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Friday, June 24, 2011

Is SharePoint 2010 Ready for Social Business? Nope!

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Yesterday, I participated in the This Week in Lotus podcast along with Joyce Davis and the usual hosts: Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke . Once the podcast is available, you'll learn a bit more about the IBM Champion selection process.

We also talk about a video posted by my colleagues recently. This video was posted in our internal Connections instance and it spread virally like crazy. It's the most downloaded and rated video in the last two weeks. It's a great video that compares Sharepoint to IBM Connections and really demonstrates how bad Sharepoint is.

What I liked about the video is that it makes an apples to apples comparison, specifically, it compares file sharing in Connections and file sharing in Sharepoint.

Here's what Brandon Seppa, the creator of the video, has to say:

The fact is that while SharePoint is widely deployed, Microsoft Sharepoint is woefully inadequate as a platform to support Social Business initiatives (HR Transformation, Knowledge Management, Enterprise 2.0, etc). Innovation on the internet has fundamentally changed the accepted usage paradigms for the tools we use to share what we know and discover other people and what they know, and Sharepoint has not kept pace. There will not be an opportunity for Microsoft to fix the many challenges Sharepoint introduces to such projects until the next major release of Sharepoint (in 2013?? 2014?? 2015??), and the inescapable reality is that an organization's Social Business initiatives are likely to succeed or fail long before then. Many Sharepoint customers have been using the platform for 10 years now! A DECADE has passed, and even though they have suffered with sub-standard capabilities, Sharepoint customers are not even ONE STEP closer to Social Business. It's time to move forward!

And again, this is just comparing file sharing. It doesn't even get to compare head-to-head Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Team places, Profiles/My Sites, Ideation (which Sharepoint doesn't have), and other capabilities that are in Connections but not in Sharepoint (microblogging!!)

Another proof point that SharePoint is not ready for Social Business? IDC didn't even include it (2 years in a row) in their social software marketshare report.

Take a peek (the video is 30 mins long but even if you can dedicate 15 mins you'll see how bad things really are in the SharePoint world):

What do you think? Thanks again to Brandon Seppa for putting this together.


Article first published as Is SharePoint 2010 Ready for Social Business? Nope! on Technorati.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

I love it! embed.ly in IBM Connections

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The other day I was catching up on my podcasts and heard of this service called http://embed.ly. It sounded very cool because it promised to make content embedding very easy. It leverages the open format oEmbed to convert links in a webpage to embeddable content.

This got me thinking about whether or not I could use this to spice up the activity stream in Connections. That way if someone shares a link via a microblog, wiki, blog, forum, etc, the actual content would be embedded into the Connections experience and I don't have to leave the site. I looked around in embed.ly's page and stumbled upon this tutorial.

In the tutorial, I noticed that all it took was 5 lines of code. I *had* to give it a try! I launched my Connections demo server and, in fact, after adding those 5 lines of code, content in Connections started to become alive.

Here's a quick demo that demonstrates how it looks:

So how did I do it? Simply follow these steps and you'll be up and running in no time:

  1. If you haven't yet, copy footer.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/footer.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
  2. If you haven't yet, copy header.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/header.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
  3. Switch to the <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates directory
  4. Open header.jsp with your favorite text editor
  5. At the beginning of the file, look for the last <div class="lotusRightCorner">. Just before that, add the following code:

    <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script>
    <script src="http://scripts.embed.ly/jquery.embedly.min.js"></script>
    


  6. That's 2 lines of code. We are almost there. Now, save and close the file
  7. Open footer.jsp with your favorite text editor
  8. Scroll to the very bottom of the file and add the following 3 lines (NOTE: Updated on 31/Aug/2011 to reflect some changes required by embed.ly, mainly the 'key' parameter and the 'urlRe' parameter. The urlRe parameter specifies which domains you want to embed. To pick and choose which domains you want to embed [for example, if you only want to embed content from YouTube], then go here: http://embed.ly/tools/generator . In the example below, I've chosen to embed all services that embed.ly supports as of 31/Aug/2011):

    <script type="text/javascript">
    
    function callEmbedly() {
    
    $('div.lotusContent').embedly(
            { 
                    maxWidth: 450, 
                    wmode: 'transparent',
                    method: 'after', 
                    key: 'e0a98aba95ef11e09dcd4040d3dc5c07',
                    urlRe: 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            });
    }
    
    setTimeout(callEmbedly, 8000);
    </script>


  9. That's it!! 5 lines of code as promised! Now, save and close the file.

Easy, right? Now, everywhere a link shows up in Connections (again, it could be a forum, blog, wiki, status update, etc), the link will be automatically converted into the embeddable object).

