We decided to put our son (Jai) in Childcare nearby home. Registration is done and he is gonna go there from 3rd Jan 2007. It was a nice feeling altogether the one my dad would have had when he put me in Lower Kinder Garten. In Singapore, we have 2 more optional levels before i put him in K1 or LKG.
First in Nursery1 or N1 which i have put my son in and after that N2. Look forward to see him in classes in the coming days, he has already started saying take him to school. I really hope he will enjoy the classes and hopefully i would facilitate with a learning environment at home too.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
MS - Sharpoint Server 2007
I attended a 5 days training session on MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007) in Avantus.
Originally it was intended only for MS tech guys in my company but i managed to get inside. The prime intention is to learn and some obviously draw some comparisons between my favorite LND and SP. I know i cannot compare LND with just SP cos SP requires many other things to get it work.
I will try to write this in detail later but the conclusion i had to draw is - if your infrastructure is Lotus already, i don't think its a good idea to use Sharepoint. If you are a MS shop yes you didn't had anything of this kind before and oh yes, you could move with additional M$.
In my opinion, if you are already LND shop and also use Quickplace, you are in the game already :)
Originally it was intended only for MS tech guys in my company but i managed to get inside. The prime intention is to learn and some obviously draw some comparisons between my favorite LND and SP. I know i cannot compare LND with just SP cos SP requires many other things to get it work.
I will try to write this in detail later but the conclusion i had to draw is - if your infrastructure is Lotus already, i don't think its a good idea to use Sharepoint. If you are a MS shop yes you didn't had anything of this kind before and oh yes, you could move with additional M$.
In my opinion, if you are already LND shop and also use Quickplace, you are in the game already :)
Things i missed to cover - IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5 Demo
I gave a presentation recently to one of the prospective customer on IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5. That made me learn about Eclipse RCP and overall Eclipse. I am sort of new to Java world but it seems like i have to learn more in the near future. Lotus Sametime 7.5 is really a huge way forward based on Eclipse. The fact that it is very extensible and it can even inlcude your Workflow applications real time is amazing.
I have to become a Java guy to do all this, but i think i don't mind to become one :)
I have to become a Java guy to do all this, but i think i don't mind to become one :)
Things i missed to cover - LAUG 8th Meeting Dec 2006
This was our last session for this year and we had a little dull crowd as it was a festive season everywhere. We had a gentleman from AXS-ONE explaining about the compliance management of everything from Email to Digital Records management and the entire life cycle of the records management.
I had a detailed chat with Stephan Wissel who is now the "Lotus Technology & Productivity Advisor" from IBM Asean about the future of Domino Designer, Domino Server and Lotus Expeditor, Lotus Ventura. It was really an enlightening session for me and i get to know the happenings in IBM toward Lotus Notes and Domino. I was damn happy to hear all the great news and look forward to see everything in the year 2007.
Thank you very much Stephan for the wonderful session.
I had a detailed chat with Stephan Wissel who is now the "Lotus Technology & Productivity Advisor" from IBM Asean about the future of Domino Designer, Domino Server and Lotus Expeditor, Lotus Ventura. It was really an enlightening session for me and i get to know the happenings in IBM toward Lotus Notes and Domino. I was damn happy to hear all the great news and look forward to see everything in the year 2007.
Thank you very much Stephan for the wonderful session.
Things i missed to cover - PMI Training
We had a Project Management training in our company to get more people to become PMP certified professionals. One of the prerequisite to appear for PMP exams is to attend 35hrs of training which will earn you 35 Professional Development Units or PDU in PMP terminology. A gentleman from ProWiz by name Mr.Ravindran took the sessions for us, and i must say its no sleepy sessions.
He made the sessions very interesting by giving us many exercises to do as teams and individuals. The entire crowd was split in to 4 groups and challenged by questions from every topic.
