ESCAPE VELOCITY

Dear Domino Spammer

Why is this from HZ Marketing? Do they not know what 'HZ' stands for? Should I expect emails at a per-second rate?

I know I have a visible email address. I'm sure I've posted it on twitter, developerWorks, edbrill.com, eview.com, my own blog, and probably about a zillion other places. So sure, it can be harvested. Nevertheless this is unacceptable.

Note to Heather Schein: I'm a co-founder and Steering Committee member of OpenNTF.org. I've been published in The View. I'm a Design Partner on half of Lotus' product portfolio. I've been blogging for over 5 years. I've done podcasts, interviews, viral videos, presented at Lotusphere, carried press credentials, and otherwise done just about everything you can imagine with Domino short of being a paid member of the IBM engineering team. As I write this, I can't even remember the number of things I've done in the yellowverse that ultimately mean that I don't READ news about Domino; I WRITE it.

And you know why I'm absolutely sure that your site is as useful to me as a 3-assed monkey?
Isn't that Domino logo from 4.5? Why not say 'InterNotes?'

Isn't that Domino logo from 4.5? Why not say 'InterNotes?'

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Xpages Xtreme

I was lamenting today that I haven't done much technical blogging in the last year or so. It's a bit of a personal disappointment to not be publishing as much, but it's not without reason. I've worked for both service- and product-oriented companies over the last 17 years, and the pattern is always consistent: working in services means sharing more technical tips. In October I went from working for a services company that dabbled in products to a product company that acquired a services team. Of course, that was less of a sea change that you might assume, as the Lotus 911 development team had been working on a product-focused solution for 6 months at that point in the form of Bones. So, as you might imagine, my job responsibilities have included a lot more trade secrets than they have in the past. This is good for my personal progression; while not so good for my publication results. I'm sure every developer reading this can relate to that constant tension.

We did get to show off some results at Lotusphere, although truthfully the Atlanta dev team was uncharacteristically coy about the whole thing. I think we showed some exciting direction, but we really didn't talk about what we did behind the scenes. And while I can't really describe things in detail, as I look around the blogosphere and see long time yellowbleeders really starting to understand the power of Xpages, I thought I'd take a minute and stretch the boundaries of my nondisclosure, and at least talk about what we know is in the realm of the possible.

Click through for more...

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Project Vulcan: The Missing Ingredient

There are a lot of positive things to say about the the Lotus vision on the path of Project Vulcan. It's definitely atypical for an established software company to leap right to user experience with an overall product vision. Certainly the Lotus of 7 years ago regaled us with block product slides and API diagrams. It's quite stunning that when Lotus wants to talk about the vision of 2011 through 2015, they do it with sample UIs and mentions of standards like HTML5 and OpenID, rather than stacks of logic layers and theoretical product lines.

As Alistair Rennie pointed out last week, Vulcan is not itself a product. Nor is it particularly revolutionary. It's really an iterative vision that is more about where Lotus plans to go over the next few years, than about some arbitrary big release. That's an important distinction to bear in mind over the coming months.

We're not going to see a universal inbox in Notes 8.5.2. Nor will we see an HTML5-compatible email client that renders presentations and threads inline. We shouldn't get to the summer and wonder "what happened to the vision?" because it's certainly a longer timeframe than 6 months.

However, as we look towards our green-blooded future, I wonder if the vision is truly everything we need. We saw compelling user experiences; we heard a lot about hybrid models between cloud, private, and on-premises solutions; and we heard about proliferations of open standards like OAuth, CSS3 and HTML5. But I believe there is a great aspect of modern software missing from the grand vision.

That aspect is a marketplace. Or more colloquially, a Lotus App Store.

Click through for more...

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Lotusphere 2010 Early Departure

For readers that were hotly anticipating my further blog entries from Lotusphere (all 3 of you,) I apologize for the lack of updates. I had to leave the conference Wed evening due to a family emergency. (Lisa and Meta are fine, thanks for asking.) I will be collecting my thoughts into a more comprehensive picture over the next few days. I have some excellent notes from both sessions and interviews. Hopefully I'll be able to draw these together into a gestalt picture that enables all of us to understand the grand opportunity that lays before us. I can't be the first with news this year, but perhaps I can at least go deeper on the meaning of this year's message.