To sign up for a free embed.ly account, go here. Another alternative is oohEmbed.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Congratulations to the New IBM Champions

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Moments ago, Ed Brill just announced the new IBM Champions at PACLUG. For the past several weeks, I worked with a bunch of my colleagues as we went through and read all the nominations that were submitted. We worked towards a list 50 new IBM champions that are going above and beyond to evangelize solutions from IBM, especially within the last 12 months.

The IBM Champion program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community — and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence. An IBM Champion is an IT professional, business leader, developer, or educator who influences and mentors others to help them make best use of IBM solutions and services. IBM Champions are not employees of IBM.

Here's the list of the new IBM Champions which has been approved by Alistair Rennie, General Manager of IBM Collaboration Solutions! Congratulations to all that were selected and I hope you continue to be great evangelists for IBM!!

  • Adam Brown
  • Bill Malchisky
  • Bruce Elgort
  • Carlos Casas
  • CC Liew
  • Chris Miller
  • Chris Toohey
  • Daniel Recio
  • David Leedy
  • David Stephens
  • Declan Lynch
  • Eileen Fitzgerald
  • Eric Mack
  • Femke Goedhart
  • Francie Tanner
  • Gabriella Davis
  • Giuseppe Grasso
  • Handly Cameron
  • John Head
  • Julian Robichaux
  • Kenio Carvalho
  • Lidia Vikulova
  • Lisa Duke
  • Marie Scott
  • Mark Leusink
  • Mathew Newman
  • Matt White
  • Mikkel Heisterberg
  • Mitch Cohen
  • Mitsuru Kato
  • Nathan T Freeman
  • Paul Mooney
  • Paul Withers
  • Rob Bontekoe
  • Rob Novak
  • Sanjaya Kumar Saxena
  • Serdar Basegmez
  • Sharon Bellamy
  • Simon Vaughan
  • Sjaak Ursinus
  • Steve Pitcher
  • Stuart McIntyre
  • Theo Heselmans
  • Thomas Duff
  • Tim Tripcony
  • Ulrich Krause
  • Warren Elsmore
  • Yancy Lent
  • Yoshihiro Matsuo
  • Yoshio Maruyama

Please help me congratulate these fantastic community leaders. All IBM Champions will receive a lot of goodies (apparel, gadgets, etc).

To view all the champions in other brands, click here. If you would like to be considered a champion, there will be another nomination period coming up soon so stay tuned!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

#e2Conf Tuesday Live Blog of the Keynotes

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Here's a live blog of the #e2conf Tuesday Keynotes

I'll try to live blog Wednesday's keynote as well, but if I can't you can check out the live stream here.

IBM Once Again Leader In Social Software Platforms

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IDC, for the second year in a row, has named IBM the world wide leader in social software platforms based on market share. IBM was also the world wide leader in social software platforms in IDC's 2010 report.

The release of the report is very timely as the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Conference kicks off today. In this year's report, IDC looks at the social software market for the 2008-2010 period. In the report, you'll find revenue and market share for each of the vendors listed.

IDC reports that the worldwide revenue for social software platforms was more than $500 million in 2010. This represents an almost 32% growth from last year. IDC also mentions that they expect the market to grow to $2 billion worldwide by 2014.

It's also worth noting that Microsoft is not included in this year's list. Microsoft wasn't included in last year's list. This further validates that SharePoint is not an Enterprise 2.0 platform (unless of course you can find the budget to spend $6-$9 on services/customization for each $1 you spend on a SharePoint license).

You can learn more about what IBM is doing at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston here. The keynotes will also be broadcasted live today and tomorrow here.

Article first published as IDC Names IBM Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Software Platforms on Technorati.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

IBM's Presence at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

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I'm in the midst of packing my bags to head out to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. As I looked through the agenda, I noticed that IBM has quite a presence at this year's conference. I also notice that there are more Diamond sponsors than last year. Last year, only Microsoft and IBM were the only Diamond sponsors. Other big vendors have joined this year which continues to validate the importance of this field.

I decided to compile what IBM will be doing at the Enterprise 2.0 conference so that it's easy for you to find.

