As you may well remember from a couple of recent blog posts I put together over here, this week, on June 8th, the yearly Social Business Forum will be taking place in Milan and it will be a great honour for me to be able to attend it as well as go and present on the topic of “Communities or Organisations? – The New Collaboration Ecology”, where I will be sharing some further insights on IBM’s various experiences with regards to the wider adoption, enablement and empowerment of online communities through social software tools and how traditional hierarchies and teams are transforming themselves, as a result of it, into a new, richer, more complex, more dynamic and agile Collaboration Ecology. I’ll be sharing some initial reflections as well on an absolutely wonderful piece of research done by the IBM Almaden Research folks with Tara Matthews leading the efforts in this very same area of figuring out the next generation of the collaboration landscape.

There will be, as usual, plenty of live tweeting from my side over at @elsua under the hash tag #sbf11 and a couple of follow-up blog posts with plenty of highlights from the overall event as well, but that would be the subject for another blog post or two. For now, I would want to reflect on something that I have noticed it’s starting to happen to me more often than not and so far it’s proved to be a challenge to put it down for good in order to reflect further on it to see where it would finally go. So I thought that today could be the perfect opportunity to air it out and, at long last, get it out of my chest. Yes, indeed, folks, it looks like my Hippie 2.0 side is coming out again, and this time around in full force and with a sweet, long lasting vengeance after putting it in a dormant status for far too long!

They keep saying that a good personal business blog is that one that has struck that perfect 80% / 20% balance; 80% business and 20% personal. Funny enough, I have always felt that most of the content I have shared over here, in this blog, has been, for the most part, business related, with the odd personal entry here and there. However, and over the last few weeks, I have been putting together a whole bunch of various different blog entries that I wanted to share across, but that never made it, because they were exceeding that 20% big time. I know they would need to get out at some point, but somehow I am kind of not very keen on re-converting this blog on something far too personal. It wouldn’t be the purpose of what I envisioned for the blog right from the start. And, certainly, creating another one, separate from this one, is not an idea I would want to contemplate just yet. Thus how do you get to compromise? Do you actually need to compromise in the first place? Should you? Will people walk away and never come back if you start becoming a bit too personal? A bit too close? Hummm, questions, questions. Choices, choices. Not an easy answer for any of them, don’t you think?

I am sure though, at this point in time, you may be wondering what has triggered that sudden change and that re-emergence of my Hippie 2.0 side, right? Well, you are probably not going to believe it, but it’s mostly been a rather hard and sudden touch with reality that has provoked an awakening, like no other, for yours truly in a couple of areas that I never thought I would see coming along after all of this time being on the Web: mainly that one of being a critical thinker while being a good citizen / netizen. And I am sure you know where I am heading with this … It’s been an awakening that I am finding it harder and harder to tame and control over the course of time, to the point, where, in some cases I have hinted already that certain change is already in the making and happening altogether.

Back in 2001, when I was first exposed to social software tools, there were a number of different guidelines I decided to put in place and abide for myself; mainly, stating there would be three different subjects that I wouldn’t touch much *ever* in any online Web form. Mainly, politics, religion and sports. So far I think I have been doing pretty well, since I hardly ever get to share any content in either of those three subjects. However, things are changing and somehow I feel there is no way back. Involvement is a very powerful word, indeed. And that touch with reality that I have experienced over the last couple of weeks surely has marked the time when that involvement may be much tighter and much more direct than whatever was happening in the past. At least, for me.

Yes, that’s right! For a long while I have stayed away, on purpose, from the whole world of politics, more than anything else, because I know, along with religion and sports, it’s one of those visceral subjects that often keeps getting misinterpreted time and time again provoking even more trouble than helping out in the first place. Yet, when certain things like this one happen far too close to home (I was there just the same morning that set of events took place!) one starts to question whether you can let it go, just like that, hoping that it will be forgotten, when you know exactly that’s not going to happen. They call us internauts, bloggers, twitterers, facebookers, social networkers, freaks, you name it. When in reality we are just like them; citizens taking advantage of the tools available to us to try to make a difference.

