developerWorks Lotus team blog

Wiki ratings: Are they hot or not?

Michael Beaver — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:33:32 -0400

In the grand scheme of things, do ratings of Wiki-sourced content work?

Traditionally, ratings systems are a mechanism that provide a quick, painless, and easily deployable way of soliciting and collecting opinions from a community of users. The ratings can be thought of as a combination of 3 values: the item being rated, the person providing the rating, and the ratings data itself. For content that is more static in nature, there is much less chance of ratings data becoming obsolete due to the underlying content of the page changing.

In other words, my opinions about the quality and accuracy of the information on a Web page that doesn't change are probably going to still be valid in the future (unless my initial ratings data was skewed by a misunderstanding of the information upon first encounter, but even then I should be able to rectify that by updating my original rating).

However, in a more dynamic and fluid environment like a wiki, the content is much more likely to have multiple edits applied to it as the content evolves, and my ratings for past revisions might not necessarily be applicable to present/future revisions of the content. In this type of scenario, what value do ratings bring to the table and how should their life cycle be managed? Do we take the ratings data at face value with no respect to the time line of revisions? Or should ratings be a more fluid data set that is respective to time (for example, only ratings that were acquired between revision X and revision Y are included in the aggregation for said revision)? Should wiki ratings systems only apply to ratings of contributors and not their individual contributions?

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Happy computing.

Back available: Notes1/NotesWeb

Craig Lordan — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:06:44 -0400

The Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net) server has been restored. This is one our of servers used for Notes client access to Lotus forums such as the Notes/Domino forums.

For information about connecting to our public server for accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."

Notes1/NotesWeb unavailable due to hardware issues

Craig Lordan — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:15:00 -0400

We have been experiencing ongoing hardware problems with Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net), which is one our of servers used for Notes client access to Lotus forums such as the Notes/Domino forums. We are working to resolve the issue, and in the meantime, we ask that you use our other public Lotus Domino server Notes2/NotesWeb (notes2.notes.net).

For information about connecting to Notes2/NotesWeb or accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

Forum search and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6

developerWorks Lotus team — Mon, 3 Mar 2008 14:41:54 -0400

We are aware of a problem that does not allow Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 users to use the advanced search form to search our discussion forums. The problem is caused by an incompatibility between Internet Explorer 6 and the code used to measure our Web site traffic. The code is owned by another team, and we are working with them to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, there are workarounds to allow you to search our forums:
1. Use the search bar located in each forum view. Although the search bar provides only basic functionality and no advanced search options, it continues to work in each Web browser that we have tested, including Internet Explorer 6.
2. Use either Firefox 2.0.x or Internet Explorer 7. No search problems have been reported with either of these browsers, so if one or the other is available to you, we recommend that you use it until the issue with Internet Explorer 6 is resolved.

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and thank you for your patience while we continue to work on the issue.

My IBM Redbooks from alphaWorks Services

Tara Hall — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:51:52 -0400

Check out this cool new technology from alphaWorks Services: My IBM Redbooks that lets you create custom IBM Redbooks:

My IBM Redbooks is a Web 2.0 mashup that remixes IBM Redbooks. It uses many of the most popular IBM Redbooks, enabling you to create customized books based on your interests and needs.
Chapters can be merged from any of the available IBM Redbooks, allowing you to create a personalized book for anything from an end-to-end solution consisting of various chapters from multiple IBM Redbooks to a book with only a few chapters of interest.

Similarly, the IBM Custom Content Assembler, which we blogged about previously, does much the same thing, but with product documentation and learning content. My IBM Redbooks, however, use only PDF format for the output.

Check out the new IBM Custom Content Assembler

Tara Hall — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:15:00 -0400

If you haven't visited Lotus Labs recently, then you may not have heard about IBM Custom Content Assembler:

IBM Custom Content Assembler helps you to easily find and organize information and store it in a topic cart where you can compile the topics into custom output in the form of HTML or PDF. You have an option to search for and assemble general technical content as well as learning content. Combining and ordering the topics allows you to create a customized content set which you can print, view in a browser, or save locally. With an editor, you could incorporate the HTML file into other HTML content, customize the file, or edit it.

In other words, you can create your own custom documentation from existing product documentation and education materials by selecting your topics, organizing them, and then outputting them to PDF or HTML format. It's that simple.

The initial launch of this application includes Lotus Connection technical and learning content. Try Custom Content Assembler and let us know what you think. Learn more about Custom Content Assembler from its Lotus Labs page on developerWorks Lotus.

Notes1/NotesWeb is unavailable

The developerWorks Lotus team — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:20:52 -0400

As some of you have already discovered, we are experiencing problems with Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net). The problem is related to a power issue. We are working to resolve the issue, and in the meantime, we ask that you use our other public Lotus Domino server Notes2/NotesWeb (notes2.notes.net).