Tuesday - June 21st - 9:00am - Beyond Collaboration: The Critical Role of Analytics in a Social Business - Ballroom A - Mike Rhodin

Social networks continue to forge complex connections between people, processes, and content, facilitating collaboration and the sharing of information. Companies are already taking advantage of this but the real business value comes when you tap into the data generated by these connections. Analytics turns this data into useful information -- information that becomes business insight, enabling enterprises to take action, fueling better business decisions. Mike Rhodin will discuss the importance of analytics in a Social Business applied both inside and outside of the enterprise and how companies can avoid missing out on an enormous opportunity by not leveraging their social data.

Tuesday - June 21st - 11:30am - 12:15pm - Business Insight Means Better Business Decisions - Room 310 - Alistair Rennie

As Social Business becomes a strategic priority for more businesses, regardless of size, they are looking for the best approach to reap the business benefits. While workforce optimization, process innovation and deeper customer engagements are widely touted as popular entry points, the value lies in the quantitative outcomes. Collaboration, analytics and insight create the perfect combination to unleash the greater value and harness the energy generated by the multitude of social interactions and scores of structured and unstructured data generated daily. While the paradigm evolves from business to business down to peer to peer, simply connecting people isn't enough. True social businesses generate insights from their social data. Alistair Rennie will discuss the means to achieve better business insight with improved social listening tools, social integration with business process management, and new social business consulting services.

Tuesday - June 21st - 1:15pm - 2:15pm - Mobile: Delivering New Context and Capabilities to Applications and Collaboration - Room 313 - Maribel Lopez, David Boloker, John Cash, and JIm Worth

Mobile is more than an access method. Mobile fundamentally changes how companies access information and what data is available to companies such as location and telemetry information. This session will discuss and demonstrate how mobile enriches and expands the way we collaborate.

Tuesday - June 21st - 3:45pm - 4:30pm - UC + Social Computing = Best of Both Worlds? - Room 313 - Irwin Lazar, Chris Morace, Ted Stanton, Christian Finn, Mike Gotta

“Unified Communications,” the intersection of voice, video, messaging, and conferencing and social computing largely exists in silos. The former is largely driven by telecom managers looking to simplify services or better meet the needs of distributed workers, while the latter often evolves organically driven by individual line-of-business needs. But integrating social computing’s ability to help people locate subject matter experts, with UC’s ability to see availability in real-time represents the chocolate-meets-peanut butter moment in collaboration. During this session we’ll look at how enterprise collaboration strategies are evolving to integrate UC and social computing, and how vendors are increasingly adding real-time and social collaboration capabilities to their products.

Wednesday - June 22nd - 1:15pm - 2:15pm - How Do You Measure That? - Room 311 - Rawn Shah and Hardik Dave

It’s one of the toughest social business questions you hear: “how do you measure that?” This session will show you how to describe the progress and/or success of your social environment through different approaches to measuring social environments: activity analysis, social network analysis, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and ethnography. The advantages and weaknesses of each approach will be explained, as well as how population size, infrastructure capabilities, and the maturity of your community affect your analysis.

Wednesday - June 22nd - 1:15pm - 2:15pm - Who Leads Social Business and What Does Leadership Look Like? - Room 309 - Keri Pearlson, Claire Flanagan, Jaime Pappas and Luis Suarez

As the groundswell matures, enterprises face a complex set of social initiatives. We’ll explore the question of leadership and management in a social business by addressing these questions: Who leads the social business strategy formulation? Who leads social business day-to-day? Where in the organization is the social business competency center? What are strengths & risks when IT/HR/Mkt/Communications runs the show? And what does a social business strategy look like in a large corporation?

It's a shame that Luis Suarez (this year's Internal Evangelist of the Year as named by the Dachis Group)f and Rawn Shah both have sessions at the same time since I wanted to participate in both. I'm still not sure which one I'll go to.

I'll be at the conference meeting with analysts and customers. If you don't see me at the IBM pedestal (307), send me a tweet and we'll meet up! To get a full listing of all the sessions, go here: http://www.e2conf.com/boston/conference/#

Remember to follow the conference via the Twitter hashtag: #e2conf to learn about all the new announcements that will be taking place.

Article first published as About to Leave for Enterprise 2.0 on Technorati.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

How To Create a Custom Icon for IBM Connections Community

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Inside IBM, the Rational is one of the teams that has done a fabulous job at creating some fantastic communities of practice. That brand has even created a set of community templates for all brands to follow as they create communities and sub-communities that are specific to the brand.