It bugs me. It bugs me big time that my social computing evangelist bubble has burst just like that, so easy. It bugs me the huge amount of fear and apprehension there seems to be out there, from all over the place, towards the Internet, specially, that thing called social networks, where no-one seems to have the control over them, as if they are the last resource of freedom, or revelry, the world has got left out there. It gets me how, now more than ever, I keep ending up having rather engaging discussions where I end up trying to justify a social behaviour that’s been with us for thousands and thousands of years and that’s finally finding its natural path: that one of showing how interconnected we all are with one another. Regardless.

You see? I told you. My Hippie 2.0 side is back! Ha! I knew it would eventually be happening, but I never expected that it would be coming back in such full force… To the point, where, even if my 2.0 evangelist bubble has been burst and smashed in hundreds of pieces in the last couple of weeks I’m now more motivated than ever to do a better job at evangelising around the subject of social networks than ever before, wanting to reach out beyond the original focus within the corporate, business environment and directly into our societies as a whole, because, after all, that’s all it matters, isn’t it? Who we are and how we are connected with one another. And if I can help open up a few more eyes and ears, why not? Wouldn’t it be worth it for all of us altogether? I mean, what are we, social computing evangelists, doing to help those around us understand where our passion and motivation for these social tools come from? Why don’t we try to make a little bit of an extra effort and pledge to make a difference with those evangelism efforts?

Well, I do realise that this is not the typical blog entry you would be expecting to read over here. And that’s fine. I wasn’t expecting it myself either. I meant it as an article reflecting on some personal changes I am seeing, AND experiencing myself, that I cannot longer control (Not even sure anymore I would want to control them in the first place!) around the potential impact social has way beyond just a business context. I do hope you understand though where I am coming from. Where that touch with reality has made me realise there is now more work ahead of us than ever before! Specially, seeing recent global events in multiple countries, I doubt we would ever have a choice anymore to ignore it. In fact, I am starting to think I don’t want to ignore it any longer. I have done so for over a decade and I am starting to have enough of it; enough of having to justify how I live the Social Web, just because people don’t understand it, as a result of the fear they have been accumulating over time from all over the place.

You see? As my good friend and, fellow Hippie 2.0, Mark Masterson once wisely said, not long ago, “If you focus on fear, you’ll get fear. If you focus on humour, you’ll get laughs“, I thought I would close this thinking-out-loud open reflection letting folks know that, somehow, this blog (As well as my overall online interactions in social networks) have just started a new phase where my new mission is that one helping focus on the humour and the laughs versus the fear. I know now why I put together Three Wishes at the beginning of the year. Started to hint it subconsciously right there! Basically, to keep evangelising on social computing, not just in a business context, but also as an integral part of our societies, as citizens, because, at the end of the day, we are not internauts, we are not bloggers, nor twitterers nor facebookers, we are just people with a strong willingness to connect, and stay connected, with those who we share a common affinity with and learn further insights from that knowledge sharing experience to help us all become better at what we already do.

That’s why I am embedding this video clip over here, as part of the weekly inspiring series of videos, by Aleix Saló under the title “ESPAÑISTAN La Burbuja Inmobiliaria a la Crisis by Aleix Salo“, which clearly marks, to me, what innovation, creativity and a touch of humour can do to help explain complex problems we are facing ourselves with simple solutions, whether work related or not. In this case, the latter. Something that affects us all…

(Video clip in Spanish)

I guess I am now, finally, ready to unleash the fury, the passion and the motivation behind my Hippie 2.0 side and let it spread around once again. Somehow I am hoping I won’t be the only one…

I need an online ragbag. I need, and pretty badly, a Web based ragbag, easy to use, fast enough to interact with on the go, pervasive, available at all times through multiple venues (Including mobile), where I can dump things quickly and share them across with others, or make them available for future reference for upcoming blog posts, clippings or whatever else. I am seriously starting to get tired of having multiple local text files with hundreds of links, golden nuggets, precious little gems that only me is benefiting from, therefore with a rather restrictive value altogether. I need to do better. I need to start curating all of that content a bit more socially. I need to stop using those text files and start looking for something a bit more innovative and lasting (Yes, Twitter is no longer an option in this regard, I am afraid), where not just me would be benefiting from sharing those knowledge snippets. Thus, finally, jumping the shark, once again!, allow me to introduce you, over here, the re-launch of “elsua’s ragbag“.

