LepoLand - A Blog by Alan Lepofsky
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A Notes Calendar Feature That I Really Miss

Lotus Notes allows you to choose the time zone for both the start and end time of an event.   I used to love this when recording travel times for a flight that starts in one time zone and finishes in another.

Notes 8.5 Ships!

Rather than recreate the news here, please take a look at Ed's post about Notes 8.5, and the post by Chris that highlights many of the new features.

I'll try and get Notes 8.5 installed on my Mac, and in Windows (via VMWare) soon.  

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this, and I'm thrilled to see Lotus getting great coverage in the press.

Editting native HTML file with Textedit in Mac OSX

I learned a nice tip today, so I figured I'd share.  I wanted to edit an HTML file but when I opened it in Textedit, it kept showing me the formatted document, not the HTML code.

To change this behaviour, go to Textedit - Preferences, and on the Open and Save screen, click on "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files"



Now the file opens as HTML.

You got Twitter In My Notes

Check out this awesome tool by Thomas Adrian that integrates Twitter into a Notes database!

I’m trying out TimeBridge for online Calendar and Scheduling

Calendar and scheduling outside your own company is almost always a nightmare.  (sometimes even inside your company).   While I was at IBM and using Lotus Notes, 99% of my meetings were with internal coworkers, and this very simple to schedule and manage.  However, now I'd say 50% of my meetings are with people outside of Socialtext, using dozens of different clients, and freetime searches are not readily available.   So, I've been trying out TimeBridge, and my first experiences have been wonderful.

The UI is great.  It is simple, colourful, uses lots of drag and drop, ... ,...

Here is an example scenario: I've been planning a get together in Toronto will a bunch of former colleagues.   I went into TimeBridge, and chose 5 potential meeting times.



I then sent them all invitations...



They each received an email with a link that takes them to a TimeBridge web page where they can choose their #1 choice, the times they definitely can not come, and then the times that would be ok.



As more people respond, it is easy to see which dates/times worked for the most people.

There are automated email reminders, including ones like the message shown below, which informed me (the organizer) that based on the limited number or responses at the time, TimeBridge could not auto-confirm the meeting.   There were three options available to me: wait another day, remind the invitees, or manually choose a time.




There are several tools for meeting management, including inviting additional attendees.



I have chosen not to sync to my calendar, nor to provide my freetime on-line at the moment...



... but it is easy to download the meetings and import them into your calendar.




TimeBridge appears to do dozens of things I've not looked at yet, like building a personal network (do I need another one?), mobile device support, sync with various calendars (Outlook, Google, iCal), on-line freetime (they call it Personal Availability) search, integrated conference calling (careful it is not a free 1-800 number),  and more.

For now, TimeBridge even in its simplest form is helping me schedule meetings.   Good job TimeBridge!

Steps for migrating to Notes/Domino 8 from versions 6.5 and 7

A great support document on Steps for migrating to Notes/Domino 8 from versions 6.5 and 7.  (I saw this via @Phigment on Twitter!)

More Reasons To Be A Twit

Here are 3 good resources I've stubbled across (via Twitter of course)

1. Why Twitter Will Go Mainstream In 2009
I'll let you read the article, but the items that I related the most were:
- Companies start to communicate PR messages through Twitter
- Important news worthy events are well documented and break on Twitter
- Twitter has become the dominant communication method at conferences
- Through Twitter you can actually get your complaint resolved, fast!

2. Greasemonkey Scripts - these are Firefox add-ons that add features to the Twitter web page
Ones that I am currently using: Nested Twitter Replies, Twitter friend name helper, Retweet This
Ones that I may look at: Endless Tweets , Profile Popup , twitter mod,

3. A big list of Twitter Bots.  Bots allow you to do things like look up (or have sent to you) weather, stocks, movie times, etc via Twitter.  While I have not started using any of these yet, when I was at IBM, we had dozens of internal Sametime bots that I liked, so I imagine these would be similar.

Google SketchUp Can Be Bad For Your Health

My name is Alan, and I am SketchUp-aholic.

Warning, this product may cause extreme loss of sleep.





I barely know what I'm doing, and I am still loving it.

What do your execs think of this fad?

There are many stories about how brands like Comcast, Zappos, and Dell very successfully leveraging Twitter.  By success I mean, a) helping customers and b) generating addition revenue.  Focusing on "a"can lead to new sales, or at a minimum stop customers from leaving, or going to the competition.

