Short summary of Swedish g33k date

Yesterday, May 24th 2007, the first g33k date took off at the premises of Ekakan, who acted as host, with an impressive collection of talented Notes/Domino developers and celebrities present.

It was very successful and I am quite sure everybody got something valuable out of it. Johan Känngård and Joachim Dagerot were keynote speakers and talked about different subjects, mostly in some way connected to the web. Johan Känngård has written a good summary about the event and also put his presentation and examples available for download on his blog. Joachim Dagerot has also posted a blog entry which is a follow-up on a subject that came up yesterday.

Next occassion will probably be after the summer in september or something like that. I guess it depends on who's hosting it and the interest and availability of everybody.

Here's a picture of our talented fellow N/D bloggers/developers and keynote speakers from yesterdays success.

Johan Känngård & Joachim Dagerot


Joachim Dagerot


Technorati tags:
g33k date, g33k meet, Lotus Notes, Domino

Flickrvision

I read on Next Generation Internet about Flickrvision. It's a really cool service accesible directly on the website which let's you watch as images are uploaded to Flickr in real time. Take a look at a subwindow below or click on the link for the site.



Technorati tags:
flickrvision, Flickr, Google maps

IBM Education Assistant for Lotus Software

Here's a tip if you need another learning resource.

IBM Education Assistant for Lotus Software provides help for Lotus Domino, Lotus Notes, Lotus Expeditor, Lotus Sametime and WebSphere Portal for different versions. The help is divided into text, video and audio.



Technorati tags:
IBM Education Assistant, Lotus Software, Lotus Notes, Domino, Sametime, Expeditor

Widgets are really cool!

I found the Yahoo Widgets Engine when I was browsing IBM's community site IBM Web Innovation, which itself is pretty cool. Find more similar spaces or create your own if you miss one at developerwork community topic spaces.

Downloading the Yahoo Widget Engine will grant you access to to download around 4000 different widgets. I just started play with it and some useful and/or funny ones are widgets for displaying:

• Wheather
• Flickr photos
• Notes mail
• Clock
• Recipes
• IBM information like news, stocks, promotions, general search or the employee directory. The last one is pretty handy. It actually gives me information like email, phone number, city and country for any IBM employee in the world (not Sam Palisano though... hmm..). I can recall several times when I wanted contact information and had some trouble finding it.
  
  Here's a screenshot from the IBM Widget showing search results from the Employee Directory. This one is public available information of Ed Brill's contact information.
  
  
  
  
• radio
• gmail
• itunes player
• del.icio.us
• and much more

Just click on the widget in the widget bar and a window will open the actual widget, like the IBM widget in the screenshot above. I really enjoy web-based widgets to put on your blog and so on and desktop widgets have not really been working for me earlier. I'll give it a shot now and see if it becomes useful to me.

More widgets here for websites and desktops (thank's Alex).

Technorati tags:
Widget, Yahoo, IBM, Desktop

Learn Java with Head First Java

While the platform for Lotus Notes, Domino and Sametime applications changes, the need of understanding Java grows bigger. Although IBM is designing their new development tools to minimize the need for new learning curves when it comes to development I still believe that you as a Domino developer (and Domino administrator) is better off understanding what Java is, how it works and it would certainly not hurt learning how to develop some in it as well.

I made the decision to learn Java a few months ago and to actually do it this time, and really good - you know to be a kick-ass Java developer (to almost quote Bob Balaban). I have studied/tried quite a lot of different programming languages before and looked at both C++ and Java (both object oriented) before but never really gone into the depth of it. But I have tried, several times. I have bought books (read the first chapters before I found something more interesting to do) and read tutorials on Internet and that has helped me to some point of course but when it comes to Java (in my opinion) it's a lot about understanding and a barrier to climb before you get it and fully can enjoy it and really make use of it. But once you have climbed that barrier you just keep going and nothing will stop you. And then it is up to you to decide whether you want to use your understanding of Java in what you do today or if you want to focus more on it and keep learning more like servlets, Java beans, JSP and whatever is out there.

What made me climb the barrier (I think I really got over it a couple of weeks ago) is an excellent book that I have to tell you about, it's called Head First Java and covers Java 5.0. Give it a chance although it at first almost feels you're going back to the early school years when briefly looking through it. It is a lot of pictures and a lot of explaining but that's what's so good about it. When you have read the first chapter you should be as excited as I am. And you don't have to be a newbie, in fact you shouldn't. You should have some basic knowledge about programming to get the most out of it I think. If you do, go ahead, you're gonna love it.

