Old Blog Post

Google's cloud storage product Google Drive has now been announced. I am however still on a waiting list, as it seems like Google is adding users little by little, so I have not been able to test it yet.

Google Drive is a service similar to Dropbox. You get 5GB storage for free, and additional 25GB for $2.49/month. Clients are available for Mac, PC and Android phones, and a version for iPad/iPhone is coming, according to Google. The service let you access your documents from different devices and on different platforms. You are also able to share files with friends, family and other people. Google Docs is integrated with Google Drive, allowing different users to edit documents.

It will be interesting to see what differentiate Google Drive from Dropbox, box.com and other similar services that already exists. The cost for additional storage is much lower than the competing products, Dropbox give you 2GB free and charge $9.99 for 50GB storage. Box.com give you 5GB free and charge $9.99 for 25GB storage.

After weeks of speculations, it seems like Samsung will unveil their latest smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, at an event in London om May 3 called "Samsung Mobile Unpacked". Invitations have been sent out to media and a website with a teaser video is now available.

Samsung also released an app for the Unpacked event, where there is a reference to "Samsung Galaxy S3". The predecessor is of course Samsung Galaxy S II (with roman numerals), and there have been some discussions if Samsung will change the numbering from roman to latin numbers. Initially the phone was just referenced as "The Next Galaxy", leading some to speculate in Samsung doing like Apple and dropping the number from the name.

I guess we will see in 9 days. Then the specifications will be official as well. But rumors are talking about a quad-core processor (everything between 1.4 and 2.8GHz have been mentioned), a 4.6" to 4.8" screen with a resolution of 1280×720 pixel (but a 1920×1080 screen has also been mentioned), 16GB or 32GB memory, 8-12MP camera, and possible a ceramic body.

Fredrik Malmborg just posted an article (in Swedish) on his blog about how the Swedish government have been moving several departments (taxes, defence, etc) from an IBM/Lotus platform to the Microsoft stack. He noticed that a certain executive with sales responsibility for public sector at a big software company became Secretary of State (not the same as "Secretary of State" in the US) right before the government asked a certain software company (guess which one!) to write the specification for the new system. Coincidentally that same company (Microsoft)  was then choosen to deliver the solution. IBM was never offered to even compete.

A year ago Computer Sweden wrote (in Swedish) about several departments moving from IBM/Lotus to Microsoft, without IBM being allowed to compete, or in some cases select Microsoft despite IBM being less expensive. Google translation here.

Here are some arguments used in the studies presented to the government why the switch should be done:

* Outlook is used privately by many users and thus have a higher acceptance.
* The similar interface improves the user experience.

I know that IBM does not believe in those arguments, but the customers and the ones in charge (may it be politicians, civil servants or a CEO) buy that argument. Line, hook and sinker… Especially if the persons in change are among the ones that use Outlook at home (since it come bundled with many versions of Office). I personally know several people who use Outlook (not Outlook Express!) at home for their private mail, as they can easily aggregate several mail accounts into one client. I been building/rebuilding a number of computers for friends lately, and the request to use Outlook came up several times.

I believe that IBM should create a "IBM Mail" client, with support for POP/IMAP/SMTP as well as direct support for Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail. Why not add Domino and Exchange support, to allow users to connect to work, without installing the full Notes client?
The client must be able to aggregate mail from multiple sources, and send mail using any of those services. When you compose a new mail, there should be a dropdown where you select Gmail, your ISP service or Yahoo mail (depending on what you have setup), the same way as it works on most smart phones today. If you reply to a mail, the service is was received on should be default, e.g. if the mail was received through one of my Gmail accountrs, the reply should be sent using the same account.

This client should look like Notes mail, contain a calendar, to-do, journal, perhaps an RSS feed and support for widgets. Why not throw in a couple of simple but useful applications? Show that "IBM Mail is not just mail". Strip away as much as possible when it comes to complicated menus, settings, etc. The properties/settings in the Notes client causes any normal user to get a headache instantly… Make it easy and quick to setup, and make it available as a free download, without any annoying registration. Most of all, make the client fast.

