Announcing the IBM FIle Viewer for IBM Connections

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Looking desperately for that important file? Don't want to download files unnecessarily just to see if it has the content that you need?

Today, that problem is gone. We have just made available a high-fidelity file viewer for all IBM Connections customers. As you may know, this was already available to Connections customers in the cloud and IBM Docs customers on premises. Today, all IBM Connections customers have access to a high-fidelity filer viewer.

The viewer allows you to see the entire contents of the file, present in full screen mode, and print without having to download to your desktop saving you time and space! The viewer will render PDFs, OpenOffice formats (odt, odp, and ods) and Microsoft Office formats (doc[x], xls[x] and ppt[x]).


Note: in the screenshot above you would only see the "Edit" button if you have purchased IBM Docs.

To get the viewer, you can get it from our app catalog, here.

New IBM Connections Plug-In for Symphony and OpenOffice Demo

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A while ago, I blogged about all the different plug-ins available for Symphony which brought the social capabilities of IBM Connections into Symphony. For those of you who don't know, Symphony is a free productivity suite based on OpenOffice, which coincidentally shipped a new release on Tuesday. And speaking of OpenOffice this same plugin has been released as an OpenOffice extension!!!

Of course, I'm pretty much a month late with these news, but there's now a new IBM Connections plug-in for Symphony, as Ed Brill announced earlier. The new plug-in adds the following capabilities:

• Add a Lotus Symphony document to a IBM Connections activity, blog, or wiki.
• Create a To Do item for an activity.
• Add a Spreadsheet or Presentation document to an activity.
• Add a URL as a IBM Connections bookmark.
• Insert data from a IBM Connections profile into Lotus Symphony documents.
• Open and share files in IBM Connections files.

And because it works inside of Symphony, it'll work in Linux, Mac, and Windows with any IBM Connections 2.5 server or above.

To me this is important because I believe in the power of bringing social to the end user to accelerate adoption of social business.

To show it off, I recorded this 9 minute demo which walks you through the features of this new plug-in plus the plug-in for the newsletter generator and a special one for those using the IBM Connections Content Edition.



For more details on this new plug-in available at no extra cost, check out the help document and to download & install it, go here (for Symphony) or here (for OpenOffice). The video above shows how to install it (hint: it's super easy!!).

Enjoy!

Mac vs PC for College 2011

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So turns out that I've received a lot of questions around Mac vs PC from family and friends who have kids going to college this fall. I also interview students for the college I went to and this question comes up (specially after they see me using a MacBook Pro to do the interview). I figured I would capture some of the thoughts on the topic and provide my take in the matter. This by no means is meant to be a comprehensive look at the options that are out there. If you are interested, there are plenty of discussions out there.

Off the bat, I usually recommend the 11" MacBook Air and undoubtedly the first thing I get back is "but they are so expensive". I figured I would look at the numbers and see how it would pan out. The comparison is against an HP machine which is the cheapest I found in OfficeMax.

There's also the question of iPad (w/ bluetooth keyboard) vs full laptop. I believe students still benefit from a full laptop (I'm thinking about writing those 40 page papers and gamers). I'm willing to be proven wrong, though.

Here's what I came up with:

Feature	MacBook Air 11"	PC
Price	$899 (typically there's a 10% discount for students)	$399
Weight	2.38 pounds	5.5 pounds
Screen Size	11.6"	15.6"
Office Productivity Suite (1)	$59.97	$149.95
Anti-Virus (2)	Not needed	$159.96 (you have to renew virus license every year)
Memory	2GB	4GB
Processor	1.6 GHz Dual Core	1.6 GHz Dual Core
Storage	64 GB (flash drive; up to 2x-4x faster)	500 GB
Backup	$0 (Time Machine included)	$80 (typically $20 / year)
OS Upgrade (3)	$29 (at least the last 2)	$119 (at least that's what it was for Win 7 Home Premium)
Battery Life	Up to 5 hours (30 day standby)	Up to 5 hours
Screen Resolution	1366 x 768 (up to 2560 x 1600 w/external monitor)	1366 x 768
Total	$987.97	$907.91

(1) You could save by using the free versions of Office like Symphony or OpenOffice . I'm assuming students will need a word processor ($19.99 for Pages), spreadsheets ($19.99 for Numbers), and presentations ($19.99 for Keynote). If students only need a word processor, Pages is enough and it's ~ 1/8 the price of MS Office)

(2) Some colleges have a site license for anti-virus. Used Symantec Anti-Virus at $39.99 / yr. Update 3/Aug/2011: Apparently, Microsoft has a free solution for anti-virus. Not sure how good it is or how it compares to the paid ones.

(3) I'm assuming that in 4 years Apple will release another update to their OS and Microsoft will release one as well.

So the Mac is costing you about $80 more over a 4 year period. Yet, it's about 2 pounds lighter and it's up to 2x faster. Personally, I would recommend the 13" MacBook Air which would come up to about $1258 over 4 years (vs $907.91 for a PC). The 13" MacBook Air gives you 7 hours of battery, it's still under 3 pounds, a 128GB SSD of storage, and has a faster processor at 1.7 GHz.

Of course, cost is not the only consideration.  Some tools will only run on a Windows environment so it might be good to ask current students in the prospective major what they are using.  

There you have it. Hope this helps.

Quickr Connector for Symphony 3.0 Now Available

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Back in October, I blogged about all the social plugins that are available for Symphony. In there, I had mentioned the availability of a Quickr plugin for Symphony. That plugin, however, was specifically for version 1.3 of IBM's free Office suite, Lotus Symphony. Last week, the connector was updated to work with version 3.0 of Lotus Symphony.