I've blogged in the past about my own personal experiences with Comcast, Firefox, VMWare, and others. (also please see my story about donating via Twitter.)  I'm in the habit now of looking to see if the vendors of products I use (such as SnagIt) have Twitter IDs, as it is a great way to connect with them.  At Socialtext with have two IDs, Socialtext for marketing purposes, and Socialtext_help for support and community outreach.  It is amazing how many customers, and equally important... potential customers we interact with via Twitter.

Ok, back to why I started writing this!

Today I had another good experience, this time with Sleep Number.

This morning I wrote:


To which out of the blue I received the response:


Well done Select Comfort.  The Jan 11 time frame is a few months early for me, but I will check back with you when I am ready to seriously start my shopping.

Another Twitter success story, and an example of how web 2.0 really does work.

What is your company doing?  What do your execs think of this "fad"?

Facebook Calendar To My Calendar

Facebook has become an extremely useful tool for knowing about birthdays, anniversaries, events, etc.  Since other people enter their dates, you don't have to do it yourself on your own calendar.  However, I don't check my Facebook events page everyday, so I often end up wishing belated Happy B-Days!  Therefore, I've decided to give fbCal a try.

It appears to offer quite a bit of functionality.  You can manage both events (on the left) and birthdays (on the right).  You can download or subscribe via RSS feed.

[ there appears to be a product missing ;-) ]

For now I am going to try a simple one time export of my friend's birthdays.  Clicking the "Download a copy here" link resulted in the creation of an iCal file.



which I opened with my Mac's iCal.app calendar.  iCal asks which calendar to add the events to.  (I have one called birthdays)



The events are automatically set to repeat every year, and there is even a link back to the person's Facebook profile so you can send them well wishes.



So for 5 minutes of my time, I think it is a huge win.

Let me know what you think, and if you are using RSS subscriptions.  I don't know, something about my calendar constantly connecting to Facebook does not sit right with me.

Maker of the ’Bush Shoe’ swamped with orders

Maker of the 'Bush Shoe' swamped with orders

The maker of the shoes that an Iraqi journalist hurled at U.S. President George W. Bush has had to take on 100 extra staff to cope with a surge in demand for his footwear

"Between the day of the incident and 1 p.m. [yesterday] we have received orders totalling 370,000 pairs," said Istanbul-based Serkan Turk, head of sales at Baydan Shoes.

Normally, the firm sells only 15,000 pairs a year of the model that Muntader al-Zaidi threw at the U.S. president

I got Cool Feet

"No doubt about it laptops get hot, often very hot. So hot in fact that manufacturers now prefer the term “portable computer” since you cannot use them on your lap without a risk of injury."



I love these Blue Lounge Cool Feet!   My Macbook is now happily wearing a set of these.

I’ve been neglecting my poor Macbook

Thank goodness for unlimited internet access.  That is a 1 GB of updates.  

Do people still fall for click through scams?

I received an email this morning from JP Morgan Chase, telling me about an error in my account.  Interesting, I don't have an account there!

Do people still mindlessly click on URLs to sites?   As you can see below, hovering over the link I can see it goes to some hualong site!


Last year I showed how you can see where a link is really pointing in Notes.

Check it before you click it!

Donations 2.0 - Help Provide Clean Water To Children

My friend Laura (@Pistachio on Twitter) is asking for people to help provide children with clean water, by donating just $2.  It is a good cause, and one I am happy to help.  

Where her request really got my attention, was the introduction of "donating by Twitter".

Typical Twitter posts are formatted such as "here is some text".  These standard tweets (what a twitter post is called) can be seen by anyone.
If you post "@username here is some text" anyone can still see it, but it is aimed to the attention of the specific person.
If you post and preface your message with the letter d (which stands for direct), the message can be seen by only that person. Ex: "d username here is some text"

Enter Tipjoy, who's About page explains "Tipjoy makes it easy for people to leave tips for things they love online".   Working with Twitter, they have added additional keywords for tweets including: 'tipjoy', 'tip', 'pay', 'give', 'rtip', or 'p'.  They say "We'll count anything that has an @username, dollar amount, and a payment keyword in the first three words in any order. So "p @ev $1" and "@ev pay $1" both work.

So now, via Twitter, you can donate money to causes, tip people, or whatever!

I set up my account this morning, not only to help Laura's cause, but to see what dona-tweeting would be like.  Here is my conceptual model...

I go into Twitter and donate via simply tweeting "p @username amount".  Tipjoy somehow connects Twitter to the charity.  I put money into my Tipjoy account via PayPal, which I pay via credit card, which I pay via my bank account!


It is certainly an interesting "2.0" world we live in!

BTW, can I order pizza by Twitter yet?  "@dominos 1 large sausage and green peppers please, you know where to find me".