The "April 2005 e-ProWire: Lotus Developer Tips newsletter"... Current Ponderings
Category e-Pro
Since I actually *did* write the April issue of e-Pro but it won't be officially published, I'll load the articles out here on my blog so they can see the light of day... Tom
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Current Ponderings – Digging Into The Mailbag
Hi, everyone… Welcome to the April 2005 edition of the e-ProWire: Lotus Developer Tips newsletter.
After each issue of e-ProWire, I normally get a number of emails either thanking or correcting me (fortunately everyone's been really nice). The March issue was no exception. But I also got a number of emails that brought up additional points on the stories, and I wanted to take some time this month to address them or feature the comments.
In the article Notes, Domino, Workplace… What's A Developer To Do?, I talked about how your current skills were still valuable, but that learning new skills were also needed to fully realize the value of the Workplace environment. What I didn't do much of was tell you where to find training on those new skills, like Java. While I tend to be partial to book learning, some people like more of a formal instructional method. Howard Greenberg of The Learning Continuum Company emailed me to let me know they have specific courses on Domino skills, such as writing Java agents in Domino. If this is a learning style that appeals to you, I'd strongly suggest checking out the site and making that first step towards expanding your skill set.
The article Selling And Teaching Notes At The Same Time also elicited some very positive feedback. Alain Romedenne wrote to say that there are a couple of other methods you can use to get the information from blogs like Alan Lepofsky's out to others in your company. He recommended checking out two Notes-based RSS readers called News Miner and Madicon. While I'm still not convinced that 5000 RSS readers all reading the same feed in a single company is a good idea for bandwidth, the idea of a Notes-based RSS reader option is intriguing. He also suggested using a standard Notes discussion database for the application design coupled with the Notes client subscription feature. Since I normally don't use the Notes client subscription, I forgot it was there. But that's definitely another way to go. One of the great things about Notes… There are usually multiple ways to solve the same problem!
And finally, the Current Ponderings: Your New Job… Notes Evangelist! got a number of people thinking about their job in a different way. An email I got from Todd Brehe of Gallatin Technologies was worth passing along. He wrote an article back in January along the same lines ("selling IT"), but his is more general in nature, where mine was more specific to Notes. It's a great piece, and I strongly recommend you go to his site and read/download the article. It's one of those ideas that could start to dramatically change the way your company views the IT department.
As usual, this month's e-ProWire newsletter has a mix of practical and strategic information. A new writer, Prasad Krishnan, shares a script he wrote that will take a Domino Directory group document and expand it out to all the individual names. It even works if you have groups nested within groups. Ferdy Christant explains the use of XHTML in Domino and how you can create standard-compliant markup in your application. This is definitely getting to be increasingly important as browsers seek to adhere to standards. And finally, I take some time to examine the Microsoft acquisition of Groove from the perspective of a Domino development environment.
As always, feel free to offer feedback and suggestions on both these articles and any topics you'd like to see covered in the future. Send them to me atduffbert@gmail.com.
I'd love to hear from you. And if you have a burning desire
to write something to share with the e-Pro readers, let me know. I'm
always interested in introducing new ideas to the readers.
Since I actually *did* write the April issue of e-Pro but it won't be officially published, I'll load the articles out here on my blog so they can see the light of day... Tom
--------------------------------
Current Ponderings – Digging Into The Mailbag
Hi, everyone… Welcome to the April 2005 edition of the e-ProWire: Lotus Developer Tips newsletter.
After each issue of e-ProWire, I normally get a number of emails either thanking or correcting me (fortunately everyone's been really nice). The March issue was no exception. But I also got a number of emails that brought up additional points on the stories, and I wanted to take some time this month to address them or feature the comments.
In the article Notes, Domino, Workplace… What's A Developer To Do?, I talked about how your current skills were still valuable, but that learning new skills were also needed to fully realize the value of the Workplace environment. What I didn't do much of was tell you where to find training on those new skills, like Java. While I tend to be partial to book learning, some people like more of a formal instructional method. Howard Greenberg of The Learning Continuum Company emailed me to let me know they have specific courses on Domino skills, such as writing Java agents in Domino. If this is a learning style that appeals to you, I'd strongly suggest checking out the site and making that first step towards expanding your skill set.
The article Selling And Teaching Notes At The Same Time also elicited some very positive feedback. Alain Romedenne wrote to say that there are a couple of other methods you can use to get the information from blogs like Alan Lepofsky's out to others in your company. He recommended checking out two Notes-based RSS readers called News Miner and Madicon. While I'm still not convinced that 5000 RSS readers all reading the same feed in a single company is a good idea for bandwidth, the idea of a Notes-based RSS reader option is intriguing. He also suggested using a standard Notes discussion database for the application design coupled with the Notes client subscription feature. Since I normally don't use the Notes client subscription, I forgot it was there. But that's definitely another way to go. One of the great things about Notes… There are usually multiple ways to solve the same problem!
And finally, the Current Ponderings: Your New Job… Notes Evangelist! got a number of people thinking about their job in a different way. An email I got from Todd Brehe of Gallatin Technologies was worth passing along. He wrote an article back in January along the same lines ("selling IT"), but his is more general in nature, where mine was more specific to Notes. It's a great piece, and I strongly recommend you go to his site and read/download the article. It's one of those ideas that could start to dramatically change the way your company views the IT department.
As usual, this month's e-ProWire newsletter has a mix of practical and strategic information. A new writer, Prasad Krishnan, shares a script he wrote that will take a Domino Directory group document and expand it out to all the individual names. It even works if you have groups nested within groups. Ferdy Christant explains the use of XHTML in Domino and how you can create standard-compliant markup in your application. This is definitely getting to be increasingly important as browsers seek to adhere to standards. And finally, I take some time to examine the Microsoft acquisition of Groove from the perspective of a Domino development environment.
As always, feel free to offer feedback and suggestions on both these articles and any topics you'd like to see covered in the future. Send them to me at
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Comments
Sorry to hear about e-pro pulling up stakes. I too, appreciated your articles. Yours was mentioned several times in presentations at my Notes User Group meeting yesterday.
Any word on what Penton will do with the content? I was wondering if they'd let you or someone else host it somewhere after the end of the month. I can't see why they'd want to retain the copyright if they aren't even making it available.
Posted by Michael Sobczak At 07:40:45 On 13/04/2005 | - Website - |
Posted by Michael Sobczak At 11:38:15 On 15/04/2005 | - Website - |
I know I'll be pulling down my articles and making them available as part of the blog. As far as all the prior content goes, it sounds like after April 30th it will be gone. Their site is done in Cold Fusion, so it's not like we could just replicate over a Notes database with all the content.
Posted by Duffbert At 07:53:27 On 13/04/2005 | - Website - |