One of the community managers, Darrel Rader, created a video that he shared internally that walks community managers through the process of create custom community icons. I thought it was a tutorial that a lot of people could benefit from, specially customers and business partners. Therefore, I asked Darrel if I could share the video externally and he gave me the go ahead.

Once you go through the video, you'll be able to create iPhone-like icons that you can use throughout the communities in Connections.

Here's the video

Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Social Project Management Built On Top of IBM Connections

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I've wanted to blog about this for a while so I'm glad I finally was able to reserve some time for this. Trilog one of IBM Business Partners has recently released an update to their application built on top of Connections and Quickr called ProjExec. ProjExec really puts Social into Project Management.

ProjExec has been around for a while and in the latest release they leverage the latest and greatest from Connections. Here are some of the integration points included:

  • The activity stream from Connections is now exposed directly in the ProjExec tool
  • Connections' business card can be surfaced wherever you see a name and provides an easy pivot point between project management and social collaboration
  • You can create and manage activities directly from ProjExec (similar to the Cognos integration where you can create activities from the Cognos dashboard)

One feature that some people will really like is its integration and synchronization with Microsoft Project. You can even create a new project in ProjExec based on an existing Microsoft Project file.

Here's a quick video (no narration) that takes you through ProjExec:


Here's a screenshot showing the activity stream within the ProjExec mashup.


I wasn't aware that they could do this, but one cool feature that ProjExec introduces is the ability to easily the activity stream directly in the Notes client!


The tool has definitely come a long way with proven ROI. Customers have reported double-digit savings on operational costs, 80% time savings, and 400% productivity increase!

Bill Ives who I finally got to meet in person at Lotusphere 2011 #ls11 also took the time to review ProjExec. For all the latest news around ProjExec, check out their blog here and you can follow them on Twitter here. To download ProjExec, you can get it directly from our own Lotus App Catalog.

Monday, June 13, 2011

How To Get Push Notifications from IBM Connections on your Blackberry

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Last week I was approached by a customer who wanted to get push notifications on their BlackBerry device based on activity that was going in their Connections deployment. They had already seen my blog post on how to get push notifications from Connections on an iPhone.

So I went out and did a quick search and found that there's a free app from BlackBerry that lets you subscribe to any RSS feed. The app is called is BlackBerry News Feeds and is a free download from the BlackBerry App World catalog.


I went out to the App Store, downloaded the app and configured it to go against the BleedYellow URL:   http://www.bleedyellow.com/news/atom/stories/public

Once I did that, I went out to BleedYellow updated my status and voilá ! I got a push notification on my phone. So if you were looking for a solution to get your Connections activity stream sent out to your BlackBerry, now you have one.

Speaking of mobile stuff, if you don't mind, please go out to our Team Blog and answer this quick poll on which mobile devices and apps you use. We need your feedback!

Enjoy!

Friday, June 10, 2011

IBM's Journey to Becoming a Social Business

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One of my colleagues who you probably have stumbled upon before, Ted Stanton, recently participated in the 2011 Dachis Social Business Summit. The summit, sponsored by IBM, occurred in 4 different places worldwide: Austin, London, Singapore, and Sydney. I talked about the summit last month when I highlighted Rawn Shah's presentation.

I also wanted to take the time and highlight Ted's presentation which he recently shared with me. In Ted's session he covers the IBM's Journey to Becoming a Social Business. There's a replay of his session available online, but I understand it's only available for those that participated in the summit. If the replay is opened up, I'll share it here as well.

In his presentation, Ted takes the audience from the early days of many organizations centered around mainframes to our intranet portal to the latest and greatest portal now centered around social software and activity streams. Ted also shares some of the latest metrics; for instance, IBM currently has 285,000 wiki pages with 15.2 million total views!

Additionally, you'll see some of the benefits that IBM has measured based on its use of social software such as 60% of IBMers able to increase sales! As you'll see in his presentation, Ted shares how one of the core pillars under IBM's Smarter Planet strategy is social business. IBM is heavily investing in this area and is using all of its muscles to encourage all organizations to become a social business.

I really liked (and agree) with Ted's closing statement: "A Journey to Become a Social Business.... is never over". Right on!

