2011 / 2012 Premier League season summary
Sun, May 13th 2012 5:12p Darren Adams There’s really only one thing that matters to me and that’s Arsenal’s position. With that in mind here’s a few thoughts.
Man City, Man Utd… I don’t care who won it, except that the thought of Dame Alice Ferguson looking a bit miserable amuses me more than Mad Roberto looking down in the dumps. It also amuses me that everyone associated with ManUre thought they had it won until Man City were awarded an amount of injury time which is usually reserved for ManUre [read] Keywords: facebook
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Twitter clients for Windows Phone
Mon, May 7th 2012 1:10p Darren Adams If you’re a user of Twitter and an owner of a Windows Phone, you may argue as to whether you actually need a Twitter client since the native integration into the phone’s OS is so good. If you’re not familiar with that integration it basically works like this… you can bring your Twitter (and Facebook, Windows Live, and LinkedIn) contacts into the people hub and get an aggregated view of updates from those people and responses to you. It’s easy to see when people have [read] Keywords: development
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Keep calm and deploy unified communications
Mon, Apr 2nd 2012 9:12a Darren Adams If you live in the UK, you may have noticed the trend for merchandise based on the old Keep Calm And Carry On propaganda poster produced by the British government in 1939. Indeed, on at my desk at home my mug is resting on a ‘Keep Calm And Have A Cuppa’ coaster. In the kitchen we have a canvas stating ‘Keep Calm And Walk The Dog’.
Some members of the British public found it difficult to keep calm last week. The primeval sheep instincts kicked in as the threat (not the act [read] Keywords: application
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Adding a favourite Notes feature to Outlook
Wed, Mar 28th 2012 3:12p Darren Adams Moving from IBM Lotus to Microsoft last year, one of things I thought I might find troublesome after 19½ years was leaving dear old Lotus Notes behind and adopting Outlook. I needn’t have worried, as I took to Outlook like a duck to water. This post may gather some comments about the merits of both in terms of features, but let’s put it out there now. Notes has some features that are not in Outlook. Outlook has some features that are not in Notes. Some features are in both products, [read] Keywords: ibm
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Eating your own words
Sat, Mar 24th 2012 7:11p Darren Adams Just over a month ago I attacked Arsene Wenger’s strategy of hanging onto his transfer pot. That rant came after the 4-0 drubbing at the hands (well, feet) of AC Milan and the FA Cup defeat against Sunderland. A week later, Arsenal played Spurs at the Emirates – at the start of the match Arsenal were 10 points behind their North London rivals, and level on points and goal difference with Chelski. At the time people were saying that Arsenal could never catch Spurs and it was a battle [read] Keywords: facebook
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The end of Arsenal’s season?
Sat, Feb 18th 2012 5:13p Darren Adams According to Football365…
Arsene Wenger praised Arsenal’s commitment and felt they were “a bit unlucky” in their 2-0 FA Cup fifth-round defeat to Sunderland.
“a bit unlucky”… Arsenal have been more than a bit unlucky with injuries to their defenders this season, and just as it seemed they were getting near to a full compliment returning suddenly they’re looking decimated again. However, a make-shift defence doesn’t account for two games witho [read] Keywords: facebook
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See Lync at UC Expo 2012
Fri, Feb 17th 2012 11:12a Darren Adams Last year I attended the UC Expo at London’s Olympia sharing a stand with an IBM business partner. From our stand most of my field of vision was taken up by Microsoft’s presence… not a stand, more like a small village. There was a customer immersion zone, a theatre demonstrating Lync 2010 (which was full and overflowing all day) and stands manned by a number of Microsoft Unified Communication partners such as Polycom. I remembered feeling dwarfed and slightly embarrased – [read] Keywords: ibm
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The bell tolls for the work computer (again)
Tue, Feb 14th 2012 3:12p Darren Adams Every now and again, when they have no real news to report, there’s nothing that the technology journos over at the BBC News site like to do more than rake over a well-worn argument and fan the flames again. Okay, I’m being a bit mean, because this particular argument is worthy of being occasionally re-visited.
