Satsuma, from appearances is doing no different than IBM, and if you read through their site, have taken great care about the way they can offer services to a changing market. We already know that IBM, in it's own operations, has services and support through it's GTS business that can also migrate clients. Just like Satsuma, IBM supports it's clients, to deliver the best outcome for the customer. The difference between Satsuma and IBM is merely the scale of offerings.

No Kidding there are delays!

This is perhaps the next big thing since MMO games came into existence around 1997 with Ultima Online. Rather than buy the console or software, you simply play a virtualised session through any capable device be it mobile/droid/"i" device, PC or MAC. You need at least 5-10Mbits to play, as the video is literally streamed to you from the host server, whilst your inputs are relayed back, processed and returned to you (and anyone else in the virtual vicinity). The other big thing is that it would transform the subscription based model for gaming. Rather than buying a title outright, or subscribing to one game only (ie World Of Warcraft or Eve), you buy a membership to a range of games that could be streamed to your a$$kicking 50inch Plasma.

So, this means you could be on your Android phone, or your 50inc plasma ;), playing a PC game against someone else who is using an iPad or iPhone. Best place to play these games at the moment would be in Korea, Japan or any of the 10Mbit+ club of countries. On a side note Kyrgystan it seems has 4 times the average speed of Australia if Speedtest.net has any substance to it, (/facepalm). I know the tyranny of distance that our forefathers had to endure to discover Australia continues to plague us today, but in terms of latency...

UPDATE: Thursday August 12. Thanks for fixing it ASAP.

Happy to go along to the Ivy... I don't think they'll let me in though, as I'm not cool enough as I still use Notes 7 alot...LOL.

This actually cannibalises the custom app work we have become accustomed to as IBM goes ape-sh_t on selling LotusLive. I had signed up for the LotusLive trial a while ago and got a follow up phone call recently asking if I wanted to buy LotusLive not once, but twice. Clients who do take it up can also ditch some of their infrastructure, and push the Lotus components into the cloud for lower cost thus reducing their capability, and subsequently your opportunity for app dev work. So, I don't see how the LotusKnows campaign will help application developers from that perspecitve.

I do however see a silver lining. BP's with sufficient agility can move into specialised hosted app dev services where they provide specific solutions through the "cloud". It also forces BP's to cross train into other up-trending technologies to maintain profitability (or survive).

Right now though the BP's are gonna have to drink the the IBM coolaid because that's where IBM is shoveling their dosh. License sales, (no surprise there). Custom application development is a secondary sell and actually conflicts with the "cloud" philosophy.

Given that historically 70+% of IT projects go over-budget and over-time it's no surprise then that customers are trying to reduce their exposure to the risk of those missed expectations. So, I think in many places, (outside the rarified atmosphere of North America), Lotus is will become largely irrelevant on the client site. You need to skill up elsewhere, and/or gear solutions for the "cloud" (aka Application Service Providers 2.0).

Hope there will be more in terms of print media in the public domain, than promoting Lotus to internal IBM staff and the coming and going of couriers. I resisted the metaphorical comparison of IBM staff just wiping their feet on Lotus, but that would be snarky.... ;)

 UPDATE: Yep.. The LotusKnows.com.au site is up as well as some print media hitting the shelves (via Ed).

http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR

I am in agreement to actually. But, (and it's a "Serena Williams" sized "but"...), my beef is more about the fact that Mark Z continues to change the goal posts without letting you know. I can see why people are getting miffed about it. You can't start out being all secure, and then move the goal posts every year or so, as people aren't sure what's going on and not all will be smart enough to avoid identity theft.

This ABC article helped me see the light, as it were. This brilliantly animated analysis of Facebook privacy over the last 5 years sums it up perfectly.

Only now after 5 years is it blatantly obvious that Facebook will eventually be totally open. And perhaps that's the way you need to approach it as a user. Mark Zuckerberg is a right -royal twat for not taking the couple of billion dollars that was offered almost 3 years ago, for facebook. Technology is a ruthless business, and some technologies have a useby date shorter than the life expectancy of single-cell organisms. Adding to the disquiet amongst the natives, the Quit Facebook day campaign, I can see a facebook "reboot" coming.