Ted will also be at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in two weeks co-presenting with the Director of Sharepoint, Christian Finn, and Mike Gotta from Cisco.

sdf

Thursday, June 9, 2011

How to add Facebook Like, Twitter, and Google +1 Buttons to IBM Connections

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Last week I shared instructions on how to add the Google +1 button to Blogger. When I tweeted about it, I noticed that I had never shared instructions on how to add the Facebook Like, Twitter and Google +1 buttons to IBM Connections.

Once you follow the instructions below, you'll see the Twitter, Google, and Facebook buttons show up in the header as shown below. Of course, there are other places to put it in; this is just where I placed them. And once you do this, the users will have a very easy way to share a blog, wiki, discussion topic, etc with their favorite social network.


Here are the instructions on how to get started:

  1. If you haven't yet, copy footer.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/footer.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
  2. If you haven't yet, copy header.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/header.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
  3. Switch to the <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates directory
  4. Open header.jsp with your favorite text editor
  5. At the very end of the file, look for the last </div>. Just before that, add the following code:

    <div style="float: right;">
     <div style="float: left; clear: none; padding: 5px; padding-left: 5.5px; padding-right: 5.5px;">
      <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal" data-via="lbenitez">Tweet</a>
     </div>
     <div style="float: left; clear: none; padding: 5px; padding-left: 5.5px; padding-right: 5.5px;">
      <g:plusone></g:plusone>
     </div>
     <div style="float: left; clear: none; padding: 5px; padding-left: 5.5px; padding-right: 5.5px;">
      <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?app_id=166725596724792&amp;href=
    <%=request.getRequestURL()%>&amp;send=false&amp;layout=button_count&amp;width=75
    &amp;show_faces=false&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;font&amp;height=21"
    scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:75px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe> </div> </div>


  6. Save and close the file
  7. Open footer.jsp with your favorite text editor (Note: this is the same place where you would add the Google Analytics code or Coremetrics or any other web analytics tool you are using)
  8. Scroll to the very bottom of the file and add the following lines:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
    

  9. Save and close the file

Enjoy!

Note: The Twitter button doesn't work over when using SSL (https) as mentioned in Twitter's FAQ. Therefore, if you have configured Connections to work over SSL you may want to get rid of the Twitter code and just leave the Facebook and Google buttons.

Note 2: The Facebook and Google buttons require that the URL that's being shared is accessible externally. Therefore, this code won't work in an internal version of Connections; only for those accessible externally.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

2 New Videos: Moderation and ECM Integration in Connections 3.0.1

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There are now 2 new videos that have been published in the IBM Connections wiki. These videos cover the new Moderation capabilities introduced in Connections 3.0.1 as well as the new ECM integration introduced in that release.

Just before Connections 3.0 was released, the Information Development team had already published ~10 videos demonstrating the various capabilities of the system.

Here's the moderation video:

                                                                                                                                           

To view the moderation video in full size go here. To view the ECM video, go here.

Kudos to the Information Development team who has done a tremendous job getting all these videos out there.If you still need to catch up, the full list of videos can be found here.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Software Development Is Officially a Social Process

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I have talked a couple of times about socializing the social development process. For a while now, this integration has been available in technology preview mode.

At Lotusphere '11 #ls11 we announced that the integration would be ready for production by Q2 of this year. And it's coming in 7 days!

To get ready, you can watch a replay of a webcast that I announced earlier called Accelerate Software Delivery with Social Software webcast.

The integration will be available natively in Rational Team Concert 3.0.1 which will be available next week (June 14, 2011). The integration consists of:

  • Integrated activity stream within Rational Team Concert (RTC)
  • Ability to create activities directly from RTC (the activity will have a direct link back to the RTC workspace)
  • Ability to create a blog directly from RTC
  • Ability to surface the Connections business card directly within RTC
  • Search for contacts from RTC
  • Update your status and microblog directly from RTC
  • Associate an RTC project with a community for direct access to community features (forums, wikis, blogs, etc) from RTC
  • Connect RTC User Profiles to Connections Profiles
  • and more..

Here's a quick demo that shows some of the integration points:

To learn more, visit the Social page in the Rational Jazz site and check out IBM's official press release here.

If you are already an RTC 3.0 user, you can simply download the connector from here (with source code). And if you are NOT using RTC, you can also download RTC for free from here (3.0.1 Release Candidate 3)

New Residency Announcement: Customizing Connections User Interface

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Last week, IBM announced a new Redbooks Wiki residency for Connections. The residency is open to IBMers, business partners, and customers.