Thanks for your patience.

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Lotusphere Blogger Panel (or how fast can I type)

Blogger panel

Mike Rhodin, Alistair Rennie, Bob Picciano

"3 generations of Lotus"

Click through for more....

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Lotusphere 2010, taking a moment to breathe

It's an interesting Lotusphere for me this year. I had the good fortune to be invited back for the Blogger program, so I get to experience the conference from the press perspective. Of course, that means I have to actually BLOG, so I'd guess I'd better get to it.

The conference in saturated with the Lotus Knows branding, which is great. As conferences in the past have had themes, Lotus carried the branding message all the way through the conference, and it's on the badges, in the scripts, on the slides... really everywhere. I've actually seen a lot of this message before at other Lotus events and in various partner programs, but for many of the attendees, this is the first time they're seeing it.

More...

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Opening General Session - 2010

Ah, it must be Lotusphere. My alarm went off at 8am, concurrent with the start of the Opening General Session!

Special guest: Unbelievable.... it's the Shat at last!

Click through for more stream of consciousness. No comments allowed until I'm done...

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DON'T MISS THE DEADLINE!!!

Remember, the deadline for submission for the Lotus Awards for Best Open Source Contribution by an Individual and Best Open Source Contribution by a Business Partner is FRIDAY So if you haven't gotten your nominations in, make sure you finish them and get them posted by FRIDAY . No need to finish early, of course. Just get it submitted by FRIDAY and you should be okay. You'll be able to compete against Tim Tripcony's submission for Dennis, as long as you submit your nomination by FRIDAY.

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ConvertToMIME Method

If you're like me, you've been wondering for about a decade when Lotus would finally deliver this method. Looks like with 8.5.1, the wait is at last over. Taken from the Lotus Domino Designer Help, I give you.... NotesDocument.ConvertToMIME

Converts a document in Notes format to MIME format similar to a mail router.
Note This method is new in Release 8.5.1.

Defined in
NotesDocument

Syntax
Call notesDocument.ConvertToMIME( conversionType, options )

Parameters
conversionType
Integer. Optional. One of the following:

CONVERT_RT_TO_HTML (2) produces MIME output with a Text/HTML part that is a representation of the Notes rich text. Some data loss is possible in the rendering. Improvements in fidelity may occur at any time.

CONVERT_RT_TO_PLAINTEXT (1) produces MIME output with a Text/Plain part that is a representation of the Notes rich text. Everything but text contained in rich text is lost. For tables, a crude approximation is made using non-graphic characters.

CONVERT_RT_TO_PLAINTEXT_AND_HTML (3) (default) produces MIME output with two renditions of the Notes rich text: a Text/Plain part and a Text/HTML part. The characteristics of each stream are the same as their corresponding descriptions above. This is useful when the target audience may or may not have an HTML-capable mail reader, or can receive only text.
options

Long. Optional. Reserved for future use.

Usage
The document's form is evaluated and the fields are used in the MIME conversion.
The conversion of rich text is imperfect.

The last sentence must surely send Ben Langhinrichs into hysterics.

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OpenNTF Everywhere

You may not have noticed, but the last month has been absolutely tremendous for OpenNTF.org. I haven't had the opportunity to provide much fanfare, but a few weeks ago, I was privileged to attend the annual Lotus Leadership Alliance conference in Harvard Square. This event offers unparalleled access to the Lotus executive and engineering leadership, and I was attending not as an employee of Lotus 911, but as the Chairman of the Strategy Working Group for OpenNTF.org. This was especially cool, because I didn't have to wear the "business partner" hat, and could focus all my attention on Lotus' strategic vision as it pertains to the development community as a whole. It was an intense but strangely relaxing experience -- intense because it really is a mini-Lotusphere; relaxing because it's just delightful to hear so much good work and enthusiasm coming from IBM.

