02/04/2010

Live, now, on the BBC website!

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I'm on the front page of news.bbc.co.uk as well

A picture named M2

This was actually filmed back in December, following an enquiry from the BBC technology team to our website. We talked for a long while about how best to present adult LEGO fans, and how to show off the engineering involved. I know the producer was very keen to make sure it came across that way and I think they all did a great job of it - so thanks to them!

If you're really on a LEGO fix today, I've just opened up the Flickr photos I took on that day and you can also listen snippets from a BBC Three Counties interview that I did live yesterday, and a BBC Radio 5 Live interview we pre-recorded late last night (which is why I sound so tired!)

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 2:37 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

02/03/2010

The Nexus one? Good/Bad/Indiferrent - tell me your thoughts!

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So, as my love affair with the Nokia N97 comes to a crashing halt as she gets lazy, fat and generally unco-operative....

What's the general geek concensus on the Nexus One, or possibly the Droid/Milestone? I can't believe I am seriously thinking about it, but here's my updated list of must-haves for a phone. Can you help me by telling me the Android view on these?

- Traveler access. I know the answer to this one, so no need to tell me
- Turn-by-turn navigation. Is Google Maps upto the job now?
- Sync with iTunes for audio and video
- Twitter client
- Good browser
- Home screen that is useful (ie shows information)
- PHONE THAT WORKS

Interestingly, one of the items that has dropped on the 'must-be-on-a-phone' list is a physical keyboard. Not gone forever, but I've found using a large touchscreen easier than I though. I even use the touchscreen on the N97 a fair bit as well instead of the physical keyboard.

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 2:19 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

02/02/2010

Missed out on Lotusphere 2010?

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If you weren't in Orlando with Paul and I earlier this year, you might be interested in this - FREE from Bluewave:

-------------

The Bluewave Technology Group are delighted to be hosting a series of free Domino related webinars starting in February 2010. These webinars are designed to inform and answer questions as well as bring you some of the latest innovative solutions that further enhance your Domino Infrastructure.  

We are kicking off the season with a review of LotuSphere 2010 which was held in Florida earlier this month.  Once again the Bluewave Technology Group was well represented at LotuSphere 2010 with both Paul Mooney & Warren Elsmore presenting a number of sessions. Hear the major announcements from the "Sphere" during this session hosted by Paul and Warren as well as details of the subjects they covered.

Date:  24th February 2010

Duration: 1 hour

Start time: 2.30pm GMT

Register for Lotusphere Webinar


Posted by Warren Elsmore At 12:10 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

01/27/2010

iPad first thoughts

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So, I missed the live coverage as I was on the train on the way home. But, like any good geek I've been looking over the iPad tonight. If you know me, you'll know I have wanted an Apple tablet for a *long* time. So, what do I think?

Form factor - good. I wasn't expecting any buttons, and it's thin enough (though I'd prefer thinner and much less bezel).
Functionality - no webcam is a disappointment, but seriously - how often do you use it on your Macbook? No SD card reader is more annoying, but I guess the extra space went into the battery
Screen - 4x3. Seriously?? No-one seems to have noticed this yet, but every other device on the market is now 16x9 or 16x10. 4x3?? WHY?????
Comms - as expected. I'm not actually too bothered about the 3G aspect myself (see below), otherwise as expected - although video out is an unexpected BIG bonus.

Apps. Now here's where I think it's interesting. I've been thinking about use cases, and the iPad fits into these very well for me:

- Browsing the web on the sofa. Nuff said here - check!
- Taking a laptop to a LEGO event/family/pub/etc, to use the large screen to show off pictures to people. Big check!
- Presenting Keynote presentations to people around a table. Check!
- Carrying around at conferences like Lotusphere to give slide-based presentations. Check! Heavy VMWare presentations will always need something chunky, but for slideware it would be cool.

Am I bothered about using it as a phone? No. Browsing whilst on the move? Not really and if I did, JoikuSpot turns my phone into a WiFi access point. No. ebook reader? Quite probably no. An E-ink screen is miles ahead of LCD screens. The IPS screen might be as good, but I doubt it. As I mentioned on twitter, I can see the iPad as a content presentation device, not a preparation device. It's the Star Trek style tablet that is handed to Picard to review, not the built in workstation Data used in his room to prepare it. It's a digital book.

