Greyhawk's Meanderings

Technorati: twitter microblog twitnotes

My friend and respected colleague Rob McDonagh just posted a rant on Why Twitter Sucks, and to me it seemed very much like the old codger saying "Get off my lawn" so I figured I would write why I think Twitter rules in a rebuttal to the fair Captain. So read his rant first, and then you can come back here. Ready? Good, lets begin:

• There are No Unread Marks - Actually I agree with this, I would like it myself. But my guess is that there is a programmer somewhere who can work this out. It can't be that hard. Also, follow your twitter stream in an RSS reader and you've got yourself unread marks.
  
• People use twitter to say the Most Inane things - Very true, but many times I actually love these little details. It helps me keep in context the fact that people have a life outside the technology. Seeing that someone watches a certain TV show might make me take a look at that show myself. And more than once, seeing what someone was about to eat gave me a craving for the same thing. I like it. I guess if you don't like people that post those things, you can always stop following them.
  
• Conversations are disjointed - This is true too, but like Rob pointed out, if people used the proper conventions it's much easier. And there are tools like Quotably that help in this regard.
  
• 140 characters? - Yes, 140 characters. Deal. If you can't then send an email or an IM. I find that having to condense what I'm going to tweet about into 140 characters makes things more concise and easier to handle. It's a texting world, 140 characters is practically a novel to the kids these days.
  
• No concept of stopping and starting a day - Okay, and this is a problem why? See, I think you have to view twitter in a certain perspective. If you consider Twitter to be a bar or a party, you can come and go as you want, and when you are there you are part of conversations, you might go to the bathroom and miss a conversation but that doesn't mean you grill everyone on what you missed, you contribute to the people you are around at the time. Think of it as hanging out with a group of friends, and it becomes much easier to handle...
  
• Twitter auto updating Facebook - Seriously, you are complaing about THIS? Both statuses (along with every other site with a status) is meant for you to post your current status. To me they are one and the same. Friends who are only on Facebook see the same thing as people who are only on Twitter. Everyone is updated equally. The fact that things like ping.fm can update statuses all over the place allows ease of use for the poster and allows users at ANY of the services to get the same information.
  
• Responses that don't make sense to people we don't follow - I actually kinda LIKE this. You know why? Because on more than one occassion reading the reply lead me to read the original person's tweet, and then in turn I started to follow them because they were interesting. I ignore the ones that don't make sense or aren't interesting to me. You need to be less obsessive compulsive about reading every little thing. Once again, think of it as a party where people are chatting. Think of the "don't make sense" tweets as times when you walk up to a friend talking to a stranger and hear the tail end of a conversation. Maybe you jump in and meet someone new, or maybe you walk on by.
  
• Spam in twitter - You're getting nitpicky now. Of course, some people that can follow you are spammers, but if you don't follow them, you don't get spam IN Twitter. If you are talking about follow requests, you are diving too deep here.
  
• People tweet instead of blogging - Yup, and it's absolutely wonderful. There are many times I have a thought that I want to keep track of, but I don't really have enough to base a full blog post on, so I tweet it. Sometimes the conversation in Twitter gets big enough to finally warrant a blog post, sometimes not. I find it increasingly harder to find time to fully blog, so being able to micro-blog on occassion is beneficial to me, and probably to many others. In fact, I bet there are some people for whom Twitter is a much better medium for them to share thoughts than a full-on blog.
  

Another reason I like twitter is because of my two best friends, Mike and Tim. They live several hours away, and I only get to see them a couple times a year (kinda like certain Lotusphere buddies.) Anyway, we can email and chat (and we do) but Twitter feels more like we are hanging out. One of us will say something, and we'll respond to each other and rip on each other and stuff like that. I like knowing the details of what they guys are doing at work too. It really seems more like we are hanging out and chatting over a beer than anything else. To me, twitter has a more personal feel to it than pretty much any of the other "social" mechanisms out there.

Now take TwitNotes. Having that open in my sidebar simply rules. Much love to Mikkel for doing it for us. While I'm at work I live in the Notes client. Having to flip back and forth to a twitter client or the website gets annoying. Having it pop up in the Notes 8 sidebar is easy, and at a glance I can see the latest information. If I want to jump in, I can. 140 characters here and there is easy to do and not really a drain on productivity.

