Ed Brill

The Inbox East 2004 weblog has good news about the content plans for their November conference in Atlanta:...we're introducing a similar "Lotus Notes Experience" including a day workshop and exhibits on the show floor. This is in conjunction with the good Penton e-Pro magazine folks. Our goal...

My colleague Dee Fleming has posted the first entry of the re-launched lotus.com/weblog. A whole bunch of people have signed up to contribute to the re-launch. You can meet all the new Lotus bloggers here....

This whole "Longhorn" replan isn't really a major focus of mine -- as I said last week, I tend to wait until a Microsoft product is close to shipping or has shipped before thinking about its features. I have been reading the other blogs about it, though. Thus, this quote from Jupiter Research...

Well, I guess it wasn't the slow boat after all... my iPod arrived this morning. Pretty impressive actually, considering that I ordered it at 10 PM on Friday night -- 83 hours to ship a customized (engraved) iPod from Shanghai to Chicago, over a weekend. Nice job, Apple! Not sure about that s...

Well, depending on which e-mail from Apple.com I believe, my iPod is: Shipped From: F/G Distribution Center, Elk Grove, Ca 95758 (First and second tracking number) 12:53 AM / Left origin /SHANGHAI CN (Elk Grove must be a suburb ;) (First tracking number) Delivery location -- INDIANAPOL...

Infoworld recently reviewed instant messaging add-on products that focus on public IM products. In this sidebar article, they talk about security needs for corporate instant messaging, and say:If there's a security ideal for enterprise IM, IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing would...

Well, it seems it is never too early to start discussing the content for the next Lotusphere. The call for abstracts hasn't even been issued yet; the nominations for Lotus Awards aren't open (though they will be this week); the registration site is up but not formally announced; heck, it isn't...

I was at my mom's house earlier tonight, and found an old file from college job recruiting days. It included a lot of letters like this one:March 8, 1990 Dear Mr. Brill: Thank you for the time you spent interviewing with us. Our discussion of your interests, education and experience hel...

From rustyspigot.com:My number one suggestion to Lotus for the new version (and maybe I should read the forums to see if they addressed this): Realize that the mouse has (a minimum of) two mouse buttons. When I'm in the mail client, allow me to right-click and say "Reply To." Or, I can right-cli...

What's this? (click for full image) ...

There's an official press release on this now, and coverage on other publications, but eWeek has to win for best headline on this story. From eWeek:Microsoft is expected to officially announce later on Friday its future roadmap for the desktop version of Longhorn. And while developers and custo...

As I mentioned the other day, my next business trip takes me to Russia and the UK, about a month out from now. Good thing, too, because it looks like it will take that long to get a Russian visa. This will be my second trip to Moscow. There seems to be a lot more paperwork involved than there...

John just upgraded this site to Dominoblog 2.2.1e, which contains several anti-comments-spam features. If you encounter any issues with posting comments, let me know. I'm slowly looking at other cool features that have been added in the latest template upgrades... for example, did you know th...

yes, like the rest of the bunch, I've received a few more google gmail invites. Ping/comment/e-mail if interested. Update: what, that took 45 minutes to give 'em all out -- amazing....

I'm sure it's purely coincidence, but a few hours after yesterday's blog entry on the new Microsoft book on Notes migration, here's what you'll get when you surf on over to the download center: "The download you requested is unavailable. If you continue to see this message when trying to acc...

Declan found a new book on migrating Lotus Notes apps to Microsoft .NET earlier today. It's lengthy and has a lot of technical detail about what is possible in such a migration (answer -- the typical MS effort to narrow scope and declare certain applications as un-migrate-able). Rather than...

For some reason, in the last week or so, I've received a ton of requests to link to pages/products/people from edbrill.com. Generally speaking, I'm going to deny requests like this. Why? Well, there are a lot of ways to publicize your site/product/self, and while I'm flattered that this blog...

In case anyone was wondering about whether my job transition left a gap in the competitive posture at Lotus....An interview with Bob Bry, enablement manager:"Recently Microsoft removed its next proposed release of Exchange, code-named Kodiak, from its roadmap altogether, and promised instead to...

The article starts with more coverage of the recent IBM Research press day, but expands into updated perspectives on the Lotus roadmap.A recent demonstration of new collaboration technologies under development at IBM's research labs won the company praise for its vision and deft handling of the...

It's starting. This week, a number of my colleagues are starting to contribute to the lotus.com/weblog. This will be my last solo entry... and as you can see, it came with a request. If you can help with either of the Notes/Domino 6.5 queries included there, please let me know. ...