Will I buy one? Well, possibly, probably, maybe. I get the real feeling that this is a V1 device, proving the market and form factor. A V2 device, 16x9, 3G only with an AMOLED or combined AMOLED/E-Ink screen would probably be the killer device - and I can't help wondering if Apple are pushing the envelope here, just waiting for that type of screen to become more available. going upto a 16x9 form factor would give more space for an SD card reader and a camera. Movies will make much more sense too. So, will I wait for the iPadS or just be a geeky early adopter. Whadya you think?

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 10:17 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

01/22/2010

I'm still alive!

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LotusKnows things have been busy recently!

Sorry for the complete radio silence over Lotusphere, but I'm sure if you wanted the inside gossip, it was available on a number of other lotus blogs! Just a quick one from me then, to say that I am still alive (as of right now...) and normal service will be resumed next week when I land back in the UK.

I leave you with two facts about UK Night on Monday
1) According to the Shulas wait staff, no group has EVER drank so much alcohol at an evening reception as we did in 2 hours!
2) In those two hours, they had to restock the bar FIVE times!
Just thinking of all the hard work all the Brits did, to make Orlando feel like home, brings a tear to my eye

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 6:26 PM Location Las Vegas, NV | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

01/17/2010

So, where were you last night?

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Day 0 at Lotusphere, and already Kitty and I are crashing! In answer to the 'where were you' question - I've got to admit that we never made it to the ESPN last night. After a great BALD we made our way back to drop off bags.

2 hours later.....

We wake up fully clothed sitting on the bed! Something tells me that we still weren't quite over the jet lag so I'm afraid we took the hint and hit the hay. On the flip side, I did get alot of sleep last night, which looking at my schedule this week is going to be very useful indeed. So, no Turtle party for me for the first time in 8 years. Doh!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 6:42 PM Location Dolphin Southern I | | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

01/11/2010

I like Symphony, but...

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I'm sure I'm not alone in the fact that right now, I'm reviewing and prepping my presentations for Lotusphere. 3 of them this time, and one (the show'n'tell) is a right bugger to test! Anyway, I was listening to the Taking Notes Podcast with John Head the other day about Lotus Symphony and some possible new releases. Having been working with Presentation for a while I hope they are sooner rather than later!

Lotus Symphony Documents and Spreadsheets I really like on the Mac. They might be slower to load than Pages or Numbers (wierdly), but they do have a boat load more functionality in there. Very nice. Presentation, on the other hand, is it's poor long lost cousin. If you're a presentation junkie like I am, it's missing some major features that Keynote has. Particularly:

- No ability to replace slide designs with a new template (John mentioned this)
- No auto-guidelines. Hard to explain this, but Keynote pops up automatic guidelines to register graphics on a centerline, baseline, a repeated distance form another object etc. Very, VERY handy
- Lots of publically available (and good) templates. Like those from www.Keynotepro.com
- Editing of slides in Notes view

And here's the biggie - no presenter display!! When you're looking at my slides from my Mac - this is what I see on my laptop (taken with the onboard screenshotting tool):
A picture named M2
The top green bar tells me that the next slide is rendered and I can move onto it (useful if there are complex builds or animations), I can see the next slide coming up (useful for 'which brings me onto...') and I can easily see how far through the time allotted I am. Even better - I can pull this up on my laptop just to rehearse. I realised this afternoon that I'm so used to having this available to rehearse timing's that I find it really, really hard to work without it.

Now, I know that alot of this is available in MS Office. An I know that there are also a huge bunch of other features that make Macs better presentation machines (auto-display sensing that works, re-scaling of content, custom screen sizes, PDF/EPS manipulation, integration with iTunes, iPhoto etc etc). But it's this display that is the total Symphony killer for me.  These sort of features let me write a 5 min presentation in 2mins flat - and present it from scratch (which I have done at certain conferences )
BTW, as A/V guy at ILUG and UKLUG, I have never had problems connecting a Mac. The same cannot be said for the herd of Thinkpads (very good), Toshibas (OK), Vaios (bad), weird Acer laptops (truly awful) we've been presented with. And did you know when presenting, Keynote suppresses all other apps' dialog boxes and sounds? Nice, eh?

