Last couple of days from last week have been incredibly busy at work and didn’t give me much of a chance to go ahead and create a blog post over here. I guess that being featured on the corporate Intranet Web site to share your story on how you have moved away from e-mail can surely be a hit for various different folks! Well, that’s just what happened last week and still going on this week. Not to worry, I shall be blogging shortly on my take of what has happened last week as far as my new adventure of re-purposing e-mail is concerned.

However, for this blog post I just wanted to share one more thing towards what I call integration nirvana on the Mac! Yes, that is right, if not long ago I mentioned how I was actually quite happy with having Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta for the Mac up and running and how a few days later I managed to get working as well IBM’s Lotus Sametime 8 standalone on the Mac, here we go with the next achievement in that integration nirvana on the Mac!

Yes, that is right! That is a screen shot of my Lotus Notes 8.5 beta for the Mac, fully integrated with the embedded version of IBM’s Lotus Sametime 8 and all of that connected to through the main Messaging server we use at IBM. I know that for most folks this may sound like "Well, big deal! So what?", but to me, this surely confirms the commitment that I can now kiss good-bye my Windows environment and welcome the Mac as my new productivity tool to get the job done at work, just as effectively as I could have done it on Windows, or, better, said, ever so much more effectively!

And it works beautifully, too without hindering my machine to a haul whenever I have multiple applications open. In this case the MacBook Pro is rather happy to allow me to keep working without having to go through innumerous issues.

Next challenge? Getting Lotus Sametime Unyte to work on the Mac from a presenter’s perspective to do seamless screen / file sharing! Wooohooo! Full integration nirvana coming through!!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Windows, Apple, Mac, MacBook Pro, Lotus Notes, Notes, Lotus Notes 8.5, Notes 8.5, Beta, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Sametime 8, Productivity Tools, Knowledge Tools, Collaboration, Instant Messaging, Groupware, Social Software, Social Computing, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration Tools, e-mail, email

Remember when not long ago I created a blog post where I was mentioning that one of the things I was really looking forward to from the IBM Lotusphere 2008 event was getting my hands on the new Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta for the Mac? Well, things have moved on from the time where I was mentioning I was having a couple of issues with it and over the weekend I have just managed to fix them by simply doing a replace of the mail file template with the latest release of the v8 mail file template. And now… it works!!

Actually, it rocks, because, as you would be able to see from the screen shot, I have reached Inbox zero on top of it and it surely looks rather nice being able to play with a very solid release, even though it is still beta, and getting rid of all of the e-mail that may have come over the weekend. Oh, and at the same time check out some of the nifty features that are coming along, like the embedded RSS / Atom feed reader client that, although simplistic, it sees to be the only one keeping up with the heavy update of Web sites like Twitter.

W00t!! Yes, indeed, can you imagine? My mail box running hand in hand next to my Twitter feed? How cool is that? And that is just the beginning, because I am surely going to enjoy this beta release before we move into the next one. First, time now to explore all of the different capabilities, like installing plugins, hacking the Welcome / Home page, etc. etc.

Who said that Mondays couldn’t be fun? Well, mine is so far…

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Notes 8, Notes 8.5, Notes 8.5 Beta, Mac, MacBook Pro, Apple, Notes Client, Productivity Tools, Performance, Eclipse, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Twitter, Syndication, Inbox Zero

Like I have mentioned in another blog post yesterday, this surely was one of the major announcements I was actually really looking forward to during the IBM Lotusphere event… And now that I am back at work, I am just this close to having it fully operational, and running pretty smooth, too, … on the Mac!!

Like someone I know would say … W00t!!!

(I can’t wait to have those issues sorted out and start using Notes 8.5 on the Mac running faster than anything I have seen so far, both on Windows and the Mac!!)