While at the event, OpenNTF was afforded some serious time and attention from Lotus management, including a very productive sit-down with VP of Development, Alistair Rennie, VP of Messaging & Collaboration, Kevin Cavanaugh, and my good friend and Lotus community legend, Ed Brill. I'm overjoyed to share that it was at this meeting that IBM suggested the creation of a Lotus Award for open source projects, specifically targeted at releases on OpenNTF.org. Needless to say, that feels like a great validation of the last 6 years, and it's marvelous that IBM is going to give recognition to the enormous contribution of project chefs.

Some other things I can disclose about the event...

1) Boston is absolutely gorgeous in late September. The weather was nice too.
2) Alistair Rennie issued a challenge in one session, and I managed to win a dollar from him. I'm having it framed.
3) I'm going to start referring to Kristen Lauria as the MIGHTY Kristen Lauria, as she has done the impossible.
4) As great as all the engineering revolutions coming from Lotus are, they still have much to learn about HOW Domino developers work. The difference between now and 6 years ago is that now when you tell them that, they break out pens and paper, lean forward, and ask you questions. This generates excellent results.

But that's not all that's exciting lately.

Thanks to the tireless work of the OpenNTF Technical Committee Chair Niklas Heidloff, IBM is releasing 8 core Domino templates to OpenNTF under the Apache license. I know what many of you are thinking: "yeah, so?" You may not realize that until now, THE single key project that made OpenNTF a success is now legitimate. For years, this template release operated under a "don't ask don't tell" policy that never guaranteed the right for it to continue. Now that question is put to bed.

The value contained in the other 7 templates is enormous. Many of them represent the pinnacle of Domino template engineering. And where they don't, we as a community now have free reign to show what's possible on the platform by improving them.

Niklas has also put together this marvelous video demonstration of recent OpenNTF projects that every Notes user on the planet should watch. It only takes a few minutes, and you'll be able to immediately see the value provided by the free downloads on the site.

Technical Committee spokesman Steve Castledine and Steering Committee chairman Vince Schuurman recently presented together at UKLUG. Steve has been instrumental in bringing Domino's use of OneUI up to par. This is, again, a really important step to broader reuse by OpenNTF projects, and I'm looking forward to Steve's forthcoming guidance on how best to use the UI kit.

I'm also thrilled to see that Declan Lynch has, as promised, released xTalk on the same day that 8.5.1 shipped. This is a fine Xpages application, and it's great to have Declan making new contributions as the Steering Committee was able to address many of his concerns about the site operation and policy.

A quick anecdote about IBM's commitment to OpenNTF.org: Lotus once again had a video production team set up to record testimonial interviews with customers and partners. I was late signing up for a time slot for this, and ended up getting my schedule shifted around a lot. As we approached the end of the conference, the only time left was at the very end of the day. Unfortunately, this slot was already booked. However, when IBM heard that I hadn't yet had a chance to shoot an interview, they delayed the booked interview and let me go first: "The testimonial from OpenNTF is important."

Why is this remarkable? The person who's interview was delayed was Lotus General Manager Bob Picciano. He sat in the waiting room because OpenNTF.org is a priority for Lotus. (and yes, I hurried!)

So a big thank you to IBM Lotus and to Bob Picciano specifically for inviting OpenNTF.org to the conference. And thank you to all the IBMers, Alliance members, and Technical Committee members who have been advancing our agenda forward with such vigor. Lots of moving parts have to come together to make this Alliance a success, and everyone involved has put forth a ton of energy.

In the coming months, we'll have several more major objectives. We still need to elect two new representatives to the Steering Committee. If you would like to be considered for this job, or if you'd like to be able to cast a vote, you need to join the Alliance as a member. So sign up NOW! It's easy, and as a member, you get to shape the future of the site.

We'll also be having our annual meeting at Lotusphere, so if you'll be in attendance in Orlando, you'll be welcome to participate.

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