So, if you're wondering why so many Lotus presenters have gone Mac*, this is one of the reasons. It really is better, trust me. Of course, for Lotusphere we've all submitted our slides as ODF using Lotus Symphony, but I'm really hoping that soon we'll see a version of Symphony that closes up this gap soon and it's possible to use Symphony for every event.

*Of course, one of the other reasons is that most Notes professionals live in Notes, doc stores, have dbs for everything, Quickrs, Sameteim, don't print hard copy etc etc - and have no use for a Windows file server anymore so who cares what OS we use? I've given up trying to explain this to a Windows admin though. They'll get there one day though, I'm sure

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 5:46 PM Location on a train somewhere sothing of Carlise | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

01/11/2010

UK Night - IMPORTANT UPDATE

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A picture named M2

UKLUG are very pleased to announce 'UK Night' at Lotusphere 2010 - and our final supporter lineup! The UK hasn't had it's own party for a while, in conjunction with some of our sponsors, we're going to have a few drinks for the brits abroad. I've a very important announcement to make - which is that we have CHANGED VENUE to allow us to get more of you in! The new details are:

When: January 18th, 2010 (Monday) from 8pm till 10pm (after the showcase reception&jamfest)
Where: Shulas' Lounge, Dolphin Hotel

How to get in:
Here's the fun part! You'll need to find someone from one of the above companies. Find one of their employees, let them hear your great British accent*, and get a special sticker for your Lotusphere badge. Make sure to wear your badge and sticker to get in!

So, if you're at Lotusphere in January, then we'd love to see you at UK Night. We're attracting more freebies as time goes on, so you will even stand a change of winning a superb prize. Our thanks again to the sponsors above who are making this possible.

*BTW, If you're not British, but can do a good british accent - we might let you in too. Just don't start learning from Mary Poppins...

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 9:36 AM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

01/08/2010

Wondering how the hell we run UKLUG? Come see at Lotusphere!

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I've had my hands slapped by my co-moderator, Mike Smith, that I should have blogged this a while ago! So my apologies!!

I've been asked a few times about how we manage to put together something like ILUG or UKLUG. How do we handle them money, the sponsors, hotels, speakers, etc? Well, I though what better way to tell people than have a BOF about it at Lotusphere. Here's the details:

Title:                BOF508 Creating and Running a Lotus User Group Event
Time:                5:45 PM
Room:                Swan Heron (*upstairs* on the first floor)

We're timed just before the party (which I think is great timing - come see us then go party!), so please come over and meet us. As Mike says, the BOF sessions are pretty relaxed and the conversation goes both ways - so bring your questions, suggestions, views, harranging etc! And if you're from the UK, make sure to join us Monday night for UK Night as well. More (exciting) details of that to follow very soon!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 2:01 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

01/05/2010

Another year gone by....

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Yes, it's that time of year again when we all look back to see how far we've come (or not!) in the last 365 days.  Actually, this is a little early as I usually post this on the flight to Lotusphere, being the actual anniversary and all. But with the projected 'no-gadgets' restriction, I'm going to err on the safe side. So, what happened in 2009?

Work
Work in 2009 was, well, pretty uneventful really. Of course there were some big announcements like Domino Designer becoming free, Notes 8.5 and 8.5.1 shipping. But on the general, day-to-day front, no major new exciting projects I can talk about, no ground breaking solutions delivered. Yet. On the flip side, if there were, then when would I have the time for all of this other stuff? Here's the alternate year in review:

UKLUG
UKLUG got big this year! With ILUG taking a breather, there was always the possibility that UKLUG was going to be very popular. We weren't wrong either! Not only did we break all attendance records, for the first time at any conference I've been to - everyone was there right until the end. We didn't have to re-draw a single raffle entry, which just amazed me. Of course, I have to again give a huge thanks to all the people involved with UKLUG, all the speakers and all the sponsors. Over the last couple of months I've been trying to explain the business model to other user groups and they are always amazed at just how much of peoples' time and money they are willing to donate. All I can do is to say 'thankyou' and try to make your time with us as easy as possible!
One of the downsides, to an extent, of UKLUG, is the sheer amount of time it takes out of my diary. Essentially, I'm now running a small company in my spare time. This isn't any sort of complaint as actually it's quite interesting. But evenings and weekends of a UKLUG year soon disappear. Paul will tell you the same about ILUG, I'm sure.
Of course a personal highlight of mine was introducing Bob Picciano. Though, as it turned out, even that was topped by his attendance all day and right into the evening. He did manage to miss the dancing though...

Brickish
Well, if I thought I could be a member of Brickish without getting too involved, I was obviously wrong there In April, I was voted in as Chairman of the Brickish Association (our LEGO club) and obviously I've been working on that ever since. Again actually, the extra work has been very interesting and I've met alot of new people from LEGO as part of it. One of the things that surprised me about the position though, is the media's interest in LEGO. We probably get a press enquiry every week or so - and another general enquiry just as often. So, when I'm quoted in the newspaper, arrange exhibits for the Gadget Show, film for the BBC (upcoming) etc, it's much less of a surprise than you'd think. Still, very cool though

LEGO
The other side to the BA is the amount of LEGO shows that Kitty and I have been to this past year. Each of these is a one or two day event where we display our models and talk to the public all day. Not unlike a trade show, except that people don't get sold to! We've exhibited in Manchester and Swindon, as well as spending a week in Denmark exhibiting, visiting the factory, even staying with LEGO set designers. All very cool and a gradual entry to a whole other world! I'm actually off to Copenhagen in February for another show too. I also blogged about the building of St Pancras (which probably got more traffic than anything else I've written!) which will also continue into 2010. Thankfully though, I should have a little longer to build the next phase of it before next year - because building that in only 8 weeks of evenings and weekends nearly did me in!

Moonwalk
This is one thing we certainly won't be repeating in 2010! In June, Kitty and I walked out the house in just tracksuit bottoms and bras, and proceeded to walk 26.2 miles overnight. Everyone here was amazingly generous and donated over £2000 to charity (there was a reason!), for which I'm very humbled and thankful. It is one hell of an event and I would honestly encourage anyone to try doing it, it really isn't that hard. I am keeping my finishing 'medal' and every time I see it, I'm still really proud of what we did. Just not again this year

Collaboration University
Another great couple of weeks went by in the summer at CU Chicago and London. Of course, to keep up the tradition, I was ill again - but all was presented well I hope. It is getting a little strange, being ill so many CU's on the trot. Thank god for good organisers who know I'm not taking the piss I guess! In fact..

Health
Really hasn't been so good this year. For the first time ever, I had to leave a customer site very quickly, and ended up in A&E. Thankfully all was well - false alarm - and I was very grateful for co-workers on that day. I even had to leave Kerrs' wedding early feeling pretty terrible. With all that, I've been to the doctors more this year than in the last 5 years. Apparently it's just bad luck - so here's hoping 2010 won't continue that trend! I have a quick appointment in early Feb, but after that, let's hope they forget my face again!


So, what's on for 2010? Well, the same resolution as 2009 - 'do less stuff' seems to be on the board. At one point this year - sometime around May - Kitty and I had every weekend accounted for until October. In fact at one point I was working away for a week, came home, flew to Chicago for CU Chicago, flew home, drove to London, did CU London, did a LEGO product development workshop, picked up Kitty, drove to Denmark for a show, drove to Billund, drove back to Swindon, did another show, drove home, waited one day then picked up Rob Novak to start UKLUG!! That's just not healthy I'm sure.
I have started to fly/train down to sites the night before, cutting back the 5:00am starts which does seem to help, and there is even the possibility of work in Scotland for once. So, hopefully that will all calm down in 2010. Not moonwalking - or training for weeks on end - will help that alot, as will moving a few things around in the diary. Looking back on my review from last year, the blogging record is still down, though tweets are up and the overal trend seems to be similar. it still doesn't feel like it's slowing though!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 12:31 PM Location Edinburgh | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)