The market perception will not change overnight, but in the long run, showing that "IBM Mail" looks modern and has the functionality people need will benefit Notes.

I wanted to share the recipe for the cake I made this weekend. It is very easy to make, and tastes great.

Mix 6 eggs and 3dl (a little over over 1 cup) of sugar, beet it until fluffy.
Mix 1.5 dl (9 tablespoons) flour and 1.5 dl corn starch (potato flour in Europe) in a bowl, add 3 tablespooons of baking powder and mix well. Fold this into the egg/sugar mix, stir gently until the batter is smooth.
Cover the inside of a baking pan with butter and then breadcrumbs. Pour in the batter and place in the lower part of the oven. Bake for 40 minutes in 325 degrees F (175 degrees C).
When done, turn it upside down on a cooling rack, let it cool down for a few monutes before attempting to remove the baking pan.

Slice through the cake twice so you get 3 equally think slices. On top of the first one, spead a jam, for example blueberry jam. Pend the extra $2 and get the best one you can get, low in sugar and high in fruit. If you have an IKEA nearby, theu got several good jams to choose from. On top of the jam, put a 1/2 inch thick layer of vanilla creme. I make it from Vanilla Sauce powder from Sweden, but here is a way to make it yourself. You can add some fresh fruit here, if you like. Why not fresh blueberries, to complement the jam?

Put the next layer of cake on top of the vanilla creme, then add another filling. I often mash 2 bananas and mix with whipped creme. Make sure the creme is nice and thick, it should be solid, not runny or soft. You can add fruit in here too, if you like. Perhaps chunks of fresh strawberries, they go well with teh bananas and creme. Add the last layer of cake, cover the whole thing with more whipped creme and decorate with fruit. Strawberries, rasberries, blackberries. Or why not go for a "mushroom cake", cut bananas in about 1.5 inch long pieces and place them standing up on top of the cake. Drain a can of apricots and put them on top of the bananas like mushrooms.

The other week we had a new executive start at my work. I stopped by her office today and offered to help her with Notes if she had any problems. I asked if she had used Notes before, and she said no, she came from an Outlook shop. So I asked her what she thought about Notes this far.

She told me that the mail experience was very close to Outlook, with sortable columns, etc. She als told me that she really like the action buttons with dropdowns for reply, etc. The fact that different windows are available in different tabs was another thing she liked.

She then switched over to the workspace and told me how she loved it, and how it was much better than Outlook, easy to find things, etc. I then quickly showed her how she can name the different tabs, change color and organize her icons. She was very impressed, and liked that.

For the last week or so, she have been meeting with different departments, and yesterday she got to meet with IT. We went through the different applications we have, and we explained how the different Notes applications are tied together with each other, as well as with several other systems. This is something else she is very impressed about, and she told me that that level of integration was something she had not seen at her previous workplace.

She is very impressed with Lotus Notes, and she is still just running 8.5.2 Basic version…

This spring is gearing up to be very interesting. The rumors are flying about both an upcoming new iPad and a new Samsung Galaxy Tab.

According to the rumors, Samsung will launch the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 11.6 at Mobile World Contress in Barcelona at the end of this month. The new tablet will (again unconfirmed) have a 11.6 inch screen with a resolution of 2560×1600 and be powered by a 2GHz dual-core Exynos 5250 processor. Some rumors talk about a quad-core processor, but I personally find that unlikely in this first version.
The operating system will, not surprisingly, be Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Despite the bigger screen, the actual size of the tablet is said to not be much larger than the existing Galaxy Tab 10.1.

As soon as Apple releases one product, rumors start about the next generation. But it seems very plausible that an iPad3 will be released this spring (the rumors talk about March). Here rumors talk about a quad-core processor in the 1MHz range (but the rumors are all over the place which processor it will be and exact clock speed), and a new graphics chip driving the 9.7 inch display with a resolution of  2048×1536 pixels, double the resolution of iPad2. A redesigned interior to allow a bigger battery is also probably, based on leaked pictures of the case. 4G LTE support is also a pretty good bet. The iPad3 will supposedly be slightly more bulky that the existing version, about 1.5mm thicker.