About this time last year, as I battled in vain to keep a customer on Lotus Notes, one of the big cheeses in their IT organisation told me that when the iPad 2 was released th [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Anywhere Working
Tue, Feb 14th 2012 5:11a Darren Adams A couple of weeks ago Microsoft launched the Anywhere Working initiative in conjunction with Business in the Community, Vodafone, Transport for London, Nokia, Regus and Nuffield Health. This group initiative is designed to demonstrate to businesses and individuals how much money, time and carbon can be saved by working more flexibly and finding alternatives to travel. The site (see link above) provides a savings calculator which provides a calculation of money, CO² and time saved by not travell [read] Keywords: collaboration
community
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Acer Iconia Tab W500
Mon, Jan 16th 2012 2:11p Darren Adams One of the great things about working for Microsoft is that there always seems to be things going on to increase the interest levels around products… or more precisely, chances to win prizes. Since I’ve been been here I’ve seen people winning phones, Xboxes, Kinects, armfuls of Xbox games and (most recently) tablets. And I’m happy to say that I was the lucky recipient of a Windows 7 tablet. I had to do a bit of work for it, but it was a welcome reward. The tablet in quest [read] Keywords: enterprise
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Lync for iOS
Fri, Jan 13th 2012 5:10p Darren Adams Following on from last year’s look at Microsoft Lync for Windows Phone, let’s have a look at Lync for iOS. Lync supports the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, but as I only have an iPod I’ll have to leave the iPad interface for another time. As usual, click on the small images to see the full versions
After logging in I see My Info, where I can set my status and message, change the call-forwarding and simultaneous ring options, and change a number of other options for multiple phone [read] Keywords: desktop
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Lync goes mobile
Fri, Dec 23rd 2011 7:10a Darren Adams Upon joining Microsoft I was extremely impressed by the fact that Microsoft Lync 2010 with telephony was rolled out right across the whole organisation. There’s no phones on any desks (other than some demo SIP phones) and a headset is part of the standard ‘welcome pack’ along with a new laptop and a Windows Phone. No-one asks if someone can take a Lync call, it just happens. All conference calls use Lync (unless it’s set up by an external party). It’s a way of life [read] Keywords: sametime
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Nokia Lumia 800
Sat, Dec 3rd 2011 8:10a Darren Adams Continuing with the Windows Phone theme… earlier this year Nokia announced their intention to embrace Microsoft’s new mobile OS. A few months ago, an internal Microsoft event previewed Nokia’s first phones and their ambitious marketing plans. Since then you may have seen a lot of advertising and events such as the Deadmau5 gig on the banks of the Thames with the Millbank tower’s eight hundred windows transformed into a huge screen.
In October Nokia announced two new Windo [read] Keywords: apple
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Nokia Lumia 800 – the amazing demo
Mon, Nov 21st 2011 12:13p Darren Adams I think I mentioned Windows Phone recently, but as yet I haven’t mentioned Nokia’s first offerings for the platform. The Lumia 800 is one of two phones released so far (more are coming) and has been getting rave reviews. I have held one on two occasions, and twice considered making a run for it with the gorgeous device in my thieving paws. At the weekend I noted that some of the many mobile phone shops in Camberley had fully-working demo units on display (not those non-functional dum [read] Keywords: facebook
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A tale of two clouds
Mon, Nov 21st 2011 10:12a Darren Adams Just a quick one, a blog post about another blog post – Binary Tree’s Henry Bestritsky explains why his company left the Google Enterprise Partner program and threw its full weight behind Exchange upgrades and migrations to Office 365. The choice quote is…
…media perceptions and market hype could not hide the fact that we were not seeing customer demand for Google in the enterprise.
You can read the full blog post here. [read] Keywords: archive
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A Windows Phone guide to Camberley
Sat, Nov 12th 2011 11:11a Darren Adams A couple of months ago I provided a list of new bits and pieces in the ‘Mango’ update to Windows Phone 7. One of the things I didn’t include was ‘local scout’. This feature can be accessed from the Bing search screen, or it can be pinned to the start screen. The first time I used local scout was in York – I was staying the night at a hotel and after seven hours of sleep I was ready for a spot of breakfast. However, I usually make a stand against expensive hote [read] Keywords: facebook
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Task list for Windows Phone
Wed, Nov 9th 2011 4:12p Darren Adams Continuing the recent trend of blog posts about Windows Phone, and because Bill Buchan loves reading about the operating system, here’s a quick update on one of my favourite apps… the aptly named ‘Tasks’. It probably won’t be a surprise for you to discover that it’s a task list app (no, really).
It was already a good app – apart from being free (a big plus-point) the killer feature is being able to pin tasks or task categories to the Windows Phone start [read] Keywords: facebook
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The Olympic art of shooting fish in a barrel
Sun, Nov 6th 2011 11:13a Darren Adams Regular readers of dadams.co.uk will know that I love modern art… mainly because it gives me a chance to be sarcastic and rude about the complete tripe that someone people produce. Usually I turn my barbed wit upon the Turner Prize, but as luck would have it another group of artists has provided some ammo. Taking the Michael out of art is often like shooting fish in a barrel, but this occasion it’s like shooting dead fish in a small barrel at point blank range with a long-muzzled rev [read] Keywords: facebook
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Windows Phone live tiles – this is how they look
Sat, Nov 5th 2011 11:10a Darren Adams You may think that this is becoming a blog dedicated to Windows Phone – it’s not, but Windows Phone is something that I’m enthusiastic about and deserves more praise than it’s getting. In a previous post I discussed live tiles, which have become more common-place in apps since the release of Mango. In the last day I’ve indulged in a bit of jiggery-pokery (that’s the technical term) which has resulted in me being able to capture Windows Phone screens. So here, [read] Keywords: application
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New York Times – a welcome Windows Phone
Thu, Oct 27th 2011 6:12a Darren Adams I’ve had several conversations with people (friends, ex-colleagues) about Windows Phone, and have argued about them being dismissive of the phone’s chances against Android and iOS. Sure, Windows Phone is going to have to catch up from a long way back – that I recognise – but what annoys me is people who are willing to dimiss the phone without actually having seen it or touched it. Those who do get to tinker with the phone often like the experience. Personally, the more I [read] Keywords: facebook
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Windows Phone – quick access to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Wed, Oct 19th 2011 2:12p Darren Adams Remember the days when you had a phone with a monochrome screen, just enough of a display to read a phone number or a text message? Remember the days when a mobile phone really was just a phone, when it had less computing power than the control centre of the Apollo moon program? In those days of the distant past, my phone battery seemed to last forever.
