Using Campaigns and Coremetrics to drive sales on your web site
Wed, May 23rd 2012 7:11a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can use campaigns in WebSphere Commerce to track content and product sales in your website. Campaigns allow you to tag things like web activities with the campaign ID and then pull reports about the performance of that web activity on your site. Web activities in WebSphere Commerce are scheduled content for your site. In this video I use a web activity to promote four products on the home page of our store. I also use a promotion for all furniture (a 20% discount) an [read] Keywords: websphere
22
Quick Tip Video: Getting The XPath In Google Chrome
Mon, May 21st 2012 12:21p Bob Balfe In this video I show how easy it is to get the xPath from Google Chrome. You can use the xPath when processing the DOM tree in your code. I use the javax.xml.xpath in Java to process DOM tree; the API is very powerful and easy to use. [read] Keywords: google
java
xml
29
Official contributor on The Smarter Commerce Blog
Fri, May 18th 2012 7:30a Bob Balfe Smarter Commerce Blog! Ok, maybe it was not as grueling as I am stating. I want to thank the Smarter Commerce Blog editors for giving me a chance to contribute on their blog, hopefully I live up to the quality that has already been going on over there.
This morning, in lieu of the Facebook IPO, I posted my first blog entry entitled “Using Social to grow your customer base”. While Facebook and all of the big social networks play a big role in your online presence there are still a lot [read] Keywords: community
facebook
mobile
Partner Spotlight: Trifecta
Wed, May 16th 2012 5:10a Bob Balfe I had the pleasure of working with the folks from Trifecta in a recent customer engagement and I am happy to report they are an excellent partner. They really know their commerce. Having several key members of the company come from the IBM lab who built WebSphere Commerce is a much added bonus. These guys know the product in and out and their work clearly shows their leadership in this space. You can see some of their craft with the sites below (Burt’s Bees, Wacoal, and Tandus Flooring). T [read] Keywords: ibm
mobile
websphere
155
My two most popular posts this year
Tue, May 15th 2012 7:51a Bob Balfe It’s not often I get more than a few hundred hits on blog posts. I actually average between 200-400 hits per post but for some reason these two posts have received a lot of views.
The statistics come from PlanetLotus.org, an aggregation site where most of my Lotus brethren follow. What is interesting is the Searchandizing post is really just a video and has nowhere near the video views as the blog post views. My blog actually does not have as many hits as the PlanetLotus post does, meani [read] Keywords: lotus
planet lotus
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
websphere
68
Must have links for the virtual eCommerce world
Mon, May 14th 2012 8:40a Bob Balfe I often get asked both internally to IBM and external how I keep up with the many trends in the eCommerce world. When I made the change over to the WebSphere Commerce team I wanted to be running in the new space (to me) very quickly. I created a few things that have helped me get up to speed very quickly in this industry and now I use these tools to not only learn new things in this space but evangelize best practices, stories, and direction. So below you will see what I currently use to keep in [read] Keywords: admin
administration
ibm
lotus
eclipse
email
linkedin
twitter
websphere
121
Oldy but goody article: The Java XPath API
Thu, May 10th 2012 11:30a Bob Balfe If you Google “Java XPath” this is one of the first articles returned. Clear and concise explanation for how to use the API:
XPath expressions are much easier to write than detailed Document Object Model (DOM) navigation code. When you need to extract information from an XML document, the quickest and simplest way is to embed an XPath expression inside your Java program. Java 5 introduces the javax.xml.xpath package, an XML object-model independent library for querying documents with [read] Keywords: ibm
google
java
xml
105
Stopping those abandoned shopping carts!
Wed, May 2nd 2012 7:50a Bob Balfe No matter what commerce tool you use, every company has a problem with abandoned shopping carts. Hopefully your tool gives you the ability to react to this “event” and attempt to get the customer to complete the order.
Some tips on making sure you get the customer to complete the order is maybe do some A/B testing on your checkout flow. I have seen some customers go from a three step screen to a single step screen with some great success. Getting customers to complete orders as quick [read] Keywords: email
websphere
100
IBM Commerce on the cloud is here!
Tue, May 1st 2012 9:51a Bob Balfe This is really good news for the eCommerce industry. Now, the leading eCommerce solution from IBM is available in three forms – On Cloud, Managed Service, and On Premise. The video below actually touches on the many benefits of the IBM Smarter Commerce portfolio and capabilities – many of which I show in my own YouTube videos on my channel. I stick to videos for marketing managers and use the business user tools referenced in the video. The video also shows screen shots of the new st [read] Keywords: ibm
interface
74
Dynamic Customer Segments and WebSphere Commerce
Mon, Apr 30th 2012 8:40a Bob Balfe One very powerful feature of WebSphere Commerce(WC) is Dynamic Customer Segments. These are customer segments that can have customers dynamically added or removed with a business rule. This means any of the targets you have in your WC tooling can be used to put customers in or out of the segment. Then, other rules can use that segment to show promotions, content, change search behavior, or change the look and feel of the site.
Here is a sample segment, let’s walk through it:
First thing yo [read] Keywords: email
profile
websphere
83
SEO made easy with WebSphere Commerce
Wed, Apr 25th 2012 3:31p Bob Balfe In this video I show how SEO in WebSphere Commerce is a snap to configure. Short and human readible URL’s can easily be configured using the business user tooling Management Center for static pages, products, and categories. WebSphere Commerce also supports automatic 301 redirection when SEO tags are changed. This preserves the old URL to still work when referenced by search engines like Google. [read] Keywords: google
websphere
73
Executing mass product edits using Management Center
Wed, Apr 25th 2012 9:20a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can quickly edit many products at once using the WebSphere Commerce Management Center. Using the spreadsheet like interface you can customize what columns are shown and you can easily edit a column with a single value. [read] Keywords: interface
websphere
82
Quick links for IBM Cross-Channel Commerce
Fri, Apr 20th 2012 12:50p Bob Balfe I stole this little snippet for my reference. It has a lot of great links to various pieces of IBM’s Smarter Commerce story.