I guess time will tell, but this spring could be very interesting for tablets, and the summer/fall will be interesting for smartphones. Expected launces of iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3 and phones from RIM with Blackberry OS 10 (QNX-based and rumored to be able to run Android apps) are the ones I see as the most interesting.

How many times do you not want to count the number of documents you process, perhaps even a few different counters? Today I was working on a Lotusscript agent where I wanted to keep track of the total number of documents processed, as well as individual counters for a few different types of documents. Normally I would have used a handful of variables, but I realized that I could use lists for this.

This is what my old code would look like:

Dim cnt As Long
Dim totcnt As Long
Dim type1cnt as Long
Dim type2cnt as Long
Set view = claimdb.GetView("(LookupView)")
Set col = view.AllEntries
view.AutoUpdate = False
totcnt = col.Count
cnt = 0
Set entry = col.GetLastEntry()
Do While Not entry Is Nothing
    cnt = cnt + 1
    ' Do stuff here 
    If entry.ColumnValues(0) = "Type1" Then
        type1cnt = type1cnt + 1
    ElseIf entry.ColumnValues(0) = "Type2" Then
        type2cnt = type2cnt + 1
    End If
    Print "Processed " & cnt & " of " & totcnt
    Set entry = col.GetPrevEntry(entry) 
Loop

My new code would look like this:

Dim cnt List As Long
Dim doctype As String
Set view = claimdb.GetView("(LookupLargeLossSummary)")
Set col = view.AllEntries
view.AutoUpdate = False
cnt("Total") = col.Count
cnt("Processed") = 0
Set entry = col.GetLastEntry()
Do While Not entry Is Nothing
    cnt("Processed") = cnt("Processed") + 1
    ' Do stuff here
    doctype = entry.ColumnValues(0)
    cnt(doctype) = cnt(doctype) + 1
    Print "Processed " & cnt("Processed") & " of " & cnt("Total")
    Set entry = col.GetPrevEntry(entry) 
Loop

Note that the list tag is case sensitive. The example also assumes that the document type is displayed in the first column of the view. You can also use ForAll to get the values of all list elements:

ForAll c in cnt
    Print ListTag(c) & " = " & c
End ForAll

That’s it for today. Happy coding!

During the last couple of weeks I have revisited some of the sci-fi classics I read when I was young. Robert A Heinlein was always one of my favorites. In what would be considered middle school in the US (4th-6th grade) we had one hour each week when the class was reading whatever book we had picked out in the library. At one time, I think it was in 5th grade, I read the Swedish translation of "Have Space Suit ?Will Travel". The other week I listened to this book as an audio book. This one was actually more of a radio theatre play, with different actors playing the different parts. I then followed this by listening to "Citizen of the Galaxy" and "Double Star".

The books were written in 1956, 1957 and 1958, and I noticed something interesting. Despite them taking place in the future, where space travel (even faster than light) is possible, and with all kinds of exotic technology available, many things we take for granted today are lacking.

In "Double Star", the main character is studying using an encyclopedia in the ships library. As we know today, online encyclopedias like wikipedia and internet searches have all but killed off the traditional printed encyclopedia. There is no way for a printed publication to stay current. If a celebrity or any other person dies, within minutes their wikipedia page will be updated with date/time and cause of death.

In "Citizen of the Galaxy" the missile control computers onboard the trade ships are manned by young adults with good math abilities. They seem to be somewhat aided by a rudimentary computer, but it is mainly the operator who calculate trajectory and time for release of the missiles. The result is recorded on a spool (which can be read by humans, so probably some kind of paper-like material). The concept of digital storage did not exist, and I am sure any PC (or even smart phone) today could perform the calculations needed much faster than any human, and with greater accuracy.