The easiest of all is the Initiation stage and thereafter its was all very challenging. Planning, Execution, Quality and finally Completion. I loved almost all the sessions and i managed to get a passing score in the mock test provided on the last day :) I will definitely write the exam this year and i initially thought i cannot for more than 6 months to take the exam. I have already missed close to 3 months. Let see how it goes from here.
He made the sessions very interesting by giving us many exercises to do as teams and individuals. The entire crowd was split in to 4 groups and challenged by questions from every topic.
The easiest of all is the Initiation stage and thereafter its was all very challenging. Planning, Execution, Quality and finally Completion. I loved almost all the sessions and i managed to get a passing score in the mock test provided on the last day :) I will definitely write the exam this year and i initially thought i cannot for more than 6 months to take the exam. I have already missed close to 3 months. Let see how it goes from here.
Things i missed to cover - IBM Lotus Quickplace Demo May 2006
One of the key resources was down with fever and i was asked to do Lotus Quickplace 7.0 presales demo for one of our prospective customers. I have worked QP3.5 before but haven't seen QP7.0 yet, the time line for the demo was just 4 days away and i just started doing QP setup in my Notebook.
I wanted to show my customer some POC with fair bit of customization, themes that matches the needs, with their corporate logos and some related corporate content i took from the Internet. I must say i really enjoyed working for that 4days. It was real fun and its was very simple and transparent for end users that they could create sites on their own in few minutes time.
The audience were really impressed when they saw some of the features and one particular feature they are very impressed is the mailing the content from your favorite mailing tool to the QP content site. You don't have to really login in the QP site to post the content, QP sites are associated with mail IDs and users can post the contents from the favorite mail tools.
I wanted to show my customer some POC with fair bit of customization, themes that matches the needs, with their corporate logos and some related corporate content i took from the Internet. I must say i really enjoyed working for that 4days. It was real fun and its was very simple and transparent for end users that they could create sites on their own in few minutes time.
The audience were really impressed when they saw some of the features and one particular feature they are very impressed is the mailing the content from your favorite mailing tool to the QP content site. You don't have to really login in the QP site to post the content, QP sites are associated with mail IDs and users can post the contents from the favorite mail tools.
Things i missed to cover - LCTY 2006
There are lots of things i missed to cover in the year 2006. May be i am very lazy to update every now and then when things happened or may be our culture also has got to do something in this. I cannot say that i am damn busy all the times that i don't have any spare time. There are definitely times, when i feel like blogging but just couldn't do it. So i take this opportunity to blog some of the things that i missed when it happened.First of the things is the LCTY (Lotusphere comes to you) sessions in Singapore. In the month of March when the preparations was on for LCTY i went and had a discussion with my SM(Senior Management) about having an IT stall during the LCTY session. The obvious things are to get additional branding and additional projects :) In April, IBM Singapore also announced sponsors from partners to have their logo and names in the Singapore CABS (Taxis) for LCTY. We decided to do both and went for taxi sponsors and also put up a stall. We started seeing the cabs hitting the roads with IBM Lotus on it and IBM also covered som
e nice ads in Singapore Straits times. All this taxi ads were there for a month and lucky for me i could see one near my block car park itself. My son and i are in the picture.On April 21, 2006 my team went early and set up the stall with Scandent Group flyers and a nice little presentation for stall visitors. I must say it was an eventful day, i met lots of people from various companies and did some boxing :) as it was the overall theme for LCTY.
Well, i look forward to this year LCTY and i am sure it is gonna be good as always.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The Famous Deal - IBM and MS
A bit of history this time. When i was Googling about IBM and MS i found some interesting articles/deals. One of the article is about the famous deal between IBM and MS and how MS became a multi billion dollar company from nothing. Its definitely worth reading.
After completion, you will contemplate whether Bill Gates really a Genius or anyone can become so!!!
So the moral of the story is :
Sometimes, its not what you know that matters, its who you know really matters? Taken from one of the Singapore taxi drivers business card, who also happened to be a Letter writer for accidents etc.
