01/13/2012

Lightweight Show Literature

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This year at Lotusphere 2012, we are continuing our practice of providing our "literature on a business card." That means if our products are interesting, you can simply take a card and get the rest of the information online, where it is always more current.

Here is a sample of our "literature" which is the size of a business card:

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It contains a QR Reader to jump to our website, and some simple product and contact information.

As Antoine Leboyer at GSX mentioned in his blog post Being Green at Lotusphere, "ask yourself whether you really keep and read all these papers which vendors like us give you".

We agree and we hope more vendors adopt "lightweight literature", as it makes for a greener and lighter user experience at Lotusphere.

01/12/2012

App to Locate Friends at LS2012

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Kudos to Mats Jansson of Donova.se for building a really useful iPhone and iPad app to locate and connect with friends at Lotusphere 2012.

It is useful to find one friend among the 10,000 delegates. The friend could be right around the corner and you can see them and stop and talk with them.

To use it, all you need to do is register your name, email, company and country. You can then make and receive friend requests. There are three options to show limited numbers of people. My Friends shows a single friend at a time. My Company shows all people in your company. My Country shows all people from a single Country (all Swedish people, for example).

A small problem is that you cannot see only your friends, so you could see the 50 people you interact with most often (Mats Jansson says this can be changed, but Apple takes 10 days to approve changes, which will miss Lotusphere).


Here is a map of the United States with locations, showing the initial installation of the app:


A picture named M2

Mats is working on an Android version as I write this, and I will post and tweet the location to download that version as it becomes available.


You can find it on the Apple app store:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lotusphere-friends-map/id474806341


01/10/2012

NotesAppStore renamed to JustForDomino

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So we are re-launching the NotesAppStore as JustForDomino.  Why?

Well, I could cite the many people who said it is not really a store, but that's not why.

I could say we wanted a more memorable name, but that's not why.

Maybe it is a re-launch of the site, which is partially true.

Or maybe AppStore is a registered Apple trademark, although Amazon does not agree (see their AppStore here).  Anyway, Apple didn't like the way we used the term AppStore, leaving me a choice between wasting money defending a name for a free website or to cut my losses. After careful consideration (i.e. 30 seconds of deliberations), I decided to change the name.
 
Yes, that's why.

12/23/2011

Fun JibJab Holiday Card

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We would like to wish everyone a safe, enjoyable and a relaxing Holiday Season!

If you do happen to be in Orlando in January for Lotusphere 2012, be sure to stop by our booth (#529).

Best wishes to everyone in 2012.



Click on this image to hear "Feliz Navidad" and see Allison lead Jason, Dan, Nick and Frank in some Christmas celebration:

A picture named M2
http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/402seRPaJfXJNx3O

12/13/2011

2 New and Undiscovered Ways to be a Social Business

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From Wikipedia: The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.


I would like to first say that Twitter, Blogging, Facebook and LinkedIn make us a more social business, and it is true to a degree. We have made many new connections via these social networks. They seem to be  used mostly as "micro-advertising" services, which serves a useful purpose announcing a product release or researching software fixes or people who you may be hiring.

There are two new and undiscovered social networking tools that we find to be extremely useful: Email and the Telephone. Yes, I know, we are talking 20th century here.  "Legacy systems". Tools that are definitely not hip or cool.

Email is only a one-to-one communication, is private and cannot improve Google rankings! It is also a time waster!  All true!  However, we have a unique spin on email, a rather radical one at that:  We publish our email addresses on our website. Crazy talk! We don't even do the frank at maysoft dot com thing.  I just write frank@maysoft.com There! I did it! Why people list 100 ways they can be found on their self-published blogs and yet don't list an email address if they want others to connect? Isn't that the meaning of social business, or did I miss its meaning, which otherwise would only be micro-advertising?


The second social networking tool is the telephone. Not for calling others, but for letting them call you. So, we also list phone numbers on our support website. More crazy talk? Perhaps. I personally am dumbfounded when a company spends all this time and money advertising, leading me to a website where I cannot find a phone number or email address!  If I hunt enough, I get a generic phone number and then get a recorded message that sounds like this: "Thank you for calling Micro-company! NoBody is here to answer your call, but if you leave a message, Someone will get back to you." Is this a script that they are required to follow? Who is Someone? In a bow to Odysseus, they should change "Someone" in the script to "NoBody".  NoBody will get back to you!