Some of the books also talk about huge archives, using micro film. Even if that still today is a great medium for long term storage, it is not the best choice for the kind of short term archiving used in the books. Again, the concept of digital storage does not appear in the books. The books basically build on the technology known in the 1950´s, but "enhanced" as imagined in the future.

However, there is on interesting thing in "Double Star". When recordings are made (for public broadcasts), they are "stereoscopic", i.e. 3D. It is not until the last year or two we have actually seen 3D television become common. Personally I believe that we soon will see 3D television sets where we don´t need to use special glasses (several manufacturers already have those) and that more and more tv shows and even news will be in 3D.

All this is not a slam on Robert A Heinlein or any other sci-fi writer from the past. It just illustrates how hard it is to predict a paradigm shift like PCs or the development of technology. For being almost 60 years old, the books are still very enjoyable. If you have not experienced Robert A Heinlein yet, pick up one of his books or an audiobook at the library, bookstore or favorite online retailer.

The discussion about the IBM rebranding of different products, including removing "Lotus" from a number of products, have me got thinking. What is really in a name? Well, a product name is really not that different from a person name. We have a firstname/surname which is our identity, and a lastname/family which indicate what family or group we belong to. In some cultures the family name is listed first, but the idea is the same. Sometimes we also have a nickname that we are know as, or that our friends call us.

When a woman get married, she often takes the family name of her husband, or combine her family name with his. Jane Doe becomes Jane Smith or even Jane Doe-Smith. A product is often named the same way. Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, Lotus Sametime. When IBM took over ("married") Lotus, eventually the name became "IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Domino, etc. We continued using the "nicknames" Notes, Domino and Sametime, as they are shorter and easier to say/write.

I am sure we all remember when Sametime was renamed "IBM Lotus Instant Messaging" and Quickr was renamed "IBM Lotus Team Workplace". The names were quickly changed back”…” Not that the names were bad, they actually explained much better the nature of the product. But they were much harder to remember and did not have the familiarity people needed. Compare that with if I would change my son´s name from Erik to say Allen (which happens to be his middle name). That would cause a lot of confusion.
And if you dropped the "family name" part ("IBM Lotus"), like we all do in normal conversations, the result did not provide any good branding. "Do you use Instant Messaging?"

Some products have already lost the Lotus part. We now have "IBM Sametime", and at Lotusphere, it was announced that "IBM Docs" is the new name for LotusLive Symphony. I think that is a great name, it explains the product and also have the family name in there. "IBM SmartCloud for Social Business" is a long name for LotusLive, and perhaps not the best name. But I never thought LotusLive was a good name. I know that a few years everything cloud was "Live" (Windows Live, etc), but it felt like just another buzzword.

I understand the need of IBM to group products into different families. That makes sense. But everything does not have to include "Smart". What about simply giving any cloud offering/product a "Cloud" designation? IBM Cloud Docs, IBM Cloud Mail (LotusLive Mail), etc. To me that is a no-brainer.

For the traditional client side products in the Lotus family it is a bit more complicated. We all love the Lotus brand, but it has a somewhat tainted or dated sound these days. It is simply old, and people still think "Lotus 1-2-3" when they hear it. I would have no problem with IBM Notes and IBM Domino. We already have "IBM Xwork Server". What about "IBM Smart Client" (for Notes) and "IBM Smart Server" (for Domino). There, IBM got their Smart-designation, and we got a good descriptive name on the products.

You are welcome, Ed.

As the article in Computer Sweden now have been published, I reposted my blog entry about Ernst & Young migrating 150,000 users world wide from Notes to Exchange.

IBM in Sweden is not commenting to Computer Sweden, but Ernst & Young have been using Lotus Notes since the mid-1990's and have been considered a major Notes account. In this first step only the email will be migrated, and it is unclear if applications will eventually be moved as well.