Yes, that’s right! For the third, or fourth time (Can’t remember anymore), that I have tried in the last few months I am going to make use of my Posterous site, once again. Although this time around with a slightly different twist. Instead of having the flavour of sharing entries that were more or less elaborate to a certain extent, I think I’m going to take a little bit more of a chaotic approach to it all and start using it again with that flavour of a ragbag: “a miscellaneous collection“.

Indeed, a collection of everything that catches my attention; of everything that I find somewhat interesting and that I would think may well be worth while sharing across with the mission to abandon my locally stored text file(s) for good, whether it’s a snippet or a clipping to an interesting blog post, or from a Web site, or a video, a learning resource, an interesting and relevant presentation or those little precious gems that one bumps into every so often, I am hoping that “elsua’s ragbag” will be the new home to all of those serendipitous knowledge discoveries, as my good friend Ana Silva beautifully explained in a brilliant blog post, just recently, over at “Embrace Change, Embrace Serendipity“.

It would also help me serve as an excuse to check out Posterous, once again, and see what other improvements and enhancements it’s had over the course of months, since the last time I checked it out, specially, as I am starting to have that feeling of being left out from other social networking sites given a good number of recent negative happenings around them. Yes, in a way, trying to figure out whether Posterous can help serve the purpose of a refuge from some awkward behaviours that other major social networking sites have been going through over the last few months, couple of years already. Who knows… it may stick altogether this time around … for good! We shall see…

For now, I feel that strong urge to give it a try, once again, and see how this new experiment goes. Here is the RSS feed, if you would be interested in subscribing to it. If you are a Posterous user already, you can connect with it, too! by subscribing to it directly from the site, and I thought that perhaps I could get things going now with elsua’s ragbag by sharing one of the snippets I have bumped into earlier on, worth while mentioning it over here as well, specially since it talks about the subject of “Social Collaboration“:

(Click on the infographic to enlarge it…)

Rather interesting, don’t you think? Well, these are the kind of tidbits I am hoping to be sharing across from here onwards… Let’s see whether this time around I can make it stick. Bring it on then!

I am sure you would agree with me that Social Computing, and, in particular, social software tools, still have got plenty of different challenges within the enterprise in order to provoke that massive cultural shift most of us have been looking forward to for a long while. One of those challenges has always been trying to accommodate the mobile workforce and provide something so relatively simple as offline capabilities from most of those social tools.

Yet, it is not happening as much as one would have hoped for, don’t you think? I mean, there are some Enterprise 2.0 Social Software applications out there that are starting to tap into the offline world. Alas, not as pervasively as what you would have hoped for. And that’s one of the main issues that most mobile knowledge workers have got right now as we speak with regards to their own adoption of social software in a corporate environment.

At IBM, where 50% of the workforce is mobile already, we are seeing this very same issue as well and the interesting thing is that more and more we are seeing how some of our various social software tools we are exposed to on a daily basis are making serious attempts to accommodate offline interactions. And the latest example is coming from one of my favourite social software tools: IBM’s Lotus Connections.

Actually, from one of the components I have started to rely very heavily on over the last couple of years: Dogear (Now graciously renamed Bookmarks after Lotus Connections v2.5 went GA). Check out "Bookmark Viewer for IBM Lotus Connections Dogear" by Hanspeter Jochmann, where you will be able to see how all of the bookmarks folks may have been storing in Dogear / Bookmarks can now be taken off into a Lotus Notes database that allows you to have a rich set of interactions, while working offline, and then synchronise them back to the server once you are connected again. Amazingly powerful! And something I was really looking forward to after having gone through some very bad experiences myself.

Remember Ma.gnolia? I was a big fan of it; I had several thousand bookmarks stored in it and was a rather heavy user all along… Till one day, I came to work, was on my way to bookmark a few sites and found out Ma.gnolia went through a server crash and LOST all of my bookmarks! Without a chance to provide a backup or anything. Just GONE! All of them! Ouch!! I thought I would have to re-create most of the work I put together in it, but lucky enough Dogear came to my rescue and allowed me to recover most of it.

Ever since that painful experience happened, I haven’t gotten outside and use any other social bookmarking site available out there. Not only because I haven’t been convinced that any of them would do what I would want them to do (Specially with the protection and backup of my own bookmarks!), but also because I don’t think I would feel comfortable going through that very same experience of losing my bookmarks once more, should they suffer from an irrecoverable server crash.