IBM Cross-Channel Commerce
IBM’s selling and order fulfillment products are the industry’s leading e-commerce and order management solutions, helping B2C and B2B brands deliver a consistent shopping experience across all customer touchpoints. With advanced social commerce, mobile commerce, web store, microsite, merchandising, and global order and invento [read] Keywords: ibm
mobile
146
Why Zynga is rocking the gaming industry
Tue, Apr 17th 2012 9:40a Bob Balfe Gaming is a tough business. Throughout the years I have seen many companies come and go or small successful companies get sucked up by the larger companies. One thing I always found interesting about electronic games is they have pretty much catered to the “young” and now with a segment of gamers in their mid-to-late forties games have a much broader audience but in general not complete.
Zynga on the other hand, has single handedly crossed that 40′s something generation and h [read] Keywords: apple
applications
development
facebook
mobile
11858
WebSphere Commerce developer tutorials on InfoCenter
Thu, Mar 29th 2012 8:11a Bob Balfe One hidden gem in the WebSphere Commerce world is the InfoCenter. The InfoCenter contains all kinds of great information but the piece I want to focus on today is the Tutorial section. If you are a WebSphere Commerce developer (aspiring or current) then this is definitely an area to check out. Many of the tutorials were created because of the business needs of our customers. Here are a few tutorials I know get a lot of attention:
Tutorial: Adding fields in the Catalogs tool
In this tutorial, you [read] Keywords: ibm
properties
websphere
widget
136
New Zurich header for my blog, thanks Chris Crummey!
Wed, Mar 28th 2012 11:20a Bob Balfe From a previous post I said I wanted to have header images on my blog from places that I have traveled. This new image was actually taken by Chris Crummey but I was there and remember this scene. The picture is perfect for the TwentyEleven theme and when I saw Chris’s post of Facebook I had to ask if I could steal it. The angle and distance could not have been better for a header image – great picture Chris! [read] Keywords: facebook
twitter
89
WebSphere Commerce Gift Registry
Fri, Mar 23rd 2012 9:10a Bob Balfe In this video I show the WebSphere Commerce starter store, Madisons, and the Gift Registry functionality. This is completely out of the box functionality and the user interface can be customized to suit your needs.
Gift registry allows you to set up a registry for many different kinds of events, you can announce the registry to your friends and track which items in your registry have been received or not. [read] Keywords: interface
websphere
121
Twenty Eleven theme and 13 custom photos
Sat, Mar 17th 2012 3:30p Bob Balfe As many saw last week I Tweeted about upgrading to WordPress 3.3 and I found out I had to upgrade to MySQL 5. The good news is I have been using MySQL5 with Drupal and a couple of other sites for a while. The upgrade process was seamless, I simply used the Export content and then import content feature from the WordPress Export/Import plugin.
After I installed everything I decided to change the look and feel and just use an out of the box theme, the Twenty Eleven theme. I then carefully went thr [read] Keywords: mysql
123
Hello world!
Thu, Mar 15th 2012 10:40a bobb Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! [read] Keywords: blogging
5227
Searchandizing with WebSphere Commerce
Tue, Feb 28th 2012 12:00p Bob Balfe Searchandizing you say? Yep, its when you use a shoppers search terms to display relevant content like other products, specials, advertisements, and content. In this video I show how to do some basic searchandizing using WebSphere Commerce and the business user tooling Management Center. Unlike many other products, WebSphere Commerce allows basic business users to control a lot of their site, including things like search! [read] Keywords: websphere
255
FourSquare check-ins versus native applications
Fri, Jan 27th 2012 9:30a Bob Balfe I have been playing with FourSquare for about four weeks now as many of my friends have probably seen the check-ins on Facebook and Twitter. I have even gone to the extent to checking out the API behind the scenes and it looks very clean and easy. The basis of the API is REST (REpresentational State Transfer). So integrating other commerce based products, tools, and sites should be a snap.
Not many people in my area are using FourSquare but on a positive note there seem to be more and more peopl [read] Keywords: application
applications
community
facebook
iphone
mobile
twitter
wiki
254
Blog and video stats for 2011
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 7:20a Bob Balfe I started keeping stats in 2010 and it looks like 2010 was a “better” year for hits and posts, most likely because I blogged a lot about Lotus and Eclipse stuff more (about twice as many posts) that year than 2011. This site generated 88,815 hits for the year in 2011 and 68,443 in 2010 (minus three months of logging statistics).
The home page is by far the most active hit, probably because of my blog URL on all of my social site profiles (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
Title
[read] Keywords: lotus
notes
sametime
application
css
development
dojo
eclipse
facebook
java
linkedin
twitter
websphere
206
2011 – A year of change
Sat, Dec 31st 2011 8:30a Bob Balfe 2011 was an amazing year for me. Full of struggles, change, and excitement. Here are few of the highlights I had for the year (minus a few struggles):
First year of be married to my wonderful wife, we now collectively have five kids in the house!
I turned 40 this year, really starting to feel old in the mornings
I changed career direction – moved out of Lotus and into Industry Solutions – having a great time, love the new job!