My personal analysis (as I wrote in my original post) is that IBM will not really lose very much revenue, but it is a prestigious win for Microsoft. Even if email might be less important than applications (many consider email a commodity), the market will probably see this as a loss for IBM, and in the long run I think this will be used as another example of "Notes is dead".
I think it is important for IBM to realize that perception is actually important. You can't always be logical. IBM need to keep as many of their big customers on Notes mail as possible, or the market will get the perception that customers are abandoning the platform, even if it is just email.

I brought some of my home-made Apple Cake drink to Lotusphere, and I had many people ask me how it is made. It is not hard at all, it just takes some time.

You need the following:

• 75 cl vodka (that is one regular bottle), and I recommend Absolut 40% (or even 50% if you want it stronger).
• 30 cl (that is about 10 fl oz) concentrated apple juice. I used one can of defrosted frozen juice concentrate.
• 3-4 tablespoons granulated sugar.
• 3 tablespoons of vanilla sugar. It can be purchased at the nearest IKEA in the US. You can also use vanilla extract.
• 3 sticks of cinnamon.

Gently heat up the apple juice on the stove. Stir in the sugar and vanilla sugar/flavor until it is all dissolved. Pour in a big bottle that is just over 1 liter, a little over a quart. I use a 2 quart Rubber Maid MixerMate bottle. Add the cinnamon sticks and then the vodka. Shake well.

For the next 7 days, shake once or twice a day. After 7 days, remove the cinnamon sticks. It is now ready to serve.

Whip some cream together with a little vanilla sugar. Pour the drink in shot glasses, but don´t fill them to the rim. Add a spoon of whipped cream on top, and it is ready to drink. Skål!

Here is another version of Duffbert and Andy Donaldson performing "I Got You, Babe" at Kimonos during Lotusphere 2012.

I am having problems embedding videos on this blog, please use this link instead. Enjoy!

The busiest day this far. The day started with a keynote session, featuring among others Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web. He spoke out against the SOPA and PIPA laws, coincidentally on the same day that Wikipedia, Google and other sites went black in a protest against the proposed US censorship laws. He encouraged everyone to mail their representative to denounce the laws.
Then he procede to discuss the Semantic Web, and how data can be aggregated from many sources but must be tracked back to it’s origin.

The next speaker was Manoj Saxema, the General Manager of the newly founded IBM Watson Solutions Group. He talked about IBM’s plans to commercialize Watson. The first target is the medical fields, where Watson can help doctors in diagnosing patients. The next step is financial institutions and insurance companies.
He also mention that 90% of all data in the world was produced in the last two years, and that 80% of that information is unstructured, saved in documents, spreadsheets, etc. Watson is designed to work with unstructured data like that.

Finally Andy Miller, CEO and President of Polycom, talked about video conferencing, social functionality and mobile, and how the younger workforce demand access to that technology.

The it was off to sessions.

BP303 – I Smell a RAT — Rapid Application Testing, by Peter Presnell. This was a very interesting session. I got plenty of ideas and inspiration of things to do after I get back home.

BP101 – Adminblast 2012 by the always excellent and entertaining Paul Mooney. Even as a developer I always walk away with tons of useful tips from his Adminblast sessions, and this year was no exception.

AD112 – What’s New in the IBM Lotus Domino Objects: Version 8.5.3 in Demos, featuring James Cooper and Elizabeth Sawyer (both of IBM). A good session, with a few interruptions that slowed down the tempo somewhat. One of the most interesting new functions is agent.RunWithDocumentContext(), a way to pass and retrieve data from another agent. Previously we developers had to use a profile document or similar hack to get the same functionality.

BP121 – Performance Programming, by Andrew Pollack. Yet another very interesting session. This one covered different issues that can slow down your Lotus Notes applications, and showed different techniques to work around this.

