine states objected to the settlement terms between MSoft and DOJ and have chosen to try to fight for stricter penalties.
Microsoft is simply trying to play for a favorable decision in the nine states case by saying "We are going to play by the rules in the DOJ settlement. We have seen the error in our ways so clearly that we are changing them now even before being mandated to."
I've been using it exclusively for a couple months now and LOVE it. Some features I can not imagine living without anymore include:
1. Ability to block images from servers. I have Mozilla set up to prompt me before accepting an image. I can say "Yes" load it or "No" block it. I see very very few banner ads now. If I come across one, I right click on it and choose "Block images from this server"
2. Tabbed interface. Instead of opening new browser windows, I have several web pages open on different tabs within one browser window. In IE you can right click on a link and choose "Open in new window." In Mozilla, you can choose "Open in new window," or "Open in new tab."
3. DOM Inspector. Document Object Model (DOM) Inspector is a tool that can be used to debug and edit the live DOM (Document structure/HTML/XML tags) of any web document or XUL application.
4. Integrated JavaScript Console and Debugger.
5. Integrated Java Console.
6. Blocking of Pop-up (or under) windows. No more pop up advertisements, surveys, etc.!
7. Blocking of automatic redirects, window resizing, and a mess of other things by scripts on web pages.
8. Cookie management. You can block cookies on a site by site basis, view cookies, remove cookies already on your system (and block them from being set again), and more.
9. Themes. Download or create or own browser themse to give your browser a different look and feel.
10. Fully customizable sidebars. They're similar to bookmarks, but include things like the DOM Inspector, Search results, News feeds, and more.
And in other news, Two Wrongs Make it Right
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 1
Loved two of the quotes I read in this one: RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen said in a statement that Berman's bill was "an innovative approach," adding that "it makes sense to clarify existing laws to ensure that copyright owners--those who actually take the time and effort to create an artistic work--are at least able to defend their works from mass piracy."
"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified.
Clearly RIAA is making an effort to win the intellectual public opinion by making such strong logical arguments.
WalMart's promotion will not eat into M$'s revenue stream at all. People buy home computers to match what they are familiar with at work. Until businesses implement alternate desktop environments, the common person will be too ignorant and intimidated to purchase anything besides what they use at work.
In America we love our freedom but give it all away to Bill Guess file compatibility's worth more to us than our free will "Kick" - Irrational Exuberance
I found it a bit odd that the scanned memo someone pointed to here is a print from an Outlook email client. Maybe the "missing" emails will be randomly sent to 50 contacts from their Lookout! address book by one of the email viruses floating around. I didn't figure the FBI would be running such an unsecure messaging platform. Maybe their systems really are "outdated."
I don't consider myself to be a heavy downloader, but if I look at my recent activities, I wonder if Time Warner thinks I am. I purchase software for download and then download it. I download beta software (50-60 MB per file at times). Oftentimes when downloading large files, things hang or timeout and I need to start the download over. I choose to download software to get it when I want it, but also to avoid the additional fees associated with boxed versions.
In my case, Time Warner could very well be making the additional "boxed copy fee" from me in "excessive download fees." I agree it makes sense to charge on a usage basis (the Toll Booth on the Information Highway). The reaction to this will not really unfold until the limits are known and affect the top 5%, top 25% or top 50%. Prior to that, it's only speculation.
For small companies/small needs (not a lot of servers/content) I use simple Lotus Notes applications. For larger needs, I step up to Domino.Doc.
Security, multi-platform support, workflow, automatic versioning, support for any number of content types, it's all in there.
I looked at some other web content management systems, but the prices for Interwoven and similar were 6 figures or more. On a smaller scale, I was pretty impressed with RedDot, but still reverted back to Lotus Notes for product maturity and cost considerations.
We actually use a modified Team Room template on Lotus Notes to archive our documentation, deliverables, discussions, requirements, etc. Full text searchable (including all the attachments), built in review workflow, and more, all accessible via Notes clients or over the web through our Intranet.
Had not heard that. I'm not fundamentally against the WebSphere integration. A migration to a DB2 foundation seems predictable the more I think about it. IBM has embraced Notes to a large degree as their corporate Intranet is FILLED with Lotus products (Notes, Quickplace, Sametime, KDS all integrated together). And their public web site continues to show more and more Notes applications as the backend.
Lotus has always been committed to backwards compatability - IBM has to know breaking that will kill their client base.
As I understand it, everything in Notes is stored as a Note in the Notes Storage Facility (NSF). Considering this, it seems one could fundamentally recreate the NSF within DB2.
I am forever amazed at the lack of understanding of what Lotus Notes is and does. Lotus Notes already address a conundrum as old as the computer industry itself: how to quickly find and work with a piece of information, no matter what its format, from any location.
