My Range
Expander turned up today.
 It took roughly 5 minutes to setup and enable for WEP/change IP address
range.  So far, it seems to work excellently, but the weather is far
too bad to go wandering out around my back garden to see how far the range
has expanded.  I will post full comments soon.

As Ed
mentioned, Fortune
have a free partial transcript
of an interview with Ray Ozzie and Bill Gates where they discuss email
and where they see it going.  Not a bad read, but I draw exception
to Bill’s Stance on competitors.
"In terms of how we take workflow, collaboration, document search,
business intelligence, e-mail, and telephony and make them better for information
workers, we’re relatively unique."
Unique? Yes.
The Best? No.
Workflow, collaboration, document search?  Notes has always been superior
on these levels, and continues to do so.

In addition, when asked about Open Office, Bills response is

"Well, most people already own Microsoft Office, and so it’s free
to them, whereas OpenOffice is not the same quality, not innovating, and
doesn’t have all the modules. We compete with our installed base by innovating.
"

Yeah… Microsoft Office is free, isn’t it?  Also, I think Bill
has innovation confused with acquisition…

Keep the 26th August free for Dublin… Hopefully the first Irish Lotus
User Group session.  Waiting for sponsorship confirmation but all
is looking well.  Some interesting sessions being planned, with a
speaker
lined up you may know.

Out with
the old…. In with the
new.

Click
here for details

"MOBILE ADMIN 3.0 NEW FEATURES:

- Palm devices, such as the TREO or Tungsten.
- Windows Smartphone and Pocket PC, as well as Nokia Series 60 and 80 devices
(in final stages of beta now – for more information, please email beta@idokorro.com)
- Additional BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 management features, including
the ability to "kill" handhelds, set passwords, lock handhelds,
and set enterprise activation passwords
- Ability to browse the network and add servers to be managed by Mobile
Admin from the handheld device"

I suppose I have to come to terms that
I am WAY behind the crowd when it comes to on-line music and media.  I
shall stand up and admit the following:

I don’t own an IPOD

I don’t own an MP3 player

I have never purchased music on-line
(with exception of physical cd’s).

I have a few albums recorded as WMA
on my XDA and that’s about it.  I am not interested in a mobile player
of any sort.  I do, however want the following:

A wireless media centre for my house
that will tie into WMA or MP3 files on my servers

A good on-line music store

The ability to convert any files between
MP3 and WMA as needed if I want to burn.

For the wireless media centre, I have
looked at the Linksys
Wireless B Music System, which
plays both MP3 and WMA files.  It seems to do the job, but I don’t
know anyone that has used one before. (my house is becoming an advertisement
for Linksys at this point )

For on-line music, I have looked at
a few (not iTunes).  Yahoo
Music, Rhapsody
and MSN
Music (beta).  I do like
the look of Rhapsody, but there is no support for Ireland as yet.

Conversion software.  Loads of
them out there…..

Any thoughts on a way to go on all of
this?

Update.  The reviews of the Linksys
kit are very mixed…. If anyone has a recommended alternative, I would
love to hear your thoughts.

Well what a day for announcements.  Methinks
I need to sit down for a second and have a wee rest…

Does this mean….. nahhhhh, it couldn’t
mean it…. IBM listened to us and rebuilt the client???? .  "Hannover"
is the next build (Post R7) of the Lotus client.  Apparently IBM have
also rediscovered Europe aswell!

Is that new
front end going to finally shut
up the GUI people or what?  From the screenshots, it looks very impressive.
 From
the article on SearchDomino, the
evolution of the Notes client will incorporate the Eclipse software.  Just
for the cheap seats, I will point out the obvious….

*Ahem*

• You will not have to Rip and Replace…
  You will be able to upgrade your Lotus Notes client to the new client.
   In fairness to IBM, they don’t do "Rip and Replace".  I
  will be interested in seeing how this comes about though..

• The client is expected late 2006.  My
  thoughts are this will slip to post Lotusphere 2007, but lets wait and
  see.

• This client will be fully integrated
  with Notes applications/mail/workplace applications/activity explorer/web
  applications/instant messaging

• It may not be called "Notes 8".
   But then again, considering my
  other post today, at least we
  are not looking forwarding to a naming disaster.  (Quick competition…
  best thoughts on the theoretical name for the new notes client if the old
  people responsible for LTW, LIM, LWWCM etc were still calling the shots,
  gets a prize!).

IBM are not planning the next release
of Notes, they are planning the next release after the next release
of Notes.  Hats off and I am looking forward to the Beta client to
play with. Dead technology?  Come on! If a Microsoft  sales
pitch is begun on the dead technology that is Lotus, please, just ask them
if they can read.

As announced formally today, Lotus Instant
Messaging and Web Conferencing and Lotus Team Workplace have been renamed
(again)…

To Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickplace.
 Thanks be to jaysus.

In Ireland that means that a bright,
orange object appears every now and then in the sky for a brief period
between rain showers.  So I get the urge to go into my back garden
and do garden stuff.. Then the geek in me awakes and I remember I hate
gardening.  So what can a geek achieve in the garden in the Summer?
 Well (Naturally) , first thing to check is if my wireless
router has the range to let
me work from out here.  It doesn’t.  This leaves me with two
options…..

I can get Linksys
Wireless network range expander and
position in the back of my house

or….

I came across SveaSoft
and the Alchemy Public Firmware which (by all accounts) seems to greatly
improve the performance of my current router.  There are numerous
builds to choose from, ranging from free download to reasonable price firmware
with excellent features.

Has anyone used either of these solutions?
 Any feedback?

Posts have been sparse recently so I
do apologise to both readers…  Just a quick tech tip for BES administrators.

Problem

User no longer receives mail to blackberry
unit, but calendar synchronises ok.  User can still send mail wirelessly.

Issue

User pissed off that crackberry not
offering mail fix every 20 seconds to aid in Ego boost

Investigation

Examination of the RIM logs show that
Inbox folder state errors occur for the troubled user.

Cause

Most likely corruption in the profile
or state database.  No scheduled maintenance tasks were running on
the server (no Fixup/compact etc)

Solution

I went the easy way.  Delete the
user from the BES Admin console.  Delete the state database and manually
remove the accounts from the BES profile and directory databases.  Then,
re-add the user and re-generate key.  It all works again.  I
have not got the exact error from the output here with me.  I will
update the entry when I get it so Google can do its job.