Kim (my beautiful wife) got me a Harley for my 40th
My d [read] Keywords: lotus
dojo
iphone
223
12 Days of commerce: Flash Sales
Thu, Dec 22nd 2011 6:50a Bob Balfe In this demo I show how you can set up a flash sale in WebSphere Commerce. This mixes date and time driven promotions and web activities. The setup is a sale for a new Nike shirt will happen on Friday from noon to five where the shirt will be 20% off. The advertisement helps on the home page but you could also use remote widgets to advertise on other sites like Facebook and blogs. [read] Keywords: facebook
websphere
widgets
238
12 Days of commerce: Replace Logo in an extended Site
Tue, Dec 20th 2011 7:31a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can replace the default content for an eMarketing Spot in WebSphere Commerce. You can optionally use a web activity and change the logo based on rules but this approach shows how you can achieve a new logo by utilizing the default content field on the eSpot itself. [read] Keywords: websphere
228
Solr synonym file for different segments and industries
Mon, Dec 19th 2011 3:01a Bob Balfe I have gotten asked in previous conversations if there are standard synonym files for different product sets and industries for the Solr search engine. Interestingly enough I could not find anything out there so I decided to create an online repository on GitHub for such files. I envision files for all kinds of industries and product sets. I put some ideas out there and if anyone else has more please share with the community. If you happen to have a large set of synonyms today also share those [read] Keywords: community
wiki
491
WebSphere Commerce welcomes iOS to its arsenal!
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 11:10a Bob Balfe This isn’t part of the originally planned “Twelve Days of Commerce” but it fits in well!
A few weeks ago IBM announced a native application for Android based devices. Being an Apple guy myself I have been waiting to announce this. WebSphere Commerce now has a native iOS application that uses the same REST base services the Android version uses. Even better, this solution is published as Open Source – talk about a great way to learn the WebSphere Commerce API’s!
You [read] Keywords: ibm
apple
application
websphere
165
12 Days of commerce: Proximity Alerts
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 9:01a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can create basic proximity alerts in WebSphere Commerce. An example is, you can show an alert when the shopper is close to a promotion. Example, say you have a proximity alert set for a minimum order of $120 and a discount of $30 when the cart contents reach $200. This alert will show to the shopper if they have a total cart value between $120 and $199.99. [read] Keywords: websphere
120
Pissed off Penguins
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 5:50a Bob Balfe I have been a user and fan of the Blender tool for quite some time. There is a KickStarter project looking for less than $250 to complete the bidding process for the project. If you believe in Open Source and education for the masses then help Kris complete this project. Whether you are a low level developer, artist or just someone who like doing this stuff for a hobby (like me) then this is a great project to learn from.
Donate a $1 or $5 today! [read] Keywords: widget
148
12 Days of commerce: Generating SKU’s
Thu, Dec 15th 2011 12:30p Bob Balfe In this video I show the cool tool “Generating SKU’s” in the WebSphere Commerce Management Center. A business user can use Management Center to enter products and SKU’s very easily and in this video I show how easy it is. [read] Keywords: websphere
94
12 Days of commerce: Product Page recommendations
Wed, Dec 14th 2011 7:00a Bob Balfe In this video I show how to set up some basic product page recommendations using WebSphere Commerce Management Center. Similar to Category page recommendations this sets up recommendations for all product pages in the Lounge Chair category. I show how things like Copy and Paste and Drag and Drop in the business tool allow the business user to quickly copy other rules and change them [read] Keywords: websphere
132
12 Days of commerce: Category page recommendations
Tue, Dec 13th 2011 6:50a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can set up some basic category page recommendations. In WebSphere Commerce you can set up a category recommendation for all pages or have specific recommendations based on shopper attributes, category, cart contents, search and many more factors. In this example I show how to set up a specific set of recommendations for the Lounge Chairs category page. [read] Keywords: websphere
83
12 Days of commerce: Product Associations
Mon, Dec 12th 2011 7:30a Bob Balfe In this first installment of “12 Days of commerce” I demonstrate in this short three minute video how to manually do cross-sell product associations. I start with showing the original product on the site and then switch over to the Management Center to create a cross-sell association with an arm chair. These associations can also be done using a file import process which is well documented on the WebSphere Commerce InfoCenter, check out this link for further information about using a [read] Keywords: ibm
websphere
98
12 Days of commerce
Fri, Dec 2nd 2011 11:40a Bob Balfe In the spirit of Christmas, and the Holidays in general, I am going to be doing “The 12 Days of Commerce” in the next week or so. Similar to the 28 Days of Dojo I did earlier this year, this series will focus on short videos showing how business users of WebSphere Commerce can accomplish tasks very easily with the business user tooling. Here are the list of videos in the queue:
- Product associations
- Category Page recommendations
- Product Page recommendations
- Generating SKU̵ [read] Keywords: dojo
websphere
92
Android comes to WebSphere Commerce
Wed, Nov 30th 2011 2:20p Bob Balfe That’s right, as of Feature Pack 4 for WebSphere Commerce 7 you get a full blown Android based application for your store front. This little addition should not be taken lightly, WebSphere Commerce shops will now, out of the box, get many of the cool features you see in other native mobile applications – like check-in, coupons, and screen resolutions for both mobile phones and tablets.
With key features like pick-up in store, ship to address and cross channel inventory, the applicati [read] Keywords: admin
ibm
application
applications
mobile
websphere
89
Removing the ZeroAccess rootkit virus
Tue, Nov 15th 2011 3:00a Bob Balfe Over the past four days I, on and off, had to look at my kids computer. The basic symptoms were “every time I search for something in Google I get redirected to another site” and then it moved on to “the internet is not working…at all“. When I first looked at it I noticed a strange looking executable named “2398764521:2143489.exe” or something like that in the process explorer. The colon is a clear sign this is not a normal process. I then searched the W [read] Keywords: google
virus
108
Using Tweet Effect to master Twitter
Thu, Nov 3rd 2011 4:01a Bob Balfe I use Twitter to primarily promote and talk about work related topics – Eclipse, Commerce, Java, Dojo, etc and have noticed I get 1-3 new followers a day but I also noticed my followers count never really grew much. So either these were people who followed me and then stopped following me or I was also losing followers at the same rate.