Here's a sample from Google Books (thanx Thomas).

The authors of the book has a blog as well called "Creating passionate users". And there are a few more books written in the same manners, take a look at them here.

Some Java-resources:

• J2SE 5.0 API Specification
• The Java tutorials
• Lotus Notes and Java
• Java Ranch

Technorati tags:
Java, Head First Java, Lotus Notes, Domino, IBM, Learn Java

Domino Best Practices Guides

Lotus Support has started blogging and in their second blog post was a table of the currently published best practices guides which (although it's a lot of reading) is a must reading for admin guys. Haven't read them all but I will.

If you in the last couple of months already have seen some of them be aware of that some more were published in the beginning of May and there are even more to come. Keep on eye on the Notes from Lotus Support blog for updates.

Technorati tags:
Lotus Notes, Domino, Best Practices, Guide, Administration

New notes.ini settings page

I read on Domino Blog that there's a new page on developerWorks with public notes.ini variables with descriptions, examples and comments.

-- UPDATE -- View of new notes.ini variables from the Notes/Domino Fix List

-- UPDATE -- I posted a comment on Domino Blog where I was pointing out that the list seems kind of small especially when compared to another Notes.ini list called the DrCC Notes.INI Reference. Amy Smith replied: When the notes.ini info was in the admin help, we could only update it at major releases. It was hard to keep up with all the new .inis being created. Now, when a new Notes.ini variable is created, or an existing one changes or is rendered obsolete, that info can be updated on devWorks fairly quickly. So you can expect to see the .ini list on devWorks increase soon. Currently, the existing Notes.ini documentation from 7.0 has been migrated to devWorks. We are now in the process of gathering new and updated notes.ini info for Domino 8. We plan on updating the on-line info every two weeks for the time being. That will probably slow down to once monthly after Domino 8 ships.

Technorati tags:
notes.ini, notes, domino

Maintain your web 2.0 collection with Wink

Wink markets themselves as the people search engine. This social search engine searches MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Live Space, Friendster, Twitter and the web which right now according to wink means over 166,845,664 people.

Besides this which is both interesting and useful you can register for an account and state your different web2.0 accounts you have on the web. They have listed lots of them and if something isn't there you can state your own url.

After making some adjustments I copied a script, which can be both HTML and Flash, and put a wink widget on my blog. Whenever I make a change on wink it is reflected in the widget.

I can see three obvious and good ways of using this; the widget to put on the blog, a place which keeps track of all my different accounts and a people search engine.

Technorati tags:
Wink, , Web 2.0, Search Engine, Widget

Charity fund raising for children with cancer in Second Life

On April 28th at 1900 hours GMT+01:00 there will be a charity fund raising held in Second Life by the Children's cancer fund and Second Sweden.

It is the first swedish charity fund raising gala in Second Life and artists, both from real-life as well as established artists in SL like Natalie Moody (Therese Åhs) will be performing to raise money for children with cancer.



I'm sure this will be a really great evening, be sure to be there and buy a teddy bear and/or give some money.

Read more at Barncancerfonden's homepage. There's been an interview in swedish television about this as well, take a look at it on youTube.
Here is the location for the gala.

Technorati tags:
Second Life, Second Sweden, Barncancerfonden, children, cancer, charity

Get ready for G33k date!

Finally there will be an opportunity for some serious geeking IRL!

On thursday, May 24th 2007 a first g33k date will be held in the center of Stockholm, Sweden.

This is an independent forum and not a sales seminar or something like that. Come and join us and listen to interesting speaches, hook up with other people interested in the same things you are and just be yourself... and why not have a beer? Few things match like g33k talk and beer.

On this first meeting sponsored by Ekakan Joachim Dagerot and Johan Känngård will be the main speakers. Hopefully this will be the first in a long row of successful and popular g33k dates.

The subjects to speaches and to the g33k meetings will be a wide variety of interesting topics - from Notes/Domino and Java to Web technologies. You have a voice, make it heard!

Everyone who is interested in Notes/Domino development and administration combined with Java, web and whatever are most welcome. It doesn't matter if you're a consultant or a regular employée as long as you have a burning interest [geek].

However what we would like you to do is to announce your wish to join us so that we can plan for food, beverages and premises. Send us an email or post a comment!

Welcome!


Technorati tags:
g33k date, , g33k meet, Domino, Notes, Java

My first Sametime 7.5 plugin

This is funny and opens up a lot of opportunities.

All you need is Eclipse, a web server and a Sametime 7.5 connect client. I used Apache Tomcat 6.0.