The other thing about Twitter is that I learn things I never would have by traditional means. Late last year, a tweet I responded to saved me about $500 in an electonics purchase. I know that Rob probably falls in that same boat there, and because of Twitter, he has $500 more in his pocket. To me, that's enough to keep on using it right there.

So, in essence, I think Twitter rules. And I've thought so for awhile, but I couldn't really explain it well until now. So thanks for that Captain, you've inspired me to put into words what I've been thinking for awhile! Twitter is like a large party where you are hanging out with friends, and if you treat it that way, it makes a lot more sense, and becomes a lot easier to manage in your head.

So what do you think? Does Twitter suck, or does Twitter rule?

Permalink | Posted at 6:46 AM | Add/Read Comments (13) |          

Technorati: vacation

A couple of weeks ago I took the family on vacation for a couple of days. But, I made the conscious effort to be connected as little as possible. I didn't really follow twitter, I didn't blog, I didn't read the blogs, I didn't even really follow email at all that week. I just unplugged.

It was pretty nice actually. You forget just how nice that can be when you are jacked in all the time. And after that week, I started reading again, but still didn't totally jump back into twitter and some of the other social things that demand so much attention. Then this weekend we spent at my parents farm in the middle of nowhere. I hugged horses and listened to birds and watched hawks glide through the sky. Then I took the four hour drive back home, and am now really back in the thick of things.

It's like anything else, you can't miss something if it doesn't go away occasionally. So now I'm ready to feel the pulse again... as soon as I catch up on all the damn email!

Permalink | Posted at 8:57 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: intranet journal rss lotus

My latest article for Intranet Journal is entitled Using RSS in your Lotus Intranet. It's basically a primer on what RSS is and can do for your company. It also shows how to use the Feed Reader in the Notes 8 client to subscribe to feeds.

We bloggers tend to take things like RSS for granted without realizing that a vast majority of end users have no clue what RSS is or how it can benefit your organization. Now that Domino, Quickr and Connections can all serve up RSS feeds, and Notes 8 can read them natively, I think we really need to let people know how valuable RSS can be.

If your users or organization aren't yet using RSS, I hope you can use this article to help give them the nudge they need!

Permalink | Posted at 10:57 AM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: meme vowe server crash

Ben L. explains it like this:

After a long outage, vowe.net is back on-line. To celebrate, Volker put up a link to a Rolling Stones video of Jumpin Jack Flash, with the famous lyrics "It's alright now, in fact it's a gas." I thought it might be fun to post a different song that celebrates the moment. Perhaps on your blog you could find a video that reflects your emotion at the news.

I like the following song, especially since Volker said he wouldn't have vowe.net had Twitter been around seven years ago

Permalink | Posted at 3:40 PM | Add/Read Comments (2) |          

Technorati: adobe lightroom photoshop express photoshop

I'd be shirking my duties as an avid digital photographer and lover of Adobe products if I didn't let you know about a couple of betas that Adobe currently has going on.

First off is Photoshop Express. Photoshop Express is an online photo editing application where you can upload photos and edit them directly in your web browser. You can share them with other people as well, and Adobe gives you 2GB of web space free. Having the capability to edit via a browser will be very nice when I'm away from my main machine and Photoshop proper. You have a lot of editing options: Red Eye Removal, Hue, Tint, White Balance, Crop, Sharpen, Touch-Up, Auto Correct and more. One thing that mystified me was lack of a simple Resize where you could choose your own dimensions. Hopefully that will get added later, or maybe I'm just missing it. Also, the site allows you to login to Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa to post your pictures. Flickr support is supposedly in the works.

This is a great way for Adobe to keep it's brand in front of people, and I think I'll find it pretty useful as well. Go check out the beta now.

The other thing that Adobe just announced was version 2 of Lightroom. Lightroom is a cataloging and workflow application for your digital photographs. If you shoot in RAW (which I think you should) then Lightroom is one of the best choices for your digital workflow. I love it, and version 2 looks like it's going to fix any of the little complaints I currently have. Adobe Lightroom has a beta of version 2 available now.