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Notes 8, Notes 8.5, Notes 8.5 Beta, Mac, MacBook Pro, Apple, Windows, Notes Client, Productivity Tools, Performance, Eclipse, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008

What happens when you find out that your Internet connection has been down for two days in a row and with very little you can do about it to try to fix it? I guess some people would take a couple of days off, others would get some stuff done around the house and, finally, some others would be anxiously waiting for it to come back to life as soon as possible and therefore would keep playing around in front of their computers for hours and hours no end. Well, in my case it was different. Yes, that is right. The last couple of days my Internet connection has been down. Again. Something that I couldn’t do anything about, or so I was told. Since Saturday afternoon till Monday late noon I haven’t been able to do anything other than watching the magic screen hoping it would pop up a message when ready to go. But nothing came through till a few hours ago after two painful days without being connected. I guess you tend to appreciate what you have, when you don’t have it any longer, right?

Now this was happening right after I came back from holidays and it was probably the last thing I wanted to go through, specially contemplating the massive catchup I had to go through. Still, it happened. So after the massive catastrophe I’ve been experiencing with the loss of loads and loads of feed reading materials with Omea Pro, I thought about taking a much more proactive approach towards things and, finally, decided to venture into trying out what I think is one of the most impressive applications from the new Mac Leopard system: Time Machine.

You would remember how in the past I mentioned how I have successfully upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard in just a few simple-enough-to-follow steps. Ever since I did it I have been enjoying some of the really nifty new features put together, but I never thought I would be trying out Time Machine so soon. Yet with the huge mess I’ve just been through with Omea Pro I thought what a better way of getting things going with Time Machine today, now that I cannot really do much work without being connected to the Internet? WOW!! What an experience!!

During the Christmas holiday, I actually got two external hard drives as presents and after having moved all of the information away from my Windows machine, I thought I would engage further with the next challenge: making use of Time Machine on the Mac. Well, I am using the word challenge here, but must say that it has been everything but that! In just a few very easy to follow steps I have been able to put one of the hard drives to good use and start backing up my essential Mac files. And all of that within a matter of seconds!!

Then a couple of hours later to finish off doing all of the backups and before I knew it everything was ready to go!! As easy as that! I have now got all of my Windows and Mac stuff fully backed up with Time Machine and I surely feel much much better! Backing your stuff in real time should be as effective and efficient as this particular application does. And the way to navigate through it to find your stuff? Goodness! That is even better!!! I am surely loving it!

And now that I come to think about it, having lost over three years of Web feed readings may have been a good thing, after all, because thanks to that unfortunate incident I decided to take the plunge and start making use of Time Machine, way before I was even thinking about giving it a try. And so far it is looking incredibly better than whatever I would have expected in the past! Just brilliant! If backing up stuff from your computer was ever designed to be elegant, smart, graceful and effective then Time Machine is your solution! And without a single doubt!!

I just wished that such an option would have been available for my Windows notebook. Unfortunately, the two backups I had didn’t work and therefore lost it all. Hopefully, now that I got everything sorted out to work with Time Machine I may no longer be running into the different issues I’ve gone through the end of last year and beginning of this one.

If you haven’t tried out Time Machine just yet and you are using Leopard on a Mac, let me take this opportunity to encourage you all to get yourself an external hard drive and start making use of it. It will all just as easy as plug and play, select a couple of options and start backing up! Nothing else needed! Oh and all of that taking place in the background, while you may be working on something else, and without taking a huge amount of resources! Another big plus!! Once again, just getting stuff done! Because that’s how computers were designed to work in the first place, right? … And I am surely glad that someone has taken that task and provide us with an application that, if anything, is state of the art, unprecedented and a must-have at all costs. Just the way I want it: stuff that works! And beautifully!

Tags: Mac, Apple, MacBook Pro, MBP, Time Machine, Backup, Back up, Omea Pro, Productivity-Tips, Productivity-Tools, Effectiveness, Efficient, Elegance, Ease of Use, Smart, Beautiful Design

While still trying to digest some of the fantastic, overwhelming and exciting reactions to the initial blog post on Next Generation Knowledge Sharing & Learning Online Conference Event - In Spring 2008? and while I am still trying to figure out a couple of things before I comment further back into that particular blog entry on further steps, I thought I would go ahead and do some light blogging on a topic that I seem to have been tagged from a couple of folks already, who I read on a regular basis and who have been participating in a couple of different memes on a very similar topic: Seven things you didn’t know about me by Martin Koser and Gullible about Work / Blog Balance by Reasonable Robinson.

