Just a personal list.  Feel free to add your own.  Personally, I think these are more important, but that’s just me.  Notice I don’t look for admin client goodness.  It works enough for us lot.

• Publish or create a wizard that automates a default policy configuring some of the brilliant and brilliantly hidden features of the notes client
• Speed up the notes client install and loading more
• Release no new features on the client or server for 12 months.  Run a 12 month bug fix so that all features that are available in the product work as advertised and designed, on all platforms.
• If a feature cannot be fully fixed, remove it (e.g. IMAP).
• Permit a mail version of the notes client to load separately, quicker then applications.  The mail only users of notes are considered low hanging fruit for migration shops.  Let’s help them out.
• Connectors working in all operating systems, for all products
• The m word
• Having a wizard button in the admin client or server install/upgrade that automatically downloads (after they agree to whatever license crap is required) a pre-packaged bundle of applications from openntf.org

Taken outside the Morning Star pub in Belfast yesterday

My excessivly intelligent niece works with Lotus Notes in her employer’s business.  As far as I can make out, they use one “box” in the workspace for their business application (for those not in the know, a single application).  I asked if it all works ok.  Of course the response is no.

“It looks very old fashioned”

Nothing I can do if the application is old fashioned, unless they are willing to re-design it.  It’s so easy for users to blame Lotus Notes for bad applications.  You cannot blame end users for that perception.  A quick demo of some of the applications that Bluewave have completed for other sites made her wonder why hers looks so bad.  Next.

“It is very hard to search for anything”

Yep – no full text indexing enabled.  Lotus Notes has a pretty crappy search facility if FTI is not enabled on a database.  I explained that not only can notes search a database, but also attachments within the database.  At this point I discovered my other niece also works with Lotus Notes in her employer.  For mail.  And.. yep, you guessed it.  No FTI on mail file.  I show database properties and creating an index.  And also searching for a piece of text.

“We didn’t know it could do that”

Yeah.  There is the problem.  Lotus Notes is 21 years old.  Old applications, regimental admins and old thinking are some of it’s biggest challenges.

We run.  Carl flies

Now you are all recovered from Orlando, the biggest Domino event of this year in Europe is accepting calls for abstracts.  Fancy speaking at the event?  It is a great way to meet people and also get practice/points on getting accepted for Lotusphere speaking.  Track managers are waiting for your submissions.

Admintrack – Yours truly (muahahaha)

Dev – The infamous Matt ‘xPage’ White

Management – Eileen “clipboard” Fitzgerald

DONT send them to us.  Go to www.uklug.info and register / submit your sessions.  If you want to run something by us in advance, feel free.

Good IBM pr/marketing.  Yeah I know I know…

Full “in anger” working with the torch since my switchover a few days ago.  Preliminary opinion is quite mixed.  The feel of the device, and the slider is great.  I like the weight (although it is top heavy when you slide up the screen) and slide action is solid.  The screen is fantastic, and integraiton with my mac, including syncing of playlists etc works just fine.  As ever, the battery life is good and there is a mass of functionality in the OS.  The keyboard on the device (physical) works a treat.

Now the bad.  The lock button on the top of the torch is useless.  The slightest tap and it is unlocked.  I have made upteen calls, and fake responses to emails (and even one tweet) accidentally this week so far.  It seems to be the only lock mechanism on the device, and it is a serious minus.  The touchscreen is good, but not a patch on the iPhone.   Silly things like getting rid of the onscreen keyboard seem to be impossible without opening the slider.

It’s too early to say if I love or loathe this device.  Another few weeks before decision time.

If you are getting a lot of these errors on a domino server in mail files, odds are that something read the files at the same time the domino server was running.  Example:

• You go to move a domino server to new hardware
• You copy the data directory to a new location without shutting down the domino server
• The data is also transactionally logged

Welcome to fixup hell.

My new 27inch cinema display arrived last night.  Yes they are overpriced, but I find the screen quality and features to be worth it.  Additionally when I am not on a customer site I am at home.  I don’t watch tv.  It gets heavy usage.  So now I have my older 24inch display and the 27inch.  By default, you can only connect a macbookpro to a single display  screen.  I have the matrox dual head display product here so eventually I will have both screens hooked up simultaneously.  I’m just waiting for two adapter cables and then I will be good to go.