Rob's Blog

25/1: 1 year’s Blog Anniversary / Lotusphere 2007

It is exactly one year since I started this blog.  Yes I know ... I was a late starter!  The primary reason I started blogging was to learn about blogging and other technologies like RSS.  Until you try stuff yourself, you aren't the best candidate to go into companies and advise them.  I now feel much better equipped to recommend to clients that they experiment with RSS to keep their staff up to date with changes in their Quality Management System (for example).

What I didn't bargain on was getting so much back from the blogging community as a whole.  I am much better informed now about Lotus Notes/Domino related technology than I was a year ago.  Even though I didn't go to Lotusphere this year (and I've never been to Lotusphere) I almost feel like I've been there because I know so much about what's been happening.  I feel thoroughly enthused about what IBM are delivering this coming year with Lotus Notes and Domino version 8 and with other launches like Quickr.  I'm looking forward to the "Lotusphere comes to you" session that I'm going to in about a month when I can see all this for myself.  I'm also keen to see inside the Connections product, understand it and decide whether it's right for my clients.

So now here's to another year of blogging and another year of 30% growth for Lotus Software.

22/1: Geni is out the bottle - Everyone’s related

Last week, Geni was launched.  Geni the company is only six months old and they have just released in beta a hosted family tree.  It has a Web2.0 type front-end allowing you to enter your own family very easily.  It is surprisingly addictive.  It uses your e-mail address as a username and basically allows anyone with a username to edit their own family.  Their ambitious goal is to get a family tree of the whole world!  Basically they will support merging of family trees once you get the same person in two trees.  I get the impression that much of the detail is still to be worked out and that Geni will use its beta users to help devise the way forward.

Why not try it out?  Just add your immediate family and then pass on the job to one of your kids!!  Just click on the Geni icon below.



This is an ideal application for the web.  Why?  Well there were already a whole host of family tree applications available but it was always difficult to share the information between family members.  Basically you had silos of data and no easy way for others to collaborate in the exercise of building the trees.  Now all you need is an e-mail address for a relative and you can invite them to help - no software install required.  You can leave messages for others in the tree without having to know their e-mail address.

"So what?" you might ask.  I think that this company could be on to something very big.  This is Social Networking on a massive scale and could easily rival the other big players like MySpace and FaceBook.  These trees will become huge.  So long as the company manages the privacy issues properly, there could be huge applications built from that data.  It could be my family address book.  It could remind me about birthdays.  It will be my family photo album.  There are so many possibilities.

If they ever decide to go public, I'll want some shares.  However, I think it's more likely that a big player like Google may come along and snap them up before they get too big.

I don't think Geni have even worried too much about their long term business model.  Advertising is obviously a possibility. Imagine being able to advertise but only to those with a known age and gender or known location.  However, there will be plenty of different ways that they can add value and charge for their services.

16/1: Pavement Art

Someone sent me an e-mail with some fine photos of pavement art drawn in chalk.  A quick search later and I found Julian Beever's site with Pavement drawings, Wall murals and also Fine Art paintings.



My favourite two drawings are the girl in the pool above and the super hero rescue below.  Just remember, he's dipping his toes into the water but both his feet are at the same level.  It is your brain telling you otherwise.



These drawings are all about perspective and the viewing angle.  If you go to the site, you can see what the same pictures look like when viewed from the wrong side.

11/1: Readers Field Problem

I've been having a strange problem today with readers fields.  I have written a Notes client based Leave Requests System that contains a Leave Summary for every person in the company.  Readers fields are used to hide documents so that staff can only see other staff within the same department (apart from some roles such as [Admin] and [Personnel] and apart from supervisors and supervisor's supervisor (who may be in other departments)).

This all works fine.  However, when testing the system I have four documents visible and 271 documents in total.  When I select all documents with CTRL A, the system reports 271 documents -- actually it reports 272 but is including the one visible category.  How can that be right?  I don't even want the user to know that there are other documents.



Despite not being able to see the documents, I can delete the documents and I can create a replica of the database that contains those documents.  Is this working right?  I was always led to believe that you couldn't replicate documents if you were locked out with a Readers field.  Help me out guys!!  I'm on version 7.01 at the moment.

Update 12th Jan

I've just tried this on a database in production and get the same behaviour and I've also tried it with a version 6.03 client with the same results.  All I can say is that this "feature" surprised me.  I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to delete documents that you are protected from seeing with a Readers field.

Naturally, I would also use Authors fields and use the Query Document Delete event to prevent unauthorised deletion of documents in a real application.

10/1: Tax Returns Done

Paying tax isn't a favourite pastime for any of us.  Filling in tax returns is a tedius occupation.  That's why I'm relieved to have finished ... almost.  Corporation tax was paid in December.  Personal tax returns are now done for the two of us.  Unfortunately there is some additional tax to pay before the end of the month.

I use a software product called Legatio FastTax to fill in and file my tax returns.  I find it easy to use and cost effective (around £15 per year) even though paying for something that's sole purpose is to tell you how much money you need to pay is grim.  It just requires Adobe Acrobat reader software and the forms look identical on screen to the paper versions but with a lot of help and with the tax calculations built in.  When done, it can be filed direct with the Revenue (so long as you have got your usernames and passwords).

I always leave it late -- usually because I'm waiting for my company accounts to confirm what dividend I received.

Anyway, the reason for the post is that the software is finished with.  It allows up to six tax returns to be completed and filed and I've only done two.  If anyone (UK only obviously) wants to try out the software (for free), just let me know by commenting here.  You need to get cracking though to beat the 31st January deadline.

1/1: Thailand

Julie and I just got back from Koh Samui where we escaped for Christmas.  Fabulous!  I feel a bit of a fraud adding Thailand to my list of countries visited (see below) because we only went to the island of Samui and never stayed over in Bangkok.  I am sure that Samui is hardly representative.  Still, that's a nice excuse to go back.



I may post more on Thailand later but just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year before it was too late.  I need to shrug off the seven hours time difference and get right back to work because I'm finishing off a Lotus Notes Leave Request System that is needed ASAP for the new holiday year.