I found a lot of great posts about Connections summarising that “it now integrates with Feature / Product X”, but nothing in the one place I could refer to.

Hopefully you find this useful and of course if anyone has feedback on integration points for Lotus Connections that I’ve missed then please feel free to add them in the comments.

The browser market has never been hotter and Web 2.0 is the reason why. More than ever the browser is now the delivery platform for applications rather than just static HTML. In the “old days” the browser didn’t matter - IE6 had a killer market share and most of your processing happened on the server anyway, so the browsers performance was less of an issue.

That’s changed. I actually posted on this here back in May  talking about the need for companies and individuals to actually start thinking about which browser they use and why.

Without getting to technical, one of the core elements of most web sites and what we know as a web 2.0 experience these days is JavaScript. All this means is that much of the processing on what an application does, the popups, the validation, the lookups etc. have been moved to the browser and run within the browser instead of the server. Logically then, the place to start in understanding how well a browser performs is understanding how fast it executes JavaScript.

So for those left-brained thinkers, here is some figures for comparison. They show the average speed each browser takes to execute a standard series of benchmark tests from http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-driver.html over 10 iterations. They’ve all been tested on the same PC (mine) so they should be relative, your own mileage may vary but the relationship between the performance should stay the same.

Browser (Speed)
IE8 Beta 2 (12,318ms)
FF3 (4,473ms)
Chrome (2,293ms).

Clearly Chrome is fastest (2X the speed of FF3) so I should just use Chrome, right?

Wrong. There is a lot more to it than that. To put some perspective on this, IE6 which is what many corporates still use benchmarks at around 60,000ms, so even IE8 Beta 2 is quite a bit faster.

The problem is that when your using a browser internally it’s probably controlled by IT, so you may not be able to change it. Even if you can, browser standards actually tend to cause lazy developers (why develop a site to support different browsers when you know that everyone uses IE6 and you can control that) which means lots of internal sites break with FF3 and Chrome.

IE6 was such a bad browser and broke so many standards that even Microsofts early official name for the IE8 backwards compatibility mode is “Quirks mode”!

So here’s where the difference comes in; all modern browsers (IE8, Chrome and FF3) now support the same standards and HTML to a much stricter degree than ever before so moving forwards, it’s highly likely that sites will work whichever browser you use, but in the internal world, you’ll undoubtably have sites that require older compatibility modes.

My solution to this is to use IE8 beta 2 for internal websites in general because of its excellent support for older style sites and its general robust compatibility. If you’re an average internet user and like low fuss options, IE8 has a lot going for it. Just be warned that you’ll likely run into internal IT support issues if you try deploy it inside the corporate firewall (for example, it wants to update Service Packs on Windows XP and some companies won’t be on SP3 yet).

For external sites I’m opting for Chrome - the raw speed and excitement, the new take on what a browser should behave and look like, and (the killer for me) the process seperation (each browser tab runs as a seperate process using seperate memory) means that bad applications in one tab won’t kill my performance. Ignoring the process bit, that’s my right-brain talking; it’s all about the look and feel and the internet looks and feels more exciting in Chrome

As far as FF3 is concerned, it’s still a great browser but I’ve had shocking stability issues with it. Where FF3 wins hands down is in it’s Add-In market. If you’re a die hard browser and like lots of nifty productivity enhancements, then for now at least, FF3 is a better browser than Chrome.

Chrome adds a really interesting new dimension to the browser wars and I’m really interested to see where this goes. Hope this is of interest to you, happy browsing!

Recently another examples of the power of Twitter occured that I thought I’d share.

There are many uses for Twitter (surprisingly many for something that only supports 140 characters), but one of them is kind of like the office water cooler – it’s for that off-the-cuff comment that you don’t neccessarily expect anyone to reply to, but you’re happy when they do.

Recently, I tweeted “Is it just me, or is FF3 really unstable?” FireFox (FF) 3 is currently my preferred browser and I use it for anything I can, only falling back to IE when some internal sites won’t support FF but it’s been very unstable and driving me nuts!

When I got up the following morning, I had the following answer from Ricardo Sueiras (who follows me) “yup, FF3 crashes for me on a daily basis.”

Now this isn’t THAT amazing, I mean Ricardo follows me, knows me in RL (Real Life) and also uses FF. However when I re-connected I received a Tweet direct from @Firefox_Answers “Firefox crashes can be from add-ons Try Safe Mode http://is.gd/PCw If fixed, disable add-ons one by one to find the culprit”

When did you last feel that you were being listened to by a technology company (without paying huge support), and wouldn’t you love as a corporation in any industry to be able to turn the negative vibe of the water cooler into a positive experience for your brand? I’m impressed.

How do they do it? Well Twitter search (formally summize) lets you search key words across all public conversations. It’s how I keep track of Lotus Connections and what’s happening out there and have made lots of useful contacts in IBM.

Unfortunately despite following all the advice, completely de-installing and re-installing, FF3 crashes multiple times a day and remains highly unstable for me personally, although many others don’t have my experience so I wouldn’t let it stop you trying it if you haven’t yet.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

It’s been a little while since I’ve returned to this series, but with a few minutes to spare I thought I’d continue on refactoring your digital life.  To recap, the steps so far are:

Step 1: Get a better browser

Step 2: Explore your mail hosts options and consolidate your mail into fewer accounts

Step 3: Update your blog software and template

Step 4: Be consistent and be you!

Step 5: Evolve your digital life

Step 6: Interoperate and connect

What does all this mean? Well if you can’t be bothered re-reading all the posts, my steps towards digital re-factoring are essentially around updating your tools and your on-line identity.  Put yourself out there with your best foot forward and don’t be afraid to be you and use the best available tools to make your life easy.