Welcome Tweet Effect.
Tweet Effect let’s you see when people follow and stop following you. You don’t get Twitter Id’s but you do get to [read] Keywords: dojo
eclipse
java
twitter
89
XPages based commerce site?
Wed, Nov 2nd 2011 4:01a Bob Balfe You see “commerce‘ based technologies popping up everywhere these days. People are always trying to get the cheapest solution with the most function. You can even get a commerce plugin for both Drupal and WordPress – two very popular and free content management systems. The interesting thing about those plugins is the fact you get content management (CMS) for free and some commerce function on the front end- because those solutions are based on content management. If you were t [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
xpages server
websphere
100
Symantec C++
Tue, Nov 1st 2011 2:00p Bob Balfe Long ago on a computer, almost two decades ago, I used the Symantec C++ compiler. I only made it through version 6 and 7 and eventually moved on to Microsoft C++. The Symantec IDE was way ahead of its time and at first using MSDEV was a struggle. Today, MSDEV is arguably one of the best IDE’s. Why am I writing about this? I was cleaning out my old software CD’s and I must have had a dozen copies of the compiler because I was on the subscription model. Made me think how far IDE’ [read] Keywords: development
eclipse
microsoft
99
Oracle releases JavaFX 2.0, shares plans for Java 9 | Application Development – InfoWorld
Tue, Oct 4th 2011 11:40a Bob Balfe In addition, JavaFX 2.0 allows developers to embed Web content in JavaFX applications, which will render the HTML and JavaScript using WebKit. Will Java developers really choose to build rich clients with JavaFX instead of the standard browser technologies? Oracle can be expected to keep pushing JavaFX while also waving the flag for HTML5. JavaFX might have some life left in it, even if it is just for Java devotees.
via Oracle releases JavaFX 2.0, shares plans for Java 9 | Application Developmen [read] Keywords: application
applications
development
java
javascript
oracle
79
The eCommerce Daily is out!
Mon, Oct 3rd 2011 8:00p Bob Balfe I am really digging paper.li. I use it almost every day. It is a great way to get a news paper look and feel of my social network. I started with The Bob Balfe Daily, which is really my own interest and things I post. I just created The eCommerce Daily which is dedicated to commerce and ecommerce posts. Hopefully this paper is just as interesting for the world of eCommerce as the other one is for my own personal stuff.
Paperli.PaperWidget.Show({
pid: 'bobbalfe/1317691115',
width: 200,
[read] Keywords: javascript
network
widgets
Workspaces just got better in WebSphere Commerce FP3
Wed, Sep 28th 2011 9:20a Bob Balfe Feature pack 3 for WebSphere Commerce 7 put in what I consider a great feature into the Management Center.
Workspaces in Management Center allow for approval work flow of content for the marketing team. This means different people can be assigned tasks and then upon approval the manager of the team can have the content automatically published or scheduled to be published.
One key missing piece in the prior release was a way for the approval manager to see exactly what changes have been made in a [read] Keywords: websphere
81
Netezza rocks out at AARP, replaces Oracle
Tue, Sep 27th 2011 9:00a Bob Balfe Just read a great article where AARP replaced an Oracle implementation with IBM Netezza.
AARP had been using Oracle Database for their data warehouse. But their system simply could not keep up with the demand. As Margherita Bruni from AARP says, “our analysts would run a report, then go for coffee or for lunch, and, maybe if they were lucky, by 5:00 p.m. they would get the response—it was unacceptable—the system was so busy writing the new daily data that it didn’t give any importance to [read] Keywords: ibm
database
db2
oracle
59
Global Smarter Commerce Summit day one
Wed, Sep 21st 2011 9:30a Bob Balfe Great opening general session, very entertaining. Mark Jefferies and Craig Hayman did a great job. I tweeted throughout the entire session, lots of good discussion in the twitterverse.
The first day was filled with some great customer sessions explaining how they moved to WebSphere Commerce and have taken advantage of things like the starter stores, espots, and precision marketing. Its always good to hear how our software is actually being used.
Two customer testimonies I really enjoyed were Pit [read] Keywords: websphere
119
Deja Mi, the IBM Smarter Commerce Summit and live blogging
Fri, Sep 16th 2011 7:00a Bob Balfe Next week is the IBM Smarter Commerce Summit and it is looking to be a very good conference indeed. With over 2000 attendees for its first year it is looking more and more like an IMPACT or Lotusphere. The summit is being held in San Diego and I will be arriving on Monday. The real attraction for me is this summit will have its usual introductory sessions for the IBM Smarter Commerce Vision but the focus is on customer presentations, lessons learned and best practices. With my agenda now filled [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusphere
blogging
networking
twitter
136
Free “Mastering XPages” book!
Wed, Sep 7th 2011 8:50a Bob Balfe I am offering my copy of “Mastering XPages” by the amazing team of Martin Donnelly, Mark Wallace, and Tony McGuckin to the first responder of this point. Please email me at bob [at] balfes.net. The only catch is you pay for shipping and handling. [read] Keywords: xpages email
What is the fastest growing web framework?
Thu, Sep 1st 2011 10:00a Bob Balfe According to Built With Trends, Ruby on Rails is clobbering the competition with an astonishing one year growth of 1146%! Interestingly though, Ruby on Rails only accounts for about 2.5% of the sites on the web today – I think this means its clearly leading edge.
by Built With Trends
PHP
32.04%
ASP.NET
21.48%
Shockwave Flash Embed
11.5%
J2EE
6.86%
ASP.NET Ajax
5.43%
Adobe Dreamweaver
4.35%
Frontpage Extensions
3.02%
Ruby on Rails
2.21% [read] Keywords: ajax
83
Ruby on Rails 3.1 standardizes on JQuery…
Thu, Sep 1st 2011 7:00a Bob Balfe Rails 3.1 sounds very promising indeed. From the article on InfoWorld it looks like they made some major enhancements to performance and most interesting is the default JavaScript library is now JQuery. JQuery is clearly all over the place these days. Being the default library in Rails, WordPress, and Drupal make it almost ubiquitous in the world of open source web development.