For information about connecting to Notes2/NotesWeb or accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

Presentation about the Domino 8.0.1 blog template

Craig Lordan — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:00:00 -0400

Our colleague Steve Castledine has just posted a detailed and helpful presentation about the Lotus Domino 8.0.1 blog template. Steve is the creator and maintainer of the Domino blog template. He also developed the new Domino wiki that we have on the site.

In this presentation, he goes through all the changes to the template, most of which are on the Notes client side for easier blog authoring and better control over the more advanced and administrative portions. On the Web browser side, major changes include a new skin in the current Lotus Connections style and a Dojo rich text editor for Web authoring.

Looking for funny business meeting agenda ideas

Craig Lordan — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:30:00 -0400

This blog entry is off the topic of IBM, Lotus, developers, or even celebrity news. But I'm wondering if anyone would like to help me out.

I am looking for funny or silly business meeting agenda ideas. They can be real business meeting agenda ideas that turned out to be funny, silly, or downright strange or that would never apply in an IBM internal meeting. For example, imagine attending a business meeting with agenda items such as "Miller Lite: Less filling or tastes great?" or "Care and feeding of your pet llama."

My task at hand is leading our group's all-hands meeting. As our group and Lotus itself is emphasizing social software, community content, wikis, blogs, and so on, I thought it would be fun to have an opening icebreaker where I explain our meeting's agenda was determined via the community. It wouldn't be the real agenda, but a list of silly agenda items that will be just hilarious. I hope.

Assuming I get any ideas, I'll post what the "faux agenda" was in the next week or so.

Declan Sciolla-Lynch’s idea for the Lotus blogging community

Tara Hall — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:37:00 -0400

Lotus blogger and creator of BlogSphere, Declan Sciolla-Lynch has an idea that we highly endorse:

The idea is called 'Forum Friday' and it is very easy to take part. All you need to do is go to the developerWorks (Notes.net) web site and pick one of the many forums that are available. Have a look through some of the questions and pick one to answer. Write up your answer on your own blog and then reply in the forum with a link to your blog entry.

What do we love about this idea? Aside from the extra site traffic that this may cause, we know that many of you don't always find answers to your questions. Although this is no guarantee that your questions will be answered, you can be assured that business partners, application developers, and system administrators -- in short experts -- are looking in our forums and are willing to offer their expertise to help you out!

There are so many great resources out there on the Web from our forums to the many, many Lotus blogs to the new wikis that are being created. All these mechanisms are just that -- mechanisms for you to find information, to share information, and so on. No one of these mechanisms is better than any other, but none of them succeed without a community to contribute to them. Visit our forums, read the Lotus blogs, and contribute your expertise to our wikis!

Thanks Declan for a great community-building activity! (Now, check out Declan's blog.)

Webcast of Lotusphere 2008 opening general session

Craig Lordan — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:15:00 -0400

Due to a case of identity theft, our staff assignments were routed to Gladys Johnson of Scranton, Pennsylvania and Jerry Galazkiewicz of Stamford, Connecticut, so we were stuck in dreary Westford, Massachusetts for Lotusphere this year.

But we're pleased that the webcast of the Lotusphere 2008 opening general session is now available. Along with the rest of you who couldn't make it this year, we can now see all the exciting product announcements and demos, plus figure out for ourselves whether or not Bob Costas was really that bad and if that violin player was really that good.

Lotus Sametime wiki

Craig Lordan — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:00:00 -0400

Hot on the heels of the Lotus Domino wiki and IBM Composite Applications wiki that went live last Friday, today brings the Lotus Sametime wiki.

The Sametime wiki is the latest place where you instant messaging, online collaboration, and unified communications kids can go, uh "wiki" all about your favorite product. Have fun wiki-ing away!

What we learned today

Craig Lordan — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:30:00 -0400

Due to a clerical error, our staff assignments were routed to Romania, so we're stuck in frigid Westford, Massachusetts for Lotusphere this year. Despite the cold, we learned a lot today. Here's the roundup:

Planet Lotus is the best way to keep up with what's going on at Lotusphere whether you're attending or not. In fact, we may know more than the attendees because we can sit here and monitor Planet Lotus all day long.
Onsite coverage from Lotusphere has reached new heights. At least a half dozen people, probably more, were live blogging during the opening general session. The daily reports and photos are being posted as I write this. When I first attended Lotusphere in 2000, it was in the role of onsite reporter for Iris Today, posting lengthy session reports such as "Getting the Most from the Domino R5 Web Application Server." There was no wireless anywhere, and the word blog hadn't been invented yet. I had this crappy digital camera that weighed more than 20 cell phones put together. The turn of the century might as well have been the dark ages compared to 2008.
We didn't know about Lotus Foundations until its announcement today. It's a package of software and hardware for the small-to-medium business. We had been briefed on the companion software-as-service project, Bluehouse, plus the guys who sit near us work on it. You can find out more about both efforts here.
We're looking forward to the My Widgets feature in 8.0.1. We didn't know about that one because we've been lazy and have not installed the daily builds of 8.0.1 yet. Looks like we should.
Lotus Protector is a new "black box" with anti-spam and anti-virus capability. We learned that product name the other day, but didn't learn the details until this morning.
On the flip side, we were already familiar with the new Lotus Mashups product coming this year, but today we learned its official name.
We also learned that it feels a little chilly in Florida this year. According to weather.com, it "Feels Like 9�F" here in Westford. I'd like 60 more degrees, please, but I'd settle for 10.

