Lotus Notes

iPhone & Lotus Notes - What do we do now

Yesterday Apple released a new version of the iPhone and somewhere in the mix old Steve Jobs, who looks sick, left out talking about IBM and Lotus iNotes for the iPhone.

There is a good bit of chatter on Ed Brill’s blog about it and people are concerned.  Nathan Freeman weights in on the SDK problem.

Lotus 8.5 Beta is out for everyone to test and tinker

I am excited about the new 8.5 client and other Lotus stuff that is out today. While 8.0.1 is nice, it still has some issues. The Linux and Mac Lotus Notes Clients are out as well so this should be one of those “steps in the right direction” things.

Link to the Lotus 8.5 Beta Download page 

Lotus State of the Union - Why not to dump Lotus - Ed Brill

Ed Brill is the mouth piece for Lotus and at the latest Admin2008 had a session that explains what to do if some lose cannon in your company wants to move away from Lotus instead of using it to it’s full potential.

Link to EdBrill.com

Let me give you my two cents about why Lotu is a better choice, they seem to understand collaborative technology way better than Microsoft ever will. Lotus out of the box will allow you to do mail, that is easy but they also allow you to build applications and collaborate.

Most companies fail Lotus and don’t do anything with it but mail. There is also one other problem IBM and Lotus have, they don’t have anyone printing books about how to use Lotus Notes, How to be a Lotus Admin and how to develop real Domino applications for Lotus Notes and the Web.

Redhat offers information on running Lotus on Linux via a new website

Link to LotusonRedhat.com

“Lotus on Linux is a secure email, scheduling, calendaring, and messaging platform. It’s a simple, easy and affordable way for small and mid-sized business to enjoy enterprise performance and scalability with the rock-solid reliability, security and simplicity of linux. All at a substantially lower cost with no compromise.”

New Lotus 8 Book - It’s a good start

I am just following up from my post/question about where all the Lotus 8 books are. Packt Press made a book about upgrading to 7 and they seem to have a new book covering how to upgrade to 8 as well. Enjoy!

Link to POST

Ubuntu ready for prime time?

Us Ubuntu fans have all been waiting for the day when IBM says UBUNTU is ready for prime time. I have been asking 2 things from IBM over the past 3 or 4 years. Make a supported Client Access for Linux (RPM & .DEB) and Make a Lotus Notes Client for Linux (RPM & .DEB). I am not aksing for much am I?

While I know the Client Access for Linux will really never show up, they do have some things out there that will run on any platform via a browser, but nothing like what is available for Windows right now. I will keep holding my breath and see what happens.

A few years back IBM approved DB2 to run and be supported on Ubuntu Server. It was a big move and I don’t think any large IT shops payed attention. Why run DB2 on Windows when you can run it on Ubuntu for less and faster.

I would like to thank IBM for making Lotus Notes for Ubuntu. (Link to Chris Linfoot) I could just scream like a little girl when I heard Lotus 8.5 will be supported on Ubuntu. Now all we need is the Admin Client to run on Ubuntu and we all know the Domino Designer will eventually run inside of Eclipse and that will cover that.

Overall we are getting there. Linux is going to be a big part of IT this year and in the up coming years. I look forward to more Ubuntu/linux adoption.

Link to CNET

Another Link

Where are all the Lotus 8 Books

I love to read and really love to read a good tech manual. I want to ask the book companies who contenue to print out 30 books on Linux and hundreds of books on Microsoft products, where are the books on Lotus? Why are the book companies ignoring a huge market like the Lotus product. From the Lotus 8 release alone I could think of 8 or 9 books that could be written and would love to see only no one seems interested in writting them? Can’t IBM place a few calls and get some great book written? The bulk of the Lotus books are for R5 and Version 6. Not much out there for Version 7 and very little on 8. Lotus 8 changes the face of everything and no one in the printing world is working on it. I approched 5 or so book companies about getting out a Lotus 8 book for Users and Adminsitrators, but no one and I mean no one would even consider the idea.

Anyone else out there seeing the same things? Since I missed Lotusphere this year are you guys there seeing any books? The System i books are pretty good right now, but if you want to learn Lotus you had better be ready to join the school of hard knocks.

Lotus 8.5 Beta out for Mac

Lotus has been “dragging their collective feet” with the release of the Mac edition of Lotus Notes. I am a Mac user at home and have has to support Mail on Macs in the past. Both large mail camps do a horrible job but Lotus seems to miss the boat when they can win it over an dover again by putting a Mac version out on time with the Windows Release. For now I am done scolding Lotus it’s significant that they now have a beta out for you Mac folks out there to test.

With Lotusphere this week in Orlando it’s important that they stop the people like me who time over time give them greif about the versions all being release on the same day for all platforms. Other than the fact that is just shows disorganization it also makes upgrading clients very hard and it’s also a bit of a chore to keep the versioning right. Rochester had to learn this lesson the hard way with OS/400 and Client Access. We all can recall the confusion of having an OS version of V4R3 and Client Access V3R1M3. I spent countless hours on the phone explaining that bit of confusion.

My recomendation to Lotus is to get all the Clients and other Applications all on the same version. It would only make life so much easier.