I read and followed the steps in this article from developerWorks and it was quite easy to create and deploy.
The plug-in is the picture of myself in the image below. When the mouse hovers the picture the text 'A nice little Sametime plug-in' pops up. There is also a Click-handler connected to the picture which opens an alert window with some text.

I found two issues that didn't match the article from reality though:

• When you want to update the plugin (change text, image or something else) you need to (among other steps) synchronize versions of contained plug-ins and fragments with their version in the workspace. The article says "Click the Versions button" in feature.xml in the overview tab. This button doesn't exist in my Eclipse. Instead click the link "Synchronize".
• Another thing that didn't work was when I was going to do "Build All" to build the updated plug-in in "site.xml". This raised an error message "Unable to find plugin: com.ibm.example-iu_". To solve this open the site.xml tab to look at the xml code. Change the version to the new correct version since this has not been updated as it should. It's in two places in the following row.
  <feature url="features/com.ibm.example.feature.iu_1.3.0.jar" id="com.ibm.example.feature.iu" version="1.3.0">. Now Build All and everything will work.

Technorati tags:
Sametime 7.5, , Plug-in, plugin, Sametime, Eclipse

Enable the business card photo in Sametime7.5

I thought it would take a mouse click or two to turn on this feature. It actually takes more than that. You have to be a designer and an administrator but once that's fixed it is done in 5-10 minutes.

I found a complete and very good tutorial at Bingham's blog.
When the Domino 7 server was new and no one really thought about the coming Domino 8 server, the idea was to add a field in the middle of the person form in which the photo would be inserted. But then someone clever thought about the possibility that the template pubnames.ntf might be changed on regular basis and thereby the changes would be wiped out when upgrading to the next server version.

Therefore a similar solution has been recommended by IBM. An empty subform called "$PersonExtensibleSchema" will instead be used to add a rich text field, in which the business card photo should be inserted. This subform is inserted in the Person form on the Other tab. So once this change is made by a designer on the template and the design has been refreshed on names.nsf, each user can add their own photo in their person document.

Before this works a little configuration is needed on the sametime server that is done via the web browser (stcenter.nsf). And finally a restart of the sametime server.

This is how my business card looks like when I have made all the changes.




Technorati tags:
Lotus Notes, , Domino, Sametime75, Samtime, Business card, photo

Faster database copy with CL COPY

This is a tip that I heard on the Taking Notes podcast, episode 57.

Bruce Elgort has with some help from Thomas Gumz found out a way to copy databases via the console directly on the server instead of through the notes client. This is really good stuff since you will gain lots of time. If I remember correctly from the podcast there was a copy of a database on about 5 GB that took several hours to copy through the notes client but by using this console command it only took about 4 minutes. You can use it to make copies in clustered as well as non-clustered environments and to make replicas, non-replicas and templates.

Thanks Bruce and Thomas for this one, I'm sure many admins are happy now. Read more on Bruce's blog for detailed info on how to do it.


Technorati tags:
Lotus Notes, , Domino, CL COPY, Admin

A Web Service consumer

Thomas Adrian aka Notessidan has written a small web service for which he provides code to consume it. I had to try it so I did both with the suggested way in an agent using Microsoft's SOAP client and it works fine.

I also had to try using the new consumer service in Notes8. This works very good as well and this is how I did it:

• Download the WSDL-file that describes the web service you want to call
  
• Create a script library (LotusScript)
• Press the WSDL button and import the WSDL file. When doing this on Notesidan's WSDL file my script library looks like:
  
  

  %INCLUDE "lsxsd.lss"
  Class Notessidan As PortTypeBase
  
  Sub NEW
  Call Service.Initialize ("UrnDefaultNamespaceNotessidanService", _
  "NotessidanService.Domino", "http://www.notessidan.se:80/A55B53/blogg.nsf/_
  notessidan?OpenWebService", "Notessidan")
  End Sub

  Function GETSIZE() As XSD_ANYTYPE
  Set GETSIZE = Service.Invoke("GETSIZE")
  End Function
  
  Function NUMBEROFDOCUMENTS() As Long
  Let NUMBEROFDOCUMENTS = Service.Invoke("NUMBEROFDOCUMENTS")
  End Function
  End Class

• Now create an agent and use the script library. Type 'Use "scriptlib_name"' in the (Options).
• To show for example the number of documents in a message box, use the following code in initialize:
  
  

  Sub Initialize
  Dim ns As New Notessidan
  Dim numbDoc As Long
  numbDoc = ns.NUMBEROFDOCUMENTS
  Msgbox "Number of documents: " & numbDoc
  End Sub

• Run the agent from the Notes client or from an application in where you want to use the data.
  