After this it was off to get ready for the party at Seaworld. It had been raining some earlier in the day, and I think some long-time ‘spherians were worried about a repeat of the 2007 party at Animal Kingdom, when it was pouring down rain. But the rain stopped and I had a good time. My favorites were as always the sharks and the dolphins. I am not a big roller-coaster fan…

A busy day at Lotusphere. It started with a keynote about how Social affects business. The messge was that leadership matters, a dedicated team must take point. Social is not an IT function/project, it needs to involve departments liek HR, legal and of course IT. If you engage the employees, they will be a huge resource. The example given was when TD Bank decided to be open 7 day a week, the reaction from the workforce would probably been negative. But by using social capabilities and transparency, the employees got engaged and even enthusiastic about the new opportunity.

Then the sessions started.

BP102 – User Blast with Mat Newman. Mat Newman, the Australian with the yellow suit, had a great session showing a multitude of functions that will make life easier for end-users. The idea is that anyone attending the session should be able to bring this info back and energize their users. The room was packed (as was the repeat session later), and the organizers had to use overflow rooms. Even experienced Notes users learned new things here.

BP110 -  A Performance Boost for Your IBM Lotus Notes Client, presented by the excellent pair Francie Tanner and Florian Vogler (both from Panagenda). I learned a number of things that I will be able to bring home and hopefully implement in my environment.

I also had some meetings, so I went to the Solutions Showcase and looked around inbetween meetings. GBS was out in force and had occupied a huge section of the floor. I did not have as much time as I wanted on the showcase floor, but it seemed like bigger than last year, with more booths and vendors.

Finally I took some time to visit the Meet the Developers lab, a place where I always spend several hours during the week. This time I had mainly development questions, most of them related to issues with Domino Designer itself. I spent quite some time with Maureen Leland, the head of Domino Designer development, and we identified a number of issues that hopefully can be fixed. One of them, to automatically indicate that a database is a template by using a different background color behind the workspace icon, was so easy that she was convinced she could code that on the flight back to Boston. She said the hardest problem to solve was to decide what indicator to use…

This is the kind of access we get to the IBM staff, nothing beats being able to talk to the guys and girls who actually wrote the code we have questions about. If you haven’t been to the labs, take a few minutes or an hour to go there. Highly recommended!

OGS. The abbreviation seasoned ‘spherians use for the Opening General Session. The fear in the community was a repeat of last year, with endless customer panels with readings from teleprompter and no demos. But IBM listened. There were plenty of demos, and the customers on stage were on for just a few minutes, were well rehearsed and had interesting stories to tell.

The OGS started, as in previous years, with a musical performance. This year by the band OK Go.

Then this years guest speaker was introduced: Michael J Fox. He talked (among other things) about how 75% of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (which Michael is suffering from) are members of an online community.

What new products did we see? Well, we got to see what came out of Project Vulcan: the new Activity Stream. It is integrated with the next version of Connections as well as in Lotus Notes/Domino Social Edition and other products.

Another very interesting product that was demonstrated at the OGS is a plugin that let you run Notes applications totally modified in a browser, without having to rewrite it using Xpages. Finally, LotusLive Symphony has been renamed IBM Docs.

So what is Lotus/Domino Social Edition? Ed Brill explains it well:

What version number is Notes/Domino Social Edition? Answer: It isn’t. It’s a feature version, but it is built atop the simultaneously-forthcoming planned Notes/Domino 8.5.4 release.

 

It includes the activity stream, but if I understand it correctly, you need Connections in order to fully benefit from this.

Personally I think this was one of the better opening sessions I have been to. It was well paced and had enough news to keep the audience awake. The four customer cases were fairly short, but next year, try just three, and add even more demo, especially on the main product we all use, Lotus Notes.

After the OGS, I had some meetings. When they were handled, I managed to catch two good sessions.

AD111 – The X Path: Practical Guide to Taking Your IBM Lotus Notes Applications to IBM Lotus Domino XPages, presented by Hunter Medney and Stephan Wissel. This was a great session, explaining the recommended steps to move existing Notes applications to Xpages. The speakers explained what to look out for, and how to best perform the conversion.

