Mobile and not so mobile access to Domino apps

I was recently checking out the IdeaJam website and really liked the work that Bruce and Matt having been doing there. Matts use of xPages has resulted in a very functional yet modern looking web application that just happens to be built on Domino.

Matt has recently been working with the Hursley team on the xPages workshop - so he knows a thing or two about the subject.

I noticed that there was a url to access IdeaJam via the iPhone. Take the time to have a look as it's a lovely piece of work. Bruce informed me that this was based on work by Jeff Gilfelt - with instructions on how to do it here.

This should make it easy to give iPhone users access to Domino data - at least to view it, however it also shows up really well as a widget in the notes 8.5 sidebar, (which is nice).

How to determine the version of Portal or Quickr you are running

After installing Quickr I wanted to check for updates on the IBM Fix Central website.

The check for the correct fix the site requested whether I was using version 8.0.0.0 or 8.0.0.2.

To check this I looked for the file C:\IBM\Quickr\PortalServer\version\TS.product which is an xml file - Wordpad should be ok to read it.

The installed version was listed as "8.0.0.0"

Easy when you know how :-)

Portal 6.1 - difficulty adding an administrator

I installed WebSphere Portal express 6.1 on a Windows 2003 server in a demo environment and ran the config wizard to secure the server to an Active Directory running on a second server.

Adding an Active Directory user as a member of the preexisting "wpsadmins" group proved difficult and resulted in the "EJPAL3030E" error - most likely relating to a misconfigured group attribute.

As time was limited to complete the demo I simply logged into the Portal as the "wpsadmin" user, chose the AD user I wanted to promote to a Portal administrator and selected the icon to "duplicate role" of the wpsadmin user.

Now the AD user can see the "administration" tab in portal.

Whew!

Analysis of a Domino NSD report - howto

Looking through the LDD website can be a good use of time. There are plenty of tips to be found. Today I was looking through this section and found a presentation from Lotusphere 2008 on "Using NSD – A Practical Guide".

This was written by Elliott Harden and Joe Wallace.

The explanations seem pretty clear, while not suited for an absolute beginner, it is certainly a good starting point.

Semaphore debugging has never been so much fun.

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - (Part 3 - External Monitors/Projectors)

Since the upgrade to 8.10 of Ubuntu from 8.04 I found that the ATI Catalyst Control Centre (ccc) had been removed from the Applications menu.

Looking at Synaptic I saw that there was a package called fglrx-amdcccle already installed. This is the control Centre - it had just been missing from the menu. After a little hunting I determined the Control Centre could be invoked by running the command "amdccle".

To Simplify this a little I created a menu item for the "ccc" by right clicking on the "Applications" menu, selecting "Edit Menus" and then "New Item" - and filling out the details as shown below.


The is the app you need to control external monitors working with the T60p.

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - (Part 2 - Cool Effects )

Earlier this week there were a few updates for Ubuntu via Synaptic. As usual I let the system apply the updates in it's typical smooth manner, however this time there was a problem.

When I restarted the system the usual Compiz graphics would not work at all. The cube you can keep - but I ned those wobbly windows. I restarted the system and chose to boot an older version of the Kernel and found the Compiz graphics were working to an extent, I had the wobbly windows but no Cube effect.

I booted back to the latest kernel. Running "fglrxinfo" in a terminal windows gave the error "BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)".

As usual there are a few websites giving long and complicated solutions to this problem. I just ran EnvyNG on the command line... "envyng -t" and selected the option to "Uninstall the ATI driver", then chose the option to "Install the ATI driver".

After a reboot the "fglrxinfo" gives a more useful output...

john@monza:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8087 FireGL Release

And now I have the cylinder effect going in conjunction with the cube.


Thanks go to Alberto for EnvyNG yet again.

Google predict the flu - what can they not do?

Google have done a little bit of work predicting your likelihood of catching the Flu if you live in the US. They have tracked search terms and found that queries on the Flu can allow them to predict outbreaks two weeks faster than existing systems.

In itself this is quite interesting - but what else could they track? Political affiliation in an upcoming election? Predict share price fluctuation in specific markets?

If I was a betting man I'd quite full access to their data - however I suppose google trends goes somewhere to this effect - however not with this granularity of geography.

Have a look here