A while ago I got together with Steve Bystran from GSX who was here in Puerto Rico for vacation. Luckily, he was staying at a hotel that was very close to me and he offered to take an hour away from his vacation to meet with me. I had heard of GSX's monitoring solution for Quickr Domino at Lotusphere #ls12 but I hadn't seen it in person.
As promised at Lotusphere 2012 #ls12, we have now posted a new Quickr Domino fix pack for 8.5.1. You can find this fix pack in Fix Central or go directly here.
At Lotusphere, we announced that the fix pack would be ready in the first quarter of 2012, and I'm glad that we were able to get this out the door today. The IBM Lotus Quickr Fix Pack 8.5.1.25 for Domino release delivers several features highly requested by Quickr users:
Addition of the Folder Navigator for libraries with deep folder hierarchies and the Index
Improved preview for Microsoft Office file attachments and imported pages
Support for importing HTML
Display of an attachment's last modified date on Attachments tab
Simplified place creation process that eliminates the requirement of reauthentication
The ability for editors and authors to create folders in a place.
Blogsy, one of the top rated blogging apps for iPad, has added support for IBM Connections, IBM's social software platform for business. For the last couple of weeks, I've been working with the Blogsy team in order to get support for IBM Connections added into Blogsy. It all started back in November when Blogsy reached out to me to understand our API. I got them an account to Greenhouse and they were off to the races.
They got a pretty final prototype working just before Lotusphere #ls12 and I showed it at my session on Monday. The feedback from that session was amazing and people were very excited to get their hands on Blogsy.
Blogsy has revolutionized blogging on the iPad and already interfaces with other popular blogging platforms like Blogger, Wordpress, Drupal, Posterous among others.
Blogsy also makes it very easy to add multi media capabilities to blogs by interfacing directly with services such as YouTube, Picasa, and Flickr.
Blogsy also includes a rich text editor which makes formatting very easy. For those advanced users, Blogsy also provides an HTML editor.
IBM Connections support - Now bloggers that use IBM Connections can use Blogsy.
Email - Now you can create and send richly formatted emails. Now, if your blogging platform is not supported by Blogsy and provides the ability to email-to-post then you can use Blogsy to create blog posts. Or if you want to send richly formatted email to friends and family. Also other services have features provided through email. For example you can email to Mail Chimp and it will send it to all your subscribers.
YouTube double tap to open in browser. - Not sure if the YouTube video is the one you want to use? Just double tap on it and it will open in Blogsy's built-in browser where you can watch it or find out more information about it.
Blogger page support - Now you can create and edit Blogger pages.
YouTube private/unlisted videos. - Now Blogsy will show YouTube videos you have set to unlisted or private so you can now drag and drop them into your posts.
Check out a demo below of the latest features:
If you are looking for an amazing blogging experience from your iPad, you won't regret purchasing Blogsy for $4.99. To download (or upgrade) Blogsy, click here.
Here's a cool demo created by Polycom showing how their solution integrates with IBM Sametime, IBM Connections, and other office productivity suites that I stumbled upon today.
Earlier this week IBM released a new short whitepaper on the behaviors required in a social business. While a lot of companies focus on how employees engage with others outside of the firewall, I haven't seen a lot of discussion of behavior guidelines in social media behind the firewall.
As more and more companies begin their social business transformation, most are testing the waters internally behind the firewall. One of the recommendations that often comes up as part of this transformation is to set up Social Computing Guidelines. However, those guidelines don't focus on the actual behavior and communication patterns employees use daily as they collaborate amongst each other.
I don't want to give anything away so instead I'll cover the areas of etiquette highlighted in the paper:
Etiquette in building relationships
Etiquette in interactions
Etiquette in responding to others
Etiquette in including and acknowledging others
Etiquette of mass communications over social networks
Risk and governance
How do you know if this paper is for you? From the paper:
This IBM executive brief is for enterprise leaders who seek to understand the critical role that social business etiquette plays in workforce transformation and in adoption of social business programs. It explores professional interactions among colleagues over online social networks inside the firewall, with particular emphasis on colleagues who do not have an established professional relationship.
The paper is about 10 pages long and is very easy to read. If you are leading the social transformation at your organization this is a great asset to have.
IBM Connections 3.0.1 has a new getting started experience to interactively guide users through steps for setting up and using IBM Connections. Each step lets you Learn more, Watch video or Do it. Want to see how other people are using IBM Connections to do social business? The new getting started walks you through the same steps others have taken to network with colleagues, join a community, start an activity, and share files.
Two ways to use Getting Started with IBM Connections:
Try out Getting Started with IBM Connections that uses IBM Connections hosted in Lotus Greenhouse. You'll need your Lotus Greenhouse credentials to log in.
One of the things that was very exciting about Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 is how the ecosystem for both IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr is growing. One of the business partners that introduced a solution is Lialis. They introduced a WebDAV add-on for IBM Connections.
So what is WebDAV? Let's not get into the technical details. Let's focus instead on what it enables. As per Lialis:
Downloading synchronizing content from/to IBM Connections Files
Deliver shared drives connected to IBM Connections to the users PC (OS independent)
Allow easy archiving of content stored in IBM Connections by coping the files from the file share
Download files from IBM Connections, upload files to IBM Connections via WebDAV
Delete files in IBM Connections via WebDAV
Create communities or profiles inside the IBM Connections via Webdav
Parallel user sessions supported
To me the most exciting feature is the ability to use IBM Connections as a mounted drive directly on your computer. For example, if have a Mac like me you could use this solution to mount all of your IBM Connections Files directly in Finder. Set up your Finder as described here in 3 steps and you are done! Very cool, right?
They have put together a quick video demonstrating the solution
I'm currently working on my presentation for SXSW 2012. I can't believe that I'm going to go to my first SXSW in just 5 weeks. I'm so excited.
As we get ready for our presentation, I was curious and wanted to see what most people are seeing in terms of trends. How are you seeing social media being used by enterprises and what are some of your most favorite examples ? Let us know in the comments section below!
And by the way, if you are going to SXSW 2012, I hope to see you there. Here's the details:
As more and more companies begin their social business transformation, 