So I have decided to go internal and rely, almost exclusively, on Lotus Connections Bookmarks inside the firewall. And every now and then I synchronise them with my Dogear / Bookmarks over at ibm.com so that folks out there would have an opportunity to check the kinds of links that are of interest to me and that can be shared externally. For the internal ones, you know where they would go… hehe

Thus when Hanspeter shared this brilliant offline Bookmark Viewer for Dogear I just couldn’t help but giving it a try and all along to state I have been rather happy is probably an understament. It just works! My fellow colleague, and good friend, Luis Benitez, blogged about it and pointed out to a YouTube video that explains how that Notes database works:

And if you notice, it pretty much puts together that key concept of replication and "working offline" from traditional groupware tools into the space of social software, which, I am not sure what you would think, but I think it’s just pretty awesome! Best of both worlds in just a single application coming together nicely and allowing me to always be control of how I use it, whether I am connected or not. Just brilliant!

I just hope that plenty of other social software tools follow this very same trend, because otherwise we are going to continue missing out on a large chunk of the corporate workforce who are constantly on the road, disconnected, while at customers, and the last thing they would want to worry is try to figure out whether they can get connected to just bookmark a site. This Bookmark Viewer clearly shows the way it’s possible to accommodate those needs, because, after all, we all know what’s like being on the road without a live Internet connection, don’t you think?

(Oh, before I forget another special thanks to Hanspeter for helping make our lives much much easier with our own adoption of social software tools in combination with those other tools we have been using for a long while now! Talking about a nice, tight and smooth integration of the 1.0 and 2.0 worlds! Well done, Hanspeter! Thanks ever so much!)

Tags: IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Bookmarks, Dogear, Social Bookmarking, Social Bookmarks, OpenNTF, Bookmark Viewer, Lotus Notes, Notes, Databases, Offline, Mobile Workforce, Workforce, Knowledge Workers, Mobility, IBM, Hanspeter Jochmann, Replication, Synchronisation, Ma.gnolia, Crashes, Data Protection, Data Ownership, Data Backup, ibm.com, Luis Benitez, YouTube, Videos, Screencasts, Groupware, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Productivity, Productivity Tips, Tips, Hints, Tricks, Hacks, Hacking

I guess it is inevitable, right? I suppose there is no way to stop it, either; perhaps it shouldn’t be after all. Who knows… We all probably realise though that the usage of Facebook as one of the most powerful social networking environments out there will continue to soar even more rapidly than right now, where it was just mentioned a couple of weeks back how it reached over 200 million users, as months go by and more and more people get exposed to social software in general. Yes, like I said, it is probably inevitable.

However, what most folks can do, but may not have realised about it just yet, is the fact you can establish, and control, how you would want to interact with it, specially if you are in the need of separating both your personal and your business interactions, because, as we all know, sometimes some things should remain just that: private.

So what can you do to tailor your own Facebook interactions to suit the various different groups you connect with in that social network, so that not only you can make sense out it, but also those personal and business connections you have in such powerful networking environment? I know that plenty of times folks have been talking about how you can protect your own privacy while using Facebook extensively. I could go ahead and share with you all some tips on how you can get things going, and start protecting some of those conversations, if you haven’t done so thus far.

Nonetheless, I am actually going to do something much better than that. If you need to take a closer look again in how you manage your identity in such social network so that you can split up interactions and define multiple levels of visibility, walk no further than a recent presentation that one of my team colleagues has put together and shared across in Slideshare.

Check out Identity Management for IBMers on Facebook by Josh Scribner. This is a slide deck that provides plenty of great tips on how you manage, and still make sense, of your identity in Facebook. It provides plenty of background on why we, end-users, need to watch out for what we share, how we share and with whom we share it. Because you never know how and where those interactions will turn up. Pretty much common sense, I can assure you all, but still plenty of sound advice on how you can improve your overall exposure to such social networking tool. Thus without much further ado, here you have got the embedded version, so you can take a look and judge whether it may be a good time now, or not, to re-evaluate how you are making good use of Facebook, both from a personal and business perspective. Worth while taking a look into Josh’s deck to get things going, for sure.

