For the first time in a long time I was able to actually attend seminars, walk the show floor, and meet and greet with out have to stand on the show floor.  Very different perspective.

I wasn’t surprised that the majority of the show was focused on Connect and other IBM technologies.  Domino is now addressed by the industry as a legacy platform.  Unfortunately, that’s a label and direction that isn’t going to change.  We can argue the merits of Domino, show its advantages against other competitors but it will not change the mindset of the industry and the changing IT landscape.

Rivit itself has spent the last two years retooling itself.  We still carry a huge Domino Portfolio of skill sets but its balanced with a huge Microsoft and force.com skill set.  We use it to help people make decisions on what to do with their Domino Platform.  We help customers make fact based decisions on tough questions – “Should I stay?”, “Should I go?”, “Where should I go to?”, “How do I get there?”.  Kinda sounds like that clash song.

But back to connect2013.  I’m not going to talk about the show content other then to say it was focused on Social Business.  Same message that we are seeing from other vendor such as force.com and Microsoft.  Its the Trend.  If you had replaced the logo of this show with a cloudforce logo it really would have been hard to distinguish between the two events.

What I did note was a change in IBM itself as it directly relates to my business.  The last 5 years I’ve found myself in constant competition with IBM.  They made it very difficult to do business with them.  Every account you uncovered ended up being an account that someone at IBM was already working.  This normally meant it was an account that was going to go direct.  Didn’t matter the product line.  We were early adopters of IBM technologies putting in a great effort into selling IBM FORMS.  In fact we were the only company to ever sell IBM Workplace.  Sorry to say but we were always pushed out by IBM.

This show IBM changed.  We’ve seen the partner community in Toronto Shrinking.  IBM says its now finally going after this community.  This was the first year that I actually felt that IBM was ready to start doing business with the community again.  We had meeting after meeting with different exec’s at the show that sought our input and promised to correct past wrongs.

But… Actions are stronger than words.  Let’s see how well they do with their actions in 2013.

I’ll let you know.

I thought I would rewrite the instructions to make it easier for people.

The problem is identified as a botched update which leaves multiple preference settings which are seen by outlook as being multiple identities.

1. Click on Finder
2. You need to deleted the ”Office 2011″ folder found in the /user/(your login name)/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
3. This is a hidden folder that you will not see.  In finder click on Go in the top menu.
4. Click on Go to Folder
5. In the dialog box enter the following.  Remember to replace the (your login name) with the name you use to login to the MAC -> /user/(your login name)/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
6. Drag or delete or move to trash the “office 2011″ folder
7. Restart the Mac
8. Next you need to rebuild the Office Identity
9. To rebuild the office identity click on Finder
10. Click on the Applications folder in the left hand menu
11. Click on Microsoft Office 2011
12. Click on Office
13. Find database utility
14. Rebuild
15. Start Outlook

Watch outlook fly!

I like Apple products, but I don’t consider myself part of the cult.  I like them because they are the best built products, the designs are great, and they always work.  Something to be said about the merits of a closed system.  Apple controls it so they can guarantee that the user experience is not disappointing.

So here is my take on the Iphone 5.

1. One Sexy phone.  It is nice eye candy.
2. Super Fast.  Application start time unbelievable
3. LTE – Faster then my home network?
4. Front and Back Camera produce amazing pictures.
5. Love the new Panoramic Pictures.  Especially like the implementation.  Move the Iphone.  Keep the pace steady.  Keep the arrow on the line.  Easy.
6. Siri – The jury still isn’t in on this.  My first impressions haven’t been great.  I like the concept but it doesn’t  seem to find things for me.
7. Maps – I use Navigon.  My friend Tony Holder told me about this years ago.  I’ve been hooked ever since.  The best Navigation system ever built.   I looked at Maps as part of the IOS upgrade on my 4.   It gives me what I want.
8. New Connector – One of things I’ve always hated about Apple was their unwillingness to use standard connectors.   I always hated the old connector.  Like most people I went out and bought devices that use the connector.  Now I have to pay for an adapter to work with them.
9. Headphone Jack is on the bottom not the top.  So this screws up some of the adapters I have since the port is now covered.
10. Headphones – TBD – Looks nice, haven’t tried them yet.
11. Quality of the phone calls. – TBD – I was always disappointed by the quality of phone calls.  I’m hoping that the 5 deals with this better.

Overall impression: Not a revolutionary phone.  But like apple said – It’s the best Iphone they ever built.

So here we are.  Three years later.  My Ipad has gotten daily use.  Its been charged over 1000+.  Its been taken on trips.  Its been used in meetings.  Its been used to read books, watch movies, play games, develop mind maps, develop mockups, surf the web, access facebook, access twitter, read the paper, follow my podcasts, work on spreadsheets, review documents, and interact on web meetings.  It still holds a charge and it still works fantastic.

The glass has never scratched.  Although the screen does get pretty messy after my kids are finished with it.

It has on dent on a corner from where I dropped it.  Luck would have it that the only exposed part of it is the part that hits the concrete.

Three years ago I would not have envisioned that it would have become such a  significant part of my life.

In the last little while we’ve acquired a Kindle e-reader and a Lenovo Tablet.

The Kindle is great for what it does.  It’s the best e-reader around.  I can take it anywhere and read it anywhere.  More importantly, it so cheap that I don’t really care if I lose it.

The Lenovo Tablet is android based.  A 7 inch screen.  Sturdy and fast.  Battery life is not great.  It can simulate everything my Ipad can do but its not my Ipad.  It’ll be used for testing apps we develop for Android but at the end of the day the kids will get more use out of it.