As a small business owner, we have always had a live human being answer the phone (being a living person is a job requirement here). That is a very social thing to do.  We also have the same live people respond to customer emails. Our customers can call and ask for people by name. There is no one here whose name is "Support". If a customer calls and asks for "Support", Allison (who answered the phone) says "Let me connect you to Frank". Very, very social. If that customer calls back, and has the temerity to ask for Frank by name, then they get connected to Frank. Scary stuff, almost radical by today's standards of "NoBody" support'.

I have often been asked "Would that work in a large organization"?  My very crisp answer is: "I have no friggin' idea! I don't run a large organization. Let them figure it out themselves". It works wonderfully for me. I had one prospective customer who asked me during Lotusphere "do you return support calls within 48 hours"?  I replied, "We normally take calls immediately during working hours. However, for you, I can make an exception and make you wait 48 hours if that's what you want".  This gained me a new customer.

So by all means do the "social networking" thing. But don't forget with all this "broadcast" micro-marketing, that at the end of the day, business is conducted not by two companies, but by two people who must connect by phone, email or in person.


11/23/2011

Thanksgiving Wishes

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So here is my prayer for Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving is an opportune time to reflect about our relationships to others. As Charles Dickens said so well in "A Christmas Carol" that it is a time to "think of people (around us) as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave", which should give us pause to reflect on the shortness of our time here.

We are all on this planet for only 78 round trips. Some get a few more, many get a lot less. So above all, the first thing that I am (and all of us should be) thankful for is good health. Without it, all the rest really does not count for very much.

I want to give thanks to all the people that I associate with in business and in person. Like the Pilgrims and the Indians, we often come from different backgrounds. In that spirit of brotherhood (or should I say community), I give thanks to all the people in my life, associates, fellow workers, and fellow bloggers everywhere for the chance to spend a few moments, in person or virtually, together, enriching our shared experience here on earth.

Isn't that, after all, what the Indians and Pilgrims were doing at the first Thanksgiving in the year 1621?

So, I would like to summon their spirit to wish everyone everywhere a Happy Thanksgiving!

A picture named M2
"The First Thanksgiving", painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930).



10/26/2011

A Biking Vacation

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I took my first bike trip last fall, biking through the vineyards of Burgundy region of France. I didn’t know what to expect, or even if I would like my time being managed and told where to go (literally).

I signed up to bike with Butterfield and Robinson, which had great reviews of their accommodations and service.

The biking was listed as 15-25 miles per day, with van (SAG) support if needed. I really did want to bike and see the scenery, so I trained all summer, riding about 15 miles a day most days.  What I couldn’t train for, however, was the inevitable glass (or two) of wine at lunch, a full meal and then re-mounting my bike for another 10 miles or so.

We met in Dijon, of mustard fame, and started our bike tour on a Sunday. There were about 13 of us, from all over the United States and a Brazilian couple, too. Immediately, we entered the vineyards and we were transformed to France, circa 1200, where monks made wine for fun and profit.  The vineyards were in what is called a “Clos”, like “Clos Des Avaux”, which were walled areas with individual “appellations”, which is the French naming system for all vineyards, protected by French law.

A picture named M2


The trip reads like a Burgundy wine-label tour: Cote de Nuits, Chambolle-Musigny, Chassagne-Montrachet, Vougeot, Pommard, Volnay and the $2,000 per bottle Romanee Conti (we did not taste that one), and my favorite, Gevrey-Chambertin.

A picture named M3


Our first lunch was a beautiful meal of local cheese, cold cuts and pate and a side salad, paired with a delicious local white burgundy wine. After a few glasses of that, and some conversation with our new friends, we were off for 10 more miles to the hotel.

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Hotel is not the best word for these beautiful spots. More like a private mansion. After a day of biking and some wine consumption, we arrived and found our luggage in our room, took a shower and went right back out to enjoy the locale. No spas were to be found, which was all the better, as the local scenery wanted to be seen.

