The world as frankps sees it!
Web
Notes Pro for iPhone
1Please have a look at my article Notes Traveler on the iPhone.
I’ve always been in favor of group calendar solutions, and therefor often written about Notes products. Recently the annual Lotussphere took place, and a lot of new stuff got announced. LinkedIn and IBM announced a partnership, in the future we will be able to use a LinkedIn add-on very similar to Xobni in Lotus Notes. Another partnership was with Skype. And Lotus Live is on the way. Yepp, this is the year of cloud computing. I can’t wait.
At the same time as Lotussphere I started upgrading my department’s computers with the latest Lotus Notes, version 8.5. I chose to install the standard version of the client and not the basic one. And ta-ta, users were quite impressed with the upgrade. I also bought a license of Notes Pro for my iPhone, and this is what the article is all about. This is my review. Notes Pro is an alternative for iNotes Ultralite.
Notes Pro costed me about 85 NOK on iTunes Music Store. From the application’s web page you can read that Notes Pro is an all-in-one Lotus Notes solution for the iPhone, that lets you access your Notes mail, calendar, group contacts and todos directly from Notes Pro. Before you can run Notes Pro on your iPhone, some basic Lotus Notes account configuration is required. So before purchasing the application, please read the Lotus Notes Server Setup Instructions and ensure your Lotus Notes server is compatible with Notes Pro.
You need to be able to to drop a simple script into your Agents folder in the Lotus Notes Application. Four versions of the script are available, among the things the script sets is where to look for your contacts. I tried both versions of the International version, Global and Local. I guess Local would only give you the Contacts you have in your local address book, but I did not get Local working. Global on the other hand was working, but I must say poorly with a global address book including all our 3.000 users. But as you can see from my screenshots, I also ran in to other problems. The appointments that appeared on Notes Pro, were the ones first taking place in December this year (screenshots were taken in the end of January!).
So with a not really working global address book and calendar, I was left with Mail and ToDo. I was able to send new mails access my list of todos, but not add new todos. The graphical user interface on the application is rather poor and not what we expect from an iPhone application, and with the limited of functionality included you are better of using the free Lotus iNotes Ultralite.
But …, I saved the very best news from Lotussphere to the very end. Notes Pro for the iPhone will in the future not be needed, as IBM plans to add support for ActiveSync (please have a look at my Google Sync article). What will this mean for us endusers? We will use the synchronization application EasySync less and sync wirelessly on-the-fly. The ActiveSync protocol is becoming a de facto standard for wireless synchronization. Another thing is that in the future we will not need iNotes Ultralite and Notes Pro.
I will test future versions of Notes Pro. Hopefully my problems will be solved.
Sad, but true
0Just before the weekend I heard that the European Commission (EC) was to demand that Microsoft stop bundling Internet Explorer (IE) in Windows, and that was after Norwegian Opera Software ASA complained to the EU about the software giant’s bundling practices and alleged undermining of Web standards. If I am not mistaken the complain was delivered in 2007. I must admit I am very surprised, and I once again share the thoughts of Paul Thurrot at WindowsITPro:
That IE has been consistently losing market share to its number one rival, Mozilla Firefox, seems to have made little impression on the EC, which has consistently proven to be more interested in shoring up Microsoft’s competition than worry about market realities. And that’s especially true is the competition that complains about Microsoft happens to be from an EU country.
“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” the EC said in a prepared statement. The statement arrives just a week after market researchers announced that IE fell from 74 percent of the market in 2007 to 68 percent by the end of 2008. The main beneficiary of that gap was Firefox, which jumped to over 21 percent of the market during the same time frame …
… However, Opera is unique among non-Microsoft browser makers in that it did not make market share gains in 2008. Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome all gained on IE during this time period. Perhaps the problem is Opera, not Microsoft’s business practices. After all, consumers do have choice; they’re just not choosing Opera.
If that wasn’t enough, Chief Development Officer Christen Krogh told CNET News that the fact that “There has been more competition before“, referring to the Netscape and pre-Netscape days. Wake up (våkn opp!), the battle has never been bigger, and the Opera browser is the only one not taking part in it. He continues with even if IE’s market share drops to below 60 percent in Europe, “we think that is sufficiently high to be concerned.”
The amusement continues: “Opera noted that it follows the same principles applied by the EU in 2004, when it held that Microsoft could not tie its media player to Windows and ordered the software maker to offer a version with the media player stripped out”. Yepp, and that was a huge success? We all now buy Windows without the media player? ha-ha-ha. Well, also here Microsoft is doing things different with Windows 7, it will not include Windows Mail, Messenger and a few other applications. That is not caused by EU or Opera Software.
And regarding Microsoft not following standards: Surprise, surprise, with Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has changed practice (Again, Opera goes far in claiming that they forced Microsoft to reconsider its position on standards in IE8). The browser will have full support for CSS 2.1 and gets full score on the ACID 2 test. Other great improvements are done in the area of accessibility, as for instance W3C’s ARIA standard. And I guess that is not the only standard they have chosen to follow!
After I read the news, I got fed up and uninstalled the Opera 10 Alpha. From now on I will stick to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, and play a little bit with Google Chrome. I wonder if Firefox actually has an even bigger market share in EU?
Trends of 2009
03 years ago
The year has more or less come to an end. It has been a very exciting year for me, as I have been working with projects like accessability, web standards and Internet trends. So let me dedicate one of this years’last blog updates to the trends that I think we will see appearing next year.
And yes, you can comment on this blog now in 2008 and come back to it in 2010, and then criticize me for all the wrong predictions that I made.