Are gadgets stealing your life?

In an in dept article in a magazine, I read about this guy who returned his iPad. Truly, he did not want it anymore. Why? It's too good. So check this article out. It's really something to ponder upon..(when you're logged off msn, sametime, facebook, linkedin twitter....)

The magazine article I was reading had some good examples that just comfirms what Peter Bregman is saying. How often, and not to mention, where do You pull out your smartphone and start surfing? Are you checking your email on the iPhone during a 30 second elevator ride?
Read the same news on you iPhone on the bus or subway on the way home as you did when going to work. At a boring conference session, would you check out ebay or maybe post on your blog?

This might seem harmless but what if our demand to always consume or produce information content, to/from any channel, in the end leads to a life where we seldom are bored. We do not get the time to reflect on our lifes, priorites, wants and whishes. Instant (and often shallow) information unwillingly draws our attention away from "free time", time where we could be bored, let the mind wonder, and maybe even get creative.

So goahead and ponder. Just remember to log off.

I Love The Cool Lotus Notes

Two web pages has come to life promoting some of the super fine sexy cool stuff you could do

with Lotus Notes. Outlook user will say "Why can't we have that...."

Check it out:

Making the case for Xpages

XPages has not triggered much enthusiasm yet. I mean in my "part of town". This could be due to technology uncertainty, "Nobody use Notes" or just plain "we don't have the need it or have the money for that".

Now should the market today set the course for your inhouse training program?
Should you postpone or even drop Xpages all together?

This could be a grave mistake.

Project Vulcan will be the new Notes Client. With it's Facebook-like look, it will be a tool for consolidating information to what you need in your role/work.

It's not a new idea at IBM; it's the next logical step moving away from composite applications (now abbandoned?) in the notes client. Even with the latest IBM Lotus Notes Client client you may find information too fragmented and scattered. Project Vulcan aims to change that.

It's a more tight integration of mail, documents,IM, Profiles, Bookmark etc.


Take a note of this:
Chris Miller's blog post "Project Vulcan - say goodbye to the Notes Client?" has a twitter response from Ed Brill:


"For Notes and Domino, we continue to build a Notes client in the next two feature releases,
in addition to building a first-class web and mobile experience."

and:

"GROUP is promoting tools to quickly transform Notes Applications to Xpages. Webinar is coming soon."


We could in a few years see that Project Vulcan is a success, it will be what IBM will push to the customers. It will be the client platform that support integration with IBMs offerings in the cloud. As for your in house Domino aplications? You'd better start lifting them to Xpages soon...

Future of Lotus Notes Client Development

At Lotusphere 2010 IBM introduced Project Vulcan. By the looks of it it looks like this is not "foilware" but actually working software. No I do not belive that you could by IBM Lotus Vulcan as a product any time soon. I see it as project term for the future workplace, where IBM tries to incorporate several technologies.

IBM did not aquire Java, Orcale did. I do belive that this will mean less development based on the Lotus Expeditor framework. For Lotus developers the focus will be on X-Pages, CSS, HTML5, and ofcourse Web Services.

There will come the time where notes application based on traditional Forms an Views and LotusScript code stored in events will be considered as Notes Legacy Applications. These type of applications will be difficult to embed in the new Lotus offerings like Lotus Connections, Lotus Quikr and in the cloud like LotusLive.

IBM has included X-Page rendering in the 8.5.1 Lotus Notes client. A smart move but I do think this is only to ease transition from a Rich Client architechture to a Web based one (Project Vulcan?). Lotus developers would do better to focus on X-Pages, CSS, HMTL-5, REST for future development.