Technorati tags:
Lotus Notes, , notes8beta, Web Service, Consumer

A look at Domino Web Access 8 (beta 2)

I took a quick look at the new DWA för notes8beta and compared with DWA7. Although the design of the interface are quite similar there are a few obvious differences. Since this was done quickly I am sure I have missed several new features or design differences. Please feel free to add what you know in the comments.

In the mail frameset the 'All documents' link have been moved out from 'Views'. There is also a new "Open mail for..." which allows you to open someone elses mail in DWA as you have already been able to do in the Lotus Notes client for quite some time. Actually it's not just mail. Calendar, To do, Contacts and Notesbook can all be opened for another person. The contacts are now replicated with the mail application in Lotus Notes 8 so true replication occurs and their is no longer any need to synchronize manually from the Lotus Notes client.



There is a new 'online' category link at the top right of the DWA window. The online means that you're connected to the network and working on the server copy. To create a local copy, use the 'install subscription', which is used for offline use.


The little green arrow in the image above also existed in DWA7 although it was blue and slightly different. By clicking the arrow you can filter and search for mail by entry name and column.




There has been a few additions in the preferences as well.

• Message Marking. Quickly identify mail that is important to you based on the recipients in the To and cc fields.
• Rooms Resources. Allows you to have default settings for scheduling rooms and resources in meetings
  
• Shortcuts. Provide shortcuts to other peoples mail file if you have been given access to it.
  

Also some facts from the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Reviewer' guide:

• DWA8 offers a new preview pane for horizontal och vertical use.
• Presence awareness icons are automatically refreshed in the inbox view.
• Server-based mail thread are supported. DWA8 mail threads are resilient and can include Internet mail messages.
• Support for dynamic view column updates
• There is a new ability to publish the inbox through an RSS or Atom feed by clicking an icon.
• New calendar filter
  

Technorati tags:
Lotus Notes, Domino, notes8beta, DWA

A trip to Thailand

Me and my family just came home from a trip we took to Thailand for two weeks for sun, bath and relax. We stayed at the Dolphin Bay Resort in the village Pranburi, near Hua Hin on the east coast. We took a few trips to other sightseeings and to Bangkok for shopping.

I recommend this place although there might be better beaches. Take a look at the hotel's homepage for more information.

I have uploaded some photos on Picasa for anyone interested.


Technorati tags: Thailand

In need of an interesting 404 page?

Take a look at 404 Research Lab. You should be able to find something there :-)

Technorati tags: 404

Lotus Notes and Domino references

References/guides/tutorials:

• IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 resources
  
• Lotus Notes Product support
• LotusScript Language Guide (R6)
  
• Lotus Toolkits
  
• Lotus Notes knowledge collection
• Known limitations of N/D - Comparison 6, 7 and 8
  
• Known limitations of N/D 7.x
• Keyboard shortcuts in Notes 6.x and Notes 7.x
• Lotus Notes/Domino FAQ
• Training/troubleshooting guide
• IBM Education Assistant for Lotus Software
• Fix central
• Lotus product data sheets (ftp)
• Lotus Domino Administrator 7 help
• Lotus Domino Designer 7 help
• Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 Server Administration Guide
• Steps for migrating from Notes/Domino 7.x to Notes/Domino 8.x
  

Wikis:

• Lotus Domino Wiki
  
• Lotus Composite Applications Wiki
• Lotus Sametime Wiki
  

Code/Libraries:

• LotusScript JSONReader and JSONWriter

AdminP resources:

• FAQ
  
• All about AdminP Part1
  
• All about AdminP Part2
  
• Knowledge collection
  

Notes.ini resources:

• Ask Professor INI
  
• New Notes.ini variables
  
• Notes.ini entries
• Lotus Notes/Domino Notes.ini settings
• DrCC Notes.INI Reference

Education:

• Lotus Notes Widgets for a support team
  
• Notes Error Trapping in LotusScript

Product information:

• The basics of Notes view index refreshing

Composite Applications:

• Composite Applications for people
  
• Designing composite applications: Writing an Eclipse component for IBM Lotus Notes
  
• Building composite applications for IBM Lotus Notes V8

Articles:

• Debugging LotusScript Part 1

Interesting technotes:

• 64-bit version of Domino 8.0.1
  
• Updall switches, Update and NIF - Notes indexing basics
  
• Knowledge Collection/Troubleshooting Guide: Know causes of slow database performance
  