Public beta of Lotus Notes 8.5 -- for the Mac!

Craig Lordan — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:30:00 -0400

Surprise! A public beta of IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 is now available -- but for right now, only for the Mac!

Essential links:

Downloads
Welcome info and release notes
Note: the release notes apply to Notes/Domino 8.0.1, but also contain the Notes 8.5 beta for Mac information.
Feedback forum

You can go ahead and ask us when or if there will be a public beta for other platforms besides Mac. We won't answer, because we don't know. They don't talk to us unless they want something, like to host the feedback forum. (Just kidding.)

Lotus Domino and Composite Applications wikis

Craig Lordan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:30:00 -0400

We added two new wikis on developerWorks today:

Lotus Domino wiki
Running on a Domino database, of course! Find Lotus Notes and Domino configuration, application development, best practices, and more on the Lotus Domino wiki. Contribute to the wiki by sharing your experiences with the community. No registration required to participate.
IBM Composite Applications wiki
Find and share technical articles, samples, and best practices. These resources are intended to help users get started creating composite applications using Lotus Domino Designer, Lotus Expeditor, Eclipse, or WebSphere Portal. Requires a developerWorks/IBM ID to participate.

We’ll be ordering our iPhones now

Craig Lordan — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:30:00 -0400

That'll teach us to leave work promptly at 5PM. Overnight, AP broke the news that Lotus Notes will be available for the Apple iPhone. If you follow Planet Lotus, this development definitely stormed the blogosphere.

The AP news story also mentions new versions of Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony software for the Mac. Lotus Sametime is already available for the Mac. Many of our colleagues around here are exclusively on Mac. Attention IBM procurement: we'll be trying again for the Macs and iPhones!

Consumability survey - your responses are appreciated!

Tara Hall — Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:51:28 -0400

We received a recent request from our co-worker for help with his Consumability survey. Your responses to this survey would be greatly appreciated. Here's the information:

We at IBM value your opinion, experience, and use of our products. Please help us identify product enhancement priorities by taking a consumability survey. Go to https://www.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/studies/consumabilitywebform.htm to contribute your insight for the product(s) you work with. This is a comprehensive survey, the results of which are fed directly to Product Development teams for action in upcoming releases. We are especially interested in survey responses regarding the most recent release of each product, and especially Lotus Notes and Domino, WebSphere Portal, Workplace Web Content Management, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Forms, Lotus Connections, Lotus Symphony, WebSphere Portlet Factory, and Lotus Expeditor to name a few. The survey is available in 10 major languages.

Please note, this survey needs to be completed in a single session. There is no option to save a partially completed response and return to finish it later. The survey is fairly comprehensive and will take between 30 and 60 minutes to complete. This is a great opportunity to influence priorities in upcoming releases on all products.

Thank you for contributing.

developerWorks Lotus Lotusphere page now live!

Tara Hall — Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:22:06 -0400

Our annual Lotusphere page is now live and available at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/lotusphere. Like previous Lotusphere pages, we've compiled a number of resources, including conference information, blogs, podcasts, and photos.

The blogs that we list include known IBMers and business partners, most of whom are presenting at this year's Lotusphere conference. This list is only a sampling of blogs from attendees, business partners, IBMers, and so on who will be blogging from Lotusphere. There are far too many blogs for us to list.

Make sure to check out the official Lotusphere site for more conference information, including hotel and registration. If you haven't already registered, do so soon! The conference is filling very quickly.

Also, here's where you can find the developerWorks Lotus team during Lotusphere 2008: at our desks in Westford, Massachusetts. We aren't going this year. See what happens when you order from the mini bar?

IBM Research: Ponder This

Craig Lordan — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 13:30:00 -0400

Stumbled upon this today: IBM Research has a monthly logic puzzle feature called Ponder This. The featured puzzle for January involves drawing balls from an urn. They don't say this, but the puzzle may also work if you draw balls from another container, perhaps a boring old cardboard box.

This looks fun! The process appears to be:
1. Read the puzzle.
2. Ponder, then ponder some more if desired.
3. E-mail your answer.
4. Visit the next day to see if you answered correctly.

New Workplace Web Content Management wiki

Tara Hall — Wed, 2 Jan 2008 09:32:26 -0400

If you haven't already, check out the Workplace Web Content Management wiki for best practices, tips, and tricks for deployment, performance, and content migration. Several Workplace Web Content Management experts from IBM contribute their knowledge to the wiki, and you are invited to do the same. Simply sign up and beginning sharing your deployment experience with other users.

Don't forget that you can find additional Workplace Web Content Management information on the developerWorks Workplace Web Content Management technical content page.