Say what you want.  But Apple has done a number of revolutionary things in the industry.  The law suit they won against Samsung guarantees that we will continue to see the growth in the industry from Apple and not have to worry about imitations that other vendors are creating.  Let Samsung develop their own ground breaking technology instead of “willfully” stealing as was sited in the ground breaking case.  Samsung should have been looking at how to compete and revolutionize the industry instead of making an imitation.

I keep saying it over and over.  If you compare Apple products to other you will always be able to show on paper that the other products might be better.  They’ll have expandibility, better screens, etc…  But what you get from Apple is consistency of product.   A product that look good, work right and won’t let you down at the end of the day.

I still think the Apple stores are creepy and cult like.

I love my IPad, my Iphone and my new Macbook Pro.

We also have some clients who use it as an alternative for accessing mail.  It’s the “Travelling Persons” email client.  Easy to access from a hotel or internet cafe.  However, they always come back with the same question:

“How do I access my local contacts?”

So I thought I’d provide it here.

Lotus Notes 8.x

1. Start Notes.
2. Go to the your clients preferences (File-Preferences)
3. Click on Contacts
4. Select the check box next to “Enable *synchronize contacts* on the Replicator.
5. You should now see “Synchronize Contacts” on your Replicator Page.

Lotus Notes 7.x

1. Start Notes.
2. Open your Mail file.
3. Go to the acton Menu
4. Select Sychronize Address Book

At the time that Windows98 had been released, Novell delayed the next release of Wordperfect.  Their inability to bring it to market is what killed the product.

Sounds like History is repeating itself.  Research in Motion has a limited window of opportunity before it follows Wordperfect and becomes irrelevant.  The ability for a company to move with its client base is essential.  Your clients are your fans.  You have to give them what they want and it has to compete with what they don’t have.  When what they don’t have becomes more important to them you’ve lost.

RIM’s inability to deliver their next generation OS to its own client base is going to kill the company.  They were the leaders in the industry and they sat on their laurels.  They stopped delivering bleed edge technology.  Now they can’t even catch  up.  RIM is now ready to become a member of the unimportant.

Reference:  http://goo.gl/BNH45

Migration of Notes is a complex endeavor.  Companies go into it because of the anti-domino sentiment that exists in a company.  They do it because they think that they are going to save money.  They believe it costs less to run an Exchange shop then it does to run an Notes shop.  They do it because they buy into the alternative.  i.e.  Sharepoint is such a great platform.  Now we could argue these points out but it wouldn’t change the fact that the world is changing quickly on us.

We’ve been working with numerous clients on a structured migration process which helps move clients through the short to long term plan based on their needs.  We provide all the critical data and guidance required for companies to make these difficult and complex decisions.  With applications its not just simply swapping out a client.

Where does the Domino Social Edition play into this?  Well, it muddies the waters a bit.  It give companies the false impression that they can now get rid of the notes client and run a light version of notes in a browser.  So, companies are now left with the impression that they don’t have to do anything with their notes applications.  Go ahead, migrate email and continue to serve up applications in a browser.

Unfortunately the Social Edition plugin is the notes basic client.  It only runs in a windows environment and runs with all the limitations of the notes basic client with some new ones.

Let me make sure that I understand the idea around this….  The Marketing spin is – Run notes in a browser.  The Reality is -You need to install (behind the scenes) a notes basic client which only runs on windows based machines (ie: no support for OSX or LINUX) and you still need to have a notes ID file.

So what have companies actually obtained.  I think that this is a great marketing pitch which helps companies stay on the platform a little longer but it muddies their longer term strategy.  It muddies the fact that companies could have started to look at better transitioning these applications to HTML5 or Xpages.  It also makes it harder for the partner community to sell these transition services to things such as Xpages.

Dlink dir-655 - restart problem - Configuration screen

I have a Dlink DIR-655 router.  On paper the router sounds great.  However, it has a nasty access point problem.   The access point seems to continually go offline.  The only way you can get it to work when this happens, is to either reboot it or physically turn it off and on.

Like most devices, Dlink is no longer providing Firmware updates for this.  Weird because it still a big seller at the stores.  The last Firmware version was 2.00, which was dated May 12, 2010.  So although this seems to be a common problem, Dlink is no longer going to fix it for you.

I finally resolved it.  There seems to be a problem in the QOS engine.  The WAN Traffic shaping section seems to cause the problem.  Specifically the problem seems to be around the automatic uplink Speed.  When set to automatic the WIFI seem to go offline constantly and the router seems to restart frequently.  I resolved it by turning the “enable Traffic Shaping setting off”.

To Fix it do the following:

1. Select Advanced from the top menu.
2. Select QOS Engine
3. Deselect Enable Traffic Shaping
4. Save Settings.

However since November we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Domino World.  Especially on our product side.   We saw a huge uptake on all of our products.

• Enforcer Domino backend clients increased licensing and our clients are fully entrenched in the product.  New clients came on board and confirmed that Enforcer Domino is still the easiest and fasted archive solution for Domino users.
• Enforcer Relational backend brought on new clients as we worked on improving scalability and performance.  This makes Enforcer the lowest cost alternative to keeping your domino email archives outside of Domino.
• Pursuit brought on new clients and we saw the return of old clients.  Seems that some clients decided not to migrate after all.  Pursuit is still the fastest Domino search, discovery, destroy application for Domino.
• And, last but not the least, Fetch Retriever.  Our original product that delivered the best Mail Recall solution for domino increased sales through new clients, additional licensing and the return of old clients.  Our old clients, who had taken the route of using the native Domino Recall, returned to us stating that our feature set and the level of success that Fetch Retriever offered to them still made it the best way to go.  Reasons that they expressed were our ability to recall mail not saved by the sender, recall mail by an administrator, recall mail from blackberry’s, recall mail from large groups, and just the fact that it worked when you wanted it to work.

Check out our new pricing and you’ll see why we had a great year so far.