Compare that to now… I bet your phone has a large, bright, colourful screen, a processor which five years ago would have graced only the h [read] Keywords: connections
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Loving the live tiles
Tue, Oct 18th 2011 6:10a Darren Adams Ever since Windows Phone 7.5 (also known as Mango) was released there seems to have been a marked increase in the number of available apps supporting the live tiles on the phone’s start screen. If you haven’t experienced the Windows Phone interface and don’t know what live tiles are, have a look here and select ‘Start Screen + Live Tiles’. If you’re familiar with iOS, you’ll know that apps like e-mail, calendar, Twitter, Facebook and Words With Friends c [read] Keywords: notes
facebook
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Mango ripens
Wed, Sep 28th 2011 5:11p Darren Adams Looking back through the dadams.co.uk archives I realised that I was a happy BlackBerry user for four years. Upon joining Microsoft they declined to provide me with a BlackBerry, and instead gave me an HTC Mozart sporting the Windows Phone 7 operating system (NoDo). Okay, I didn’t actually ask for a BlackBerry – before joining I’d had a good look at Lewis Turek’s phone, had found out his pass-key, and took great pleasure in changing the theme to pink when he wasn’t [read] Keywords: applications
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Using Visio 2010 for process simulation and optimisation
Thu, Sep 15th 2011 5:13p Darren Adams My previous blog post about Visio focused on integration with SharePoint, but now I’m going to take a look at using Visio for simulating and optimising business processes. Just about everyone knows that Visio allows you to map out workflow and business processes… and it’s also possible to publish workflow processes into a SharePoint site. But how could you work out how many people it takes to complete a process on an on-going basis, how much the process costs, where the bottle [read] Keywords: facebook
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Visio 2010 – Microsoft’s best-kept secret?
Sun, Sep 4th 2011 11:10a Darren Adams While I was having lunch with Eileen and Tim from GSX today (nice to see you both, and Tim, congratulations on the new job) the conversation turned to Visio 2010. There was no surprise about the popularity of the product, there was a bit of surprise over the scale of the Visio business (it’s huge, but I course I divulged no numbers), but there was an awful lot of surprise about what the product does.
This is something I find during a lot of conversations – there is a perception that [read] Keywords: enterprise
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The (hopefully temporary) fall of Arsenal
Mon, Aug 29th 2011 8:13a Darren Adams After yesterday’s tragic and embarrassing 8-2 defeat at the hands (or maybe I should say “feet”) of Manchester United, I started on a long blog post about money being the controlling factor in football. Note to our American friends at this point, I’m talking about football, a game played by kicking a ball with the feet… not carrying and throwing an egg-shaped object while wearing body armour. After mulling over my thoughts and the content for twelve hours I’v [read] Keywords: facebook
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The most popular e-mail client
Sun, Aug 7th 2011 7:10a Darren Adams During the past week a colleague sent me a link to Campaign Monitor’s statistics on e-mail client popularity. A first glance shows Outlook to be the most popular, Lotus Notes to be absolutely nowhere, and iOS devices to be the strong-performing new kids on the block.
However, it’s very important to look at the way that the statistics have been collected. Campaign Monitor use a request to a remote image in their e-mail, and then can check the type of client that makes the request. Now [read] Keywords: lotus
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Outlook 2010 mail tips
Wed, Aug 3rd 2011 6:09p Darren Adams It’s now been five weeks since I became an Outlook user. After nineteen years of using Notes I slipped into it pretty well… yes, there’s a few Notes features I miss, but there’s a big heap of Outlook features that Notes doesn’t have. I’m not really interested in starting a big feature comparison, but feeling the need to blog about something, I thought I’d feature mail tips to start off the Microsoft product blogging.
So what are mail tips? Well, they giv [read] Keywords: notes
blogging
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exchange
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Week one at Microsoft
Fri, Jul 1st 2011 11:19a Darren Adams Should I have named this blog post ‘Career 3.0′? Today saw me complete my first week at Microsoft, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading back to Thames Valley Park for week two. I’ve joined the Enterprise and Partner Group as a Business Productivity Sales Professional in the Specialist Team Unit. Here’s a few thoughts from my first week:
Thames Valley Park is an inviting place to work – free drinks and fruit on offer, a number of subsidised restaurants, a [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Firefox 5… what? Version 5 already?
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 2:14p Darren Adams For years I’ve been a big fan of Firefox, but things seem to have gone a little askew lately. It was only a couple of months ago that I blogged about version 4, so I was extremely surprised when a ZDNet tech update arrived in my mail box today and announced Firefox 5. I momentarily thought it was a prank.
At the moment, having given my ThinkPad back to IBM (and being without Windows until next week), I’m a 100% Mac user. But I’m not using Firefox. Shortly after installing Firef [read] Keywords: ibm
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Anyone fancy a Chromebook?