(A special thanks to Josh for sharing that lovely slide deck outside of the company’s firewall, so that other folks out there would be able to benefit as well from such nifty, and useful, presentation! Well done, Josh! And thanks for sharing!)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Facebook, Privacy, Identity, Identity 2.0, Identity Management, Business Relationships, Personal Relationships, Josh Scribner, Slideshare, Presentations, Stream, Life Stream, Declarative Living

Continuing further with the blog post series of Mac Tips I have been putting together over here on the good number of (social software) tools I get to use on a regular basis to help me be more productive, I thought I would cover today what, to me, is perhaps the biggest productivity tool I have bumped into on the Mac for the nearly two years I have been using my MacBook Pro as my main work machine.

It’s one of those tools that I would not classify per se as a social software tool, yet, it surely is helping me engage further in the social networking space much easier, and faster (As well as healthier!) than whatever I could have imagined so far. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the superb TextExpander, your next best friend on the Mac!

TextExpander "saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images" and although initially it may not say much more about it, once you start watching your behaviour of how you interact with your computer you immediately get hit by the numerous ways you could make use this application itself. And from there onwards, there is no way back! However, I thought I would expand further on the topic and perhaps share with you five different reasons as to why you would want to consider this tool to, at least, give it a try at some point. Thus here we go:

1. Saving keystrokes: If you are one of those people that gets to type quite a lot of text all over the place, and if that text string happens to be rather repetitive sometimes, why should you type it again, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of keystrokes and off you go, it will add that text for you automatically, whether just plain text or rich text! Even images!! Amazingly easy!
2. Spell check: With TextExpander you will no longer need to use a spell check; the application itself will become your default spell checker for everything! And all of that thanks to the AutoCorrect group of snippets. A huge database of strings that will correct on the fly almost every single spelling mistake you make. Try it! I know you will thank me later! Yes, it is *that* good!
3. Filling out forms: How many times have you had to fill in an Internet form or a specific document, presentation, spreadsheet, regular text file, whatever, with the same information details over and over again? Far too many, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of characters and voilá! Your forms instantly filled in and ready to go! Priceless!
4. Wealth of macros: One of favourite reasons. While you get to educate TextExpander to include the regular (rich) text strings you will want to avoid typing again, there is already a wealth of group snippets that you can import right away and start seeing the benefits of using this tool. Right from the Snippets user preference you can rather go ahead and create your own or import those already existing ones! That way you don’t have to start from scratch! Nice, don’t you think?
5. Watching over your health: Repetitive Strain Injury anyone? In the past I have talked about RSI a couple of times and have shared a number of tips on how to help prevent it. Well, perhaps one of the most compelling reasons I can mention for TextExpander is how it helps you save time by not having to constantly be typing away the same text strings, which means that with a couple of keystrokes you are off to insert the text you need without having to type it and therefore freeing up your hands from your keyboard. To that extent one of the nifty features is providing you some statistics on how many characters you have saved, but most importantly how many hours you have saved in the end as well!

   And I can only say that in my case it has been plenty of them, so you can imagine how grateful both of my wrists are about the extended breaks I am enjoying from that all of that typing away! W00t!

I am sure there would be plenty of other reasons why you would want to make extensive use of the fantastic TextExpander application, so I encourage you all to perhaps share through comments what your favourite ones are. Yes, I do realise that there is a price tag for this tool, and, to be honest, considering the amount of time I have been saving already; considering as well how much less I get to type on a daily basis, I can certainly state that $30 is not that expensive. Quite the contrary! I consider it quite an investment not only for my time saved, but, most importantly, for my own health! And that’s what really matters, don’t you think?

Oh, to wrap this Mac Tip #3 blog post, I thought I would give a special thanks as well to Euan Semple, who first introduced me to TextExpander through Twitter and encouraged me to give it a try and from there onwards I haven’t been back and more and more by the day it’s becoming that essential tool for my Mac I cannot longer live without! So, thanks much, Euan!

