ESCAPE VELOCITY

Where's OpenNTF.org?

"Whither goest thou, OpenNTF.org?" someone asked (I had to look it up). Apparently, creating working groups, committees, conference calls and forums are a bad idea. Why? Because it's real work to create all that content and publish all that documentation?

Apparently, some people don't like transparent processes.

I guess we could just be opaque about it. I hear ECMA and ISO get good stuff done that way. Surely they're model organizations to follow. We could just decide to do whatever we feel like, publish it, and hope for the best.

Or we could just wait 5 years for code to proliferate, and then declare that we own it all and people should start paying royalties. The names Rambus or NEC or SCO mean anything to you?

Then again, if the only complaints about the process are coming from people who have never contributed a line of code to the site in their lives, I can safely conclude that we're on the right track.

Thanks to all who are participating. I think we're very close to reaching some real milestones with OpenNTF 2.0. Particularly when it comes to figuring out the parameters of code contributions, it seems we are emerging from the infancy of "hopefully no one with any reason to object won't notice us" into the grown-up realm of taking responsibility for what we publish.

Quo vadis OpenNTF? Eo vowe.net iterum crucifigi.

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You suck at Eclipse plugins

Disagree? Send your resume and a work sample to nathan.freeman@lotus911.com. Prove me wrong and get a job offer.

And yes, we're recruiting for this project. So bring your A game.

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Got OpenNTF?

If you have an OpenNTF.org account, we need you. For what, you ask? Lots of things.

Let's start with John's IP Working Group conference call on Friday. If you've contributed to an OpenNTF project, or you're thinking about contributing, you need to get on this call. John's going to present some information on the current code contribution process, what changes we're thinking of making, and why we need to have a proper process at all.

Don't know what the IP Working Group is? It's the Intellectual Property Working Group for OpenNTF. It's the group that talks about, ponders, pontificates, and ultimately proposes to the Steering Committee how OpenNTF need to manage contributions to make sure everyone stays out of legal trouble. This is not a trifling matter -- it's the single most important conversation happening at the site right now.

Don't know why you need to get in on the conversation? That's easy. Because if you DON'T, then John's going to recommend whatever he wants to the Steering Committee. And we're going to vote on it. If you didn't get in on the conversation, then your voice doesn't count. If you don't engage, then we don't know what you care about. And if we don't know what you care about, then we're only going to worry about the things WE care about. And that will probably piss you off.

So if you're not already participating, get in on the conversation, whether in the IP WG forum, or on the conference call. Anyone with a valid OpenNTF is welcome.

While you're at it, you should get in the Strategy Working Group forum as well. That's where we're going to be figuring out what OpenNTF actually DOES over the coming months and years. If you have an idea on how to evolve OpenNTF.org, this is the place to suggest it. Want to hear what we're thinking? That's where you can find it.

Now my fellow yellow bleeders -- if you've gone to these forums, you'll notice something interesting: it seems to be the John, Nathan & Niklas show over there. All the topics are from one of the 3 of us, and 90% of the conversation is us talking to one another.

Wait... aren't there 9 Steering Committee members? Yup, I just went and counted. There's 9. But only two steering committee members are involved in the conversation. Where's everybody else? Apparently, our 7 other colleagues are just slackers. They seem content to let the 3 of us do all the work.

I implore you: DON'T LET THEM. If you know of, or work for, another member of the Steering Committee, go ask them why they aren't fulfilling their responsibility as custodians of OpenNTF.org, and making sure we have a plurality of voices. Being on the Steering Committee isn't supposed to mean you sit back and rubber stamp your corporate logo on the site.

Even more importantly, get in on these forums and start talking. Start proposing. Start criticizing. Start participating. If you're a developer, an administrator, a manager, or just somebody who downloaded a template for managing your MP3 files one time 5 years ago, we want -- no, we NEED -- to hear from you. Right now.

Thanks.

(And yes, I really did throw the SC members under the bus. They told me all I could do was guilt them. So I'm doing it the best way I know how. Sorry fellas. But not really.)

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Cats, bags and YouTube

...and, like... welcome to our demo, you hoser.

It wasn't supposed to be public knowledge yet that the parts of my life that weren't spent on my newborn daughter were instead spent on this. But it's all over the Yellowverse now, so I might as well take the opportunity to answer a few questions that people have been pinging me with over the last couple of hours...

There is a reason it doesn't say Lotus 911 all over it. This isn't an internal skunkworks project.

Yes, I know there's a cartoon of a naked lady in it. It's all for science.

1 visual designer, 2 full-time devs, 2 part-time devs. 90 days so far. (90 days of 80-hour weeks, that is.)

It's inside a Notes client, but you don't see much of the Notes interface because we're hiding it. There's some plugin.xml tuning you can do to mask certain pieces of Notes if you're properly motivated.

No, I'm not kidding. It really is a Notes client. That's a composite app called "smoke.nsf." ("Smoke" as in smoke-test, not smoke and mirrors.)