Mon, Jun 20th 2011 11:15a Darren Adams Let me set my stall out first. At home I use an iMac, and for work I use a Windows-based laptop (previous job and new job). I tried a few times to get into Linux, and while I quite liked the operating system itself, some key applications were either flaky or missing, and I always ended up back in Windows. As I’ve mentioned a few times, for a number of weeks I had possession of an iPad but barely used it. I heard from some people that they were taking an iPad with them on business appointme [read] Keywords: apple
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Amazon Kindle
Wed, Jun 8th 2011 6:16a Darren Adams What do the Nokia 6310i and the Palm Vx have in common? Is it that they’ve both been consigned to a distant corner of a drawer in my office? Is it that my daughter turned her nose up at both of them? Well, I did (jokingly) offer the 6130i to her a couple of years ago when she wanted her first mobile phone, but she politely declined. The answer I’m looking for is that they both have monochrome displays, and as such would now most likely be regarded as technology that Noah’s dad [read] Keywords: lotus
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Goodbye IBM
Tue, May 31st 2011 5:48a Darren Adams “Do one thing every day that scares you” – Eleanor Roosevelt, US diplomat (1884 – 1962)
Well, every day is probably a bit excessive, but once every two decades probably isn’t enough.
After 19½ years of combined service with Lotus Development Corporation and then IBM, I have decided to leave and pursue a new opportunity. After that amount of time you’ll appreciate that this was a hard decision to make – there were a number of reasons that prompted me to [read] Keywords: ibm
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Announcing IBM Sametime 8.5.2
Wed, May 18th 2011 4:10p Darren Adams Despite it’s small version number increment, this is a BIG release. The what’s new list is a variety of items, so let’s take a quick look:
Network Address Translation (NAT) support and firewall traversal for audio / video – this is something I’ve heard a few times as a deployment blocker, so great news.
Audio / video in browser-based meeting rooms – Sametime 8.5 introduced the new style of persistent meeting rooms and provided rich client and browser-based ac [read] Keywords: ibm
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Plantronics and IBM team up for live web event
Mon, May 16th 2011 6:10a Darren Adams Mark you diary… 15:00 UK time this Wednesday, 18th May…
Ken Kannapen, Plantronics CEO, Bill Loewenthal, Plantronics Vice President of Unified Communications Solutions and Jeff Schick, IBM’s Vice President of Social Software will share insights into how businesses can simply communicate.
Interesting timing as there’s another big IBM announcement looming, but there’ll be more details on that later in the week.
For more details on joining the live web event please clic [read] Keywords: ibm
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Report reveals time wasted on e-mail
Thu, Apr 28th 2011 4:11p Darren Adams I’m getting old and my memory is failing – and ironically it was an e-mail containing a summary of our press coverage that reminded me that I’d commented on a YouGov survey (something I’d forgotten). The comments were distributed by our PR agency and ended up in a number of publications, such HR Review and Plugged In. Among my pearls of wisdom are:
Social collaboration offers great opportunities for business and allows users in disparate locations to easily collaborate an [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Jabra GO 660
Thu, Apr 28th 2011 7:12a Darren Adams Jon Machtynger is Chief Technology Officer for IBM Collaboration Solutions in the UK & Ireland. Jon ‘volunteered’ to test-drive a GO 660 Bluetooth headset and use it for day-to-day use with Sametime Unified Telephony (and customer demos) in return for a write-up… and hereby qualifies for the honour of being a guest blogger on dadams.co.uk – Darren
The Jabra GO 660 is so easy to use that it took me some time to get it to work.
Let me explain.
When I opened the box, it [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Scrapple to the rescue
Wed, Apr 27th 2011 2:09p Darren Adams Scrapple is a neat side-bar plug-in for Lotus Notes, a place where you can keep little fragments (scraps) of information that you use time and time again. It’s very simple to use… to save a scrap of info, you simply highlight it and drag and drop it into the Scrapple panel. By the way, that drag and drop works from anywhere you can grab some text, not just within Notes. To use a scrap, you just drag and drop it from the panel. You can also drag a Notes document into Scrapple, and the [read] Keywords: ibm
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IBM Connections 3.0.1
Fri, Apr 8th 2011 1:11p Darren Adams Back in November 2010 I blogged about the release of IBM Lotus Connections 3. Hot on it’s heels (just four months later) comes version 3.0.1 – looking at the version number, you’d think that’s not much more than a fix pack for version 3.0, but you’d be wrong. One other thing of note is that Connections has lost its ‘Lotus’ brand… it’s now IBM Connections. I thought this would raise a few eyebrows and spark a few debates, but the reaction to t [read] Keywords: connections
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IT spending in the UK’s Public Sector
Wed, Mar 30th 2011 2:10p Darren Adams My frolleague Richard Voaden sent this article my way this afternoon…
Ian Watmore – who is now in charge of a Whitehall efficiency drive – gave a scathing assessment of the previous government’s IT record.
