Things To Do On Your Next Visit To Puerto Rico

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In the past couple of weeks, 5 colleagues have reached out to me asking what is there to do in Puerto Rico since they are going to be coming for some vacation soon. Given the interest, I figured I would blog my response for the benefits of other that are thinking of coming.

There's plenty to do here. It depends if you are a beach person, shopping person, etc. These are my favorite things to do in the island and that I encourage my friends to do while they are here:

• Day trip to El Yunque - the caribbean's only rainforest: http://www.elyunque.com/ Good for hiking, going into the waterfalls, and spectacular views
• Day trip to Arecibo Observatory / Camuy Caverns - The Arecibo Observatory was featured in movies like Contact and 007's Live Another Day. It's the largest radiotelescope of the world and it's operated by Cornell. (http://www.naic.edu/) It's main mission is to look for extraterrestial life and comets that may impact Earth one day. The caverns are the 3rd largest underground cavern system in the world. http://www.whattodoinpr.com/camuy.html
• Horseback riding: Hacienda Carabalí
• You have to check out one of the bioluminiscent bays: http://www.discoveringpuertorico.com/2010/04/puerto-rico-bio-bay-and-kayak-tours/
• For shopping, check out Old San Juan and Plaza Las Américas (and of course, PioMu)
• Visiting Old San Juan and El Morro is a must!
• Since I'm a pilot, I can take you on a plane ride around the island :D and let you fly the airplane (only 4 people fit at a time though)

Restaurants to check out:

• La Bombonera - good for lunch.. Spanish food, service is horrible but the food is great & awesome prices. Been there for almost 100 years
• Dragonfly - Great atmosphere for dinner. Definitely check it out on a Thurs-Sun
• Aguaviva - Another great one in Old San Juan
• Casa Dante - in Isla Verde... ask for the Mofongo.
• Eat some (http://www.puertoricodaytrips.com/luquillo-kiosks/). The kiosks may look sketchy, but they are popular among locals :) (and the food is good)
  
• Another must-visit for local food is Guavate. Check out this article.

In terms of Beaches:

• Definitely check out Ocean Park, tons of young people and good atmosphere.
• If you like more deserted beaches, you may want to consider a day trip to Culebra and go to Flamingo Beach. It's #2 of Travel Channel's Top beaches.

Hotels:

• Depends on your budget and lifestyle. Good metro area hotels are: Condado Plaza (can walk everywhere), Caribe Hilton ( hard to walk to places ), Marriott Condado, and El San Juan Hotel in Isla Verde. If you like hotels that are secluded from everything, El Conquistador in Fajardo is a good choice.

There's some more good info here: http://www.discoveringpuertorico.com/

Enjoy!

What Do IBM Interns do ? Take a Peek

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How To Get the LinkedIn Widget working in Connections 3.0

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On Wednesday I was working on a demo environment and wanted to install the LinkedIn widget in this new Connections 3.0 instance. You may remember that I introduced the LinkedIn widget for Lotus Connections in April of last year.

Once you download the widget from the catalog, you can install it on your 3.0 server. The widget includes step-by-step instructions and they mostly work except for the last step where you configure the translations for the widget.

In 3.0, the process to add custom strings for widgets changed a bit, thus the instructions attached to the widget are no longer applicable. Therefore, ignore steps (2f) and (2g) in those instructions. Instead, you can follow these instructions to make sure the translations are properly loaded. (Note: Even if your users are all using the same language, you must follow these steps).

1. Copy linkedIn.zip to C:\IBM\LotusConnections\Data\shared\customization\strings
2. Extract the contents of the file
3. You'll see a folder structure created.
4. Go to: C:\IBM\LotusConnections\Data\shared\customization\strings\com\ibm\lconn\linkedin\resources
5. Copy all the files from this directory to C:\IBM\LotusConnections\Data\shared\customization\strings
6. Append the following string to the beginning of each file name: com.ibm.lconn.linkedin.resources.
7. Check out LotusConnections-Config.xml
8. In the <resources> section add this line: <widgetBundle prefix="LinkedInFramework" name="com.ibm.lconn.linkedin.resources.linkedin" />
9. Save the file and check it in
10. Restart all the nodes and application servers

UPDATE (13/Jan/2011): You have to do one more change. Open <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>\installedApps\cellName\lc_linkedInApp.ear\LinkedInFramework.war\returnLocation.jsp with your favorite text editor. In there you will see an include to Profile's Dojo v1.2.3. That needs to be changed to Dojo v1.4 since that's what Connections v3.0 uses. Therefore, the include link should now look like:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/profiles/dojo_1.4/dojo/dojo.js"></script>

I've alerted the right person so that the instructions are updated on the widget.