I'm excited to see how both of these products work out. Should be cool

Permalink | Posted at 5:13 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: quickr lotus directions

Okay, I know that some people are a little slow, but really? Under the Administering section of Quickr instructions they have a section on Starting Lotus Quickr Services on Windows. Here's how you do it:

To start IBM Lotus Domino and IBM Lotus Quickr on Microsoft Windows, double click the Lotus Domino Server icon on the Desktop.

Thank goodness it's spelled out for me.

Permalink | Posted at 4:19 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: quickr lotus

Being the long time Domino guy that I am, upgrades don't frighten me. I've upgraded our entire server environment by myself in half a day without batting an eye. I do generally wait a day or two after initial release of the code to make sure there are no serious red flags thrown up in the community, but I decided to throw caution to the wind with the Quickr 8.1 upgrade.

Basically, I decided to upgrade Domino to 8.0.1 and Quickr to 8.1. Friday. At 5:15 PM (I leave at 5:45)

Needless to say, things didn't go as anticipated. I upgraded Domino, then upgraded Quickr and then fired the whole thing up. Domino seemed to load fine, but HTTP was stuck at initializing. For the life of me I couldn't get it to load. The weird thing was, when I did a QUIT HTTP at the console, all of a sudden all the Quickr components loaded up, and then promptly shut down as I had told HTTP to quit. Hmmmm...

So I go looking for others with issues. The only thing I really find is the wonderful installation description by Daniele Vistalli. He did mention that you should disable http when you upgrade Domino to let Domino fully upgrade. Otherwise it might crash with nquickplace.dll. I figure this might be the issue and give it a shot. Do the re-install this way. No luck.

So as it is Friday, and our Quickr server wasn't really being used anyway yet, I went home. I ate supper, then continued working on the problem from home. So now I reinstall products again, I UNinstall and reinstall, I try tons of little tricks and nothing works. Searching the forums and technotes doesn't really reveal anything similar being seen by anyone. Frustrated as can be, I decided to go to bed, sleep on it and try again in the morning.

The next day the same cycle pretty much repeats itself, but after banging my head against the wall for so long, I finally find a year-old Quickplace technote that seems like it might be my issue: HTTP task does not load after installing QuickPlace on Domino Server.

Anyway, in this technote it states that HTTP just throws an error and exits. Wasn't quite the same. This was also Quickplace and not Quickr proper. So THAT wasn't quite the same. It also said that the Quickplace\Quickplace folder would be missing databases. Once again, it wasn't quite the same as my LotusQuickr\lotusquickr folder HAD all of the right databases. What I did find the same was this:

Place does not exist or is marked for deletion

A-HA! We have lift-off. I hadn't gotten that error all along, but on Saturday morning I started seeing it. They recommended deleting the whole Quickplace\quickplace (well LotusQuickr\LotusQuickr in my case) folder and letting Quickr re-create it on its own. So I did that, restarted the server, and HTTP loaded. Finally.

So at least the server was finally up and running. I still had to tweak a bunch of things in the INI file and do some upgrades to the places, and I still have one place that is showing the old yellow color scheme and I can't figure out why. But it's running and that's all that counts right now.

Anyway, I wanted to post this out there in case anyone else ran into this. If your Quickr 8.1 upgrade causes HTTP to be unresponsive or to show Initializing then deleting the LotusQuickr folder and letting it rebuild might help. At least it did for me.

If there are any Quickr experts out there that want to add to this, or let me know any other tips of tricks to know while upgrading or running into issues, please do!

Permalink | Posted at 12:43 PM | Add/Read Comments (1) |          

Technorati: lotus greenhouse intranet journal lotus911

Every month in Intranet Journal, I try to write about a Lotus feature or product that you can use for your intranet. Well this month I decided to clue everyone into the Lotus Greenhouse.

The Lotus Greenhouse site is basically a demonstration site to show off many of the capabilities of IBM Lotus Connections, Quickr and Sametime. It's all put together in a way that I think many companies would enjoy as their intranet. So if you are a Domino reader and haven't really experienced any of the new Lotus products, then head on over to the Greenhouse and you can see how it all works together for yourself.

I also mention BleedYellow.com from Lotus911. BleedYellow.com is another implementation of Connections from IBM Business Partner Lotus911. This site is also free and can give you a taste what someone else might be able to do with the same technology.

The main point is that you can try before you buy, and see if Quickr, Connections and Sametime can work for you. Check out the article and see what you think.

