Well you probably guessed or even knew that the main product sites at Lotus and IBM have been recently updated to handle the new re-branded products. Unfortunately, the execution is missing some URL redirection, which leaves people like you the reader, to find the flaws and report them back to IBM -- for free. I will focus on one aspect of a greater issue for brevity purposes. Know that I have no problem providing substantiated feedback in a professional manner; but there are times when the issues found really insult the intellect of the target audience. These matters are resolved with some very basic testing in most cases. Of course, ibm.com is a massive site with scores of pages, so of course, dead links will appear occasionally. This post highlights a different situation. Ultimately, it leaves the end user to contact their IBM/Lotus BP (if they have one), contact IBM directly (expensive for both parties) or go to a competitor. If they really lack the desire to perform proper internal testing --- and I have zero information that they do, but providing a conjecture based perception here --- then they should hire partners and select customers to perform simple usability testing. Because in the end, the absence simply irks their partners and can deflate their customers' zeal, leaving us in the community, to help the customer find what they need. (But that point commences deviation into matters outside the intended scope of this post.) Where I am Going With This Post? A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, one could type lotus.com/ and you would get to the product page--quickly and easily. In fact, the main IBM site also did and does this well. Two of my favorite site conventions are ibm.com/servers and ibm.com/linux. As expected, one arrives at the main systems product page with the former, and the IBM Linux portal when using the latter link. With the re-branding of several Lotus products, many of the new expected URL conventions are counter-intuitive, if they work at all. Here is a table of my findings this evening. It is hardly an exhaustive list, but illustrates the point sufficiently.
Product
URL Shortcut
Results
Notes
Lotus.com/notes
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/notes
Redirects to the Lotus Notes product page on IBM.com
Domino
Lotus.com/domino
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/domino
Redirects to the Lotus Domino product page on IBM.com
Sametime
Lotus.com/sametime
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/sametime
Redirects to the IBM Sametime product page
Quickr
Lotus.com/quickr
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/quickr
Our apologies… The page you requested cannot be displayed
Connections
Lotus.com/connections
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/connections
Our apologies… The page you requested cannot be displayed
Traveler
Lotus.com/traveler
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/traveler
Our apologies… The page you requested cannot be displayed
LotusLive
Lotus.com/lotuslive
Redirects to Lotus.com
Ibm.com/lotuslive
Our apologies… The page you requested cannot be displayed
Support
Lotus.com/support
Redirects to Lotus.com -> click on Support in left pane -> IBM Support
Ibm.com/support
Redirects to IBM Support page portal
Yes, some of the products that were Lotus originally, have been re-branded as IBM now. They are reachable via the IBM URL convention and that is all fine and well. The products that do redirect to Lotus.com are accessible under the Featured Product section in the rightmost column. But is this the correct approach?
Example 1: If a customer uses IBM Connections, seeks the main product page at ibm.com via redirection, they are unable to do so. Two options to solve: (1) they can either hunt for it on the main IBM site, (2) or go to Lotus and find it there. So, the IBM Connections product is accessible via Lotus.com but not via ibm.com. Fascinating.
Example 2: Lotus.com/Notes goes to Lotus, but the same convention on the IBM site takes one to the Notes product page -- which is the expected result, but on the Lotus side. This is a counter-intuitive web experience which creates frustration.
The table really highlights that the URL redirection table is missing some entries. If IBM is in a hybrid state for naming products, then add a few entries to ensure that your sales audience can find what they need easily. Very simple items for the proper administrator to create easily.
Solution The customer is really not going to know at a moment's notice what product is owned by which division. What was Lotus yesterday may be IBM today or tomorrow. People refer to Lotus Quickr simply as "Quickr". It is surprising to me that when all of its sister products have ibm.com redirects due to re-branding, that Quickr does not. Allowing smarter, web savvy customers or partners an intuitive design with time-saving conventions is important and well, expected in today's market. So if the site user wants a particular product, take them directly to the respective product page. Simple.
I really no longer care what IBM names the products, just as long as they have a future. But whatever they do with this effort, the implementation should be common, complete and consistent. These URL shortcuts are also a feature that IBM has provided successfully previously. The competition understands this too and has done it well for years. Guess where hp.com/drivers takes you? Or how about microsoft.com/exchange? Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day.
