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Getting social ?

Yesterday IBM released Notes / Domino 9.0 Social Edition in the first public beta.

The amount of information made available to the public is astounding and the quality of the release notes is just great.


At my company (
Factor-y S.r.l.), we're an IBM business partner, we were waiting for this new beta to to the right thing ... Upgrade.

Just a few hours after Paul Mooney
announced his upgrade we completed our.

We updated:

  • The mail production cluster to v. 9.0
  • A separate 9.0 server beta we used for testing
  • The traveler server
Now let's talk about the impacts ...

Full Text Search issues


We are on Linux 64 bit and we moved from Domino 32bit to the newly available Domino 64bit for linux.


If you're doing such a move be sure to delete all the Full Text directories on your server and re-create indexes. Otherwise you'll experience crashes in the libftgtr64.so library (which is the full text indexing library in domino).


Once you're done with this .. no issues or worries.


Domino 9 Social Edition and Connections Mail


I can confirm that after the upgrade Connections Mail (which we're using as part of Connection 4.0) is working with no visible problems.


Domino 9 Social Edition and Lotus Protector


We've deployed Lotus Protector to secure our mail communications. The Notes template integration is intact and works as usual opening up the blocked email list, the blacklist and whitelist views.


Domino 9 Social Edition and the new iOS ToDo App vs Android


I've downloaded and installed the new iOS ToDo App from the iTunes store. I can't get it to work against the Traveler 9.0 beta. I get the "server needs upgrade" message.

My colleague using Android has no issues using the Android client for Traveler and enabling the Todo App.




In general we got to upgrade all of our servers in a few ours. Everything went well and we're now in the process of getting more and more knowledge about the new features.


Next week we'll be working to enable:
  • Embedded Experiences
  • Integration with Connections 4.0 activity stream
  • Deploying the new SBT SDK
  • Create an SBT Applications using the new playground ... (I'm targeting a "basecamp" clone built with XPages and Connections 4.0 services)
Oh... well then we'll start integrating new stuff inside Portal .. we've not yet talked about XPages as iWidgets in WebSphere Portal and about Web Experience Factory + Domino... that's another story.


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli December 14th, 2012 18:06:10

My friend Giuseppe Grasso of Dominopoint.it fame just created an interesting post in the OpenNTF forum.

Giuseppe accomplished the task of designing a rollover "stylish" style for Open NTF and has some good points on the OpenNTF look.

Maybe it's a worth read, go check how nicer look Giusppe created.


Image:Giuseppe just created a stylish look for OpenNTF


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli March 20th, 2010 11:45:21

Image:Vi racconto Lotusphere 2010

Ciao a tutti, sono a Lotusphere 2010 e stò seguendo, anche per voi la conferenza.


Per chi fosse interessato a una prospettiva "business" stò scrivendo una serie di post sul
blog di Factor-y S.r.l. (la mia azienda).

Buona lettura


da Lotusphere

          Daniele Vistalli.


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli January 17th, 2010 16:34:12

On Thursday November 13 2009 the Italian Lotus Community gathered once again under the Dominopoint.it flag.

The venue this year was located in the Italian IBM headquarters. Many were worried about "rules" that could be imposed on us presenters but this actually didn't happen. We got complete freedom of "expression" and nobody complained about anything.

This year (for the third time) the number of attendees increased. If you check out the conference website (http://day3.dominopoint.it) you'll see that 571 people registerd.
Unofficial information confirms that more than 400 people faced up and stayed all day long at the event. I'm looking forward to official numbers soon this week. This is an awesome number for an european Lotus only event. If you also consider that being held in italian as a spoken language our target was "limited" this is ultra-awesome... more than 400 people attended from Italy only with a few coming from abroad and two international speakers (more later) participating in the event.

I was participating with a session about using Lotus products in Web 2.0 mashups. I'm looking forward to extend an tranlsate my presentation next week and share it on slideshare. I'll post an update when it's ready.

Also I was guest of Lotus' own presentation on Lotus Connections 2.5. Elena Sangalli (Lotus Technical Presale) held a great presentation and LIVE DEMO (the most risky thing you can do at an event) about all the integrations and plugins that Lotus Connections 2.5 offers to users out of the box. I completed the session with a show about how you can "customized & extend" Lotus Connections using APIs and extension points (eg. using Domino 8.5.1 iWidgets to extend the connections' homepage).

Finally ... the two speaker's dinner were great. The first with all the speakers and the second with those who could affort to stay in Milan after the event.

During the second dinner we've had the honor to have with us once again Franziska Tanner and Mary Beth Raven our two international speakers !!!

My favourite quote from Mary Beth twitter is:


" ... #Lotusknows that #dominopointday has the best free lunch
of any LUG ever! Stuff, fried olives- yum! ..."


The best italian technology: GREAT FOOD

Thanks to everybody for the time spent preparing for Dominopoint Day, for the time spent with the audience...

See you soon (next stop is LotusSphere) and thank you again.


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli November 15th, 2009 12:31:20

Il DP Day 3 si stà avvicinando, la call for session è aperta e come al solito devo decidere cosa proporre alla selezione.

Ho fatto una breve lista degli argomenti che potrei preparare, che ne dite, c'è qualcosa che interessa più del resto ?
Commentate e fatemi sapere.