Updated the last 2 lines on 19th Nov 2006.
After completion, you will contemplate whether Bill Gates really a Genius or anyone can become so!!!
So the moral of the story is :
Sometimes, its not what you know that matters, its who you know really matters? Taken from one of the Singapore taxi drivers business card, who also happened to be a Letter writer for accidents etc.
Updated the last 2 lines on 19th Nov 2006.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
LAUG 7th Meeting
The 7th LAUG meeting at IBM City centre today went pretty good. A Team (Mitsuru and Mike) from TeamStudio came all the way from Japan to give a presentation on some of their flagship products. Though i have seen some of their presentations through WebEx demos before (courtesy Benjamin Green - TeamStudio) today i managed to see it live. Almost all the tools are quite cool and some of them are a must in the Notes/Domino environment (CIAO - Check In And Out) is one among them.
Nowadays, we hear a lot of people saying their Notes environment is out of control. The reason is simple. Because Notes is a Rapid Development environment we tend to keep building applications and one fine day hundreds of applications sitting in the app server with the least amount of document possible. I have seen in many places, hundreds of design elements with many duplicate copies of the application/design elements with no version control at all. So, then it becomes tedious for anybody to maintain and people start saying Lotus Notes in not good.
But the fact is we didn't put any control in the first place. Had we put proper controls, source code controls etc etc. we would not have messed up this much. That's where TeamStudio products can help. For all other platforms there are tools available for team of developers to manage the versions of the application and if any problem a way to roll back to previous code and so on. Unfortunately they are not available for Notes environment. Products/Tools like Team Studio CIAO, Analyzer and Delta will help in bridging the gap and take the Notes environment a long way.
Visit teamstudio.com for more details
Nowadays, we hear a lot of people saying their Notes environment is out of control. The reason is simple. Because Notes is a Rapid Development environment we tend to keep building applications and one fine day hundreds of applications sitting in the app server with the least amount of document possible. I have seen in many places, hundreds of design elements with many duplicate copies of the application/design elements with no version control at all. So, then it becomes tedious for anybody to maintain and people start saying Lotus Notes in not good.
But the fact is we didn't put any control in the first place. Had we put proper controls, source code controls etc etc. we would not have messed up this much. That's where TeamStudio products can help. For all other platforms there are tools available for team of developers to manage the versions of the application and if any problem a way to roll back to previous code and so on. Unfortunately they are not available for Notes environment. Products/Tools like Team Studio CIAO, Analyzer and Delta will help in bridging the gap and take the Notes environment a long way.
Visit teamstudio.com for more details
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Made up my mind
Today, i finally made up my mind to use this blog much more than i have been doing so far. I am willing to cover all that has happened in the past with the present in my posts. But how am i going to differentiate this two? At the moment i am planning to include the month and date(if possible) in the title of the entry.
The reason am doing this is to remember all the good things i have had in the past and hope to continue the same in the future and more. I always think that my memory is so good that i can tell many of the things happened during my childhood, even my mom don't remember.
Ok, so there we go... lets see how it goes.
The reason am doing this is to remember all the good things i have had in the past and hope to continue the same in the future and more. I always think that my memory is so good that i can tell many of the things happened during my childhood, even my mom don't remember.
Ok, so there we go... lets see how it goes.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Effective Team Collaboration in On-Demand Work Place
Attended a half-day seminar on Effective Team Collaboration in On-Demand Workplace conducted by IBM. It was a very good and different from the usual ones. IBM has started doing some great things around Lotus marketing and it is evident in these events. The crowd was pretty decent in number and for the first time i have got DVD's as take away with lots of IBM software evaluation copies.
The presentation was indeed good by Scott Bain - Manager IBM Software Technology Group followed with nice demos from Mark Moore. The presentation was well organised and started with Domino v7 and Sametime integration and explaining the newly introduced Web services in Domino. Got some very interesting points including the free presence awareness, and IM.