Yes, that is right. It is another meme where the rules seem to be pretty straight forward:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.

2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself.

3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.

4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

And although Martin’s meme post seems to be slightly different I thought about combining both of them since the overall outcome seems to be pretty similar. So here we go with the meme post and here you have eight random facts about myself that you may not have heard / read elsewhere:

1. I was born and raised in a very small village in León, which is where I have spent a good chunk of my life. Another good chunk is spread around The Netherlands (Where I lived 7 years) and, finally, Gran Canaria, where I have been living for nearly four years now.

2. I first got exposed to the world of computers in high school (Yes, I was one of the folks who owned an Amstrad CPC 464!) and back then my marks on computer lessons were really bad, which gave me the impression I would never, ever, work with computers. Fast forward to today … Already 10 years in the IT world and still going strong!

3. After I graduated from University, I spent one year working in Thale, Germany, where I got to experience one of the most severe winters in my life thus far with up to -30C. for several days!! But I must say I loved the overall experience quite a bit!!

4. First time I came to Gran Canaria was in 1996 (For a very short period of time) and back then I knew I would be coming back at some point. It took me only 8 years to make that happen

5. I actually got my job at IBM while I was spending a two week holiday in The Netherlands in 1997. Probably the longest two weeks I’ve ever known!! (Already heading for my 11th year in the company!)

6. While working for IBM, I spent another year of my life in Dublin, Ireland, where there is very little I would need to explain, if you ever have been there. Yes, I know, I need to get back there for a short visit and catch up some time soon!

7. I was first exposed to Knowledge Management by the end of 1999 and during that time I already sensed it was going to be the field / discipline I would be developing my skills & expertise over the course of the years. Two years later I was working, full time, in a Knowledge Management team. Till today. (And, yes, still going strong, in case you are wondering…)

8. And, finally, I initially got started with my blogging experience back in 2003, as a way to prove to myself how I could work smarter, not necessarily harder, relying on the community and my social networks to get the job done versus having to do the job myself re-inventing the wheel over and over again. Four years later, and just a couple of days after the 10th year anniversary of the word "Weblog", I still feel the same way. Blogs, and plenty of the various different social networks where I hang out, still make me work smarter. Much smarter! Not harder.

And that would be it. Next on this blog post is to actually tag another 8 people who would be willing, hopefully, to take the challenge and share with us 8 factoids about themselves that we may not have heard elsewhere. So here is my list of folks I would love to hear some more from on this particular topic. In random order: Jasmin Tragas (a.k.a. Jazzydee), Thomas van der Wal (a.k.a. wanderwal), David Stephenson (a.k.a. DavidStephenson), Susan Scrupski (a.k.a. ITSinsider), Dennis McDonald (a.k.a. ddmcd), Stuart Henshall (a.k.a. stuarthenshall), Andy Piper (a.k.a. andypiper) and Jon Husband (a.k.a. jonhusband).

I am sure that I could have included a whole bunch of the folks I get to interact with on a daily basis, so feel tagged as well if you would want to chime in a well. Why not, right?

Either way, I am sure that with this particular blog post you actually got to find out about stuff on me that you probably haven’t seen / read elsewhere. Hope you have found it just as entertaining as it was for me to put it up going through that trip down the memory lane.

Now time to go ahead and digest some of the wonderful discussions going on Next Generation Knowledge Sharing & Learning Online Conference Event - In Spring 2008? and see where it would take us all… Fancy joining us on that wild ride, too?