AD106 -IBM Lotus Domino XPages -Write Them Ones, See Them Everywhere, by Viktor Krantz and Stephan Wissel. Another great Xpages session, showing how Xpages can be consumed by different platforms, including mobile phones and pads.

Then it was on to a reception for an hour, before heading to Joe Litton’s Mai Tai night. Then we all migrated over to Shula’s for the traditional UK Night. The night then continued on the Swan side outside Kimono’s, where a smaller group were hanging out, smoking cigars and swapping war stories from previous ‘spheres.

A great day and night.

Sunday is now officially the first day of Lotusphere, with Jumpstart sessions and (of course) the welcome reception at night. I had a full day’s schedule, and went to four great sessions.

JMP102 – Introduction to Java for IBM Lotus Domino Developers, by the excellent Paul Calhoun. I can’t say I know Java, even if I did write some code many years ago. This session made me very excited about taking another look at Java, in order to add that language to my toolbox.

JMP103 – "How Stuff Works" IBM Lotus Domino Style! by Susan Bulloch and Jess Stratton. I am a developer, but I want to (and feel that every designer should) learn the basics of administration and security. Susan and Jess are excellent presenters and are experts at their subject. This session was very beneficial to me.

JMP303 – Master Class: They Really Are Out To Get You by Gabriella Davis and Andrew Pollack. The title is ironic, as it seems like a certain corporate lawyer at IBM is out to get Andrew. An hour before the presentation was about to be given, the lawyer demanded that all pictures were to be removed, because of potential copyright issues. You can read the full story on Andrew’s blog.
Despite this, Gab and Andrew managed to deliver a great session on security, which of course would not surprise anyone who know these competent long-time speakers.

JMP101 – IBM Lotus Domino Xpages JumpStart by Howard Greenberg and Paul Della-Nebbia. I attended some Xpages sessions at Lotusphere 2011, but have not been able to start doing any actual development. I was having problems getting over the initial hump, but this session explained things very well and inspired me to take a look at Xpages when I get back home.

Then there was the traditional poolside welcome reception, followed by a visit to Kimono’s, before heading to bed.

After getting up early in the morning, I boarded my flight from DFW to Orlando. As usual I flew American Airlines, but for the first time they had WiFi on the plane. So I was able to stay connected even on the flight, keeping track of how all my friends and contacts in the Lotus community were arriving to Orlando as well, from all over the world. Some had already arrived on Friday, and they shared weather info and other tidbits with the rest of us. During the approach to Orlando, I was even able to get a picture of Dolphin and Swan from the airplane.

After taking the shuttle to Dolphin, I checked in, and #occupyswandolphin (as Andy Donaldson once called it on Twitter) could start. The official twitter hash tag is #ls12, though.

After picking up my badge at registration, I headed over to Big River Brewhouse and the traditional BALD, which stands for Bloggers (and friends) Annual Lotusphere Dinner. There I met many of my friends, and we had some beer, food, and Kitty Elsmore's excellent toffee.

Spankford Blogmonkey also made an appearance, and he even brought some friends.

The plan was to head over to ESPN Zone after BALD, but because a couple of football teams decided to play each other, so the line was ridiculously long. A number of us went to Kimono's and had some drinks and some food.

After Kimono's we moved over to the Dolphin Bar to continue socializing. I had brought some "apple cake" (or perhaps it should be called "apple pie"), a drink that is popular in Sweden. It was a big hit with everyone that tried it. I will post the recipe soon, for anyone that want to make it themselves. 

On Flight AA1434 DFW to MCO. Should be at Swolphin around noon. Can't wait for Lotusphere 2012 to start! I have high hopes for the OGS, hope IBM delivers.

Looking forward to see all my friends again, and make new ones.

As I promised in my previous entry, I will show how to use the Windows clipboard functionality in a Notes application.

We have a knowledgebase, where information for different departments is posted. A very typical and simpel Notes application, in other words. But some users requested a simpler way to create nice doclinks, so I listened and created two buttons on the document form. 