Tags: Mac, Apple, MacBook Pro, MBP, Tips, Hints, Productivity, Productivity-Tips, Tools, Images, Text, Rich Text, Text Strings, Twitter, TextExpander, Smile on My Mac, Spell Check, Macros, Forms, Repetitive Strain Injury, RSI, Euan Semple

If you have been reading this blog for a little while now, or if you have been following me online in multiple social networking sites like Twitter, you will know how for the last 18 months I have seen the light and have become the proud owner of a MacBook Pro as my main work machine. During that time I have tried several dozens of applications trying to help me increase my productivity into new levels and although with some of them such improvements haven’t been there, with some others the jump has been tremendous!

So I thought it may be a good time now to share with you folks a series of what I call Mac Tips, putting together short blog posts sharing some further insights on some of those incredibly helpful and resourceful tools I have been using at work all along, some of which have been incredibly instrumental in my successful quest of giving up e-mail at work.

Yes, that’s right! This is going to be the first of a series of blog posts where I will be sharing with you the productivity tools, as well as the social software tools, I am using to eventually move out of e-mail successfully, which I know is something that most of you would find interesting and perhaps somewhat intriguing.

Every now and then, what I will be doing is putting together a short blog post, shorter than this one, definitely! (This longer one is the kick-off one!), where I will share 5 different reasons as to why I really am enjoying using that tool and how it has improved my productivity at work. And all of that using my MacBook Pro.

Why using my Mac? Well, in most cases to prove the point that you, too, can be productive at work using something else than Windows. Plenty of times I get people looking at me with weird looks when I tell them I work for IBM and I use a Mac. This is just the perfect opportunity for me to share with everyone out there how it is possible to do that! So, let’s get the fun going, before this entry becomes longer than I expected!

Mac Tip #1: MacBreakZ – Healthy Computing Made Fun

In the past I have been touching base a couple of times on the important topic of working in a healthy environment, whether at the office, on the road or from home. Specially sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day, it is something that no-one should ignore. To me, on the Mac, that lovely tool that looks after my health is MacBreakZ. Preventing Repetitive Strain Injury (a.k.a. RSI) is probably one of the best things you can do to keep yourself healthy while sitting in front of a monitor for far too long. Thus here are 5 reasons why you would want to give it a try yourself:

1. Its incredible ease of use: That’s right, installing and setting it up to match your needs is very easy to do. I set up mine to kick in every 30 minutes with a 5 minute break in between and so far I am loving it!
2. It actually works: I have tried in the past a couple of other applications in this space of preventing RSI like Time Out, but somehow I noticed how they weren’t as effective and convincing as they could have been. MacBreakZ does the job beautifully, so much so my wrists are now very very grateful!
3. Its sounds: One of the issues I had with some of the tools I tried in the past was the fact their sounds were not as wonderfully annoying are those from MacBreakZ. I mean, if you exceed the time for a specific break, this application will keep nagging on you with a lovely sound till you eventually give up and move away from the keyboard. Love it!
4. Its price: Yes, I know, it is not freeware. It costs 24.95€, but if I look into the potential amount of money that it has helped me save keeping me in good shape with my wrists, elbows, etc. etc. and away from the Mac when I should, I think that amount of money is a very worth while one! Don’t you think?
5. Its tips: Finally, this is probably one of my favourite reasons to use MacBreakZ, and, in a way, it kind of reminds me of Workrave for Windows. Every time you take one of those breaks, MacBreakZ actually shows you a few tips with graphics showing you different types of very easy stretches you can do while at your desk; some of them which I am sure you are all familiar with (As you will find them in other programmes), but with plenty others I was not aware of and which after executing them on a regular basis not only is it good fun, but you get to feel the stretch and how it helps release the pressure of your muscles and tendons. Amazing!

   Never thought that so relatively easy stretches, yet so powerful, would have such effect and since I have set up the system to kick in every 30 minutes it helps me stay on top while I learn new ones! Ideal as well for when you are on the road and you have a spare minute in between to keep stretching! Just brilliant!

Oh, and one other really neat feature that I certainly like about MacBreakZ is the fact that if you try to type for an extended period of time, right after you have just finished with one of those breaks, it immediately tells you to slow down with a beep, beep, beep sound that reminds me I need to stop now!

Thus there you have it, my first Mac Tip on one of my favourite Mac programmes available out there looking after my health while I am typing away on those long days in front of the Mac: MacBreakZ.