Linux School -- Easy Shell Script Date Manipulation
Mon, Jun 10th 2013 1:16p Bill Malchisky Jr. In writing a few script files recently, I became reminded that if I run the shell script past midnight, but seek to use yesterday's date in the filename for accuracy, I would have to add several lines of creative code to complete this, while taking into account DST and in one case, a timezone delta between me and the server. I then stumbled upon 'yest'. Yest is an open source project specifically designed to allow for easy date manipulation. By default, it provides yesterday's date, othe [read] Keywords: linux
server
98
Heading to IamLUG? Still Time to Join an Outstanding Group of Individuals Attending
Tue, Apr 30th 2013 2:52p Bill Malchisky Jr. This year, Linux School: Advanced Administration for IBM Software debuts at IamLUG. This offering, covers a lot of useful tools and installation tips for IBM products on Linux. We'll cover a lot of information and am looking forward to showcasing useful utilities which can save you time when troubleshooting. There is still time to get there, find decently priced air fare, and join a great group of peers to learn. Have you signed-up yet? Here is the official list of IamLUG Sessions and speake [read] Keywords: administration
ibm
lotus
community
linux
177
Running Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu x64
Thu, Apr 11th 2013 6:17a Bill Malchisky Jr. Adobe Acrobat Reader is i386 code that needs one i386 library file --- when installed on an x64 OS --- omitted with the native x64 installation of Ubuntu 12.x. As such, you'll see this error. To fix the issue, run this command From here you'll see this window, which will flow into several screens of files being unpacked and then installed. It's quite a lot. When finished though, Acrobat will run. The process continues with suggested packages and alerting the end-user t [read] Keywords: linux
ubuntu
Some Fun at BLUG
Thu, Mar 28th 2013 7:14a Bill Malchisky Jr. Our illustrious BLUG organizer Theo Heselmans had a surprise for us. During a special event for the speakers and sponsors, he arranged for a Dutch artist to arrive and sketch caricatures for anyone invited. As I recall, there were 31 completed in about three hours (plus time for a couple of breaks). So the artist named, Tice, worked tirelessly creating art. He had two LCD monitors setup, the second was facing the victim volunteer, so we each could see the picture evolve. I believe that Tice used [read] Keywords:
187
Train Tips for European Traveling
Wed, Mar 27th 2013 6:15a Bill Malchisky Jr. Train travel is fun and certainly exciting. You can easily get to anywhere with enhancements to the multi-country rail network in Europe. Here are a couple of tips (hardly plenary, I'll add) to aid you on your way. 1. Rail travel is expensive on mainland Europe (UK is quite reasonable comparatively); with the advent of cheap (for some travel situations) airfare like Easy Jet https://www.easyjet.com/ ,but if you have luggage you need to move around, it can be by far the easiest and most cost [read] Keywords: laptop
network
wifi
wireless
107
BLUG Slides Uploaded
Tue, Mar 26th 2013 6:15a Bill Malchisky Jr. After a fabulous event in Leuven, Belgium with BLUG 2013, I adjusted the deck to account for a few new morsels provided by IBM since the release of IBM Domino 9 (link in yesterday's post). I also provided the changes to the BLUG Team to ensure currency and consistency across versions. The slides are located in My Presentations section. Title: Infrastructure Fitness and Design Simplicity for IBM Mobile Connect Session ID: A13 Track: Administration Absolutely enjoyed the event and to be p [read] Keywords: administration
domino
ibm
mobile
190
A Few Quick Points on Domino 9, x64, and Linux
Mon, Mar 25th 2013 6:12a Bill Malchisky Jr. IBM released Notes Domino 9 this week and it has been a firestorm of zeal, anticipation realized, fun tweets, community upgrades, and success stories overall. Included in the server code are two x86 Linux installation flavors for the first time. This allows one to run native Domino code in either i386 or x64 mode. If you attended Linuxfest at IBM Connect 2013 with myself, Wes Morgan and Daniel Nashed, my BLUG 2013 session, or my private Domino training sessions since December, you were ahead [read] Keywords: administration
collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
notes
application
community
linux
red hat
server
vm
ubuntu
95
IBM Connect Slides Uploaded
Tue, Feb 5th 2013 7:10p Bill Malchisky Jr. I took some time today to update My Presentations page and insert the latest (updated) slides from my IBM Connect 2013 session. Title: Infrastructure Fitness and Design Simplicity for IBM Mobile Connect Session ID: BP406 Track: Best Practices Really enjoyed speaking once again with the Lotusphere/Connect team and working with René Winkelmeyer as well. Happy reading and enjoy the slides. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Great to meet some many people at IC13 this year t [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusphere
mobile
101
New Upgrade Tool in Fedora 18
Fri, Jan 18th 2013 6:14a Bill Malchisky Jr. Fedora 18 comes with a new upgrade tool entitled, FedUp. It allows you to perform system upgrades. You can also install it on Fedora 17 so that you can load the RPM there and then utilize the tool to get to version 18. This is a command line tool (CLI), which will download several to a lot of packages (depending upon your configuration), a new kernel, initrd, the will reboot the box to perform the final operations. Know that the code is new and may very well change before Fedora 18 is released. [read] Keywords: notes
bug
linux
network
red hat
redhat
security
wiki