The article suggests that expensive IT projects made policies sound “sexy” and that certain suppliers had a vice-like grip on the world of Public Sector IT. As these articles often do, the idea of open source software is thrown in as a potential money-saver, [read] Keywords: lotus
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A box of Jabra goodies
Fri, Mar 25th 2011 6:17p Darren Adams Regular readers of dadams.co.uk will know that I’m a big advocate of getting the right kit for unified communications solutions. Whether you’re working from home, in a private office, in an open-plan environment , or constantly on the move, it’s very important to get a device that suits you and allows you to manage your modes of communication. When working from the Camberley office, I use Sametime Unified Telephony as much as possible – for all my outgoing calls, and a co [read] Keywords: connections
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Firefox 4
Thu, Mar 24th 2011 5:10p Darren Adams Upgrading to a major new version of Firefox is carried out with a certain amount of trepidation. After years of using Firefox I have it ‘how I like it’, and that includes my favourite theme Camifox. And here’s the first piece of bad news… Camifox is not being updated for Firefox 4. That’s a shame.
An upgrade is very likely to expose some non-supported plug-ins, and it’s likely to give Mrs A a case of the wobbles – as Firefox is installed on the family iM [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Collaboration UKI TechJams for Spring 2011
Fri, Mar 11th 2011 7:10a Darren Adams The IBM Collaboration Solutions UKI (that’s UK and Ireland) Technical Sales team are hosting a number of events through April and May 2011. The TechJams are focused on covering many parts of the IBM Collaboration Solutions portfolio, including:
Customising and extending Connections 3
Cloud-based messaging and collaboration (that’ll be LotusLive)
Exceptional web experiences
Collaborating using mobile devices
Unified communications and collaboration
Two dates are set so far, 5th Apri [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Get Social. Do Business. Mark your diary.
Thu, Mar 3rd 2011 1:09p Darren Adams It’s about this time of year that daffodils start to emerge and our thoughts turn to Lotusphere Comes To You. But this year the events aren’t billed as Lotusphere Comes To You – instead they will go under the name of ‘Get Social, Do Business’. We’ve announced five (yes, five) dates:
13th April – Warrington – hosted by Polymorph
18th April – Warwick
4th May – Edinburgh (hopefully without the added delights of a volcanic apocalypse this [read] Keywords: ibm
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Forbes: Avoiding IT Consumerization Pitfalls
Thu, Feb 10th 2011 4:13p Darren Adams Forbes’ article starts with the strap line “I want my iPad” and relates to something I’ve experienced first-hand. When the iPhone 3 was released I noted a marked increase in the number of IBM colleagues coming to me and asking whether they could get their shiny new device connected up to their Notes-based e-mail. At that time, Traveler was not available to UK employees, so the answer was “no”. And even if it had been available, it was nothing to do with meR [read] Keywords: ibm
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Lotus Knows where you’re likely to get mugged
Wed, Feb 2nd 2011 6:14a Darren Adams For an overview of live text please go here. And for an old dadams.co.uk look at live text and widgets, travel back in time to early 2008.
The most common use of live text recognising a post code is plotting the place on a Google Map… but you can also see the local weather forecast (for what it’s worth), find the nearest NCP car park or BT Openzone hot-spot, find a hotel, get local government information, and sometimes find the nearest Starbucks (I say “sometimes” because [read] Keywords: ibm
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Lotusphere Comes To Warrington
Sun, Jan 30th 2011 10:17a Darren Adams Today marks the start of Lotusphere 2011 in Orlando, Florida. Thousands of enlightened customers and Business Partners, plus some of the competition (hi Lewis), are attending and will hear the latest announcements. Normally I would live-blog the opening session and give you the updates as they happen, but this year I’m not attending. If you’re following the right people on Twitter I’m sure you’ll be able to get the news, plus announcements will be made at the Lotus web si [read] Keywords: ibm
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Connections 3.0 Files plug-in for Notes
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 4:18p Darren Adams Here’s something that’s been in the works for a while internally and has now seen the light of day. I’m a big advocate of IBM Lotus Connections Files for sharing content. I like to see the look on peoples’ faces when I say “no, I won’t send that file to you… but I will share it with you”.
Using Connections Files I can control the sharing, I can see how many times the content has been downloaded (my most popular presentation has been downloaded 228 [read] Keywords: connections
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Improved security for Microsoft Exchange / Outlook content
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 9:18a Darren Adams Good news folks, IBM Lotus Protector now supports Exchange and Outlook. Read all about it here, but here’s a quick soundbite:
The IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Encryption software appliance extends Microsoft Outlook and Exchange encryption capabilities to the Internet, making it easy and cost effective for your business to exchange sensitive email with verified third parties, helping to meet regulatory requirements, streamline your processes and minimize costs. [read] Keywords: ibm
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A simple Connections story
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 5:18a Darren Adams Here in IBM-land we use Connections every day, often without thinking about it. I’ve got so used to it being there that it’s become second nature, but every now and again I stop to appreciate its value. And here’s a simple example.
About a week ago, I received an e-mail about the UK ODF Plugfest – I’ll let you visit the web site (if you’re interested) to find out what it’s all about. The question posed in the e-mail was “how are we [IBM] involved a [read] Keywords: connections
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2011 – the year that e-mail dies?
