new endeavour/challenge

you know, when trains come into someone's life, he/she'd better be aware and take them. This is what happened to me almost one month ago, when I get a call saying if I'm interested in joining IBM.

Since then, I had some discussions, some meetings, and as of tomorrow I'll be joining IBM Romania. I am leaving a great company, Kepler-Rominfo, where I got the chance to work with great people. I could not imagine a better place to work here in Romania.

But the train came for me and I jumped in. I expect lots (and I mean it) of work ahead of me, and lots of stuff to learn.

This also means that development might be something of past for me but I'll be targeting the architecture of systems, which is something I'm build for.

I will also try to keep this blog rolling, around same ideas you already found here.

good article about Domino vs Exchange

I´ve got this via Steve´s blog and I think its true.

Not trying to start discussions here, just present the facts to your management: Domino is better than Exchange. Read this loud in your office room so that everybody learns: Domino is better than Exchange. When they will ask why, download and show them this pdf article

I agree, it´s written by an ibmer. So what, you still need to install a plethora of MS products in order to compare with Domino.

One last thing I´ve learned these past 8 years: both do messaging, BUT:
- with Exchange, you need to ask: how the hell can I develop anything related to collaboration ?
- with Domino, you need to ask: how the hell the Designer works, what are all these forms, views, documents, ACL, pages, agents ? doh ... can I write Java agents ? yes you can. ok ok, I´ll get back later, so what are the forms and documents ?

The Domino enterprises considering the migration to Exchange are bad managed. The effort does not worth it. The gain is zero, as in null.

If new companies currently running FOSS messaging consider choosing between the two, I have to say that a small shop Exchange (up to 200 users) might beat Domino. Because MS´s politics is: so, you bought Windoze. Get this Exchange as well, it´s free, came with that Windows server you´ve bought.

Happy reading, say it again: Domino is better than Exchange :)

surface

finally, something cool from microsoft : http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Check out their videos, pretty interesting and promising stuff. I wonder if they break any patents with that 30" wide touch-screen (considering the latest FUD launched by MS against the open-source community)

Hmmm, how about a blue screen of death on that screen ? will it lock or reboot if we'll touch the screen on the "dump memory" message ? :)

collection of web 2.0 apps ...

this is how I describe the following site: http://www.webware.com/

I found there many and interesting sites, some of which I've never heard before. There's also a voting session opened for "best of best" in several categories.

Discovered this site via meebo blogging, I'm keeping track of it here.

finally ... my domino blogroll

I finally took the time to identify and compose the list of domino related blogs most useful to me. I preffered to identify a blog by it's author/owner instead of it's title. This is because sometimes titles don't say much - like this blog's title, for example, not very immaginative :) - while a person's name does.

If I've got something wrong in the list please let me know, it'll get changed asp.

this is an echo article of ....

Ed's viral campaign. Let it be viral. Notes 8 splash screen. yummy ...

going back in time ....

way back ..... :) What was I doing in 1991 ?! I think I was doing ... high-school, while the battle between IBM and MS raged. Funny enough, Windows NT was to appear in one-two years :)

Check out this article, written by mr. Andrew Pollack, well known to me, actually, through his Vision for Hire blog/brand

funny clip

curious how things sometimes ties together ...

I was just having a conversation yesterday about Outlook vs. Notes. My friend Florin (best unix/linux/windoze security/networking expert there is) argued that:

- "oh my, in Outlook I just have a button which makes it work offline".
- me: "well yes, in Notes you can make a local replica just as easy"
- "replication ... doh, way too complicated, I just have a button in Outlook which makes it work offline and thats it. No need to know where my .nsf in on server, then create the local replica ..... "

Don't even know when MS introduced the offline working for Outlook (local *.pst file, actually) and I no longer care, I'm using Thunderbird :-P

However, interesting enough, seems that Outlook interface is the standard for messaging these days (even Thunderbird looks pretty much like Outlook instead of Notes) and IBM was listening/designing/recovering the gap on this, with the Notes 8 client.

Via Mary Beth's blog, here's your button for "Notes offline access": it's called Make available offline

Domino 8 ODS - can this be true ?

Today I joined a Domino 8 server to a Domino 6 existing one and I discovered it uses the same ODS (43) as Domino 6.

If you think about it, Domino 4,5,6 have had different ODS (On Disk Structure).
Domino 6,7 and 8 are using *.nsf/*.ntf with the same ODS. This makes it way better in terms of using multiple servers versions in the same org. This makes migration easier, since a Domino 6 server won't complain "invalid on disk structure" if an admin makes a copy of a db designed with Domino 8 Designer.

So, indeed, this is true, Domino still has a lot to offer, migration process just got a little bit easier. For those of you involved 5 years ago into R4 to R5 migrations, you'll know what I mean.

Notes 8 with Notes 7 (and/or 6 ? ) on the same workstation

I think I've complained before that I used to be able to run on the same workstation, Notes clients v4 with v5, then v5 with v6. Suddenly I was not able to run Notes 6 and Notes 7 as separate installations. Notes 7 kept upgrading my 6 install ...
This was a big step back for adopting Notes 7 for my current work.

Although technically new stuff (see this), Notes 8 will in fact upgrade your Notes 7 install (and probably my Notes 6 install) by default. Unless you do what they say in the 'readms_beta2.pdf' file which can be downloaded from IBM:

"
Notes 8 Beta and Notes 7.x coexistence

..... With that understanding, follow the steps below to install Lotus Notes 8 Beta on a machine that also has Lotus Notes 7.x installed: ...
"

and the procedure is just the same I used to do when installing R5 beside R4, then R6 beside R5 .... Basically, break the current Notes install by renaming your binaries and data folder. Then, do a install of the new version. Check this pdf if you want to take this track, I am just signaling that this is possible. Again. Hurray !