Tags: Tips, Hints, Mac Tips, MacBook Pro, MBP, MacBook, Apple, Twitter, Productivity Tools, e-mail, email, Productivity, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, IBM, Mac, MacBreakZ, Health, Fitness, Fit, Stretch, Stretching, Repetitive Strain Injury, RSI, Time Out, Workrave, Prevention, Work, Workplace

You may have noticed how, over the last couple of days, things have been relatively quiet over at one of my Internet blogs: http://www.elsua.net. Well, things have gone quiet a little bit there on the front side of things, but on the background it has been one of the most intensive weeks I have had ever since I started blogging nearly 5 years ago! Yes, indeed, and that is not an understatement. And here is why…

A couple of weeks back I got an e-mail from the Google Quality Search Team where I got told that my site, i.e. http://www.elsua.net may have been compromised and that I needed to look into it or it would get banned from Google Search. Of course, with the limited amount of technical knowledge I have for these things I contacted my hosting provider folks, who told me that it was a spoof e-mail & that I could ignore it. So I did.

Big mistake!!

A couple of days later, and, while I was reading through the blog post from one of my colleagues, and good friend, Luis Benitez, (Yes, people confuse us quite a lot, too!) on the topic of his new business card I noticed that I could no longer find http://www.elsua.net through Google Search. Oh oh. No, that can’t be right! My comment in Luis’ blog post was going to be along the lines of "I hardly ever use business cards any longer. I normally just tell people "Hi, my name is Luis Suarez. Google me! #1 on the list of results!"". But apparently, not any longer! I could no longer find a single reference to my blog site.

I was banned! (Fun, fun, fun … NOT!!!)

From there onwards I went down into a spiral of frenetic activity, behind the scenes all along, except for my twitterings on the whole thing, sharing my views on what it is like being banned by such a powerful traffic driver as Google Search is and how to overcome the problem. So I contact my hosting provider once more and I mentioned that I was eventually banned, so it wasn’t so much of an spoof e-mail, was it? No, it wasn’t. Very real!

From there onwards, the interactions with the hosting provider have been rather sporadic from the perspective where they first tried to identify the problem as something to do with Bloglines, but Ben Lowery, came through to me on Twitter and mentioned there was no way it was a problem with Bloglines since the javascript I was using is not crawled by search engines. So second time I am being let down by the hosting provider. The search for the root of the cause continued…

It was then suggested that the problem had to do with http://www.elsua.net running a very back level version of WordPress, v 2.0.2, to be more precise, and that I needed to upgrade to the latest version, v2.6, as soon as possible in order to start addressing some of the issues. Yes, I already knew I was running a very back level version of WordPress, but given my limited technical skills in that area I procrastinated long enough to, apparently run into these problems. So I had to manage a way out of it and, again, with very little help from the hosting provider. Just a single URL link of where to get help! And it would take days before it could be actioned! Nice!

And here is where I got started with some more frenetic activities, because in no time I had to learn how to make the upgrade with the least disruption possible and get back in business soon enough. So, oh the irony of things, I used Google to find my way around and found the super nifty InstantUpgrade WordPress plugin and I made use of the 1.0-beta2 version.

The upgrade of the blog went by rather smooth and in less than 5 minutes! I tell you, if you would need a quick, clean, comprehensible (Even for non techies!) & easy to use plugin InstantUpgrade would be it! Yes, I know that you also have WordPress Automatic Upgrade, but that gave me errors that the former didn’t. Probably because I was running such a back level version of WordPress. Either way, I was getting, slowly, back on track. Or so I thought!

Once the upgrade was completed I noticed how everything seemed to be in place with the new 2.6 release, which is a fantastic upgrade, by the way, with plenty of great new features!, but there was a minor glitch. My entire list of categories was gone! Yes! GONE! All of them! By this time I was pretty much running into panic mode, not knowing what to do next! So I used Google again and I found the wonderful tutorial post from David Cumps (Thanks ever so much, David! Great giveback to the WordPress community!), where he explained, step by step, how to get them back! A bit of a labour intensive job, but since I only have 30 categories it wasn’t too bad.

I still needed to shape up my technical skills on how to get it all done, so I had to get a crash course, over the course of a few minutes, from another good friend of mine, and fellow IBM colleague: Brian Olore, who was patient enough to explain to me how to work and operate things with the SQL database (That was fun, once I got the hang out of it!)  and came to my rescue! Many many thanks, Brian! Appreciated the time and the just in time tutorial!