Tags: Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Meme, Things, Martin Koser, Reasonable Robinson, Tagging, Leon, Spain, Gran Canaria, Amstrad CPC 464, Thale, Germany, IBM, The Netherlands, Dublin, Ireland, Blogiversary, Weblog Anniversary, Work Smarter, Jasmin Tragas, Wonderwebby, Thomas van der Wal, David Stephenson, Susan Scrupski, ITSinsider, Dennis McDonald, Stuart Henshall, Andy Piper, Jon Husband, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0

Over the last few days I have been bumping into a number of different blog posts from the various folks I follow in my feed reader, who have been trying out the first publicly available beta client from one of my favourite Web browsers: Flock v1.0 RC3, and I thought it was about time that I should a comment or two on what my own experience with it has been thus far. If you have been reading my blog for a little while now you have probably noticed already what a big fan I have become of such particular browser and it seems it is not over any time soon! Yes, that is right, folks, Flock v1.0 Beta just rocks!

I am not going to mention all of the different nifty social software features that have been put together for this particular beta release. For that I am just going to point you to the superb blog post that Harry McCracken has put together over at PCWorld where you would be able to read one of the best, and most thorough, reviews put together so far on this very same subject.

However, I am surely going to be sharing this with you. Flock still is my default Web browser for all of my Web 2.0 activities, like the previous versions have been all along. But here is the new thing. Flock in combination with the MacBook Pro I am currently using as my work machine just takes things into a whole new experience! Flock on the Mac rocks! And rock solid! Incredibly stable, hasn’t crashed a single time yet, very intuitive to navigate and make use of the various different features, all of the different social software capabilities are very nicely integrated (Much better than in Windows) to the point that I am really enjoying the integration with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Ma.gnolia etc. etc. and overall I can certainly comment on the fact that over the last few days I have been trying it out it has enhanced my exposure to Web 2.0 quite a bit. For the better.

And I am surely glad it has, because I was starting to get tired with how poor that same experience is with my Windows machine. Up until now I have been enjoying Flock quite a bit in the Windows notebook, but as soon as you try it out on the Mac you surely know what you have been missing all along, or, what I have been missing all along. It just feels smoother, more natural, just like a lifestyle. Exactly how social software has been envisioned from the start.

Yes, I know that most people are enjoying FireFox quite a bit, but to me it lacks some serious functionality as a Web 2.0 browser, along with some stability and memory footprint issues. Plus rather simplistic. Oh, yes, I know about the extensions, but let me tell you something. Those very same extensions work as well with Flock and don’t need to carry them with me. They are already there. At least, the ones I am interested in from day one.

I know that people may have different issues with a couple of the components that may need some work, like the integrated feed reader or the blog editor and I am sure, while those capabilities get to be improved as time goes by, I will still be making use of them in between my default options at the moment: Vienna and Qumana. So I can surely wait till they are finally done. But still the overall experience from a Mac is just so much more compelling than everything else that I may have been exposed to in the past, including Flock itself in Windows.

I know that this may sound rare, but contrary to what I thought was going to happen with this new MacBook Pro I am finding out that I spend less and less time working in it, but instead hang out more on the Web 2.0 apps. out there helping me enjoy that exposure quite a bit and making it much more integrated with my daily workflow. And Flock 1.0 is doing a superb job at it, too!

Ok, ok, I realise that it is not as fast as Opera is. In fact, Opera beats them all in that particular respect, including Safari, and that is why for my straight up front reading of Web sites Opera is my default browser, but for all of my social software tools Flock 1.0 on the Mac rules. Now and for quite some more time to come! Thus there you have it, some of the main reasons why I am sticking with Flock and why I am still enjoying the overall MacBook Pro experience… Oh and the empowering Leopard will be installed over here very soon, too! But that would be another story for another blog post…

(Keep up the superb piece of work, Flock developers!! And thanks ever so much for making our Web 2.0 experience much more enjoyable and resourceful. We would never probably be grateful enough for what you have been doing all this time — quoting Harry’s post shared above: "Two years ago, when the Flock people started talking about the notion of a social browser, they might have been a little ahead of their time.")

Tags: Flock, Web Browsers, Browsers, FireFox, Opera, PCWorld, Harry McCracken, Reviews, Social Browser, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Communities, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Ma.gnolia, Vienna, Qumana, Mac, MacBook Pro, Apple, Windows, Lenovo 3000 N100, Speed, Security, Safari, Browser Wars, Innovation