As some of you know, I'll be speaking at Admin&Developer UK 2004, on 4/5 October in Bedfont/Feltham. I am hoping to see many of local/regional readers, bloggers, customers, etc. at this conference. However, I know that for some, attending the conference is a non-starter. So, as much as I...

A sad day for the blog. I suppose it was inevitable.... a half-dozen spam comments were posted to some of the most recent blog topics. Three different IP addresses, many different linked websites. Looks like Steve is one step ahead; as such, we'll be planning to upgrade to the latest domin...

When I arrived home from the last California trip (Linuxworld in SF), it dawned on me that I didn't seem to have my jacket with me anymore. I recalled taking it off at SFO airport security, but not much since then. I figured I had probably left it behind at the American Airlines Admiral's Club...

Well, three days of intense meetings in California all wrapped up. Unfortunately, flight options at this hour are quite limited in terms of heading home, so I'm here in Los Angeles until tomorrow. That's fine...it's not like it's a quiet little town. In fact, this might make three sushi night...

Has anyone else taken a look at Technorati lately? I haven't blogged about it in well over a year, but recently took another look after a link on Peter O'Kelly's blog. I think the site is intriguing -- primarily because of its understanding of the linkages among various weblogs. I also foun...

The queen of Lotusphere, Sandra Marcus, sent out an e-mail to a few folks internally saying that early-bird registration for Lotusphere 2005 is open. Some of you who have attended Lotusphere in the past will receive e-mail today with more details. The early-bird registration price is only US$1...

A fascinating non-story.Executives said Microsoft was opting to deliver a stream of releases that delivered messaging features in incremental waves. The first of those releases will come in September when Microsoft releases its Best Practices Analyzer for Exchange.a) that's a release? and b) fas...

Arrived at my customer meeting in plenty of time today -- after wearing down the cell phone battery during the drive talking to a different customer, talking to Rocky, and talking to John. During introductions before the meeting started, I was asked if I had perhaps been referring to this part...

I was chatting with Duffbert last night about his latest book read. Dan Gillmor's "We, the Media" discusses the way the web, including weblogs, newsgroups, wikis, RSS feeds, and more, has changed journalism and media forever. Gillmor is at the heart of bridging old media and new -- he writes...

While I'm still transitioning to my new job, some things happen faster than others. I have a total of four customer meetings on the calendar this week, two face-to-face and two phone/e-meetings. At the moment, I'm headed home from a meeting with a customer who is on the short end of a merger/...

Last week, I blogged the announcement of end of support for Notes/Domino R5. Of the eight comments, most seemed to be wistful about R5, the release that was, rather than anything about the announcement itself. I have to admit that I was expecting more comment on this. IBM's tracking studies...

Behold the rare and wondrous breed -- the Citibank credit card with a Visa logo. I have had a Citibank Visa of some form since college, and for many years have had the version that awards American Airlines AAdvantage miles for purchase. Over the last few years, Citibank has written, called,...

And to think that I knew Brendan back when....Update -- it appears that Brendan was tired of being teased about his instant promotion, and asked for a correction. Anyway, anyone reading the actual content here?"This is a technical preview in Lotus Workplace Messaging 2.0," said Brendan Crotty,...

An article discussing the extension of Microsoft Office beyond personal productivity into a product line. Most of the article is positive about the new Office 2003 capabilities, but there is one balance point, at least...Microsoft faces strong competitors in the collaboration field. I.B.M., for...

By the way, a little known fact: you can get fired for what you put on your personal blog just as easily as you can get fired for what you put on your corporate blog -- there really is no difference in my mind. At NEC I saw an exec get fired for a comment he made on a Web forum. Be careful out...

Reachable from the downloads page on developerWorks:Lotus ... more directly here. I guess that gives Carl one less thing to pester me about. ;)...

A high-level view of the collaboration software market....Collaboration tool vendors are selling products to customers as diverse as states, local jurisdictions and several wings of the Defense Department. For example, the Connecting Windsor-Essex public Web portal in Ontario uses IBM's Lotus...

Matthew White writes:I have yet to meet a Notes developer who is alienated by the move to more open standards. Everyone I talk to decided long ago that the opportunities afforded by learning Java / J2EE are much more appealing than learning yet another MS development platform, and should make l...

I guess being offline the last two days means I'm getting scooped on my own news :). Via Arthur Fontaine, my marketing colleague: We are currently planning to provide a Notes 7 client for the Macintosh platform, complete with popular integrated Instant Messaging capabilities on par with those...

SearchDomino reports on a recent press briefing at Lotus:IBM Lotus on Wednesday offered a glimpse of its future collaboration strategy by demonstrating experimental new communication tools that it hopes will soon lead to big changes in the way that people work together. The new technologies fal...

