First GRANITE User Group West Technical Meeting

We have discussed the idea of holding a Technical meeting in the Western Suburbs on the months opposite the Loop meetings. At yesterday’s GRANITE meeting, we decided that PSC will have the pleasure and the honor to host the first of these meetings at its Schaumburg office on Monday, March 15th from 3pm – 7pm.  Our office is on the 5th floor in suite 500.  (Google Maps link is here.)

We also decided that the main topic of these meetings will be XPages. Specifically, Mike McGarel and Roy Rumaner will be starting everyone off on how to build an XPage application. Where do you start, what do you need to know and how does it work with an existing Notes application.

They are going to use Declan Lynch’s excellent 54 step tutorial as the focus of this project. At the first meeting we will be walking everyone through the first ten steps (more if time permits) in his tutorial. We will then ask everyone to do the next ten on their own before the next meeting.

If you want to start reading through the tutorial before the meeting, it can be found at http://www.qtzar.com/blogs/qtzar.nsf/htdocs/LearningXPages.htm

Please let us know if you are interested in this idea and if you are going to attend this meeting. If you have any other topic ideas, we are also open to hearing them.

We would like to get a count of how many people will be attending.  That will determine which room we will use for the meeting.  Roy started a thread on LinkedIn.  Please respond there or on our blogs.

Abbott lays off all of its Lotus developers

A couple of weeks ago Abbott Laboratories in Chicago let go all of its Lotus Notes developers.  Interestingly enough, they kept, at least for now, all of the contractors.

This may be a cost cutting measure.  But it sounds like another company making a strategic decision about the future of their Lotus Notes development efforts.  Sure, it will take some time to move existing Notes apps to SharePoint or some other technology.  And, sure, some apps may always remain in Notes.  But those apps will be in support and maintenance mode, with new development being shifted into some other technology, SharePoint being the most obvious suspect here.

In the mean time, there are a few more unemployed Lotus Notes developers walking around Chicago.

Census 2010 – a few thoughts

The government moves in mysterious ways and our government, perhaps, even more mysterious than others.

If you’re like me, you probably just finished watching Super Bowl XLIV.  I watched it in bits and pieces during a gathering at a friends’ place but, for some reason, one ad that captured my attention was the one for Census 2010.  The ad ended with a URL http://2010census.gov.  It also mentioned Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and every other vastly popular social network and I’m all about that, so I just had to check it out.

The census website looks pretty cool.  It gets extra props from me for featuring a snapshot of Chicago on the home page.  Now, if you’re thinking of getting a jumpstart on getting your census form and filling it out online now, you’ll be disappointed — you can’t do it.  In fact, even after April 1st, the National Census Day, you will NOT be able to complete your form online at all.  Not this time.  According to the site, the Census Bureau is “experimenting with Internet response for the future”.  Experimenting?  For the future?  Furthermore, the census form is not even available as a PDF to be printed off the web.  And before you will receive your form, first, you will receive a few days’ notice with a letter from the Census Bureau Director.

The website goes on to say: “Earlier in the decade, we researched an Internet option for 2010 and found that it:

• Didn’t provide enough protection for individual census responses
• Didn’t increase the percentage of people who responded
• Didn’t save money”

“Earlier in the decade”?!  This research was conducted in 2000.  You would think that in 2009, as the Census Bureau was getting ready for Census 2010, someone, perhaps even the newly appointed US Government CTO, would’ve pointed out that in 9 years the world of technology and the Internet has progressed so far that research results from 2000 are no longer valid.  Apparently, the Census Bureau and statistics don’t always go hand-in-hand.  Otherwise, the Bureau would’ve known how much broadband has changed the Internet landscape of America; how many more homes now have Internet service vs. the numbers from 2000; how many purchases and other transactions are being conducted over the web; how many wi-fi enabled Internet connected mobile devices are out there.  Instead, the Census Bureau is promising to conduct another research in 2010 with results to be applied to Census 2020.  Scary!

If you think about all the paper, the printing costs, the mailing costs, the costs of humans sorting through all the returned forms — having a simple online form would it make it all so much more cost effective.  Oh well, not this time.  I can follow the Census Bureau on Twitter using my BlackBerry, but I can’t use the same BlackBerry to tell the Bureau how many people live in my house.  I use the Internet on a regular basis to submit information much more important and sensitive than whether I own my home and my “race”.  I, for one, would have no qualms over completing my Census form online.  What about you?

The census web site is very adamant about the fact that your census information is protected.  It says that “By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with anyone, including the IRS, FBI, CIA or any other government agency.”  The Census form itself is only 10 questions.  The questions all appear rather innocuous.  It is not clear to me how the CIA, for example, would benefit from knowing that I own my home and that there are 4 people living in it.  On the other hand, if you’re on the terror watch list or on the FBI’s most wanted list and you participate in the census, I WANT that information and your address to be made available to the proper authorities.

It seems sadly ironic yet sadly appropriate that the National Census Day falls on April Fool’s Day.