This particular feature is available from v6.5 but the sad thing is not many know about this and hence haven't tried in their environments. I don't know of anyone who is using this in Singapore. Initially, i assumed that i require a Lotus Sametime server component to make this work but after taking some time with the speakers after the presentation i found out that its just a matter of turning ON the feature while installing and configuring Domino. Now i am convinced to give it a try in my notebook to begin with.
So then the presentation moved to extending Domino to Portal infrastructures. They covered some of the features of Websphere portal and how it can work with Domino and several other transaction oriented apps. They were explaining how collaboration could extend to portals and will in turn help the customers.
Till that stage, they were explaining about tool based collaboration like E-mails, IM, Discussions, Application databases which we are doing today. In the future there is going to be "Activity based collaboration" which is also called Contextual collaboration.
What it means is this : For a particular goal/activity to be accomplished users are using various tools like Emails, Chats, Word docs to generate artifacts. And the common thread which connects all these is that particular "Activity". The thread which links everything is called an Activity thread which is what Activity centric collaboration all about.
The users might have used various tools, interacted with various users and would have prepared various artifcats like word docs, spread sheets so on so forth. But at one shot, the system will show the users about all the things which has happened on that particular task and what is happening currently.
Sounds exciting!!! Today this technology is available in the form of Lotus Workplace and customers can make use of it straight away. But if users want to stay in the evolutionary path who is currently using Domino v6.5 upwards or Websphere Portal they can wait till "Hannover" time frame and Domino Next which will have Workplace technologies sowed in everywhere.
I look forward to "Hannover". Meanwhile i will start exploring about Workplace :)
The presentation was indeed good by Scott Bain - Manager IBM Software Technology Group followed with nice demos from Mark Moore. The presentation was well organised and started with Domino v7 and Sametime integration and explaining the newly introduced Web services in Domino. Got some very interesting points including the free presence awareness, and IM.
This particular feature is available from v6.5 but the sad thing is not many know about this and hence haven't tried in their environments. I don't know of anyone who is using this in Singapore. Initially, i assumed that i require a Lotus Sametime server component to make this work but after taking some time with the speakers after the presentation i found out that its just a matter of turning ON the feature while installing and configuring Domino. Now i am convinced to give it a try in my notebook to begin with.
So then the presentation moved to extending Domino to Portal infrastructures. They covered some of the features of Websphere portal and how it can work with Domino and several other transaction oriented apps. They were explaining how collaboration could extend to portals and will in turn help the customers.
Till that stage, they were explaining about tool based collaboration like E-mails, IM, Discussions, Application databases which we are doing today. In the future there is going to be "Activity based collaboration" which is also called Contextual collaboration.
What it means is this : For a particular goal/activity to be accomplished users are using various tools like Emails, Chats, Word docs to generate artifacts. And the common thread which connects all these is that particular "Activity". The thread which links everything is called an Activity thread which is what Activity centric collaboration all about.
The users might have used various tools, interacted with various users and would have prepared various artifcats like word docs, spread sheets so on so forth. But at one shot, the system will show the users about all the things which has happened on that particular task and what is happening currently.
Sounds exciting!!! Today this technology is available in the form of Lotus Workplace and customers can make use of it straight away. But if users want to stay in the evolutionary path who is currently using Domino v6.5 upwards or Websphere Portal they can wait till "Hannover" time frame and Domino Next which will have Workplace technologies sowed in everywhere.
I look forward to "Hannover". Meanwhile i will start exploring about Workplace :)
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
LAUG 1st Meeting
So i have attended the 1st Lotus Asia User Group Meeting in Singapore. I initially thought this group was there for quite sometime and i missed many of their meetings. Luckily, i didn't miss any as this is the first one. Seems that there used to be a Notes user group in Singapore long time before but it remained silent for whatever reasons.