Another change: The default JavaScript library for Ruby on Rails has been switched to jQuery. Users can easily change f [read] Keywords: application
development
javascript
86
Ridiculopathy and the web
Wed, Aug 31st 2011 10:30a Bob Balfe Not to be confused with Radiculopathy; Ridiculopathy is “The state or chronic condition of being pathologically ridiculous” according to Urban Dictionary. After reading this article I think the article and its author can be labeled as this state.
There are a couple of valid points and observations but to say things like this:
IBM launched its Social Business initiative at Lotusphere – Lotus is two decades old technology! IBM first talked about On-Demand computing in 2001 – a deca [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
apple
db2
google
integration
tivoli
websphere
wiki
95
Rich web applications
Wed, Aug 31st 2011 4:00a Bob Balfe Yesterday I posted a video showing how to create an AB test using the IBM Management Center. Every time I use this web application it reminds be how powerful the web can actually be. Things like drag and drop, clipboard, context menus, copy and paste are all part of the web now. The marketing tool also provides an incredibly powerful search engine built right in, the same search engine that provides the search for the WebSphere Commerce product. [read] Keywords: ibm
application
applications
websphere
Precision Marketing and eSpots
Fri, Aug 26th 2011 8:40a Bob Balfe This video shows the cool visual editor in the IBM Management Center. I create a new web activity and promotion to get people to register on the site by offering 10% off all items in the store for registered customers; the video walks you through all of the steps. The IBM Management Center was designed for business users and is a very easy to use tool. [read] Keywords: ibm
90
Twitter helps in catching a criminal!
Fri, Aug 19th 2011 8:23a Bob Balfe Once again the power of Twitter and social software is helping in the area of law enforcement. This excellent article explains the series of events in great detail. A 15 year run of an activist spammer named “Mabus” has ended. Mabus sent out thousands of death threats through his reign of spamming has now been arrested.
Today the Montreal Police announced that an arrest has been made (in French here) in the “Mabus” case. It wouldn’t have happened but for Twitter. This post expl [read] Keywords: social software
twitter
84
Will Googles Web Intents usurp some of the Open Social 2.0 function?
Fri, Aug 12th 2011 10:03a Bob Balfe Looks like Google is off doing their own thing in a very interesting space – application integration with Web Intents. Web Intents are not new and have been a primary piece of the Android operating system; it will be interesting to have this concept in a web application. You can read some healthy discussion over on the Open Social forum and also check out this presentation about Web Intents.
On the surface it looks like they are tackling some of the embedded experience stuff but in the det [read] Keywords: application
google
integration
186
Goodbye Flash games, here comes Game Maker Studio!
Fri, Aug 12th 2011 4:04a Bob Balfe Over the past few days I have been playing with Game Maker and I am very impressed with the interface and capabilities. I will have to get my hands on Game Maker Studio when it comes out, it promises some amazing features. The paid for version supports 3D games, custom DLL’s and much more; the soon to be released version will allow export to HTML5 – way cool. I have long been a game developer enthusiast starting in the eighties at the age of 11 writing my first game on the Commodore [read] Keywords: eclipse
interface
mac
69
Is Facebook falling apart?
Thu, Aug 11th 2011 10:03a Bob Balfe Over the past several days when using Facebook I have seen all kinds of strange errors. I would switch browsers, refresh cache, and even attempt to log out and back in. All produced a myriad of errors. Here is the latest error I received while attempting to “Like” something:
What's a database???
The really bad thing is Facebook is mostly used by very non technical people, “What is a database?”. With Google+ gaining ground, it is not the time for FB to be unstable. [read] Keywords: database
facebook
google
76
Is Game Maker Studio a “Game Changer”?
Thu, Aug 11th 2011 4:03a Bob Balfe My oldest son and step daughter are taking a game programming course at a local college. We figured it would keep them busy for five half days this summer and who knows they might even learn something and enjoy it. My son has really taken to it so far.
They are using Game Maker by Yo Yo games – who has an impressive list of executives. I checked out the software and its pretty impressive, the video tells a great story – check it out below. The new version will allow compilation to mu [read] Keywords: development
iphone
mac
100
Will Java 8 bring in OSGI?
Tue, Aug 9th 2011 12:03p Bob Balfe One of the big moves in the industry is to the cloud and many have already begun talking about what will the cloud mean to Java. As outlined in Joab Jacksons article about Java 8, Java 8 gears up for the cloud, making Java modular is a must have. As many IBM server technologies like Notes Domino and the Notes client already have OSGI built into their stack, this would be a great move if Java 8 included OSGI.
One effort, Project Jigsaw, has been working on this goal. When Sun Microsystems control [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
notes
notes client
application
development
java
oracle
server
103
New Social targets and triggers in WebSphere Commerce 7
Mon, Aug 8th 2011 12:44p Bob Balfe When administrating WebSphere Commerce version 7, you, as a business user, can now use the new social triggers and targets to strike dialogs with your customers. The trigger and action was enhanced in feature pack 3, here for more details.
Now when a customer participates in social activity (blog, comment, review, or rate your products) you can trigger things like sending a coupon for a promotion:
Using the same rules editor, you can use these new triggers to customize your shoppers experience. [read] Keywords: admin
ibm
websphere
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Developers: 4Shared offers $5000 a month in contest!
Mon, Aug 8th 2011 7:23a Bob Balfe 4Shared, a Virtual drive and file storage company, is offering an integrated file management solution that allows users to access and save their content from their desktops and mobile devices.