"The new technology will unify storage in a single database built into windows that's more easily searchable, more reliable, and accross corporate networks and the Internet."
This new technology simply implements the fundamental structure of Lotus Notes applications. The document-driven database origin of Lotus Notes already addresses the wrapping of unstructured data and adding meta data to facilitate quick and easy organization of related documents. Full text searching of binary data - it's in there. Preservation of one copy of the data with all users accessing that one copy (as opposed to distributing and maintaining multiple copies within traditional file directories) or built-in version control if desired - it's in there.
"Despite advances in Windows' design and networking technology, it's still impossible to search across a corporate network for all e-mails, documents and spreadsheets related to a specific project, for instance. Searching through video, audio and image files is kludgy at best."
"If I'm looking for anything where I interacted with one customer in the last 12 months, I need to search for e-mail, Word documents or information in my database,"
Save your files within Notes databases and I'll retrieve any and all of it in seconds. Guess that's why I do it.
And the fact that Lotus Notes isn't even mentioned in the article is just amazing. Seriously, with Notes' multiplatform support, Object Store foundation for storing unstructured and semistructured data, why aren't people knocking down the doors to implement it? Run Lotus Notes on Linux for less than $500 per server and you've got enterprise level messaging, object store, collaboration and workflow features on an Open Source platform.
I'm running a NetVista at home and a ThinkPad for work. I think ordering them is a pain in the butt, you have to wait a lot longer than with Dell and others to get it, and you'll pay more, but the differences really show when you take one apart.
I've torn apart PC's from Dell, Compaq, IBM, Packard Bell, and some local custom shops. The IBM's are the only ones I've seen that look like they were actually engineered - not simply thrown together. The quality in the boxes shows through when you look beyond the MHz specs and prices.
Again, I like their products, buy them, and recommend them when I can because I believe they are some of the best constructed ones around. Unfortunately, IBM ends up leaving a bad impression when people order them, wait longer to get them, and pay more than they are used to with the Dells and Gateways.
As a developer of small business solutions, an xSeries server running RedHat Linux 7.x, coupled with IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux (Domino Application server, DB2 Workgroup Edition, and WebSphere for $500) is a VERY attractive combination from price, stability, and product maturity standpoints.
It's a good practice to purchase your computers with NO operating system. Dell and IBM offer this now, as will many smaller firms. If you want Windows whatever on it, purchase it seperately. By doing so, Microsoft is responsible for support. You are not bound under the OEM licensing, but under a direct EULA with Microsoft.
how many of my colleagues (in the software development field) still have a Microsoft property for their home page. Many immediately click out of it, but many also eventually get tired of that and instead follow the customize links and customize their homepage on msnbc.
Just cause it's in the OS, doesn't mean its better. Unfortunately, convenience matters most to all but the most vigilant users.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the post. I have really lost interest in /. over the past year or two because of the bias that shows through slashdotters posts with regards to Notes. Knowing how open Notes is and how it has expanded since IBM bought it, and how much IBM is dedicated to Open Standards, most slashdotters come across as uninformed sheep following the lead and repeating the rhetoric they've heard from others.
/.'ers can repeat the same uninformed, uninspired rhetoric about how bad Notes sucks.
Personally, I'll stick to using my setup implementing Domino on Gentoo servers with LTSP clients using Firefox and OpenOffice with their apps served up and replicated via Notes between offices. You can't beat the RAD you get in Notes and the fact that we're serving up the same applications to Notes, web and mobile clients. I'll continue building my environment where anyone in the company can get to their information from anywhere with an internet connection. And
I've always had a fondness for Above & Beyond from www.1soft.com. It's best feature is a dynamic workload balancing tool that prioritizes the items and allows me to give realistic estimates of WHEN I will likely get something complete. It's not free, but you can download a free trial... It's worth a look to understand how nice that feature is.
Osterman Research has published several studies on this topic. One of their studies from September 2002 indicates that "Among organizations that have adopted a corporate standard, 61% have adopted Lotus Sametime; among these organizations with more than 1,000 email users, 73% have adopted Lotus Sametime." More recent surveys have been conducted, but I haven't seen those results.
Harlene Hayne recently published some of her research that theorizes memory is limited by the vocabulary one has at the time of the event. In essence, when you recall something from your past, you use the words you knew at the time to describe the memory. Pretty interesting stuff. Further description of the work is here.
Lindows?
Quite a broad extrapolation I must say. Even to the point of including dollar figures on costs. Amazing!