So if you use Quickr and Symphony, then you'll want to download the latest Quickr connector which is now available in the Symphony plugins catalog.

Here's a screenshot of the Quickr plugin for Symphony:

To download, click here and then drag-and-drop the widget directly into Symphony and the installation will start automatically!

IBM Makes Office Productivity Suites Go Social!

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IBM has just released their latest version of Lotus Symphony, their free award-winning office productivity suite built on top of Eclipse and OpenOffice.

And Symphony even becomes social thanks to the free plugins that are available. First, there's a plugin to generate an organizational chart based on the information coming from the Profiles service.

Additionally, if you are using LotusLive Connections, there's a plugin to allow you to easily open, edit, and publish files to/from LotusLive directly from Lotus Symphony.

If you have SharePoint internally, there's a plugin for that as well! Or even better than SharePoint, if you are using Lotus Quickr, there's a plugin that lets you check-in/check-out, edit documents, upload documents, integrates with your ECM, and even works with your established workflow patterns.

Another plugin you might be interested in is the Wiki editor plugin. This plugin allows you to create documents in Lotus Connections and convert them into a Lotus Connections Wiki or Confluence Wiki. Need an offline wiki editor? This is the plugin for you!

If you are using MediaWiki, there's also a plugin for that.

If you are interested in calculating how much money you would save by dumping Microsoft Office and switching to Lotus Symphony, check out the calculator here. And if that's not enough to convince you, you could still download the social plugins from IBM for Microsoft Office.

You are convinced, right? Then go ahead and download this plug-in to batch convert all your Microsoft Office files into OpenOffice format and start enjoying the power of FREE!

Version 3 of Lotus Symphony is available Windows, Mac, SUSE Linux, RedHat, and Ubuntu and can be downloaded from here.

Lotus Notes v8.5 released at MacWorld!

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As you may have heard already, Lotus Notes v8.5 has been officially released! AND it was released at Apple's last MacWorld conference. Customers and business partners can start downloading the Notes v8.5 client NOW! I'm glad to say that I already have it installed on my Mac OSX (Leopard).

Additionally, for the first time in many years, IBM has a kiosk there showing all of their software that works on Mac. I am lucky enough to have an Exhibitor Pass to MacWorld and will be here at the MacWorld Expo until Friday night! I'm also surprised that there are several IBM software brands will be at MacWorld: Lotus, IM, and Informix.

As a Lotus on Mac user, I'm thrilled that Lotus decided to announce Notes v8.5 today instead of waiting two more weeks for Lotusphere! With this announcement "out of the way" (so to speak), this leaves room for even bigger announcements at Lotusphere less than two weeks from today! Honestly, when Ed Brill announced they were going to wait after the Christmas holiday to ship Lotus Notes v8.5, I thought he meant they were going to wait until Lotusphere!

Here are some of the new features that I like the most:

• Includes Lotus Symphony 1.2.1 beta for Mac embedded
• Ability to add Calendars from Lotus Connections Activities, Google Calendar, and iCal feeds
• Ability to take Lotus Connections Activities offline!
• Ability to bookmark any document, database, and/or view in Lotus Connections Dogear
• Includes Sametime v8.0.1 with the WebAPI plug-in (important to show ST awareness in web applications such as Lotus Connections)
• Drag-n-drop emails into Sametime to add contacts to your Sametime list
• Photos/Screenshots embedded into emails are automatically compressed when sending
• File attachments are now shown at the top of each email (so that they are easier to find)
• New support for LiveText on the Mac
• Performance! Lotus Notes v8.5 on my Mac starts about 70% faster than Public Beta 2

Now, I know that you are wondering... "When can I get the Lotus Connections Activities sidebar to work on my Mac?" Well, the wait is over! Just like I hacked Public Beta 1 and Public Beta 2 to add the Activities sidebar to Notes v8.5 on the Mac, I've hacked the Gold release of Notes v8.5 so that you can add the Activities sidebar to your Notes v8.5 whether you are on Linux or Mac!!!

Once you download and install Notes v8.5 on your Mac, follow these instructions to add the Activities sidebar to it:

1. Uninstall the previous hack if you had it installed. (File > Application > Application Management)
2. Go to File -> Application -> Install
3. Select Search for new features to install and click Next >
4. Click on Add Remote Location...
5. Set the Name to Activities Sidebar
6. Set the URL to http://blog.lbenitez.com/updateSite/site.xml (Note: New URL)
7. Click Ok and then Finish
8. Follow the remaining steps and restart Notes for the changes to go into effect

Note: You will see several categories listed. Make sure you select the category named: Notes 8.5 Gold.

Enjoy!!

Sametime Unyte Has Been Upgraded

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Over this past weekend, Lotus Sametime Unyte has been upgraded to version 8.2b.

The enhancements that have been added are very timely. I was just going to post a blog entry on my "Sametime Unyte Wish List For The Holidays", but everything that I was going to ask for has already been added. Take a peek at some of the new features that have been added to Sametime Unyte:

• Support of PDF & ODF (OpenOffice and Lotus Symphony) document formats in addition to Microsoft formats
• Firefox 3.0 support
  
• A waiting room for attendees who join a conference prior to the host
• Performance acceleration for international customers so all attendees, regardless of location can count on consistent, fast response rates
• Multi-language support so individuals can host and join conferences in their preferred G1 language.
• One-click start of a Web conference from Lotus Sametime messaging service via a shelf

Are you ready to start hosting a meeting? It's easy, just head out to http://www.sametimeunyte.com and off you go!

Quick Tip: Want to send out an invite with a one-click meeting URL? Use this format: http://www.sametimeunyte.com/join/?schedid=xxxxxxx (and replace xxxxxx with your meeting's passcode).