The first button is 'Copy Link', it will simply collect information about the open document (database server, filename and path and UNID of the document. This information is then just stored in the cliboard as a delimited string.

The second button is 'Paste Link'. It will read the delimited string from the clipboard, get a handle to the document and create a nice doclink. The title of the document is also pasted into the document.

To support this functionality, you also have to create a form called 'doclink', where the only content is a RichText field called "Body". Make sure there is not even a linebreak after the field.

Below is the actual code. It requires the script library I posted earlier. Hope this can help someone.

Button 'Copy Link':

 Use "Class.Win32.ClipBoard"

Sub Click(Source As Button)    Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace    Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument    Dim clipboard As WindowsClipboard    Dim clipdata As String     Set clipboard = New WindowsClipboard()    Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument    clipdata="NotesData~" & ws.CurrentDatabase.Database.Server    clipdata = clipdata & "~" & ws.CurrentDatabase.Database.FilePath    clipdata = clipdata & "~" & uidoc.Document.UniversalID    clipboard.Contents = clipdata    Msgbox "Document info has been stored. You can now" & Chr$(10) & _    "use the 'Paste Link' button in IT Support db or" & Chr$(10) & _    "your mail file to create a link to this document.",,"Success"End Sub

Button 'Paste Link':

 Use "Class.Win32.ClipBoard"

Sub Click(Source As Button) ' *** Create and insert a doclink at the insertion point    Dim session As New NotesSession    Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace     Dim thisdoc As NotesUIDocument     Dim tempuidoc As NotesUIDocument    Dim db As NotesDatabase    Dim doc As NotesDocument    Dim tempdoc As NotesDocument    Dim linkdb As NotesDatabase    Dim temprt As NotesRichTextItem    Dim dbname As String    Dim servername As String    Dim unid As String    Dim clipboard As WindowsClipboard    Dim clipdata As String    Dim clipargs As Variant  ' Array to hold data from clipboard     Set thisdoc = ws.CurrentDocument    Set db = session.currentdatabase    Set clipboard = New WindowsClipboard()     clipdata = clipboard.Contents     If clipdata="" Then        Msgbox "No clipboard info found."        Exit Sub    Elseif Instr(clipdata,"NotesData~")=0 Then        Msgbox "No doclink info in clipboard."        Exit Sub    End If    clipargs = Split(clipdata,"~")     servername = clipargs(1)    dbname = clipargs(2)    unid = clipargs(3)     Set linkdb = session.GetDatabase(servername, dbname, False)    If linkdb Is Nothing Then        Msgbox "Could not find " & dbname & " on " & servername,,"Not Found"        Exit Sub    End If    Set doc = linkdb.GetDocumentByUNID(unid)    If doc Is Nothing Then        Msgbox "Could not located document.",,unid        Exit Sub    End If      ' Now the awkward bit: the only way to insert a doclink into RT that you  ' are editing is to paste it. The only way to get a pastable doclink into ' the clipboard is to copy one from an existing document so first we make ' a doclink in an RT field that links to the document.    Set tempdoc = New NotesDocument(db)     ' Form that will only contain the field with the doclink and NOTHING else.    Call tempdoc.ReplaceItemValue("Form","doclink")    Set temprt = New NotesRichTextItem(tempdoc,"body")    Call temprt.AppendText(doc.KBFull(0) & " - " & doc.Topic(0) & " ")    Call temprt.AppendDocLink(doc, doc.Topic(0))    ' This doc must be saved otherwise the display doesn't work    Call tempdoc.Save(True, False)    ' Now "display" the document so we can grab the doclink    Set tempuidoc = ws.EditDocument(False, tempdoc)     ' Select and copy the content    Call tempuidoc.SelectAll    Call tempuidoc.Copy  ' We should have the doclink inthe clipboard    ' Close and throw away the temporary document     Call tempuidoc.Close      Call tempdoc.Remove(True)      Call thisdoc.Paste   ' Paste the doclinkEnd Sub