If you have any insight into this, I would love for you to share it.

Lotusphere Comes To You dates are announced

IBM has posted dates for LCTY events.  More information is here.

Chicago happens to be the first city on schedule for North America.  The Chicago event is on March 11th.

Lotusphere 2010 had a great deal of interesting information on LotusLive, Project Vulcan and overall future plans for the Lotus product line up.  If you didn’t make it to Orlando this year, spending a day at a local LCTY event is going to be well worth your time.  And did I mention? There will be food.

GRANITE meeting on Monday (Feb. 8th) – Updated

The first meeting of GRANITE user group is this coming Monday, February 8th.  One of main topics will be a recap of Lotusphere 2010.  Unfortunately, not all GRANITE members were able to join us down in Orlando.  I’m curious to learn what other folks took away from Lotusphere.  Did they walk away with same thoughts and ideas as I?

I guess I’ll find out on Monday.

Hope to see a lot of wonderful Chicago folks join us.

And here’s the agenda for the even.

8:30 – 9:00 AM – Registration, Refreshments & Networking

9:00 AM – 9:10 AM
Presentation: “What’s New With Lotus/IBM” Update
Presenter: Mac Glore, IBM

9:10 AM – 10:00 AM
Presentation: Lotusphere 2010: Wrap Up
Presenter: Lotusphere 2010 Attendees

GRANITE members who attended Lotusphere 2010 will summarize all the new things coming from IBM Lotus including Project Vulcan, Project Concord, Sametime 8.5, Quickr 8.5, and LotusLive.

10:00 AM – 10:15 AM – Break

10:15 AM – 11:15 PM
Presentation: Worst Practices: Orlando, We have a Problem ( DVD presentation )
Presenter: Bill Buchan
Presenter: Paul Mooney

Bill Buchan and Paul Mooney brings back their extremely popular presentation of Worst Practices with an all new 10 worst administration and application development practices. We will be presenting the tame version of their presentation on DVD.

11:15 AM – 11:30 AM – Break

11:30 PM – 12:30 PM
Presentation: Roll Your Own Intranet Using OpenNTF.org
Presenter: Michael McGarel, Czarnowski

If you want to build your own Domino-based intranet quickly, there’s no better place to go than OpenNTF.org. First we’ll discuss some intranet strategies, then we’ll put together an intranet for a fictional company using open source applications and code from OpenNTF.org. The focus is on traditional Domino techniques and options, but XPages won’t be left out.

12:30 PM – 01:30 PM
Lunch (provided by GRANITE).

01:30 PM – 02:00 PM
MWLUG 2010 Participation

02:00 PM – Discussion Groups / Workshop / Networking
Focused, moderated discussion groups to address topics of major interest to attendees. So bring your problems, your laptops, your questions, and let’s share some solutions. We can all learn something new at every meeting.

03:00 PM – Adjourn

My first BlackBerry Widget

I must start off with a disclaimer: to build this widget I followed the instructions outlined in this document by Andre Fabris.

BlackBerry Widgets are standalone BlackBerry applications that are built like a web page.  They consist of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  So they don’t require a whole lot of BlackBerry-specific knowledge to build.  The very cool thing about them is that, while they appear to be a simple web application, through JavaScript they have access to the device itself.

The biggest gotcha in the process is to make sure that you have your environment setup just right.  RIM is encouraging developers to start using Eclipse IDE for all your BlackBerry development needs.  So, if you never used Eclipse before and don’t have it installed, it will take a bit of downloading and a bit of effort to get your environment setup.

First of all, sadly enough, none of this works on a Mac.  You’ll need Windows XP or Vista.

Next, you’ll need the Eclipse IDE, of course.  You can get the latest version here (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads).  You just need Eclipse Classic.  The current version on the site is 3.5.1.  The Widget instructions call for Eclipse 3.4.1.  If you want to be on the safe side and follow the instructions, you can find previous versions here (http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads)

Once you have Eclipse downloaded and installed, you’ll need to add two additional pieces of software to it: Eclipse Modeling (EMF) 2.4.1 and Web Tools Platform (WTP) 3.0.3.  Note, without WTP you won’t be able to follow the first step of the instructions, so make sure to install it.

The easiest way to add both components to Eclipse, is to go through Help – Install New Software inside of the IDE.  Inside of the ‘Install New Software’ dialog box click on the Available Software Sites link.  In the next dialog, scroll through the list of sites to find http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/ and http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates locations.  Enable them both.

In the ‘Available Software’ dialog select the EMF site from the ‘Work with’ list and then pick EMF 2.4.1 SDK from the list of available software.  Click ‘Next’  and go through the prompts to install the software.  Repeat the steps to install the WTP.

Install the rest of components as required by the instructions.  When picking a simulator, choose one of the newer devices.  Widget development requires BlackBerry device software 5.0 or above, so don’t pick a Pearl simulator and wonder why your widget is not working.