4Shared users receive 15 GB of available space for free on their virtual drive, an amount considerably greater than any competitor. The space capacity allows personal and business users the flexibility to choose 4Shared as their secure backup drive for the storage of important data, photo, or video files. [read] Keywords: application
applications
desktop
eclipse
interface
mobile
wiki
Rotating the free partner ads
Wed, Aug 3rd 2011 7:03p Bob Balfe So I got some immediate attention about yesterdays post about placing free ads for business partner products on my blog. I gave it some more thought and tonight I designed a basic rotation system based on the hour of the day. Currently the ads will rotate every hour or every several hours – it just depends on how many ads I will be displaying. The more I get the more the algorithm will be enhanced to give everyone a fair share. So currently, if you sent me your ads you should see them at l [read] Keywords: ibm
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Integrating Coremetrics with WebSphere Commerce
Wed, Aug 3rd 2011 4:14a Bob Balfe IBM’s Smarter Commerce is designed to give B2B and B2C companies the ability for one stop shopping for all aspects of commerce. One integral part of the commerce story is web analytics and Coremetrics is the IBM solution.
“Coremetrics Web Analytics is the analytical heart that fuels the IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite. Marketers gain a competitive edge because they benefit from not just state of the art analytics but also from comparative benchmarks versus peers [read] Keywords: ibm
integration
websphere
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Creating Effective Teams
Tue, Aug 2nd 2011 10:13a Bob Balfe Last week I sat through an excellent presentation titled “Building Effective Teams” by Matthew Ganis. The presentation was given at the technical leadership exchange in 2009 and it is now an elective presentation IBMer’s can watch. The deck was excellent and Matthew clearly has a lot of passion for software and building the best team.
The best time I have had in my professional career is when the team seem to just meld together and productivity just came. I have been on many te [read] Keywords: ibm
exchange
exchange
java
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Free advertising on this site for IBM business partners!
Tue, Aug 2nd 2011 4:04a Bob Balfe After yesterdays post about removing advertisements on this site I decided to go one step further. I will post any advertisement from an IBM or Lotus business partner on this site for free. If I get more than one company putting an ad on this site then they will simply rotate randomly.
So if you want an ad on this site in the top banner and in the single posts then send me the ad information. It needs to be in banner size (468×60) and it should be just a GIF or any other bitmap. The click w [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
email
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I’ve got no ads on me!
Mon, Aug 1st 2011 11:03a Bob Balfe Make sure you sing the title like the Pinocchio song…”I’ve got no strings on me”.
So for the last year I had tried ads on this blog. I figured hey, if I could get something for delivering content to my readers and get a following it may work out in the end to pay for the site fees. So what are the results? Well, with a daily average of almost 400 hits a day for the past year the net results were $8.64! I have found many of the ads offensive and not relevant to my site, ev [read] Keywords:
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Lots of goodies in Feature Pack 3 for WebSphere Commerce!
Thu, Jul 28th 2011 10:07a Bob Balfe Many new and exciting features are now available in the latest fix-pack for WebSphere Commerce. The team has done a great job in putting in the most warranted function in Feature Pack 3. With the purchase of Sterling Commerce back in November the integration of IBM Sterling Configurator and IBM Distributed Order Management clearly enhance the overall platform.
One of my favorite enhancements are the new triggers for targeted marketing and customer dialogs. The trigger and target for social comme [read] Keywords: admin
ibm
integration
interface
websphere
75
Google+ uses OpenSocail…it’s looking so…
Tue, Jul 5th 2011 8:00a Bob Balfe I knew one of the few people who read this blog would respond. This response was from Ryan Baxter (the lead developer in Lotus integrating Open Social into the next version of Lotus Notes) on Twitter:
From Google+ JS: var Q=j.gadgets||{},Ib=j.shindig||{},R=j.osapi||{},google=j.google||{}; Answer your question? #OpenSocial
I did not get into the first wave of Google+ so I wasn’t even able to get at the source but it looks like Ryan did, but, the time I spent on his team gives me some good [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
google
twitter
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Does Google+ use Open Social?
Fri, Jul 1st 2011 2:30p Bob Balfe If it does, you can’t find any reference to Open Social on their Google+ site. More interesting, this quote from an article on IBTimes somewhat mentions this:
Open Social, launched in 2007 with the aim to create an open standard for social network applications, faded away as Facebook monopolized the spotlight. 2009 saw Google’s struggles in the social-based communications system Wave and Buzz, both stirred the market but did not survive.
Given that Google+ does implement many of the [read] Keywords: applications
facebook
google
network
112
Window Builder for Eclipse – for SWT, RCP and SWING UI’s
Fri, Jun 24th 2011 10:50a Bob Balfe With the announcement of Eclipse 3.7 you can see it now includes the Window Builder that Google contributed to the foundation. I wrote about this back in December if 2010 and now it is officially in the 3.7 release. This is an excellent tool and even more amazing is that less than six months later it is officially supported in Eclipse. Great job Eclipse!
SWT and SWING for that matter have always been a hard thing for new people to handle. With the builder you can visually lay out your user inter [read] Keywords: applications
eclipse
google
integration
interface
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Eclipse 3.7 is available for download!
Fri, Jun 24th 2011 9:20a Bob Balfe There is a lot of great stuff in Eclipse 3.7.