• Can a field be hidden in Document Properties
  
• Correct procedures for renaming a Domino server
• How to delete Profile documents manually or using Lotusscript
• Setting the Sametime Connect client's preferences
• How to set up SSL using a third-party Certificate Authority (CA)
• How to renew an SSL certificate stamped by a third-party Certificate Authority
  

Interesting redbooks:

• IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Deployment Guide
  

Featured documents:

• Lotus Notes client
• Lotus Domino server
• Lotus Sametime
• Lotus Domino Web Access
  

Notes/Domino Best Practices:

• Transaction logging
• Upgrade and migration
• Domino web access
• Sizing
• Performance
• Roaming
• Backup & recovery
• Administration process
• Calendaring & scheduling
• Security
  

Out Of Office resources:

• OOO Guides
  
• Enable OOO for another user
• Lotus Notes 8 OOO functionality
  

Test infrastructure documents:

• High Availability Domino 8 configuration
• Domino 8 server reliability in operational profile multi-platform
• Domino 8 interoperability Test
• Series i Domino 8 server configuration
  
• Reliability of the Notes 8 client
• Notes 8 client within Citrix
• Notes 8 client Smart Upgrade
  

Blogs:

• Notes from Lotus support
• Domino server team
• Notessidan
• DominoExperts
• DeveloperWorks Lotus team blog
• IBM Lotus Notes Hints, Tips and Tricks

Tips & Tricks:

• Open a view in a designated frameset from a link
  

Podcasts:

• The Taking Notes Podcast
• IdoNotes Podcast

Java in Notes:

• Java applet signatures and the Execution Control List
• Possible Java plug-in vulnerability in Lotus Notes
• Domino Javadoc Generator
  

Unsorted:

• Format Lotusscript as HTML
  
• Notes 8 icons
  
• Summary of differences between Notes 8 Standard and Basic configurations
  
• Lotusphere
  
• IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8
• developerWorks
• IBM Redbooks
• SearchDomino.com
  
• NotesDesign
• LavaTech
• LotusUserGroup.org
  
• Google Custom Search for Lotus Notes/Domino
• Notes/Domino on DominoWiki
• Lotus Notes/Domino blogs

Technorati tags:
notes.ini, Lotus Notes, Domino, Reference, information

AJAX problems in Firefox

I have been writing an AJAX-application that calls one or several SOAP web Services and presents the result on a single web page in different div tags. Due to some css-functionality a really nice look and feel can be accomplished similar to a portal site with many different portlets. In this case each porlet would consist of a div tag. This is all done in Lotus Notes/Domino but can be moved to any system (!?). I will present it in more detail here later on but for now I'd like to share a limitation that bothers me with Firefox or Mozilla browsers in general, maybe others as well.

If you're using AJAX where the requesting page and the Web Service resides on the same domain it works in any browser since the XMLHttpRequest object is univeral to any browser. However if the requesting page and the Web Service resides on different domains you'll find that it will not work in Firefox. An error will be raised looking like this:
Uncaught exception: Permission denied to call method XMLHttpRequest.open

The error is raised because of security concerns. Appearantely most web browsers (IE excluded) is restricted by default to interact only with resources and services hosted by the same domain. The reason is to keep potentially malicous code from accessing information it shouldn't have access to.

However, as I see it there is an equal need to communicate with Web Services that is not located on the same domain as Web Services located on the same domain. There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Digitally sign the Javascripts. Read more about this on Mozilla.org. I started digging into this but got really tired and sick of it since it is required by me to:
   
   1. Download a sign tool and learn how to use that. The sign tool creates a jar-file when executed to point to.
      
   2. Add specific exception handling functions
      
   3. Get a certificate and pay for it
   4. Whenever I change my javascript I have to resign it to create a new jar-file to use.
2. Use a proxy. I don't know how this is supposed to work but the point is that it will work if all requests from the XMLHttpRequest object is passed through a proxy resource located on the same domain as the requesting page
   

Anyway, I guess it has to be done if you want your applications to work on anything else than Internet Explorer 6, which is what I have tested this on together with Firefox 2.0.

My resources recommendations are:

• W3 Schools
• The article series 'Mastering AJAX'
• The article series 'Call SOAP Web Services with Ajax'
  

Technorati tags:
AJAX, Web Services, XML, SOAP, Lotus Notes, Domino, portlet

General Opening Session from Lotusphere 2007 in Second Life

In Second Life it is possible to watch the general opening session in the IBM Theatre. It's pretty cool. Many people are gathered in front of the big screen to see what Mike Rhodin and all the others are saying.



Technorati tags:
Second Life, General Opening Session, Lotusphere 2007