From there onwards I spent some time re-populating my categories back into the blog and despite some initial glitches here and there things worked out in the end rather smooth and there I was: fully upgraded to 2.6, categories all back to normal and with a huge sense of achievement for something that earlier on in the week I didn’t have a clue where to get started!

But that was step #1, I was still banned from Google. Still am, by the way. But thanks to various different folks, mainly through Twitter with the superb help from Laura Fitton, a.k.a @pistachio, and various folks behind StopBadware, I managed to find the way a couple of good links to follow to try to get me back in shape (Thanks much for that, folks! Great tips coming through all along!).

And just coincidentally another good friend of mine, and fellow IBM colleague, put together a blog post sharing some further details on a common problem we partially shared. Yes, indeed, Rob Smart (Thanks a million, by the way!), over at Google Ate My Blog, explained with screen shots, and step by step, how to get your Web site back into Google’s Search Index through Google’s Webmaster Tools (Yes, I know most folks out there would be familiar with those, but it was the first time for me taking a serious look into them, specially now that I was banned from Google).

Thus earlier on this morning, and after a rather hectic week with lots of activity behind the scenes on http://www.elsua.net, to try to get things back to normal, I have submitted a request for re-consideration by the Google Search Quality team and, hopefully, (Keeping my fingers crossed at this point in time!) I will be back into Google’s Search Index rather soon. Rob told me it took him a couple of days to have the request processed, so I am hoping the same would happen with my own blog as well. We shall see.

For now, I feel like I am at the end of the roller-coaster ride, and what a ride!!!, having had an exhilarating time experiencing what it is like not being indexed by Google. I have learnt lots and lots about managing your blog out there in the wild open Web, but at the same time here are a few other things I have learned along the way:

1. I need to find a new hosting provider… I wasn’t too particularly happy with the one I have got now, given their reaction & involvement with the problem(s) I had. Looking for one here in Europe, reasonably priced, too. Suggestions welcome!

2. http://www.elsua.net is going to go through a major facelift in the next few weeks. It would be about time! So if you see weird things on the main site itself, hang in there, will try to keep the disruption to a minimum (May want to subscribe to the RSS feed for the time being)

3. WordPress is an amazing CMS & blogging platform, but without the community around it of incredibly smart and talented people it would be … nothing! Yes, I just said that! How can you release a full upgrade, v 2.6, which you know is going to create a massive set of issues with missing categories, and don’t inform people about it ahead of time?!?! I had only 30 of them, but folks who have several more dozens, I am sure they weren’t happy. And a fix, v. 2.6.1 or v 2.7, is not going to help much. The harm is done! Long life to the WordPress community!!! (Thanks, David and the folks behind the InstantUpgrade plugin!). Oh, mind you, I still *heart* WordPress. Still think it is one of the most powerful blogging engines available out there! But, take the community with it, please!

4. I have got an amazing network of friends, both inside and outside of the company I work for, who went the extra mile to help out and they surely did! Many many thanks to Brian, Laura (And her network!), Rob and the folks behind StopBadware! Next time we meet up face to face drinks are on me!

5. I should not procrastinate any further with WordPress releases and jump into the latest one at a reasonable time, instead of waiting for far too long! And you shouldn’t either! Dive in, the waters are not too bad & trust your network(s)!

6. Google may still be my friend. After all, a good bunch of the pointers I have mentioned above were provided by Google’s Search engine. Would have been incredibly more difficult having to use any of the others, I can imagine.

Hopefully, I will be back into it over the next few days, so that when folks search for Luis Suarez, a.k.a. elsua, they would find who they were looking for in the first place: yours truly!

Now you know why things have been rather quiet over here this week… Have a good one, everyone!

Tags: elsua, Luis Suarez, IBM, Google, Google Search, Banned, Google Banned, Luis Benitez, Business Cards, Hosting Provider, Hostpc, Ben Lowery, Bloglines, Twitter, WordPress, WordPress 2.6, Categories, InstantUpgrade, Plugins, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, David Cumps, Brian Olore, Rob Smart, Laura Fitton, Pistachio, Twitter, Communities, Learning, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Innovation, Personal KM, StopBadware, Tutorials, Personal Branding

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