First and foremost, the book is designed to be an overview of the product and an update on what is new. In many ways, it feels like the content you would get from a super duper "What's New in Notes" help file or something from Lotus Education to take the new certifications. I do not think that is a bad thing. If you were expecting a really detailed book on Xpages, this is not that book. I will get to the Xpages issue in a bit, but first - lets talk about what is good in the book.
I found the chapters on the Domino Server, Deployment, Upgrading, and Coexistence to be very good, even if there are two chapters about Domino (Chapters 4 and 10) which should have been consolidated into one. I thought for anyone who was a beginner to mid level IT professional would learn something from all of these chapters.
The chapters about the Notes client, Notes & SOA, Integration with other Lotus/IBM Products, and third-party applications were very detailed.
There is some great code to export Domino Configuration Tuner reports - a feature I have asked IBM to implement specifically. Nice addition - but would be even better if the code was made available for download.
The details about the Lotus Quickr Connectors is very detailed and great for any end user who has never used them.
The iNotes sections are very very detailed. Outside of presentations at Lotusphere and the documentation in the product, this might be the most extensive writing on iNotes I have ever seen.
Now on to some of the issues I have found:
There is a mix of 8.0.X, 8.5, and 8.5.1 in this book. And the book reads as its all supposed to be current. My guess is that they took the 8 or 8.5 content that was already there and updated pieces of it. The problem is that they did not update enough. You can find a picture from the Notes 8.0.X client on page 7 with pictures from Notes 8.5.0 with message recall on pages 23 and 24. When you get to the Lotus Notes 8.5 section on page 35, the book finally starts to cover modern features. But why not just write an entire chapter about the Notes client from the 8.5.1 perspective. There was no mention of the new 8.5.1 features like making unread mail red instead of bold. Just a lost opportunity to really hit home on the new features
Chapter 3 covers "Productivity Tools" - 8 pages on the editors that ship with the Lotus Notes client. But they use pictures from 8.0.2 - and don't talk about any of the integration pieces that tie Notes and Symphony together with 8.5 and Symphony 1.2 and 8.5.1 and Symphony 1.3. As the technical reviewer of "Lotus Symphony for Dummies" - this chapter does not serve anyone who reads it
There is a couple mentions of DB2NSF - and it has been known for at least 6 months that this functionality was sunsetted. The book shouldn't even mention it.
Chapter 8 talks about what is new in Notes/Domino 8.5 Development. The chapter goes 29 pages before it mentions Domino Designer for Eclipse (DDE) or Xpages. Sure, cover what's new otherwise - but this is very much a bolt on to an existing chapter from Notes 8.X. No screen shots of the new LotusScript editor. 1 page on Xpages. This book will not serve anyone who wants to be an Xpages developer.
Chapter 9 covers integration with other IBM/Lotus products - with products that have been out for over a year. Obviously they are using Quickr and Sametime 7.5.1 - could they not have used Sametime 8 and Quickr 8.2? One of the screen shots even shows the IBM version of the Lotus Sametime Connect client. I know the majority of the authors of the books work for IBM, but they should be using the out of the box software.
The Third Party Section could have been an amazing section for IBM to highlight great business partner solutions. The problem - they don't mention any alternatives to the tools they have. For instance, they have a section on reporting on Notes data but only offer one solution to the problem. They should have listed a bunch of products and then dived into the one's as they did.
It's great that there are books on Lotus Notes & Domino coming out - but we really need them to be accurate and up to date. If you are reading PlanetLotus.org on a regular basis - this book is not going to offer you new content. New administrators who find the book will find great info on upgrading and coexistence. As for end users, it may be a great book for some of your users - at least pieces of it. Personally, I would suggest they pull the "8.5.1" number off the cover.
If you are looking for a written resource about Notes 8.5.X, you should check out the book for yourself. These are just my opinions, and you might find the book useful for your purposes. In that vein, Packt has provided a free downloadable version of Chapter 8: What's New in Notes/Domino 8.5 Development - please, download; read; and make your own decision. If you would like to purchase the book, you can get it directly from here. You can get the physical copy or the pdf - and it does look good on my Kindle 2 DX :-)
New Media Tuesday - 8/31/2010
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 12:30p John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Beatdown Best Of Soul Train Brainjacked Brothers & Sisters: Season #4 Ca$h Cemetery Junction Final Girl FlashForward: The Complete Series Forbidden Dreams Harry Brown House: Season #6 Lonesome Dove: The Series: Season #1 Marmaduke Middle, The: Season #1 NCIS: Los Angeles: Season #1 Naked Cities One Tree Hill: Season #7 Parenthood: Season #1 Persons Unknown: Season #1 Sexy Radio Sons Of Anarchy: Season #2 Thriller: The Complete Series (#18 in [read] Keywords: vista
wireless
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Happy 20th Birthday to PSC!