Permalink | Posted at 5:08 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: serial fiction albino butterfly

Chapter 4 of Albino Butterfly is available now, go check it out!

Permalink | Posted at 5:04 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: albino butterfly serial fiction

Check out Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 first

CHAPTER 3 - Twinkies are Forever
by John "Greyhawk68" Roling

Albert crashed into the stacked palettes with a sickening wet crunch as dust filled his nostrils and stung his eyes. Pain seared his chest and he knew instinctively that he had broken some ribs. It wasn't the first time, and probably wouldn't be the last.

If he survived the night, that is.

Breathing came hard as he pushed aside boxes and rose to one knee. That's when he saw him standing in the dim light. "Great, it's you" Albert coughed, blood welling in his throat, "I should've known."

Bryce was at the other end of a large cavern. Metal beams supported the walls and ceiling, albeit tentatively. Thick dust covered hundreds, maybe thousands of boxes; boxes that filled the area from floor to ceiling. It seemed to be a fallout shelter of some sort, and by the looks of it, it had been abandoned since the Cold War.

"I guess this is the end then" said Albert, looking at the gun Bryce held at his side.

But Bryce didn't respond, he was too transfixed on a pile in front of him. In the dim light, it was hard to make out, but Albert soon realized that it was money. Bundles of green stacked nearly seven feet high.
"There has to be millions here," Bryce muttered.

Albert stood fully now, using the dusty boxes as leverage. The artwork on them all showed the same thing: yellow snack cakes with cream filling. "Twinkies?" Albert puzzled. "This cave is filled with Twinkies."
Without his eyes leaving the stack of cash, Bryce swung his pistol in Albert's direction. "I prefer Oreos." he said flatly. "Oreos are nice," replied Albert, "but Twinkies are forever."

Indeed, if anything were to survive a nuclear holocaust, it would probably be Twinkies. Twinkies and roaches anyway.

Albert studied Bryce for a moment. 'Bingo' Bryce had once been the best enforcer Mr. Giuseppe employed. But that was long ago. Years of alcohol and drug abuse had taken its toll, and Bryce was simply a shell of his former self. Albert was actually somewhat insulted that Mr. G would have sent Bryce after him. Surely he and his cargo were more important than to send just Bryce. Bryce was vulnerable and both he and Mr. G knew it.

"C'Mon Bingo, it looks like you found enough scratch there to disappear forever" Albert said "You don't need me anymore. You don't even need Mr. G."

"SHUT UP!" Bryce fumed, the pistol trembling slightly in his hand, "I've still got a job to do. This is just icing on the cake."

"Or the Twinkie" Albert thought to himself.

Just then a flash of white flew by Bryce's ear. Startled, he whirled around and fired into the wall behind him. The gunshot seemed much louder than it should have, the acoustics of the cave acting as an amplifier no doubt. It was a split second before the gunshot gave way to thunder and the wall and ceiling collapsed into a thick cloud of dust.

Albert winced as he stumbled back into another pile of boxes, rubble nearly missing where he had been standing only moments earlier. He wiped the grime from his eyes and squinted through the haze. The section of the cave where Bryce had been was gone, the money with it. The shelter had undoubtedly become a tomb.

Fortunately, the wall behind Bryce had given way to where the ladder was located. As the moon was directly overhead now, the tunnel up glowed in the moonlight. Albert gingerly made his way through the debris, bid Bryce adieu and started upwards, rung by painful rung.

The cave was intriguing. Twinkies and a million dollars would cause anyone to do a double take, but Albert didn't have time to explore right now. He couldn't risk anyone finding his cargo.

When he reached the surface, Albert emerged and promptly vomited. His side throbbed, and his vision blurred. As he spit chunks of a long ago meal into the weeds, he gasped for air and noticed something peculiar.

The car was gone.

The car was gone, but his backseat blanket was still covering something in the middle of the road.

Albert forced himself to rise and walk to the highway. He found her there, face down, the lower half of her body sticking out from under the woolen blanket. Her feet were still bound by the duct tape, and as he followed her curves upward past her hips, he noticed something he had never seen before.

A tattoo.

The small of her back contained a tattoo of a tiny pale butterfly.

Just as the chill started down his spine, a moan emanated from the asphalt. Apparently the drugs were wearing off.

Permalink | Posted at 11:13 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |