Its going to be a busy week.  Tonight
I fly to London to attend Lotusphere
Comes to You in Wembley Stadium
tomorrow.  It sounds like its going to be a cracker of an event, with
600 people registered to attend!  I will be presenting on Notes/Domino
"next" with Darren
Adams near the end of the day.
 When I am not doing that, I will be manning the BE Systems booth,
where we will be ready to talk just about anything to do with Domino/Portal.
 We have an iPod touch to give away aswell, so be sure to say hello.
 We will have demos of:

• Notes 8.5 beta on the Mac
• Lotus Traveler
• Domino/Windows mobile applications
• Blackberry applications using Domino
  backends and the MDS studio

• DWA 8.1
• Custom applications

…and lots more.

Wednesday will be spent in Dublin at
the Irish LCTY and then back to Manchester where I will be presenting with
Darren again, and also hosting a booth with BE Systems.  There will
be 4-5 BE Systems staff at each event, including Warren
(tat master) Elsmore.

Powerpoint 2004 on Mac…. At least
with Lotus Notes, you
can customise any error message.

Roll on BSG

Woman forced to remove nipple ring at
US airport

Click here
for a laugh….

PS – my thoughts on this are simple…

unless the lady had breast implants,
and said implant happened to be a hand grenade, this was a bit silly no?

My mum always told me to keep my mouth
shut at any and most opportunities.  Usually, I listen, but right
now I want to make a few points that I think need to be made.  These
are my opinions, so I am not representing anyone or anything blah blah
blah

(Paul dons flameproof clothing and asbestos
underpants)

• People can write whatever they want
  on their Blogs.  They can.  Its not press. Its independent.  its
  a blog, therefore opinionated by default.

• I owe a lot to some people.  Ed,
  Alan, Rocky, Kristin, Eileen, Warren, Bill, Ben, Matt, Duffbert, McDonagh,
   and many more.  Blogging has lead to many good friends for me.

• People overreact to blog posts.  If
  you disagree, FINE – disagree and write your opinion.  If it gets
  to insults, I turn off.  Wasting time fighting each other when we
  all want to improve things is … em… a waste of time.

• Volker and Nathan are quite alike.  Both
  very very smart guys, with great ways of looking at things.  How they
  deal with their opinions is totally different though.  I respect both
  of them.  I dont always agree with them.  

• Volker has less hair.  Nathan’s,
  however was a strange colour for a while (joke)

• IBM agreed to sponsor ILUG2008.  This
  was not public because they were jumping through hoops on my behalf trying
  to get past the formalities that DNUG and Lotusphere (i.e. events that
  have staff that get paid) have to go through.  I owe Ed/Kristin a
  lot of thanks for this.  They are putting a substantial amount of
  money my way.  Considering our event is not formal, and they supply
  speakers aswell, this is great for us.

• The bigger an event gets, the more political
  it gets.  This is not a good thing.  This is the fourth ILUG.
   The last one was really busy and great fun.  So far, this one
  has just been really busy.  Im hoping fun is on the way.

• Volker helped ILUG get most of the sponsors
  they have, just by making people aware of the event in his own way.  I
  owe Volker a lot of thanks for this.

• I don’t like  being told what to
  do.  Ever.  It usually makes me do the complete opposite even
  if I am cutting off my nose to spite my face.

• There are a lot of fevered Ego’s in
  this community.  I hate to point this out, but even though we are
  valued, we are not as important as some of us think we are.

• Promoting (or cheerleading) a product
  is a good thing

• Criticising a product to force it to
  improve is a good thing

• Sometimes constantly criticising a product
  is not good

• Volker wrote (IMO) the most positive
  OGS report after Lotusphere.  Far
  more positive than any I know

• I don’t agree with titles written just
  to attract attention.  I tend to read as many blog posts as I can
  anyway.  That being said, there are a lot of guilty people on PlanetLotus
  for this (myself included)

• We are all ASW’s.  
• There are more sub plots / agendas going
  around the Lotus community than in LOST

• Being customer focused is great.  
  Not caring what the community thinks is great when you want to say something.
    This is used by both so called "positive" and "negative"
  sites.  This is a good thing

• The ND8 product stream, and the way
  it is being sold and marketed is the best I have ever seen it.  By
  far.  

Its settled ;)



Click here
to try it

Can you guys recommend a broadband supplier
in the UK (Northern Ireland) that would be good?  Do any of them offer
fixed IP addresses?

Have a good one….

Quite a few times in the past month,
I have been asked by people who does the logos and graphics for ILUG2008.
 Well, there is a design company that I came accross though a recommendation
from a friend, called
hairymonster.net (thanks for spell
check Rob).  They had the new ILUG logos to me, finished in 4 hours,
in pretty much every format and style we could of hoped for.  They
gave their own recommendations, and suggestions, and were very keen to
help out.

 So, if you are looking for someone
to do some graphic work for you, you should contact these guys.  This
is a well deserved shout out to them.

Taking a few minutes away from the day
job to just comment on the impending release of the iPhone in Ireland,
which you can only get with O2.  I will be blunt.  The cost and
contract can only be considered a complete rip off.  Lets look at
it.

First of all, you have to take an 18
month contract to even get an iPhone. Purchase of the 8GB model is €399,
and the 16GB model is €499 (McMerica – thats $618 and $776 respectively).
The phone pricing per month, and the tarrif entitlements though, are just
awful compared to other countries.

Here is the Irish pricing and tarrif
details.

Now lets look at the UK one…



Lets compare the basic tarrif for each
country.

In Ireland for €45 per month, you get
175 minutes talktime and 100 text messages, 1GB data transfer (which is
ample because all you get is EDGE speed).

In the UK, for £35 (which is €45) you
get 600 minutes talktime and 500 text messages, and unlimited data transfer.


Visual voicemail is also not supported
in Ireland.

This is yet another example of carriers
ripping off people in Ireland.  As much as everyone wants an iPhone
(believe me, I am one of them), I just will NOT pay this for it, and would
hope that others will follow suit.  Rant over……

Update:  Warren Elsmore
is staying with me.  He made a useful point.  It may be cheaper
to get a UK iPhone and just roam in Ireland, then the Irish model.  How
bad is that!  Anyone want to do the math?