The residency will take part during a 5 week period between July 18th and August 19th. They are looking for 6 people who have done work around customizing the UI for Connections. Here's a quick excerpt from the residency page:

This new Lotus Wiki delivable will provide guidance to customers seeking to expand capabilities with IBM Connections. These new features will provide a rich user experiences, increase end user satisfaction, productivity, and value-added use of IBM Connections inside and outside the organization. Designed with a Social Business in mind, IBM Connections gives you fast access to everyone in your professional network - your colleagues, customers and partners. The latest capabilities in IBM Connections such as Moderation, Ideation Blogs, and the Media Gallery, enable you to embrace networks of people who are engaged and work in transparent and nimble ways to create business value.

This residency consists a total period of 5 weeks, from July 18 through August 19 and requires 6 residents. This is a remote residency. All participants will participate from their home office location and interact with others in remote fashion.

If you are interested in signing up and have 20 hours/week to commit to this, go up to the residency page for more information: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/residents.nsf/Residency/14449F324AF10D83852578A40069390C?OpenDocument

Hope that a lot of you who are doing tremendous work sign up!

Monday, June 6, 2011

64-bit Quickr Connectors Are Here!

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That's right! The Quickr Connectors that you've been waiting for so long are finally here. And even before they were promised.
You may remember that we were targetting the second half of 2011. However, as Mac Guidera just announced the new Quickr Connectors are now available as of June 6th, 2011 so we were able to beat our commitments and that feels really good!

  Key features of HF7
  • Windows 7 64-bit support, including Windows 64-bit Explorer Connector
  • Microsoft Office 2010 64-bit Connectors
  • Microsoft Outlook 2010 64-bit Connector
Go out and get it:
Enjoy!

It's Here: Customizing Quickr Domino v8.5

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A while back, I shared with you how I'm working very hard with our team to improve the documentation around Quickr Domino v8.5. This is mainly based on feedback I heard at Lotusphere '11 #ls11.

The team has done a tremendous work in this area. So far the following has been published:

And today, I'm glad to announce that we have a new whitepaper focused solely on customization based on the new Pages architecture in Quickr Domino 8.5. Here are some of the things you'll find in the whitepaper:

  • Anatomy of the Quickr 8.5 theme
  • What's new in the Quickr 8.5 for Domino theme
  • Creating a custom theme
  • Customizing forms
  • Customizing widgets
  • Migrating customized templates to the 8.5 theme
  • Quickr for Domino hooks
  • Other customizations

I would like to thank two partners who really helped review the content and make sure it was ready for publication: Snapps and Opus Neo. And of course, thanks again to the development team who's working extra hard to get all this stuff published.

The whitepaper is available in PDF format and you can download it here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/quickrcustomizing/

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

How To Add Google +1 Button to Blogger

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I just caught the news about Google making available the new +1 Button.

If you want to understand the value of the Google +1 button, here's a quick video that Google put together:

As an end user, I'm still not sure about the value, but as a content publisher it might help my search rankings and make my content more discoverable so I figure I would add it to Connections and my Blogger blogs. (more on Connections in a follow-up post).

Adding the Google +1 button to Blogger is pretty easy. Once you follow these instructions, it'll show up on your page similar to this:


Here's how you get it done:

  1. Go to Blogger.com
  2. Log in with your account if you haven't yet
  3. On your Dashboard, click the Design link for your blog you want to modify
  4. Near the top of the page click on Edit HTML
  5. Now on top of the text box, click the Expand Widget Templates checkbox
  6. Find the line that contains </body>
  7. Just before that tag, add the following code:

    <script src='http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js' type='text/javascript'/>
    

  8. Now search for post-body and you should find something like this:

    <div class='post-body entry-content'>
    

  9. Immediately after that line, add the following code:

    <div class='post_share social-media'>

    <div class='wdt_button'>

    <g:plusone expr:href='data:post.url'/>
    </div>

    </div>
  10. Now look for .footer-outer { and you should find something like this:

    .footer-outer {

    color:$(footer.text.color);

    background: $(footer.background);

    ...



  11. Just before that line add the following:

    /* Social share styles

    ----------------------------------------------- */

    .social-media {

    width: 90px;

    }

    .post_share {

    float:left;

    }

    .post_share .wdt_button {

    clear:left;

    margin:0;

    }

    .wdt_button {

    padding:5px;

    }



  12. Click Save Template and that should do it.

To see how to add the Twitter and Facebook Like buttons to your Blogger blog, see this post.

Enjoy!