Key New Features for Java Developers
EGit 1.0 release provides first-class support for Java developers using Git for source code management
WindowBuilder, a world-class Eclipse-based GUI builder, is now available as an Eclipse open source project
Automated functional GUI testing for Java and HTML applications is included via Jubula
m2eclipse brings tight integration with Maven and the Eclipse workspace, enabling developers to work with Maven project [read] Keywords: applications
eclipse
integration
java
workspace
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WebSphere Commerce, The power of extended sites – Part II
Mon, Jun 20th 2011 7:20a Bob Balfe In this next video in the series I show how eMarketing spots can be used to drive products, promotions, cross-sell, up-sell and content throughout your site. The easy to use interface of the Management Center enables non-IT business users to essentially define a large portion of the eCommerce site. This is another great feature that sets WebSphere Commerce above the competition. Using the rules based system and activities you can schedule content for specific demographics or have the content tie [read] Keywords: interface
websphere
I love this series of posts…
Thu, Jun 16th 2011 9:10a Bob Balfe One thing I really like is when a blogger does a series of posts. Even better when the posts are tagged together with a unique tag so its easily found and all of the posts related to the series are in a single list. The 12 Things You Shouldn’t Do on a Portal Project is such a series. This series was tagged with “12things”.
The series has been hitting PlanetLotus for about a month now and it has been a very informative series. Since it’s tagged, it is easily referenced for fut [read] Keywords: blogger
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
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IBM – Smarter Commerce Summit
Thu, Jun 16th 2011 7:00a Bob Balfe Register now!
Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2011
The Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2011 brings together a powerful combination of best practices, new technology and services, marketing and supply chain experts and industry perspectives into an event like no other. It’s one you can’t afford to miss. The event includes deep dives into:
e-commerce
supply chain management
behavioral marketing
mobile commerce
analytics and insight
change management
via IBM – Smarter Commerce Summit [read] Keywords: ibm
mobile
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Top reasons why WebSphere Commerce is best of breed
Wed, Jun 15th 2011 4:13a Bob Balfe Following my first video of WebSphere Commerce I really want to get across why WebSphere Commerce crushes the competition in two places.
The first area is in database performance and management with regards to extended sites. WebSphere Commerce uses a rules based system for things like catalog filtering, price rules, eMarketing spots etc. This means data is inherited from the hub site and optionally filtered or overridden on the extended site (or esite). This boosts data footprint and management [read] Keywords: database
interface
websphere
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The 6 hottest new jobs in IT
Tue, Jun 14th 2011 7:33a Bob Balfe Great article on InfoWorld. As I get more and more acquainted with my new job, meet with customers and learn the business of eCommerce I am seeing this more and more. For instance, Business Architect is clearly a job role that could fill some gaps. It brings me back to my Marine Corp days where each developer on the supply system project (ATLASS) got supply certifications (an additional Military Occupational Specialty). We went through many classes to learn how supply management was done and in [read] Keywords: application
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Is Eclipse fading away into the abyss?
Tue, Jun 14th 2011 4:04a Bob Balfe As I read the Eclipse responses to the 2011 survey one thing that really stood out was the activity (or lack there of) in the number of respondents. The US continues to be second or third in the past two years with regards to number of respondents (maybe we are just lazy). I also would have thought, from a site which claims over a million hits per month that there would have been more than 624 people taking the survey. The survey count dropped from 1696 respondents in 2010 to just 624 in 2011 &# [read] Keywords: community
eclipse
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WebSphere Commerce, The power of extended sites – Part I
Mon, Jun 13th 2011 7:33a Bob Balfe Today I am launching a series of videos to show how flexible and easy extended sites are with WebSphere Commerce.
First a brief introduction to extended sites:
Think of a large company that has many brands – even IBM for that matter, but it is easier to think of a large retailer. Just so we don’t mention any actual companies I am going to use a fictitious company called Madisons. This company is an eBay like store where you can buy many kinds of things. The company wants to launch a [read] Keywords: administration
ibm
database
interface
websphere
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Lotus Ad shows up in crazy YouTube video
Fri, Jun 10th 2011 10:03a Bob Balfe I saw this video on Facebook, shared by Richard Schwartz and thought the video was disturbing at first but realized it must be fake. What caught my eye was the Lotus advertisement near the beginning. I watch the ad area a couple of times and it looks like they are random. I just wonder how many of the 750K people saw that Lotus ad. [read] Keywords: lotus
facebook
White Paper: Leveraging Lotus Notes for Better Project Collaboration
Wed, Jun 8th 2011 6:33a Bob Balfe by Alen Lepofsky
If only everyone understood the power of Lotus Notes. Neil clearly does and outlines it very well in this white paper:
Project Management Duly Noted: Leveraging Lotus Notes for Better Project Collaboration
By: Neil Stolovitsky
Abstract:
For many knowledge workers, Lotus Notes is the lifeline to their team members, supervisors and clients. Unfortunately, in many cases Lotus notes is not utilized to its fullest potential beyond the use of email and calendaring. For those workin [read] Keywords: calendaring
collaboration
lotus
notes
applications
email
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The power of social software, please help me out!
Tue, Jun 7th 2011 2:34p Bob Balfe Ok, if you are reading this then I know you will take the next 10 seconds, click on the link below and vote for my brothers photo. What I want to see is if social software will come through. Of course this means the relationships I have built via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and of course my blog must hold water. What I would really like to see is this post make a difference, as it stands right now, my brother has 22 votes. Let’s blow this thing through the roof!
Link to photo voting.
I rea [read] Keywords: facebook
linkedin
social software
twitter
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eCommerce 101
Tue, Jun 7th 2011 8:33a Bob Balfe Are you new to eCommerce? Thinking about setting up a team to support your companies web presence? If so, you might want to check out the IBM Redbook: Best Practices and Tools for Creating WebSphere Commerce Sites.
While the book focuses on WebSphere Commerce, it also has a lot of great best practices around commerce in general. From deployment to team setup, the book is pretty comprehensive and promotes general project management using the Rational® Unified Process or RUP®.
Another great chap [read] Keywords: ibm
integration
sap
websphere
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Technology at its best – ‘This guy has my MacBook!’