Enjoy!

Social Business ROI - Why Do You Need This With Examples Like This?

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I can't think of a better way to start the year 2011 than with an amazing success story that led to increased customer satisfaction thanks to social collaboration. My colleague Fred Raguillat wrote this up, so I'll let you read through his awesome story:

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This is another scenario where IBM's Social Collaboration Platform & Atlas made finding experts & collaboration across continents an easy task..!

Adam Ramsay and Rob Thatcher from IBM UK needed Dev Technical assistance fixing a deployment problem with Mobile for their customer. Using IBM social software, we were able to successfully resolve the problem within 24 hours across two different continents.

Here's the sequence of events...

16:45, Monday December 6th GMT, Adam Sametimed with me, asking for help with his problem.  Michael Roche (Lotus Connections Distinguished Engineer) had referred Adam to me for assistance on "mobile application issues with applications".

By 17:12 I had all the information I needed from Adam and Sametimed Luis Benitez for help identifying developer(s) in in the U.S. that could assist. Luis performed a quick tag search using Lotus Connections ('mobile', 'development', 'connections'), identifying the best two qualified developers. With three clicks he narrowed down a company of 400,000 employees to 2 employees!

I then used Atlas to find my "contact entry point" (my link to those guys). I then mailed a "help request" to all the relevant parties..

At 18:30 Jesse Hill, one of the mobile LC developers, confirmed that he would be happy to help..

At 8:00 the next morning the UK team sent the log files over to Jesse in the U.S. By that afternoon Jesse sent a fix on to Rob. Rob made the relevant changes, and by 17:00 Rob sent an email to confirm that all issues were resolved.

Sounds easy, yes!? but think if we did not have those tools in our reach, this would have taken for ever..!

Thanks to IBM Social Software, we’ve got another happy customer! ;-)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: Robert Thatcher/UK/IBM@IBMGB
To: Adam Ramsay/UK/IBM@IBMGB
Cc: Tony Hickman/UK/IBM@IBMGB, Jesse Hill/Phoenix/IBM@IBMUS, Fred Raguillat/Ireland/IBM@IBMIE
Date: 07/12/2010 17:13
Subject: Re: Fw: Help Request! RBS Lotus Connections mobile assistance


Adam,

Headline is good news Mobile is fixed and working.

Longer story is that Jesse found the problem very quickly, and it is fixed in 2.5.0.2. But rather than disturb the system Jesse gave me a work around to the Configuration file. I have made the change to the config file, and restarted the Mobile app only. I would suggest a complete restart of WAS when convenient to confirm that the config changes did not upset other functions.

THANKS Jesse.

Rob

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How's that for a success story? And it would've been less than 24 hours if it wasn't for the timezone difference.

Goodbye 2010 and Welcome 2011

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Boy am I glad that 2010 is over. 2010 sure had its ups but it had many downs too. For instance, I had to go to the hospital 9 times. Yuck! One of those visits forced me to bail on Lotusphere 2010 . However, one of those visits was a very joyous event as my family and I welcomed to the world Gabriela. Hands down, my favorite moment in 2010 was when 2 year old Alejandro got to meet his 1 day old sister for the very first time:

I also lost American Executive Platinum status as I traveled less this year (sort of bitter-sweet there). And that's mostly due to another positive event in 2010: I got a new job!

I'm about 4 months into the job at IBM and I'm loving it. One of the things that I've noticed is how my work pattern has changed a bit. My email traffic seems to have doubled since I took the job. I think part of it is that I'm now working with a whole bunch of new peers and they may not be aware of my instant message-before-email preference . Another factor is that I get to work now with a lot more confidential data which makes email and Quickr the tools of choice.

Blog wise, readership is up about 2% from last year including the big hiatus I took between February - July (102 posts vs 162 posts before). Traffic spiked significantly around the time Connections 3.0 was announced.

Looking ahead towards 2011, I'm excited to bring to market my first product update in my new role as Product Manager. When and what that is will be talked about at Lotusphere 2011. It's been fascinating learning what it takes to plan and drive a product in coordination with all the right entities: developers, marketing, legal, customers, business partners, etc. I really like being able to quickly poll the community either via Twitter or via the Skype channel Stuart created.

I also want to continue participating and growing the Puerto Rico Lotus User Group and drive more local business and reduce the market share of the competition.

So with that, bring on 2011!