I'm not worthy
Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards, but guess what? As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like! While the backend code of Lotus Notes/Domino may be closed, the front end is fully customizable. It supports POP, IMAP, HTTP, SSL, NNTP, LDAP, SOAP, XML, COM, CORBA and more. You can write code against it in scripting languages like Lotus' Function language and JavaScript, a VB like language (LotusScript) that is more OO than VB6 (supports classes and inheritance for example), or write code against it with Java or C. You've got API's into just about everything in Notes as well so you can change whatever it is you dislike.
If you can't give up the Outlook client, Domino supports using the Outlook client against a Domino backend. Granted, native Notes features such as document links do not work in Outlook (because it has no equivalent functionality), but the majority of the features work seamlessly and some are also improved by running against Domino instead of Exchange (security and better support for remote users are two that immediately come to mind).
If you don't want to run an Exchange server or a cluster of NT boxes for messaging, run Domino on practically whatever you want, from big iron to Linux. Let everyone keep the Outlook clients they're used to if it meets everyone's needs, or customize the Notes UI to look and act like Outlook, like the OS Notes developers at www.openntf.org did with Lookout Express.
If you don't like the UI, change it. If a button doesn't work the way you think it should, or you wish it had a different feature, change it. You can.
ducky
There is a good argument to purchase computers without any OS and then pay Microsoft for a Windows license so that the license you own obligates Microsoft for support, not an OEM. Guess that option will now be limited only to custom built systems now.
I find this news very disturbing given the recent news that Microsoft was implementing some of the terms of the DOJ settlement prior to being forced. I continue to view this as a PR "good faith gesture" to try to sway judgement in the pending case with the holdout states. Hopefully the judge will keep pure objectivity and not be influenced by these moves.
No. Microsoft and the DOJ have already agreed to settlement terms. Nine states objected to the settlement terms between MSoft and DOJ and have chosen to try to fight for stricter penalties.
Microsoft is simply trying to play for a favorable decision in the nine states case by saying "We are going to play by the rules in the DOJ settlement. We have seen the error in our ways so clearly that we are changing them now even before being mandated to."
Same old same old...
The article can also be found on Netscape's news site here.
I've been using it exclusively for a couple months now and LOVE it. Some features I can not imagine living without anymore include:
1. Ability to block images from servers. I have Mozilla set up to prompt me before accepting an image. I can say "Yes" load it or "No" block it. I see very very few banner ads now. If I come across one, I right click on it and choose "Block images from this server"
2. Tabbed interface. Instead of opening new browser windows, I have several web pages open on different tabs within one browser window. In IE you can right click on a link and choose "Open in new window." In Mozilla, you can choose "Open in new window," or "Open in new tab."
3. DOM Inspector. Document Object Model (DOM) Inspector is a tool that can be used to debug and edit the live DOM (Document structure/HTML/XML tags) of any web document or XUL application.
4. Integrated JavaScript Console and Debugger.
5. Integrated Java Console.
6. Blocking of Pop-up (or under) windows. No more pop up advertisements, surveys, etc.!
7. Blocking of automatic redirects, window resizing, and a mess of other things by scripts on web pages.
8. Cookie management. You can block cookies on a site by site basis, view cookies, remove cookies already on your system (and block them from being set again), and more.
9. Themes. Download or create or own browser themse to give your browser a different look and feel.
10. Fully customizable sidebars. They're similar to bookmarks, but include things like the DOM Inspector, Search results, News feeds, and more.
RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen said in a statement that Berman's bill was "an innovative approach," adding that "it makes sense to clarify existing laws to ensure that copyright owners--those who actually take the time and effort to create an artistic work--are at least able to defend their works from mass piracy."
"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified.
Clearly RIAA is making an effort to win the intellectual public opinion by making such strong logical arguments.
WalMart's promotion will not eat into M$'s revenue stream at all. People buy home computers to match what they are familiar with at work. Until businesses implement alternate desktop environments, the common person will be too ignorant and intimidated to purchase anything besides what they use at work.
In America we love our freedom but give it all away to Bill
Guess file compatibility's worth more to us than our free will
"Kick" - Irrational Exuberance
I found it a bit odd that the scanned memo someone pointed to here is a print from an Outlook email client. Maybe the "missing" emails will be randomly sent to 50 contacts from their Lookout! address book by one of the email viruses floating around. I didn't figure the FBI would be running such an unsecure messaging platform. Maybe their systems really are "outdated."
I don't consider myself to be a heavy downloader, but if I look at my recent activities, I wonder if Time Warner thinks I am. I purchase software for download and then download it. I download beta software (50-60 MB per file at times). Oftentimes when downloading large files, things hang or timeout and I need to start the download over. I choose to download software to get it when I want it, but also to avoid the additional fees associated with boxed versions.