Tue, Jan 18th 2011 1:13p Darren Adams I doubt it. But an interesting article from the London Evening Standard kicks off this idea.
Before we know it, email will seem as quaint as the fax machine and dial-up accounts.
The article starts with the thoughts of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. He rarely uses e-mail. And then Mark Zuckerberg (don’t know who he is, something to do with Facebook) who describes e-mail as ‘formal’.
Let me start by saying that I welcome the idea of receiving less e-mail. To me, there is no [read] Keywords: collaboration
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BlackBerry OS6
Mon, Jan 10th 2011 3:14p Darren Adams It’s been a couple of days since I upgraded my BlackBerry Bold 9700 to OS6, so time enough to provide a quick summary of what’s new and improved.
The home screen provides easy access to a number of BlackBerry functions and is more customisable. You can do more with the home screen, such as set the number of rows of applications (none, one or two), scroll between different sets of applications (favourites, frequently-used, media), and start a search just by typing some characters. Cli [read] Keywords: application
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Harry Potter studio visit
Tue, Jan 4th 2011 1:17p Darren Adams Way way back in time, August 2009 to be precise, I visited a studio where a major movie was being filmed along with Mrs A, Lolli and my nephew Big Al. I said at the time that we’d all signed confidentiality agreements, so could divulge very little. But since then the very kind person who arranged the visit said that it was okay to blog it provided that as-yet unseen details were not revealed, and one part of the movie series being filmed has since been released. We are of course talking ab [read] Keywords: facebook
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32
Review of 2010
Fri, Dec 31st 2010 10:17a Darren Adams We got a dog in January, didn’t go on holiday during the Summer, and then the weather was rotten which made the fact that we didn’t go on holiday just that bit more depressing. I changed jobs in April and I’m now spending less time in Scandinavian airports. Christmas was fun but came and went too quickly.
My best wishes for the time period between the 1st of January and the 31st of December, which is basically a range of dates decided upon by a Roman guy who died a long time ag [read] Keywords: facebook
29
Quickr or Connections?
Wed, Dec 29th 2010 10:16a Darren Adams Something we’re often asked… when would you use [IBM Lotus] Quickr and when would you use Connections? My frolleague Louis Richardson, who just so happens to be our Worldwide Sales Executive for Social Software, has provided some thoughts on this question in the Collaboration Soapbox blog.
I’ve covered off this issue with customers in the past, and reading through Louis’ article I’m glad to say I wasn’t far off with my answer. Just as when people have asked qu [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Lotus Notes Traveler meets Android
Tue, Dec 14th 2010 3:14p Darren Adams Slightly old news as Ed Brill has already blogged it, and Traveler Product Manager Jan Kenney has also provided a detailed write-up. So what more value can I add?
Late this morning a member of the IBM UK Public Relations team contacted me and asked if I’d be available to speak to journalists about the announcement. Nursing a slightly sore throat wasn’t going to impede me, so the answer was yes. By lunchtime an appointment had been set for 14:30 with Dan Worth of v3.co.uk. Not long af [read] Keywords: ibm
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51
Weather report in your calendar
Fri, Dec 10th 2010 4:17a Darren Adams Lotus Notes 8.5 introduced the ability to overlay other calendars onto your own. The ‘other calendars’ can come from a variety of sources:
Other users’ Notes calendars
Notes TeamRoom calendars
Notes application calendars (e.g. an application for managing events or a workflow application with milestones and deadlines)
Google calendars
Open standard iCalendar feeds
Lotus Connections Activities
Lotus collaboration advocate Chris Crummey talks about the idea that work / life balance is a myt [read] Keywords: collaboration
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39
Sametime and Plantronics integration
Tue, Dec 7th 2010 2:14p Darren Adams A couple of months ago I blogged about Plantronics’ headsets, and it’s no secret that we have a very good relationship with this supplier of extremely high-quality audio equipment. Yes, Plantronics do work with other vendors of Unified Communications solutions (why wouldn’t they?) but it’s good to see that they’re extending the integration with Sametime.
Late last night I got an e-mail from Carl Tyler of Epilio, who are providing Plantronics’ Sametime integrat [read] Keywords: ibm
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23
Tablet dilemma
Mon, Nov 29th 2010 3:15p Darren Adams I was going to name this post “keep taking the tablets” or something witty like that, but then I realised it would be an extraordinarily bad pun and not very funny.
Anyway, here’s the problem… I’m a contented soul who doesn’t want for much or expect much. I have a few gadgets… I actually have four iPods (and use them all) and an Archos 605 media player. The 605 looks a bit long-in-the-tooth – it’s three years old which is almost pre-historic [read] Keywords: lotus
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IBM Lotus Connections 3 is available
Thu, Nov 25th 2010 7:18p Darren Adams A couple of weeks ago we announced Lotus Connections 3, and today it became generally available. This is a substantial update with many improvements and some major new capabilities – so, it’s a good time to provide a quick overview of what’s new and improved.
