Stu Downes

I’ve been asked a number of times by people who use Notes about databases with not too many documents in them yet lots of space consumed.  This is particularly important when trying to free up space with low quotas imposed.  The problem comes down to the fact that with local replicas the indexes created to allow notes to open views and folders quickly may not get discarded if they are unused.  Hence if you have lots of folders your mail file size may grow to a point where documents only form a small portion of the overall size.  I’ve simplified things here…

In most cases the compact performed from within the notes client only gets rid of the space freed up from deleting documents.  So  if you find you are having problems getting below a quota try this:

1. Open a command prompt (one way to do this is to click start – run – enter “cmd”)
2. You’ll need to know the folder your lotus notes executables sit in.
3. Then change directory to that folder.  That may be cd “c:\program files\lotus\notes” but in later versions of notes that has changed.
4. Next you’ll need to know where your data files are.  In my case it is c:\program files\lotus\notes\data
5. Now the magic command to get rid of indexes and the space left from deleting documents

   ncompact.exe “TheFullPathToYourMailFile” -D
   
   In my case it is ncompact.exe “c:\program files\lotus\notes\data\mail\sdownes.nsf” -D

I’m sure someone who reads this will have a wonderful script which runs from a button   If you have lets see it

While fitting some doors to a bookshelf last night my mind wandered to twitter, don’t ask he how!  The thought was that we are using twitter with our colleagues to replace the general verbal announcements we’d all have when co-located.  “Just nipping for lunch”, “Going for a coffee, anyone else” – the sentences not aimed at anyone in particular but the people you sit near.  Now I still do that but the people I sit near when in the office aren’t from my team.  The closest person to me is 20 miles away, then 200 miles, then several thousand miles.  It was only on reflection last night that I realised I was using twitter for those historically verbal announcements.

To follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/sdownes1972

Microblogging using twitter has become part of my daily life quicker and more effectively than Instant Messaging did.  The key benefits to me are:

• The social nature of following tweets
• Its much quicker than blogging and I can do it from all my devices without issue
• The clients are good, I recently moved 100% to twhirl
• No comment spam to manage
• I can integrate my tweets with my facebook status
• You can understand the following much better than you can with IM status messages:
• Location
• Mood
• Historic events
• Future events, we never lay out our day in IM status messages
• What we are doing, rather than available, busy, do not disturb
• Its much friendlier
• It works when I’m offline (people can see what I’m doing and hence why I’m offline).

I’m waiting to see which of the vendors incorporates microblogging into their IM environments, either via plugins for client technology or full blown enterprise ready versions of microblogs.  The balance for the enterprise solution from one of the vendors will be enabling some form of connection to twitter as half the value of twitter is the ability to link to people outside the corporate environment.  Enough of my twittering, work to do!

In the collaborative world January is usually an interesting month.  Lotusphere is guaranteed to produce interesting announcements.  Microsoft normally make an announcement around this time of year also so it’ll be interesting to see what that is (hope it isn’t simply a migration tool).  We will have to wait and see.  Yet again I’ve failed to get to Lotusphere, this time I have a collaborative excuse.  We’ve been working hard on packaging a suite of collaborative solutions and that work is just coming to fruition and hence can’t take the time out at such a critical time.  However, I wish everyone attending a safe and enjoyable Lotusphere, I’ll be tracking your blogs and watching the opening general sessions (and hopefully more content will be released).

I’m beginning to wonder whether at some point soon we’ll start to see digital migration within the UK and the wider world.  As more and more content is streamed over the Internet the speed of connection will be key.  In my personal circumstance you can see that compared to friends I have one of the slowest speeds (you’ll guess that Darren and I live within a mile of each other).

My results do make me question whether in a few years time my household, particularly the kids, will be disadvantaged by not being able to take advantage of the next generation of television, internet and other services due to slow connectivity speeds.

This message greeted me after importing my feeds from GoogleReader   Its actually quite useful but I’d probably scan my “most important” feeds before utilising this feature.

Newsgator yesterday announced that their clients can now be downloaded and used without fee.  Some more thoughts from Mike Gotta who thinks IBM should acquire Newsgator and discusses whether Microsoft may move for them.  Frankly I’m surprised both IBM and Microsoft still have no capability in the Enterprise RSS space beyond some basic client integration.

My work renders the incumbent feed readers in IE7, Outlook 2007 and Notes 8 unusable – they simply do not give a rich enough experience.  I like the Newsgator product though recently (well since my subscription came for renewal) I’ve been using Google reader.  I may well switch back.  One of the great things I really like about Newsgator is the ability to share multiple folders with my colleagues.  This is really important for me, right now in google reader I can just share posts to everyone.  Well actually everyone is not interested in all the posts.  However now I can share things I feel are interesting on UC with Sam our UC product manager etc.  Its really powerful for me so a switch back to Newsgator looks likely.

To remain balanced I must point out that the folks at Attensa have worked using this business model since day 1.  Their river of news algorythms to track and focus posts are very powerful but for now the Newsgator UI wins for me.

Off to the download site now!

I had moaned to Steve about the fact that joining conference calls was a pain as unlike his Treo there was no automated way of storing the post connection numbers.  Well apparently a way does exist.  Best described here.

“When dialing a phone number that contains a pause, the handheld will pause for two seconds before dialing the remaining numbers. When dialing a phone number that contains a wait, the handheld displays a Dial Extension screen prompting you to either dial the remaining numbers, skip the remaining numbers, or end the call.”

I can’t be the only person to have missed this feature so here it is!!!  On the 8800 I found the only way to add a pause or wait was to press the scroll wheel and select.  Its really useful for joining calls as I just store the entire number, a wait and then the entry pin and other keys.