Go through the steps outlined in the document.  When you get to the end and build your widget, your web folder contents will look a bit different than the document.  I imagine that happens because of the newer version of the Widget Packager.  In the bin folder you will have an OTAInstall folder, a StandardInstall folder and a JAR and an RAPC file.  When selecting a Java program to load in the simulator, select the COD file from the OTAInstall folder.

When you load the program, nothing really happens in the simulator.  Don’t expect your Widget to just start running.  In the simulator, navigate to the Downloads folder on the device.  The widget icon is in there.  Click on the icon to run your widget.

That’s it!  You will have just built and executed your first BlackBerry widget.

Now I just need some ideas for more widgets to build.

My first ride of 2010

A new issue of the Bicycling magazine is here.  Great!  Just bloody great!  There’s a happy smiling male model atop an expensive road bike on the cover.  He’s wearing shorts and a short sleeved jersey.  While in Chicago it’s 20 degrees outside.  (That’s 6 below zero, for you in the rest of the world that’s outside of the United States.  )  And I haven’t been on a bike in 3 months.  Bloody hell!  Talk about teasing and temptation.

To add to the injury, last night, at a local bar, I bump into an IT Director from one of my clients and somehow our conversation turns to cycling.  The client turns out to be an avid cyclist and we talk about different rides and routes we like to take.  The good thing is I may have found a riding partner.  The bad thing — my whole body itches for the feel of spandex and a bike under me.

So today, on Saturday, the sun is shining bright, it’s about 30 degrees outside and almost no wind.  I’m going out for a ride!

But not much of a ride.  Come on, I was idle for 3 months.  There are still patches of snow and ice on the ground, so a mountain bike is the obvious choice.  A nice under layer of Under Armour clothing, padded bike pants, gloves and a tuque — I’m ready for my first ride of 2010.

I’m not gonna talk about the particulars of cold air penetrating to the depth of my being and beyond.  I won’t discuss the exhilaration of plowing through the snow and mud and being the first to leave tire tracks through dirt fields.  It was all great.  What matter is that I have my first set of miles logged for 2010.  And they were not ridden in my basement.  So eat that, Mr. IT Director on his way to China right now.  While you’re up there stuck inside of a plane, I was down here tearing through the snow, ice and mud.

Here’s to many more rides of 2010.

My blog is to be mentioned in ORMS Today

IBM Research is publishing a high-level paper on social media analytics in OR/MS Today.  It’s a bi-monthly publication for members of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

One of the sections is on sentiment detection and acting on it.   It is using the exchange I had with Sean Poulley on my blog as an example of blog posts that may require swift marketing action.

I’m told that the paper is supposed to appear in the February issue of the magazine.  I am extremely flattered to be mentioned, even if just as an illustration, in a paper for such learned organization.

How to solve Xbox360 losing network connection

If your Xbox 360 loses network/Xbox Live connection after about 30 – 40 minutes of playing, change its network settings to use a static IP address.

I noticed that my Xbox would sign me off XBox Live after about 30-40 minutes of me playing a game.  This wasn’t a problem while I was just playing games off my console.  But when I started playing against other Xbox Live members or streaming Netflix movie or streaming movies off my PC downstairs, losing the network connection after about 40 minutes started becoming a pain.

I searched around the web and found some people reporting the very same issue but no solution.

After spending some time trying different things, I suddenly realized that when the problem occurs, the IP address of my console gets reset from the dynamically assigned DHCP address of 192.168.0.x to some 169.x.x.x address.  I decided to give my console a static IP address and — magic!  The problem went away.  I can stay connected for hours.

I don’t know if there’s a firmware fix or something to make it work with a dynamic address.  At this point, it works and trying to make it work with a DHCP assigned address is just not worth the effort.

Lotusphere 2010 wrap up

All is well that ends well and Lotusphere 2010 was no exception concluding with the talk of Big Bang and colliding particles.  In a wrap up focusing on my impressions of the conference, it would be easy to focus on the negatives, but like I was reminded in one of the Business Partner roundtables, if you’re gonna say something negative, make sure you also say something positive.  So, I’ll skip the negative stuff.

This was the first Lotusphere in several years where I was able to attend sessions, a lot of them in fact and most from the development track.  Among the sessions I attended, there were none that talked about advanced tricks and techniques of @ Formulas or LotusScript.  I don’t think there were many of those in the entire conference.  Instead, there were plenty of sessions focused on the WebKit, widgets, mobile development for BlackBerry, REST APIs, LotusLive APIs, Java and the web technologies.  And even Brent Peters in his Application Development keynote said that while @ Functions and LotusScript applications will continue to be supported, the future is with other technologies.

I returned from Orlando inspired and excited like I haven’t been in years.  There was so much new to learn: new terms, new technologies.  I’m inspired to learn new things, which have a broad range of application beyond Lotus.

The message was clear to me: as a developer, you have to learn new things.  LotusScript isn’t going to cut it anymore.  So it is likely that my blog will soon start listing posts on new topics in new categories.  It’s just too bad that not all of this new stuff runs on a Mac.