Fri, Jun 3rd 2011 10:04a Bob Balfe The power of technology, the internet and social software is stunning.
It all started after Kaufman discovered the burglary and filed a report with the Oakland police. Then he began to gather information about his stolen MacBook using theft-tracking software called Hidden, which uses the laptop’s webcam and other tools to surreptitiously capture photos and screen shots of the computer in use.
‘This guy has my MacBook!’ Blog, tweets help recover stolen computer – CNN.com. [read] Keywords: laptop
macbook
social software
82
Should IBM do to OpenOffice what Jive does with OffiSync?
Fri, Jun 3rd 2011 8:24a Bob Balfe Two interesting things have happened in the last month, one - Jive purchased OffiSync which socializes Microsoft Office and two - Oracle announces OpenOffice.org will be submitted to the Apache foundation.
Is this an opportunity for IBM? Should IBM drop Symphony, invest in OpenOffice and make the same socialization into products like Connections that OffiSync does?
It definitely makes me wonder if installed Symphony should continue. I don’t thing this affects the online version of Symphony [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
symphony
applications
community
microsoft
office
openoffice
oracle
outlook
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Group Messaging Apps to Watch in 2011
Wed, Jun 1st 2011 7:33a Bob Balfe I think this concept is a great one. I always text my kids in one text but the responses get sent back as individual messages. Group texting will be a hit.
Group messaging has started to become popular for people who want to coordinate events, meet-ups, or just chat across a small sub-set of friends or contacts that don’t necessarily find the existing messaging in Facebook, Email, Twitter or via SMS convenient, usable, or private enough. Beluga, GroupMe, and sometime sooner than later – Goog [read] Keywords: email
facebook
google
twitter
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Our first time using the Disney Vacation Club
Tue, May 31st 2011 11:43a Bob Balfe Our first experience in the Disney Vacation club was overall excellent. We learned a lot about the club, Disney, and how to effectively get around. I will be posting some pictures soon – we took a lot! The kids were great and everyone was pretty much exhausted by day 3 – next time it will be a much more relaxed approach. The older kids got to go off on their own for one day and it worked out great. We all met in Epcot for some famous fish and chips and I had some great beer to go wit [read] Keywords:
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Amazing pictures and animations can be made with Blender
Wed, May 25th 2011 4:00a Bob Balfe I have written about this software a few times and often go in and play with it. Unfortunately I do not have the time to take the software seriously because it is so darn complex and powerful – it is almost a full time job. I have created very basic pictures and animations but boy what I could do if I could spend hours with this thing. One of my favorite things to do is check out the gallery of pictures created by the Blender community on their site.
Old Guy by Kamil (maqs) Makowski
Blende [read] Keywords: community
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How to deal with unacceptable employee behavior
Tue, May 24th 2011 9:00a Bob Balfe This is my second post in the leadership series, you can read my first post here about mentoring and management. In that first post I attempted to provide an entertaining narrative about how to be a leader by outlining what not to do. I got an email tonight that was an advertisement for a one day seminar here in Syracuse about Unacceptable Employee Behavior. The seminar is run by Fred Prior Seminars and it looks very interesting.
“The best morale exist when you never hear the word mention [read] Keywords: email
virus
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Personal brands and their value in the company
Tue, May 24th 2011 4:04a Bob Balfe I just got done reading an excellent article on Forbes.com – Personal Brands Raise New Talent Development Questions For HR, by Rawn Shah. I think companies should have some level of performance evaluation based on personal brands only if the company asked the employees to become company or technology community advocates. IBM is very clear in its direction to technical employees and encourages employees to be social, blog, write articles and grow the IBM community organically. As the Yellow [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
community
development
google
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The Nook is making some waves
Mon, May 23rd 2011 9:20a Bob Balfe Ever since I got the Nook Color I was convinced of the success it will bring to Barnes and Noble – my favorite store. Now, last Thursday, Liberty Media offered $1 billion for the store – or $17 per share, which would give it a 70% stake in the company. I have also noticed the Nook section in Barnes and Noble seems to get bigger and bigger, it is a clear sign this is where the company is moving, and fast. The Nook Color is arguably the best value for an Android based table at $249.
Ma [read] Keywords:
Revenge for bad reviews
Mon, May 23rd 2011 4:07a Bob Balfe It does not surprise me if this is true. I have often thought that if I gave a bad review something like that could happen (not that I have a book on Amazon though…) and that is one of the primary reasons I only review things I like or at least attempt to find positives in the things I review.
Freelance reviewer T. Michael Murdock reamed Conduit 2 earlier this month on gaming blog Joystiq, giving the Wii shooter one star out of five. Within a day, several negative reviews sprang up on the [read] Keywords:
68
Mac and Linux update on the Attachment Viewer 2.0 for Lotus Notes
Fri, May 20th 2011 4:00a Bob Balfe After getting some feedback from the prior post (thanks everyone), I will need to move the Microsoft Office Viewer code into an Eclipse fragment. This will allow me (and maybe others) to write a Mac and Linux (good luck there) version for the Office files by creating additional fragments. If you haven’t seen the video please watch it and if you like it then make sure you give me a thumbs up on YouTube! [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
eclipse
linux
mac
microsoft
office
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Fwd: IBM’s mobile strategy: Anybody but HP or Microsoft
Thu, May 19th 2011 7:20a Bob Balfe “But the format is a potentially a substitute for the PC in many cases. I’ve talked to CIOs who think they might be able to replace 20 percent of laptops with tablets over the next few years. So the hierarchy of Windows and Office that we accept as our environment will change,” he says. – Kevin Cavanaugh
IBM’s mobile strategy: Anybody but HP or Microsoft | The Industry Standard – InfoWorld. [read] Keywords: ibm
microsoft
mobile
office