We're using the Eclipse SWT controls almost exclusively. Most of the Expeditor APIs weren't discoverable enough for us to use. JFace wasn't helpful because those are all native OS controls, and we specifically need controls that have nothing to do with the underlying OS. Even a lot of SWT wasn't adequate for us to do what we needed. Later revisions than the one in the video (yes, there are later builds) don't even use the standard text rendering. I wrote an elaborate approach to rendering anti-aliased text against a gradient background in Eclipse.

No, I will not tell you where we got the hardware. Ask me in two months.

I'd be happy to talk about reseller partnerships, but not until August.

Yes, the fingerprint scanner handles a Notes ID login.

I am aware that this is a surprisingly technical presentation for doctors. This particular presentation isn't targeted at doctors. We're still working on that one.

There are indeed outtakes from this video in which I channel the Sham Wow guy. No, you cannot see them.

The software does work on non-touchscreens. But it doesn't really make sense unless you're on a touch screen. There's no reason to have the world's largest scroll-slider on the screen unless you have to touch it with big fat fingers like mine.

Yes, I realize that it'll look better with transitional animation. I am writing that code personally. Yes, it is fun.

That's the microphone battery pack on my pants. I wasn't happy to see you. Well, not THAT happy, anyway.

It does indeed scroll through a Notes view DRAMATICALLY faster than the native client. We didn't use any magic for that. ViewNavigators are just... well... fast!

The mistakes you see once in a while on the responsiveness don't occur in normal usage. It's actually extremely difficult to stand OVER the unit and press the screen, because you don't have a good X/Y understanding of where your finger is. So some of the spots where you see me mis-hit a button or control are because I can't tell what I'm pressing.

It's not a subtle gesture that I use my middle finger sometimes. That fingernail is slightly longer, and because the screen is sonically triggered, it works better to scrape it a little with your nail.

Prior to me writing this, exactly ONE person has notice that I'm channeling the McKenzie brothers at the beginning. It was supposed to be a joke, but our editor (who's also my boss) thought it was funny.

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Google Wave for Yellow Bleeders using the Socratic Method

If you've watch the Wave presentation by now, you've probably bumped into a few questions about how Wave works. Lucky you, I've been digging into everything they've published so far, and thought I'd share some of what I've been able to glean.

Click the permalink for more...

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Google pwnz collaboration

Google Wave. If you haven't seen it yet, it really is worth the hour and twenty minutes to sit through the whole thing.

For yellow bleeders, here's the simple summary: email, forums, wikis, IM, documents -- all in one seamless interface.

I feel really sorry for my friends at IBM right now. If this stuff really works in the real world the way it does in the demo (and let's face, it Google does tend to get these things right) they just smacked down Notes, iNotes, Sametime, Quickr and a good portion of Symphony. Probably Foundations, too. Google hasn't made a Notes-killer -- they've made a Lotus-killer.

I know of no initiative whatsoever at Lotus that comes anywhere close to this level of innovation.

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Fun with Wolfram|Alpha

I know you and Stephen were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

This is a much cooler message than the Fail Whale.

Wolfram|Alpha is way cool, and I have some specific uses for it in mind very soon. But while it's still new, I thought I'd have some fun, and ask it some hard questions.

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4

The question that overloaded it was "Who watches the watchmen?" Make of that what you will.

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I do not accept your apologies

Apparently the Big Blue Cloud is made of methane.

Please accept our apologies

Our system is currently unavailable due to system upgrades.

We expect the systems to be available by 8:00 p.m EST on May 17, 2009.

Please come back and visit us at that time.

Wait a sec.... down until Sunday? But... my servers!

So I now have a four-hour Window to download the fix pack!?

Good job sucking, IBM.

UPDATE: The Mighty Mr Brill got the update made available for download on Fix Central. Good job unsucking, Ed! (Yeah, I thought about using a different word there.)

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Bob Picciano on IBM Lotus Smarter Work

Friday morning I had the distinct pleasure of participating in a blogger conference call with IBM Lotus General Manager Bob Picciano. Bob was there to discuss IBM's Smarter Work initiative with specific talking points related to his recent op-ed at CIO.com.

Bob started with a summary of the Smart Work strategy. I won't transcribe the whole thing here, but there were two excellent quotes from that introduction...

We're helping customers cut out 30% of their TCO in 90 days or less with the innovations of 8.5 as they migrate from Microsoft... or as they upgrade from previous versions of Notes.

[Smart Work also about ubiquity. It's not just a smart company thought. It's a community notion. It has to use cloud computing to align your interests with your trading partners.

The good stuff, as always, came with the Q&A. Click the permalink for my abridged transcription. You'll find plenty of editor's notes and added emphasis on what I think are the highlights.

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Star Trek (no spoilers)

Just saw the new Star Trek. 5 stars. I'm not going to give away anything of substance, but I can tell you immediately why it's so damn good. It's simply a really great story.

And I know exactly how they did it. The movie is essentially based on Episodes IV and V.

That's right. From a story telling standpoint, it borrows as much from Star Wars as it does from the original Star Trek. It's Empire Strikes Back with a more upbeat ending.

And you will not be disappointed by that.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: There are some spoilers in the comments. So stop reading here if you want to be completely surprised

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