Lotusphere 2009 Call For Abstracts - Closed

Chris Freestone  29 September 2008 23:51:08

My first Lotusphere experience was in 2007, soon after joining IBM and frankly the single greatest week of training I have ever experienced. Every session gave me something to take away - most of the time leaving me looking forward to the podcasts & presentation files so that I could have another go at absorbing the wealth of information that had just been bombarded at the audience.

To say that I was more than a little gutted when I found out that I could not go in 2008 is something of an understatement. So given that the only guaranteed way to go is to be accepted as a speaker, I vowed to try my luck by submitting a few abstracts for the Lotusphere 2009 Application Development track  :

Enterprise Mashups Meet Unified Communications : Cost reduction is more than ever playing a key part in day to day business. Lotus Sametime's role in Unified Communications & Collaboration has had an enormous impact on reducing a business' costs. Now, IBM Mashup Center brings business oriented self service application development to the center stage, again dramatically cutting costs on what would have traditionally been expensive IT led projects. Find out how your business applications can use both technologies together.

Sametime Plugin Development for Domino Developers : An introduction into how to create a fully featured Sametime Plugin to be used within the standalone client or the Notes 8 sidebar, with the session explaining the key steps in terms familiar to Notes/Domino Developers. The session will show how to create a plugin from scratch, and show how an XML feed from a Domino database can be transformed into a tree view incorporating full presence awareness, context menu, and hover over business cards.

21st Century Domino Web Development - XPages : Take a look at some of the traditionally complex workarounds of old and compare them to the simple XPages equivalent. From $$ViewTemplateDefaults to $$Return, and WebQueryOpen and WebQuerySave agents to Previous/Next buttons on a custom web view - find out how XPages will revolutionise your web development strategy for your Domino databases. The session will also look at some of the more traditional limitations of Domino Web Development and how XPages addresses these.

Adding to The Notes 8 Sidebar - Widgets or Plugins? : The sidebar within Notes 8 is a focus point for customers wanting quick access to information, but sidebar addins can be created in several ways; either through Notes Widgets pointing to a Domino design element or web page, or as a full blown Sametime plugin. This session will compare and contrast the options available for bringing functionality to the sidebar, and explain when to use which approach, looking at the pros and cons of each.

The call for abstracts closed last friday and competition is bound to be fierce, so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that one of mine hits the mark...

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Mash Nav

Chris Freestone  29 September 2008 19:59:44

Two weeks off and the batteries are fully recharged. However there are still certain things that I find myself pondering over regardless of how little practical sense it makes... when really my brain should be switching itself off and reducing its carbon footprint.

Last week, I found myself on a long road trip without my TomTom (cardinal sin - I know) - not even my mobile phone. But given that it was a journey I had done hundreds of times wasn't overly concerned about it. It's amazing how much you miss something when you need it - sure enough there was an accident on the opposite side of the road causing the motorway to close - meaning that on my return journey I would have to find an alternate route. I ended up spending 7 hours in the car that day on what should have been a 3 hour round trip, way too much time on my hands...

For a while now I've pondered over the concept of CarPCs. This is not a new idea, but given that I have yet to experience it - I still dream up new applications for such a gadget (iNotes Ultralite strikes me as being perfect for those in-dash VGA touchscreens). Now, obviously there is Sat Nav software that can be purchased that will hook in to a USB/Bluetooth GPS receiver - but where's the fun in that ? Surely with the advent of these all you can eat mobile broadband deals, a CarPC should be able to have full internet access for the duration of any journey by using your handset as a modem (assuming the handset supports such a feature like my old brick the Fujitsu Siemens Loox T830).

It struck me though, surely information like traffic must be available as a useable feed, and having done a couple of IBM Mashup Center POCs based on mapping I know that the Google Maps API gives you classes to programmatically retrieve directions between pont A and point B. I'd also need a java applet to hook into the COM port for a USB GPS device to use as the plot point within the map. Combine all this with a Text To Speech API (along with some quality voices such as AT&T's Natural Voices) and you have a mashup that can steer you around any traffic jam in the country...