Today, the group is rejuvenated again by conducting their first meeting @ Springleaf tower. Happened to meet couple of IBMers too and shared my opinions - i was a bit emotional when arguing IBM has to do more than what it is doing when taking the technology to the management. It was certainly not to just hit IBMers, infact we as developers also have to play a key role when we build/showcase applications to customers.
But my point to IBM is, if customers are not choosing Lotus Notes/Domino as their platform how do i develop apps using that as platform. Of course, I have to do my bit to go,push,argue with my customer base that - look these are the list of things this platform (Notes/Domino) can offer , now you show me a platform which can do all this in one single box. Mine stops there. I can do that and am doing it. But i think its very hard for me to have access to their senior management and convince them.
Right, i am asking IBM to play that role cos i know only IBM can do that. They can talk to corporate/government agencies about the role Lotus can play inside their organisations.
I know that day is not so far and will come soon, and i am sure IBM will do that.
Meanwhile, i hope that i can participate regularly in the LAUG monthly meetings and hopefully i can contribute something back to the community. Thank you very much Stephan for making this happen and thanks to all attendees.
After all, i love this IBM Lotus Notes/Domino platform. I earn my living through this and i badly want to contribute something to it.
Today, the group is rejuvenated again by conducting their first meeting @ Springleaf tower. Happened to meet couple of IBMers too and shared my opinions - i was a bit emotional when arguing IBM has to do more than what it is doing when taking the technology to the management. It was certainly not to just hit IBMers, infact we as developers also have to play a key role when we build/showcase applications to customers.
But my point to IBM is, if customers are not choosing Lotus Notes/Domino as their platform how do i develop apps using that as platform. Of course, I have to do my bit to go,push,argue with my customer base that - look these are the list of things this platform (Notes/Domino) can offer , now you show me a platform which can do all this in one single box. Mine stops there. I can do that and am doing it. But i think its very hard for me to have access to their senior management and convince them.
Right, i am asking IBM to play that role cos i know only IBM can do that. They can talk to corporate/government agencies about the role Lotus can play inside their organisations.
I know that day is not so far and will come soon, and i am sure IBM will do that.
Meanwhile, i hope that i can participate regularly in the LAUG monthly meetings and hopefully i can contribute something back to the community. Thank you very much Stephan for making this happen and thanks to all attendees.
After all, i love this IBM Lotus Notes/Domino platform. I earn my living through this and i badly want to contribute something to it.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Replication Mode
Lately, i have started using local mail file replica than to use my mail box in the server. They are actually for some good reasons.
One is to avoid the network traffic that i would be generating when i access the server each time for my mails. And the other is, i can do all my work related to my mails fast when am in disconnected mode or say replication mode. I would set a auto-replication every 15-20mts so that only at the time of replication i use my network and rest of the time leave it for others :)
I am thinking this way.. If everyone in the organisation does the same way as mentioned before a lot of network bandwidth can be saved and used for some other useful purposes.
Notes/Domino allows this to happen.. So why not take vantage??
One is to avoid the network traffic that i would be generating when i access the server each time for my mails. And the other is, i can do all my work related to my mails fast when am in disconnected mode or say replication mode. I would set a auto-replication every 15-20mts so that only at the time of replication i use my network and rest of the time leave it for others :)
I am thinking this way.. If everyone in the organisation does the same way as mentioned before a lot of network bandwidth can be saved and used for some other useful purposes.
Notes/Domino allows this to happen.. So why not take vantage??
Sunday, January 01, 2006
IBM Lotus Notes Domino Training
Last week went very good indeed as i was taking training classes for polytechnic students in my office.. Yes, they are doing their final year Industry attachment project in our company and i happened to take training for them in Notes/Domino.
They were 5 students from Nanyang Poly and 1 from Temasek poly. It was really interesting for me and was very happy to give some people training in my technology.. A lot of people from Notes community are talking about giving school people training in Notes/Domino (including Nathan Freeman) so that people coming out from school knows a technology other than MS..