In my case, Time Warner could very well be making the additional "boxed copy fee" from me in "excessive download fees." I agree it makes sense to charge on a usage basis (the Toll Booth on the Information Highway). The reaction to this will not really unfold until the limits are known and affect the top 5%, top 25% or top 50%. Prior to that, it's only speculation.
I'd mod you up if I was a moderator. Good one. Guess that explains why I see so few references to Notes and Novell.
For small companies/small needs (not a lot of servers/content) I use simple Lotus Notes applications. For larger needs, I step up to Domino.Doc.
Security, multi-platform support, workflow, automatic versioning, support for any number of content types, it's all in there.
I looked at some other web content management systems, but the prices for Interwoven and similar were 6 figures or more. On a smaller scale, I was pretty impressed with RedDot, but still reverted back to Lotus Notes for product maturity and cost considerations.
We actually use a modified Team Room template on Lotus Notes to archive our documentation, deliverables, discussions, requirements, etc. Full text searchable (including all the attachments), built in review workflow, and more, all accessible via Notes clients or over the web through our Intranet.
Had not heard that. I'm not fundamentally against the WebSphere integration. A migration to a DB2 foundation seems predictable the more I think about it. IBM has embraced Notes to a large degree as their corporate Intranet is FILLED with Lotus products (Notes, Quickplace, Sametime, KDS all integrated together). And their public web site continues to show more and more Notes applications as the backend.
Lotus has always been committed to backwards compatability - IBM has to know breaking that will kill their client base.
As I understand it, everything in Notes is stored as a Note in the Notes Storage Facility (NSF). Considering this, it seems one could fundamentally recreate the NSF within DB2.
Thanks for the link!
Ducky
I am forever amazed at the lack of understanding of what Lotus Notes is and does. Lotus Notes already address a conundrum as old as the computer industry itself: how to quickly find and work with a piece of information, no matter what its format, from any location.
"The new technology will unify storage in a single database built into windows that's more easily searchable, more reliable, and accross corporate networks and the Internet."
This new technology simply implements the fundamental structure of Lotus Notes applications. The document-driven database origin of Lotus Notes already addresses the wrapping of unstructured data and adding meta data to facilitate quick and easy organization of related documents. Full text searching of binary data - it's in there. Preservation of one copy of the data with all users accessing that one copy (as opposed to distributing and maintaining multiple copies within traditional file directories) or built-in version control if desired - it's in there.
"Despite advances in Windows' design and networking technology, it's still impossible to search across a corporate network for all e-mails, documents and spreadsheets related to a specific project, for instance. Searching through video, audio and image files is kludgy at best."
"If I'm looking for anything where I interacted with one customer in the last 12 months, I need to search for e-mail, Word documents or information in my database,"
Save your files within Notes databases and I'll retrieve any and all of it in seconds. Guess that's why I do it.
And the fact that Lotus Notes isn't even mentioned in the article is just amazing. Seriously, with Notes' multiplatform support, Object Store foundation for storing unstructured and semistructured data, why aren't people knocking down the doors to implement it? Run Lotus Notes on Linux for less than $500 per server and you've got enterprise level messaging, object store, collaboration and workflow features on an Open Source platform.
meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"
in the source header is all I look for!
I'm running a NetVista at home and a ThinkPad for work. I think ordering them is a pain in the butt, you have to wait a lot longer than with Dell and others to get it, and you'll pay more, but the differences really show when you take one apart.
I've torn apart PC's from Dell, Compaq, IBM, Packard Bell, and some local custom shops. The IBM's are the only ones I've seen that look like they were actually engineered - not simply thrown together. The quality in the boxes shows through when you look beyond the MHz specs and prices.
Again, I like their products, buy them, and recommend them when I can because I believe they are some of the best constructed ones around. Unfortunately, IBM ends up leaving a bad impression when people order them, wait longer to get them, and pay more than they are used to with the Dells and Gateways.
As a developer of small business solutions, an xSeries server running RedHat Linux 7.x, coupled with IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux (Domino Application server, DB2 Workgroup Edition, and WebSphere for $500) is a VERY attractive combination from price, stability, and product maturity standpoints.
It's a good practice to purchase your computers with NO operating system. Dell and IBM offer this now, as will many smaller firms. If you want Windows whatever on it, purchase it seperately. By doing so, Microsoft is responsible for support. You are not bound under the OEM licensing, but under a direct EULA with Microsoft.
how many of my colleagues (in the software development field) still have a Microsoft property for their home page. Many immediately click out of it, but many also eventually get tired of that and instead follow the customize links and customize their homepage on msnbc.
Just cause it's in the OS, doesn't mean its better. Unfortunately, convenience matters most to all but the most vigilant users.