Unable to find anything like it on ProgrammableWeb, I decided to look into this a little further and discovered that sure enough the BBC publish their UK traffic information in both RSS and TPEG format. The RSS is good but the TPEGML does offer GPS coordinates for the accidents (handy for icon placement on the map).

So then, I'll need iWidgets for :

1) The GPS applet Widget to wire the current coordinates to the map to relate to the next set of directions
2) Google Maps API Map Widget to display the map (would look nice with the Google Earth Plugin), route, current coords and traffic blocks
3) Google Maps API Directions Widget to manage the step by step instructions, and read them out through TTS
4) Traffic Conditions Processing Widget to periodically pull in the traffic data and wire the data ove rthe the directions widget

Seems feasible enough right ? Somehow I suspect calculating routes around traffic might be a tad challenge unless Google Maps has some means of catering for this - a work in progress I feel, and not likely to get to the top of my To Do list anytime soon.

It would make for a cool technology demo though, so maybe I'll see how things pan out.

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STlinks on steroids

Chris Freestone  15 September 2008 21:44:35

For several years now I've been rather fond of the good old STlinks API. It was basic, very easy to implement into a Domino web application and did exactly what it said on the tin - providing awareness and the ability to initiate a chat session by clicking on a name. The chat window could be branded with your company's logo and allowed you to escalate the chat session to a full blown meeting if desired. All without the need to deploy the Sametime Connect client to the desktop - total genius. This API was revolutionary back in the day, but it is fair to say that it was due for a overhaul. Enter the new kid on the block - the all new Sametime Connect Web API now available in the Sametime 8.0.1 Toolkit. STlinks is still great as a lightweight option or if you can't guarantee that the end user has the Connect Client installed, but what if your users have got the full Sametime Connect client installed on their machines ? Customers have been crying out for a way to take full advantage of the Sametime client and IBM have listened. In fairness, I've been meaning to take a closer look at this for several months now, as for me this represents a real step forward in terms of application integration options. Not necessarily for the depth of functions that the new API provides but more for what it represents for the Sametime platform; the number of actions that can be called out of the box are few, but what is provided makes absolute sense - and the architecture gives flexibility to organisations that need more. Customers want a unified desktop experience with integration that extends to all the tools they use everyday. The growing trend in Unified Communications has brought the IT and Telephony industries much closer together - changing peoples' expectations of how collaboration tools need to evolve. Over the past couple of years we've seen the rich features of a revamped Sametime Connect client (first seen in ST 7.5) getting exposed within Lotus Notes 8 as well as Microsoft Outlook & Office, providing not only chat but functions such as Click to Call and Instant Meetings, in addition to the big telephony players providing extensive plugin support for both the client and the meeting server.

STlinks chat window Sametime Connect Web API 8.0.1 chat window

The thing is though, people don't only work in those applications. With Web 2.0 playing such a strong part in all new development projects, an organisation's intranet is becoming the defacto one stop shop for corporate information and applications. As such, having the ability to tightly hook in the Sametime Connect Client's rich collaborative toolset within the applications that business users rely on to do their job provides a natural evolution to how people want to work.

Getting down to specifics, obviously the API provides realtime status information for users and the ability to launch a chat window for someone. For me though, the key actions would have to be actions such as :

- AddToList  : as the name would suggest - adds the person to your Sametime contact list

- Call : providing the ability to initiate a telephone call through whichever telephony provider is integrated

- InstantShare : part of Sametime Advanced allowing users to share an application window without the need to launch a meeting

Imagine being able to launch these tools in context directly from within your own applications !  

This has all been made possible through the Sametime Connect Client's underlying Expeditor framework, specifically the local web container that sits on top of it. What makes this approach so unique though, is the ability to extend it. For example, suppose you have written a Sametime plugin to query a backend system given a particular username - why not make that available as a web action through the web API function extension point. Or even launch a conference call for a given customer's account team at the click of a button directly from your web based CRM application.....