I think MS is doing that and that's why every 6/10 wanna be IT professionals will have MCSE certification. If IBM has to change this kind of trend they have to take Notes to all particularly to schools/poly and colleges.
Before the start of the session, students told me that they haven't heard something called Notes/Domino but they do use Outlook at times cos that's what they have in their polytechnic to get their queries answered from their teachers via E-mails.
So i showed them Lotus Notes client and explained them as a PIM tool (includes E-mail, Calendaring/Scheduling, Group Calendars, Collaboration) what it can do in an organization.. They were very happy to see the Discussion DB's and immediately started with posting queries and answers.. I can see the joy in their face..
Most of them have done Java and .Net projects in their curriculum and they haven't seen applications like this before.. I showed them E-mail client first, Calendering and Scheduling, Group Calendars, Resource reservations etc and said all of them are out-of-the-box and this is not all :).. They were so pleased to see this and agreed that it can do a lot for any type of organisation...
Initially, i was showing them only Notes and started with "Story of the Notes" clipping from Julian's blog.. I slowly showed them with the advent of Internet, Lotus came out with their HTTP engine and code named as "DOMINO" and adapted that as the product name for their back end server after that..
I then opened the same discussion DB which they were playing around in Notes to show them in WEB. In Firefox browser the DB opened like charm and everyone in the room were astonished...
I showed them slowly the Domino designer the RAD tool for building Notes/Domino applications..
It was a very short span of time of 3 days in which i showed the capabilites of Notes/Domino and what it can do any organization.. I loved the way the training went and lotsa my training skills showed up during this sessions..
All in all i am very happy that i have shown them that there is this technology called Lotus Notes/Domino which is now a proud member of IBM Workplace..
Good luck to all of the students who came for training..
They were 5 students from Nanyang Poly and 1 from Temasek poly. It was really interesting for me and was very happy to give some people training in my technology.. A lot of people from Notes community are talking about giving school people training in Notes/Domino (including Nathan Freeman) so that people coming out from school knows a technology other than MS..
I think MS is doing that and that's why every 6/10 wanna be IT professionals will have MCSE certification. If IBM has to change this kind of trend they have to take Notes to all particularly to schools/poly and colleges.
Before the start of the session, students told me that they haven't heard something called Notes/Domino but they do use Outlook at times cos that's what they have in their polytechnic to get their queries answered from their teachers via E-mails.
So i showed them Lotus Notes client and explained them as a PIM tool (includes E-mail, Calendaring/Scheduling, Group Calendars, Collaboration) what it can do in an organization.. They were very happy to see the Discussion DB's and immediately started with posting queries and answers.. I can see the joy in their face..
Most of them have done Java and .Net projects in their curriculum and they haven't seen applications like this before.. I showed them E-mail client first, Calendering and Scheduling, Group Calendars, Resource reservations etc and said all of them are out-of-the-box and this is not all :).. They were so pleased to see this and agreed that it can do a lot for any type of organisation...
Initially, i was showing them only Notes and started with "Story of the Notes" clipping from Julian's blog.. I slowly showed them with the advent of Internet, Lotus came out with their HTTP engine and code named as "DOMINO" and adapted that as the product name for their back end server after that..
I then opened the same discussion DB which they were playing around in Notes to show them in WEB. In Firefox browser the DB opened like charm and everyone in the room were astonished...
I showed them slowly the Domino designer the RAD tool for building Notes/Domino applications..
It was a very short span of time of 3 days in which i showed the capabilites of Notes/Domino and what it can do any organization.. I loved the way the training went and lotsa my training skills showed up during this sessions..
All in all i am very happy that i have shown them that there is this technology called Lotus Notes/Domino which is now a proud member of IBM Workplace..
Good luck to all of the students who came for training..
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