Possibili sessioni per il DPDay III

  1. Development
    1. Facciamoli a pezzi !!! I dati (con Lotus Mashups) - Integrazioni con Domino
    2. XPages a 360° (e oltre) - Web & Client 8.5.1
    3. Composite applications - Portal edition
    4. Composite applications - Lotus Notes Edition
  2. Admin
    1. Extreme Web Experience for domino - Ottenere un'infrastruttura web eccezionale con i prodotti lotus (Domino e WebSphere). (Performance, SSO, HTTPS, Reverse proxy, Logging)
    2. Usare le XPages con Domino 8, 7, 6, 5, 4... un ambiente ibrido per chi ancora non vuole/può migrare alla 8.5 ma vorrebbe le XPages
  3. Prodotti
    1. Sametime Conferencing 8.5 - Extreme conferencing
    2. Ri-Connessi (Lotus Connections 2.5)

Io sono abbastanza orientato verso Lotus Connections 2.5 (che esce il 28 agosto) o Mashups, però non mi dispiacerebbe un pò di feedback sugli altri titoli.

A presto,
Daniele



Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli August 22nd, 2009 12:21:09

I've not posted lately because I'm preparing something new that's changing my professional life.

Apart from this I've been following everything in the Lotus BlogoSphere and in particular the latest Lotus annoucements in the marketing initiatives.


I'm hoping... finally Lotus may get a real marketing plan. In my experience IBM/Lotus marketing has been inefficent or useless providing the market with messages that were "very IBM" and cryptic for the rest of the world.

I'm hoping... it appears Lotus wants to change this but I remember a long list attempt with no results

I'm hoping... Lotus has the most complete product-set around for collaboration but I keep listening to customers saying... "it seems IBM don't want to sell us..." (it's not a rant this is what customers tell me everyday).


So what I'd like to see happen (mine is mostly an Italian focused experience):

  • Stop feeding useless "channel magazines" that are only of interest to vendors/distributors but that are useless to CIO/CEO and often drain marketing funds... (I think channel magazines are a place where everybody attempt to look better with almost no value for the readers)
  • Start being aggressive on IT magazines with highest reading public. Maybe even magazines that are not (by nature) focused at Enterprises but to small medium business.
  • Publish understandable and complete whitepapers with best practices on TCO reduction and product comparison (IBM vs Microsoft vs OpenSource).
  • Engage universities and education institutes. Microsoft is doing this all the time.. IBM is not. Have partners do this for you. Consider this as the greatest investment you can do. I learned that universities love OpenSource but also that people in univesities loves to (and need to) learn from the real world. Nothing better than having IBM go there and explain the how and why of enterprise software and what's the difference...
    • I've been following the DB2 on Campus initiative... that's great

I'm sure the guys over at LotusKnows have far more input thant these few lines... but believe me ... there's a tremendous amount of work Lotus needs to do to get back to earlier acceptance and presence.


Then, there's the way IBM sells/educate the market... but that's a completely different story ... ;)


Finally a couple of "Lotus Knows ..." messages....
  • Lotus Knows you can't exchange a Microsoft mail system for a real Collaboration Platform
  • Lotus Knows you can't exchange a system that allows upgrades with an Install&Migrate product and still keep your TCO low. (Domino upgrades, Exchange doesn't)

Other, for fun


  • Lotus Knows you can't exchange a Ferris survey/report with a report that really addresses your TCO (check it out)
  • Lotus Knows you can't exchange a Julia White post with something that doesn't need "correction" (check it out)


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli August 9th, 2009 06:45:40

In the last couple of weeks I've been very quiet in my blog.

Outside my blog a lot is going on. I'm getting engaged in new projects, participating to IBM events around WebSphere Portal and of course preparing to unveil the experimental lab I begun to build on Amazon EC2 some week ago.


While preparing the new portal I faced a problem... Out of the box the themes provided by IBM with WebSphere Portal are "fair" but not good enough to have people (read customers) say "WOW I want that".


Over time IBM polished up the product and created some "not so bad" themes but today people tend to chose a product also for it's look, not just for the functionality. This means that if we want to "win" we've to show customers a good design that's functional and very pleasant to the user's eyes.


Since I'm not a designer and I wanted something "fast" I looked up in the internet and found a number of great resources you can use when you feel the need for something that's both nice to see and ready to use.


I found these sites, take a look and start improving your web application/blogs/sites experience for users:


Just by browsing here you'll find a number of high quality designs that you can take and use for personal or commercial use.


After browsing two or three hundreds of themes I actually selected the Indigo theme for my next work (maybe I'll update my blog too)



Image:A good resource: Website designs for lazy developers


I'll be soon implementing it on WebSphere Portal and prepare for the next step.


Finally I also bought Balsamiq Mockups, a great tool I learned about trough
Chris Sparshoot's blog. It costs 75 $ but it pays itself in a few days if designing applications/websites is part of your work.

Here are the first studies for the UI of the new Portal:



Image:A good resource: Website designs for lazy developers
Image:A good resource: Website designs for lazy developers


Finally since I'm also working on an iGoogle like theme for WebSphere portal I also designed a mockup for it using the same tool. It's amazing how "visualizing" things improves the design work. (I first learned about this at
Chris Blatnik sessions, but doing it for real is another story)

And here's the iGoggle UI expressed as a mockup:



Image:A good resource: Website designs for lazy developers


Comments (0)
Daniele Vistalli March 8th, 2009 18:29:13