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IBM Lotus Workplace is dead, long live IBM Lotus Ventura

As VoWe pointed out today, IBM Workplace Messaging is no more. It has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SOFTWARE-PRODUCT!! But as soon as I read the announcement, something made click in my head. This actually makes sense! Remember the „Domino 8 - What’s new” posting over at „Domino Blog”? They stated:

Nor does it require that you deploy any of our collaboration products such as Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickplace, or Activities.

So there was a hint, that there will be a „Lotus Activities” product by IBM. Then there was Ed Brill’s comment „I’m not sure the product announcement has been made” in the comments to Volkers above mentioned „tidbid” (Ceci n’est pas un blog). So I cranked up Google and Technorati and found some „interesting” postings. ‘Cote’, a software Industry Analyst with RedMonk and well known for his „Drunk And Retired” podcast, wrote:

Ventura is the productized suite of several „Web 2.0” technologies, like:

• IBM’s BluePages - an end-user oriented directory for storing and looking through people profiles
• Dogear - IBM’s social bookmarking app.
• Activities - a to do list with, of course, much more that just bullet points with things to do.
• Communities - the „groups” part of the application.
• Roller - for blogging. One question is how much IBM’s extended roller vs. used it out of the box. As ever, Sun should be asking themselves why IBM’s the one who’s figuring out selling roller „first.”
• Lots of glue - things like search (which I need to get more details on), integration with SameTime and otherwise making all the components feel more like a suite rather than just separate things. And, of course, enterprisey things like directory integration and security. And, of course, feeds on everything.

Unfortunately, Cote’ pulled that posting off his „business” blog, but it is still available via Google Cache (you have to love Google for that feature). I think it has something to do with IBM being his client. ;) According to the information I found so far, Ventura is IBM’s approach to Web/Enterprise 2.0, is all J2EE/Websphere and is using Apache Roller as the blogging platform. At least, that is the information I found in the postings by Dave Johnson, Luis Suarez, Elias Torres and Andy Piper. Workplace is no more but with Ventura we will get, IMHO, another add-on product to Notes, along the lines of Sametime and Quickplace. But this time, it is not based on Notes/Domino but on Websphere. I do not like that too much, but we will see. I am also anxious to see how Roller (that is also used by Sun to power their corporate blogs) will play up against the Lotus Notes blog template. Interesting times ahead, I am sure. So we will probably not hear a Workplace marketing pitch at Lotusphere ‘07, as Ed Maloney said in the comments to Volkers posting, but I expect to hear a lot on Ventura and how it will make our lives better. And I expect a lot of slides similar to Mike Roche’s „Bringing People and Processes Together”.

Tagged as: IBM, LotusNotes, mITtendrin, ventura, workplace | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Donnerstag, 20061214, 17:51 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

Mary Beth Will Change the View Icons - Check your Views!

Mary Beth Raven announced, that they will redraw all the view icons for Lotus Notes 8. While most icons will only get a facelift, a few icons will „change metaphors”, as Mary Beth put it: 10 – changes from the „finger with a string” to an alarm clock -> 160 – changes to a clock type thing from a person with a hand raised -> 81 – changes from the X to a different kind of „do not” type international symbol -> 166 – (mood stamp for „joke”) changes from eyeglasses to a „drama mask” -> 169 – indicator for „private” changes from the red hand to an envelope with a special seal on it -> As a few colleagues already commented in Mary Beth’s blog, the designers also changed the colours of a few icons (check icons # 98 to 100 and 114-120). Look out for that, if you are using these icons to represent status-information, etc. If you are a Notes developer and don’t know what I am talking about, read up the chapter „Displaying an icon in a column” in the Domino Designer help. According to Mary Beth, the new icons will look like this: Which, IMHO, is a great improvement over the ageing old version: So check your views now in case you are using one of the changed icons!

Tagged as: development , Hannover, LotusNotes, Notes+Domino, Wissen_ist_Macht | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Donnerstag, 20061214, 16:20 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)