A short article pointing to an updated Microsoft tool to strip out "hidden" personal data in Office documents, such as comments, revisions, etc. There's a reason I typically only distribute PDFs of presentations I do these days -- it's easier than remembering to try to clean up speaker notes or...

Now in the Knowledgebase....The last day of software maintenance (phone support, electronic support, and software program fixes) for IBM Lotus Notes V5.x and Domino V5.x and IBM Lotus Enterprise Integrator V3.1 and V3.2 will be September 30, 2005. With Lotus Notes V6 and Domino V6 in market for...

An interview with Thomas Schaeck, WebSphere Portal Architect:Q: What trends are you seeing in the enterprise portal development? A: The early portal products were pretty much focused on providing aggregated information and applications to users. We can now see a shift toward more advanced wo...

Johansson admits that Microsoft "has lost a lot of trust" due to the way it traded off security for usability and features in the past, and says it will be a "gradual change before users discover that our products are safe."Link: Computerworld New Zealand: "We have lost a lot of trust" -- Micro...

With all the distractions last week, there wasn't much time to blog about the trip to Linuxworld itself. I was at the conference briefly on Tuesday & Thursday; Wednesday was a local press tour. In the end, it felt to me like Linuxworld is a show mostly about the exhibit hall and keynotes a...

What a week -- New job on Monday Linuxworld on Tuesday Great press interviews on Wednesday; the peak of the controversy; lots of interaction with great friends Linuxworld panel, lost cell phone (thank you for retreiving, Richi!), lost jacket, lost mind on Thursday ;) About the only...

Home for seven hours between flights...log onto IM...screen lights up like a pinball machine. Anyway, thanks to those of you who seem to have decided that I can't just have this little occasion today pass quietly. ...

I'm not familiar with the publication; this came in to me through the IBM PR team. The author of the article is Nicole Minnick, the CIO of Shaw Pittman, a law firm..In 2001 we installed Lotus Instant Messaging for roughly 1,000 users as a natural extension of our E-mail platform. Very quickly,...

Some coverage of beta 2 of Notes/Domino 7 etc....Extensive plumbing work on the server product will also finally enable Notes/Domino applications to exchange data with systems based on IBM's DB2 database software, a capability customers have increasingly demanded as Notes has become more of an a...

My friend Colleen's dad passed away last night, after a tough battle with cancer. That plus an intense schedule in San Francisco today and tomorrow has made it tough to get to the blog. I'll be back shortly....

New on the jargon watch --"astroturf": "The tactic of anonymously attacking competitors or artificially fomenting tides of support for or against a cause". Sean Gallagher has blogged about the Radicati Group report and discussions related to it that have taken place here, on Vowe.net, etc. Se...

Jason Dumont, Lotus Senior Product Manager:"With all the excitement this year over Lotus Workplace," Dumont continues, "we want to make sure customers haven't lost sight of the fact that we're just a few months from delivering the best Notes and Domino version ever. No previous release yet has e...

This Q&A with Dr. Ambuj Goyal covers several different topics. The reporter inquired about the Radicati report, so you can see Ambuj's responses on that by clicking through. There's other good stuff, too:Q: What about the general marketing of Workplace -- there is some criticism that you h...

on the lotus.com/compare website (needs a better subhead; I'll fix that tomorrow). There are two sections to the response -- some point/counterpoint, and some texture at looking at the overall market. The point/counterpoint includes a few quotes from the industry and trade press. One particu...

Ross Mayfield, who is the CEO of Socialtext (and a blogger I read regularly), has some thoughts on recent discussion of analyst reports:I point all this out because we have gone from a general distrust of analyst projections post-Boom -- back to case-by-case due dilligence. This kind of back and...

SearchDomino filed a report about the Radicati Group messaging market analysis and the discussion that has ensued. Once again, I'll let the official IBM response, once posted, address some of the points about roadmap and future. Link: SearchDomino: Domino users fuming over Radicati report ...

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I'm starting a new job today. Within IBM. Within Lotus. Working with Lotus messaging, specifically a couple of products called Lotus Notes and Domino. Maybe you've heard of them. This move has been in the works for several months (and foreshadowed here many times!). IBM has some really gr...

Jeff Schneider, CEO of Momentum Software, has given me a great idea for a new Lotus Notes marketing slogan: (emphasis mine):Most talented engineers hate environments like Lotus Notes. They roll their eyes thinking about scripting hell, inability to enforce uniform constraints and business logic,...

Colin picked up a subtlety in some of this week's discussions:I've noticed a trend, though, for people to start labelling the Domino blogging/online community in ways that are not particularly flattering. Some folks have insinuated that we're all a bunch of self-congratulating, back-slapping cro...