Files – lots of new display options… you can now choose which pieces of information you see, and also choose whether to see full details or a ‘social view’. Collections have become folders – y [read] Keywords: connections
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Rock your Notes applications with Teamstudio
Thu, Nov 25th 2010 1:13p Darren Adams It’s not even December yet, but our friends at Teamstudio are already thinking about Lotusphere. Michaela from Teamstudio notified me that they’re running a contest to put the spotlight on the best Notes applications, and Notes applications that are begging to be mobilised (and I know that Teamstudio have a great solution for doing just that).
Details are here and you have until 31st December to get your application entered. [read] Keywords: lotusphere
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This Week in Lotus episode 26
Tue, Nov 16th 2010 4:15p Darren Adams If you haven’t discovered the This Week in Lotus podcast series yet I suggest that you check it out. This week would be a good time to start – joining regular hosts Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke are Suzanne Livingstone and Mac Guidera from the Lotus Connections product management team (discussing Connections 3, which will feature here on dadams.co.uk very soon).
Also featured in episode 26 – and I apologise for this appalling act of self-promotion – is one Mr Darren Ada [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM LotusLive iNotes wins a CRN 2010 Tech Innovator award
Mon, Nov 15th 2010 5:18p Darren Adams The title says it all – LotusLive iNotes has won an honour in this year’s Everything Channel’s CRN Tech Innovator awards. iNotes won the award for the best small / medium business software productivity solution. According to the press release:
The winners were recognized for introducing innovative new solutions to bridge the widest gaps between current problems and solutions facing channel executives today.
iNotes’ mention is brief, but you can read about the full list of [read] Keywords: ibm
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Greetings from Aberdeen
Thu, Nov 11th 2010 4:13p Darren Adams It’s 19:45, and I’m in the Aberdeen-based Business Class lounge of a certain airline. I shall refer to them as ‘the airline’, which is a much politer term than they deserve. The story goes something like this…
14:16 – I’m in the middle of a meeting with a customer and a text message from the airline arrives on the ‘Berry. As we were talking about Sametime Unified Telephony I was involving my phone in a demo and got a chance to look at the text mess [read] Keywords: agent
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Lotus Notes is cool
Tue, Nov 2nd 2010 2:31p Darren Adams By now I’m one of the last people to blog this (apart from Ed Brill) – this morning I launched a brand new web site, Lotus Notes is Cool.
The idea has been buzzing around my head for a while, and the inspiration to do it went into overdrive after I Love Lotus Notes was recently launched. So during half-term last week, in between washing the car and packing away the trampoline for the Winter, I worked on the site and created some content.
Why do this? There’s a few reasons… [read] Keywords: administration
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Cool Notes icons
Sat, Oct 30th 2010 8:27p Darren Adams Previously, in an update on Notes 8.5.2, I mentioned that a Notes application can now boast a full colour icon (i.e. not restricted to sixteen colours). While this does nothing for your productivity, it is an important addition to Notes. Why? Well, because for years people have been telling us that look and feel is important. The Notes design team have done an amazing job with the Notes user interface in the past few years, but for database icons… we’ve always been at the mercy of ap [read] Keywords: notes
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The joys of self-checkout
Wed, Oct 27th 2010 5:27p Darren Adams Nothing annoys me more than waiting in a queue for the checkout in a supermarket. Actually, that’s not true, loads of things annoy me more than that… for example, Eamonn Holmes, and the fact that orange juice is always served at social functions for people who aren’t drinking alcohol. Anyway, I digress – the notion of those new self-checkout machines appearing in supermarkets is a good thing… when they work properly.
Mrs A does a big weekly shop on Monday, but IR [read] Keywords: facebook
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Lotus Symphony 3 is available
Fri, Oct 22nd 2010 6:30p Darren Adams I’m more than a day late on this, and of course Ed Brill got there first as usual. But I couldn’t let this important milestone go by without a mention.
It’s a shame that some people chose to focus on the small matter of having to register (or at least enter a few details) before downloading Symphony 3. I say this because I’d prefer it if they focused on the facts that have a real impact. Symphony is free, it offers the same capabilities as the core components of Microsoft [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Using groups with live text in Lotus Notes
Thu, Oct 14th 2010 6:30p Darren Adams We’ve covered Notes’ live text feature before in the hallowed pages of dadams.co.uk, but this time we’ll dig a bit deeper and show a real-world example. Let me first thank Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg, as his post helped me clarify some of this. I knew the basic concept but needed a little help, and his post gave me what I needed.
A quick intro for anyone who doesn’t know what live text is… Notes has the ability to recognise a set of characters and associate an action [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM floats Notes for Microsoft Exchange wobblers
Mon, Oct 11th 2010 6:28a Darren Adams Channel Register has published an interesting article about IBM’s moves in the war for cloud-based e-mail and collaboration. They state that with equal pricing for both IBM’s and Microsoft’s offerings, IBM is squeezing Microsoft on capabilities, mentioning that LotusLive offers guest services while Microsoft require a payment from everyone.