In the meantime, I'll wait it out.... But where was I ? Oh yeah, back to the original headline. Facebook has lots of security... when deactivating your account, I had to re-enter my password, and also enter a "captcha" value to complete the process, then I get a confirmation email as well. So, a very secure and safe means of closing your account...Ironic I thought in the circumstances.

At least it will support flash ;)

I suppose it'll be nick-named the "gPad". I can see it already, if you touch certain parts of the screen to launch Google's applications you would be touching the "gSpot".. Booom-tish.. thank you everyone and goodnight!

Recently, I was asked to modify a web app to open dynamically generated spreadsheets/word docs, natively, in their respective applications. Normally, the content would fire up the application but it would render in IE, and it would be a bit of a pain to do things like save it locally after reviewing it, (see screen shot).

It's almost useful, but you can't easily save the data else without starting up the native application manually and copy and pasting. Bit of a pain..

Well, after trawling google with a drift net, I managed to collate something that you may find of value.

Eventually, my trawl led me to Codestore, which is it's own little fountain of knowledge. I found this article where Jake explains how a java agent can do this job quite well and is designed for static files. It's a much more serious solution, and has a bigger scope. But my scope is smaller, and I'm lazy.

I am "ok" with Java, but after a day or two of it, my left eye starts to twitch, so then realise I need to read the signs, and want to achieve something similar but without too much complexity in it's implementation.

A link on Jake's article took me to this little post to generate "downloadable files". But the comment at the end was the key which talks about using "application/download" as the content type and content-disposition like this.

RESPONSE.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/download')
RESPONSE.setHeader('Content-Length', len(data))
RESPONSE.setHeader('Content-Disposition','attachment;filename=Data.dat')

Now remember that we can control the response header by printing "Content-type" as the first thing the agent outputs. So, with all this in mind you can do

   Print {Content-Type:application/download}
   Print {Content-Length:} + Str(Len(sContentData))
   Print {Content-Disposition:attachment;filename=yourFilenameHere.xls}
   Print sContentData

Now, sContentData is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in XML format in this example. So this works well for text data. If you put the code above into your agent that you call via an anchor link, it should be alot more intuitive for your users to download the content.

If they select "open" the application will launch natively in it's own application, or you can still save it to a file as you would expect. This blog post by Scott Hanselman talks about all the gotchya's when dealing with IE and file downloads.

I had seen this a couple of years ago on TED... You'll probably see it in Google's O/S at some point in the near future, as an alternative interface to the traditional icons interface. It's cute, but I don't see it as revolutionising the workplace. This demo though is well presented and good giggle...

Video link here

And just for a few seconds there was a screen shot in their office, and Lotus Notes mail was up on the screen. And it looked like 6.5 mail, still going strong... hehe

Source video here. ABC seems to be doing more about putting Lotus in the media than IBM.. ;)

But I have a solution. Check this kid out!

Just fly this kid in.. Have Whitney lip sync it,  no one would know the difference, just pay this kid in twinkies, and it will be the best concert she has ever done ! Everyone goes home happy.

 The original news report from the London Daily Telegraph implies there is still some ambiguity in determining it's age, thus allowing people to continue to believe that it's really the shroud of the Messiah. I am highly skeptical as to it's authenticity. The 3d technology they're using is not that ground breaking either.

Most of it seems to be relating to what 3D afficionados term "bump maps". Which basically gives 3D resonance based on the richness of colour/detail in a 2d surface. However, the more complex part is that the texture was wrapped around a body, not just laid out flat. Then they use all sorts of assumptions about skin colour/hair/eye colour etc.

Well, all this philanthropy has not gone to waste, as it will be part of a a two-part "documentary" appearing on the History channel in the near future. I suppose someone had to pay for the 3D artists to work on it....

".. most of these projects lasted less than three months and cost under $30,000 -- but rather [..] IT targeted projects with high visibility across the organisation, ones that would show people a different way of working."

Being able to have a big impact on any significant business for under $30k I think is a reasonable "ka-pow!" in justifying the investment in the technology. More of these please!

It's a bit like Indiana Jones, discovering little gems like this, buried deep within the bowels of the technology, now, if only my bag of sand is the right weight!

Check it out here.

Melbourne has had it's hundred year storm over the weekend.