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 10:20a John D Head Tomorrow, August 28th, marks the 20th birthday of PSC Group. The founders, Andrew Lauter and Bruce Bellak started the company out of a desire to do provide superior service and great technology consulting to their customers. I have personally been with PSC for 10 years and am proud to be part of this great company. And at 10 years, I am in the middle of the pack in terms of seniority ... we have one member of the team that has been here for 19 years and another for 18! Pretty incredible [read] Keywords: consulting
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New Media Tuesday - 8/24/2010
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 12:30p John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies 90210: Season #2 Ax Men: Season #3 Black Orpheus: 2 Disc Edition: The Criterion Collection Days That Shook The World: The Complete Series Dexter: Season #4 (Blu-Ray) (#15 in the DVDPS Top 40) Dexter: Season #4 (#6 in the DVDPS Top 40) First Four Films Of Akira Kurosawa, The: Eclipse From The Criterion Collection Flight Of The Conchords: The Complete Collection Gangland: Season #5 Gossip Girl: Season #3 Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train: Dinosaurs Under [read] Keywords: symphony
eclipse
vista
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MWLUG 2010 - Thoughts
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 5:50p John D Head Last week, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second MWLUG took place. MWLUG 2010 was bigger and better than the first last year. Here are some thoughts on the conference: 1. The conference really came into it's own this year. As much as I liked being in Chicago last year - and being at the IBM Innovation Center - being a hotel in another city took MWLUG to it's user group roots. It felt like a user group conference - not something IBM ran. This was a good thing. 2. The attitude of the user group menta [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
lotusphere
community
networking
New Media Tuesday - 8/17/2010
Tue, Aug 17th 2010 10:20a John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Black Orpheus: 2 Disc Edition: The Criterion Collection Ca$h Cemetery Junction Cougar Town: Season #1d Dark Oracle: The Complete Series Dexter: Season #4 (#8 in the DVDPS Top 40) Friday Night Lights: Season #4 Keeping Up With The Kardashians: Season #3 L'Enfance Nue: The Criterion Collection Last Song, The Max Headroom: The Complete Series (#3 in the DVDPS Top 40) One Tree Hill: Season #7 Orlando: SE Red Shoes, The: 2-Disc Edition: Criterion Coll [read] Keywords: mac
oracle
vista
wireless
PSC built BarillaUS.com featured on topsharepoint.com
Mon, Aug 16th 2010 10:10a John D Head PSC's Microsoft practice has gotten a great accolade: the Barilla website (www.barillaus.com) has been featured on topsharepoint.com Congratulations to the team at PSC for developing such a great site and being selected for topsharepoint.com! [read] Keywords: microsoft
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New Media Tuesday - 8/10/2010
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 7:00a John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies 187: One Eight Seven Adam-12: Season #5 Casper's Scare School: Season #1 Crumb: The Criterion Collection Date Night Joneses Louie Bluie: The Criterion Collection Max Headroom: The Complete Series (#2 in the DVDPS Top 40) Mercy: Season #1 Minder: Season 3 Numb3rs: Season #6 Titan Maximum: Season #1 Trauma: Season #1 UFC 114: Rampage Vs. Evans: Ultimate 2 Disc Edition Computer Games Madden NFL 11 ( Xbox 360) Tritton AX Pro Dolby Digital Precis [read] Keywords: vista
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Yellow Day Release: Updated OpenNTF.org Contacts Experience
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 6:50a John D Head In honor of Yellow Day, I am going to post a new version of the OpenNTF.org Contacts Experience. Here is what is new: - Support for Microsoft Office 2010 - Updates to Microsoft Office Label and Envelope Functionality - Started work on adding Label functionality - The beginnings of custom field functionality: The goal is to have custom templates that the user can select, but first we need custom fields. The first release just defines the basic fields and a way to customize them. More to com [read] Keywords: notes
symphony
microsoft
office
openntf