Imagine Mashups where the iWidgets have been coded to take advantage of the Sametime Connect Web API. Business users could create their own applications that natively have context sensitive actions for Click To Call... Surely a winning combination !

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Mashing it up - Gartner’s Portal, Content & Collaboration Summit

Chris Freestone  12 September 2008 22:09:01

I was at Gartner's Portal, Content & Collaboration Summit in London yesterday and was quite taken back by how many attendees were really excited by the concept of enterprise mashups.

Now, I get to speak with customers a lot about this subject but usually I know that they're interested in the stuff given that they've asked me to come in, or at least it features as part of the agenda. What was so good about Thursday was that the attendees at the event were primarily focused on enterprise portals, yet they could see the reasons why enterprise mashups are so complementary as a business oriented self service application development tool.

The catalyst for the interest was in no small part due to the opening session presented by Pam Chandor who talked about Exceptional Web Experiences with Next Generation Portals.

Just to reinforce the fact that IBM really do use their own technology, the demo I was showing on the day was based on a mashup put together by Stuart Crump and I just few days prior. The gist was that it monitored activity from the various sales teams across the brands and provided a realtime dashboard showing who had made the most calls, booked the most meetings etc. on the day - updating every minute.

To give you an overview of how this was created, here is a list what makes it up. First of all, the widgets that make up the UI : - Pie Chart & Bar Chart Widgets : The chart widget that is available from the IBM Mashup Centre demo site hosted on the Lotus Greenhouse, which allows you to point the chart to a live XML feed - Top 10 Widget : Developed in a few hours, takes a basic XML feed of 10 entries and populates the table with the contents of the various elements. - URL Customizer Widget : A new widget that is coming in Lotus Mashups v1.1 - allowing you to specify a URL and have its parameters populated through wired properties. Two of these were added as hidden widgets to the page to correspond to the URLs for the XML feeds used by the charts - Alert Widget : Again, one of the new widgets that is coming in Lotus Mashups v1.1, allowing you to wire an event to be triggered on a periodic basis - in this case every 60 seconds.

Of course, without data, these widgets are nothing. So here's an overview of where the data came from to populate the mashup. - Top 10 feed (used for the Top 10 widget): Combining data from a Domino database for the call numbers , a spreadsheet for team information and our Bluepages API web service (similar to the REST API available in Lotus Connections' Profiles) for peoples' photo and job title. The sources were joined and merged using the various operators inside the MashupHub, producing a unified XML feed containing all the information required by the widget. - Call breakdown feed (used for the Pie Chart): Using the Group and Transform operators, the Domino data could be categorised and totals were added up through the calculated value functions. - Team breakdown feed (Used for the bar chart) : Using the Combine operator, the different sets of Domino data could be brought together and used as different series on the bar chart.

Putting the mashup together was really quite simple as everything used were out of the box widgets with the exception of the "Top 10 Widget" which I had to develop (basic HTML and Javascript - see the article on developerWorks here for more details). Not only was it a great way to showcase our own technology internally as a means of tracking the progress of a prospecting day in realtime, but shows how information that would normally only be accessible through IT managed systems, can be exposed and reused to produce something new.

It was great to hear what so many attendees had to say about this technology and especially how it would make a difference in their organisation. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the stand !

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To blog, or not to blog...

Chris Freestone  27 April 2008 05:58:08

So with a view to start jotting my thoughts and ideas down, it seemed like a logical step to register a domain name and use some of the technology I work with...

To be fair, I registered the domain name a few years ago, but blogging wasn't as commonplace then as it is today - but even so - I really should have sorted my act out a while back.

In terms of themes, I dare say the majority of the content posted here will be around technology and gaming - with perhaps the odd personal event thrown in for good measure. This should be a fairly regular affair and I have lots of things rattling around my brain that really would benefit from being writing down on paper, but this is about all I can muster for now...

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