I shouldn’t deny that the article talks about Notes customers moving to Microsoft’s BPOS offering – but I want to remind [read] Keywords: collaboration
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26
Be kind to your ears
Wed, Oct 6th 2010 6:29p Darren Adams Last week I blogged about Christmas coming early in the form of some goodies from ClearOne and Plantronics. Having given the speakerphones a thorough testing (hey, I work for IBM, there’s no shortage of opportunities to get on a conference call) it was time to give the headsets a proper going-over. My contact at Plantronics, Declan, provided three new headsets – one attaches to a computer using cables… imagine that. Old school, but about as simple as it gets for connecting and [read] Keywords: ibm
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A big week for LotusLive
Wed, Oct 6th 2010 2:30p Darren Adams As usual, Ed Brill got his blog post in before me, so I’m not going to repeat Ed’s rather thorough overview of the LotusLive Notes announcements. But if you want a quick overview of the new bullets:
$5 per month, 25 gigabyte mailbox
Onboarding, data migration and custom mail template services for LotusLive Notes
LotusLive Notes access from Apple iPhone and iPad, Windows Mobile and Nokia / Symbian devices
BlackBerry support coming soon
We also announced the new LotusLive offering, t [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Battle of the speakerphones
Fri, Oct 1st 2010 9:27a Darren Adams Regular readers of dadams.co.uk may remember a recent post about a Polycom CX100 speakerphone that I picked up at Polycom’s event. Since acquiring this nifty and extremely portable device, I’ve tended to use it at home (when taking and making calls on Sametime Unified Telephony) more than I’ve used my trusty Plantronics CS60 headset. The speakerphone works well in a home office environment as the voice of the other person (or people) doesn’t disturb anyone. The headset re [read] Keywords: ibm
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Lotus Notes love-fest
Mon, Sep 27th 2010 9:26a Darren Adams I love Lotus Notes. And I wish it had been me who had set up ilovelotusnotes.net, but it wasn’t. So far the comments have been pretty much what I’d expect – the perception is that the hate-filled rants on ihatelotusnotes.com are mostly from people using older versions of Notes. Mind you, once you hate something you’ll probably convince yourself that you’ll always hate it, no matter how much it improves. So going to that site and telling people that they’re on [read] Keywords: lotus
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The cloud collaboration guru
Mon, Sep 13th 2010 10:33a Darren Adams A couple of years ago I recorded a series of videos for GuruOnline. Our contact John has often mentioned that the series has been viewed a considerable number of times (over 19,500), so when the chance to record some more videos came along I needed little persuasion. However, I had forgotten how tortuous the process of filming is… well, for me anyway. I can stand up and give a presentation without a moment’s thought. I can sit across the table from a customer and talk until the Sun e [read] Keywords: collaboration
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A gift from Polycom
Wed, Sep 8th 2010 6:27p Darren Adams A few weeks ago I received an invite to the grand opening of Polycom’s new Executive Briefing Centre at a plush 16th floor location near Liverpool Street station. Today marked the event, and I have to say that Polycom’s new location is tremendously impressive – if you get an invite, take the opportunity to visit them.
Joined by my frolleagues Stuart McRae and Murat Gunenc, I was there because we’re partners with Polycom in the UC² market offering integration with Sametim [read] Keywords: ibm
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The rock ‘n’ roll years
Mon, Sep 6th 2010 9:27p Darren Adams If you’ve ever bothered to read the About me page here on dadams.co.uk, or if you’ve known me since school days, you’ll know that I once came very close to fame through music. Okay, close-ish. In my teens I played the six-string guitar quite badly, and then took up the bass guitar when one of my school chums, Al Johnson, needed a bass player for his band. Myself, Al, and drummer David Hunt became a band with no name and no singer, and never played any gigs. But it was fun rehea [read] Keywords: lotus
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Lotus Notes upgrade workshops
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 5:33a Darren Adams My frolleague Matt Newton is running a series of Notes upgrade workshops during September and October. With Notes / Domino 8.5.2 available this week there’s never been a better time to look at upgrading a back-version infrastructure, to take advantage of the attractive and highly-functional Notes client and the many improvements on the Domino server (many of which will contribute to lowering the cost of ownership). To quote the invite…
The Notes & Domino 8.5.x upgrade workshop is [read] Keywords: domino
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IBM Lotus / IDC webcast on Unified Communications
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 5:33a Darren Adams Just a quick one… on the 9th of September at 14:00 (UK time) I’ll be joining IDC for a webcast on Unified Communications. The core theme will be to discuss whether the adoption of Unified Communications requires a rip-and-replace (I can tell you now, the answer is ‘no’). Here’s an overview…
Last year one of the key concerns highlighted by delegates at IDC’s Unified Communications conference was whether UC requires significant investment in new communications [read] Keywords: ibm
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Macs only come in white or silver
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 1:26p Darren Adams What keeps Steve Ballmer awake at night? No, not Mrs Ballmer’s snoring. And probably not the IBM Lotus portfolio. Linux maybe? Well, someone from Microsoft did once tell me that Lotus doesn’t keep Bill Gates awake at night (hence my comment) but Linux does. Why Linux? Because it starts to break down Microsoft’s halo effect… Linux servers replacing Windows servers will hinder .NET and SharePoint deployments and Linux desktops will scupper Windows and Office, which are Micr [read] Keywords: ibm
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