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At 6 o’clock we met our other bikers, and have an aperitif in preparation for a great French meal. The guides, Nathalie and Eric, would explain wine pairing of Bourgogne wines with our meals. They kept the wine glasses filled all night, which gave us a great night sleep for the next day’s riding.

We biked into Beaune, which is the wine capital of the Burgundy region. This is where we experienced our first “Cave”.  Caves (wine cellars, but Cave really helps visualize it better), are mold blackened underground cellars to store and age wine. In Beaune, there are more miles of caves underground than streets above! The estimate of wine bottles stored underground is in the millions of bottles.

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The guides had us meet with a local vineyard manager, who let us sample wines directly from the barrel, after she sucked it up into a big pipette. We proceeded to have a dinner, cooked by a local chief, right in the cave, and it was fantastic.

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Where is the heavy biking in all of this? Well, I was thrilled that I trained all summer, so I was in good enough shape to really enjoy the scenery and never worry about the hills or the miles, even after a few glasses of wine. I was not looking for a bike “race”, just a vacation where I could enjoy the scenery at a leisurely 12 MPH.

The trip included the “Hospices de Beaune”, a beautiful mosaic roofed building built in 1442, a visit to a vineyard that was just processing harvested grapes, a castle on a hilltop and numerous stops for espresso.

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The final stop for the last night was a converted 12th century abbey, where we stayed in the eves of the church. After some Kir Royale, we had phenomenal food and local cheese in the restaurant, and many, many bottles of burgundy wine.

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Since this trip, we did a similar trip to the Napa Valley wine region. There are still many places to visit, like the Loire valley, Bordeaux, Chile, Italy… all with great wines and great biking.


10/07/2011

Your software is not complicated enough....

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OK, so here is an email that we don't get often, but I am thrilled to receive. Serge found the install to be "flawless" , in fact it was so easy that he was not sure it was done correctly.

Here is his email to us:

We have faced absolutely no issue in installing the software, it worked right away....out of the box flawless.

If I may make a comment on this subject, you should specify the way to install it,
I was looking for a much more complex procedure ..

Best regards
Serge PERRIN




**********************************************************************
NOVATEAM Consulting S.A. / Serge Perrin
Switzerland
Http://www.novateam.com
***********************************************************************



09/16/2011

SpamSentinel MBE Upgrade Released

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I am pleased to announce a significant upgrade to our anti-Spam offering. SpamSentinel MBE reduces false positives and provides the end users with better control of their e-mail. MBE also replaces the Daily Report for verification of suspect messages. This upgrade merges the former MBE (which required a mail template modification) into the core SpamSentinel product to create a more accurate and user friendly spam filter.

SpamSentinel MBE is a server based product (there are NO mail template changes) that lets users better manage their email on whatever client they prefer: their Lotus Notes client, an iPhone or Android device or using Lotus iNotes.



Accuracy
Reduces false positives, resulting in better control of your mail.

Sent Folder
Entries from your SENT FOLDER and contacts overrides SpamSentinel and they ALWAYS show up in your Inbox.

Newsletters
Another new feature is automatically putting all Newsletters in one folder, reducing Inbox clutter

Junk Folder
Immediate Spam Checking in Junk Mail folder is a replacement of the daily report, which can still be delivered, but it is less important now.

Manage By Example (Preferences)
You can now change how SpamSentinel manages your mail by drag&drop actions between Inbox, Newsletter and Junk mail folder. For example, if a newsletter belongs in your Inbox, drag it there, for future delivery.

Download it Here

Watch a 60 second video to learn more about SpamSentinel MBE


06/17/2011

Amazon's Appstore for Android is Brilliant!

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The Amazon Appstore for Android lets you try out an app on your computer before downloading it. It is a fantastic simulation of the way the app will look on your device. It supports screen gestures, like finger swipes, by using a mouse drag across the screen. In my tests, it worked identically to how it works on my Android device. Brilliant!


How do they do it?  I wasn't sure, so I checked on the Amazon website and found this:

Clicking the “Test drive now” button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 — just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer. All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device.




Here is my Heian Shodan karate app with the Test Drive Now option (click anywhere on the graphic to go to the test drive).

A picture named M2




Here is a short video of the "app simulation" directly from the Amazon App Store. The "finger" on the screen is actually my mouse moving left to right.




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