At this point, much of what I’ve been suggesting has been internally focussed on streamlining your own identity and resources.  With this in place, you’re now ready for step 7; reach out and connect to new people.

There is no easy answer to the question “How do I build my online network?”.  Ultimately you need to figure out what works for you; still I have a few tips that you can explore.

1. Join Twitter, then use Twitter search.  Twitter is an micr-blogging service which is a little confusing until you get the hang of it.  If you’re new to Twitter, I recommend that you set-up your account, download Twhirl (a good Twitter client that makes it a bit easier for a newbie user to get their head around Twitter) and start following people.  If you don’t know who to follow, then use the twitter search to look for things your interested in, then start joining the conversation; before you know it you’re part of a bigger community and participating in ongoing conversations.
2. Use a service like Technorati to find other bloggers who are writing about things you’re interested in.  This can be a challenge (because you’ll be hit by a flood of content) but find a few interesting bloggers and again, join in the conversation by commenting on their blog and providing links back to your own.

Let me know how you’re steps towards re-factoring your own digitial life are going and if there is anything in here of interest.

As a Twitter user, I’ve been tracking the usage of Lotus Connections and the buzz around it as approached its version 2.0 launch using Summize, (now Twitter Search). I set up a custom filter search which I shared with the community (through Twitter again) which let me monitor various tweets.

A couple of things came together. I tweeted about the fact I was working on the principles for Social Software adoption for my employer, and @Idonotes asked if I’d share which I was happy to do.

Through monitoring Twitter I also came to “know” at @lbenitez , a passionate evangelist for Lotus Connections. He tweeted about discussing principles for Lotus Connections and I shared the post I’d made on my blog here. Luis provided some feedback and so I took this on board and then we moved our collaboration into the real world, setting up a phone call and a discussion.

Luis took on the “job” of road testing these with his clients, while I shopped them around internally and on the blog. As a result of this collaboration I think we’ve acheived a great outcome and one that demonstrates how social networking can help you produce an outcome. I believe the new principles are now more sound than anything I’d of produced individually, my employer benefits, Luis has benefited and hopefully the community also benefits.

A combination of facts, including holidays, lots of house priorities and a lack of broadband at home for a couple of weeks has prevented me from blogging for a while.  Things are starting to settle and I think I’ll be back in business soon.

I have continued to participate in the community however and am taking a bigger interest in the Australian Web 2.0 community which is very active and has really matured in the 10 months I’ve been away. Either that, or maybe I’m just more in tune with it, I’m not sure.  In doing so I’ve engaged in some debates through comments on a couple of blogs, something which led to me being quoted on one blog as “Tim Bull from my employer“.

I’m not ashamed of my employer at all, I’m proud to work for them and if you want to check out my LinkedIn profile, they feature prominately.  However I have always had an implicit editorial policy that I never mention them, not least in part because ultimately the ideas expressed here are mine and don’t represent those of my employer.  Actually if I was found to be representing the view of my employer, that could be cause for an issue given what we do, so I’ve always kept the two things separate — my personal blog where I expound my own ideas and theories on things and participate in the community, and my professional profile which is me at work.

Consequently, I decided an implicit policy was not enough, so I’ve now written one which you can find here.

It’s nothing special, but the time has come to make explicit the distinction between my professional opinion (although it may draw on my personal experience) and my personal opinion (although it may be shaped by my professional experience).

First, a little bit more background. When we (myself and the team I work with) define architectural principles, one of the good pieces of guidance we use in drafting them, is that each principle must be able to be expressed as a counter argument. Why? Because this is something that guidance is therefore required on, and will generate a conversation with the business and help get to the root requirement. If no conversation is required, then it’s probably not a principle (it’s more likely to be a fact). The proviso I’d put around this is that one organisations “fact” will be another organisations “principle”, so you need to consider your requirements and if these principles here apply. For example, the Principle “Configuration not Customisation” does have a counter in our business where they would consider highly customising an off-the-shelf solution and have typically done so in the past, whereas in your business, it may not ever happen.

Applying this rule, I think that we can further refine two of Luis’ principles into one, because at the moment, while they are sound, they are also (at least for our organisation) “fact”; i.e if Internationalisation was available, no-one would say “don’t do it”, and equally with the UI, no-one would say “lets design a complex UI that requires lots of training”. So with that background, here are my 9 core principles from my original (7) and then Luis post (3 combined down to 2) plus a draft of a new one to bring the total to 10!

All this needs now is a review of a few eyes and I think a re-order perhaps to reflect importance a bit better.

Principle 1: Limit Social Software Data to Basic Security (Username/Password) Only

Rationale: Social software is by it’s very nature social! While user security is important, information requiring complex, 2-Factor security solutions is generally not considered appropriate for how social software will be used. In general, open read access is preferable.

Principle 2: Social Software should use Authoritative Sources for relevant Information.

Rationale: Internally we store a lot of information about users, including their phone numbers, contact details etc., we shouldn’t require them to re-key this and it should be updated automatically.

Principle 3: Simple Ubiquitous Online Access

Rationale: Social Software should be considered an online access solution (ie. limited facility to access the information in an off-line capability), but access should be facilitated from multiple points, not just a browser.

Principle 4: Global Sharing (largest number of users)

Rationale: The value of a trusted network dynamically increases with its size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law

Principle 5: Modular, Highly Integrated Services

Rationale: Services should be designed to maximise simple re-use and allow users to mashup up modules to meet their specific requirements. Common standards support is key to enable this.

Principle 6: Configuration not Customisaton

Rationale: Social Software is rapidly evolving, we should only configure the software, not customise it t allow rapid roll-up to future versions and capabilities as these improve.

Principle 7: Build for Rapid Growth

Rationale: Social Software is difficult to control and pilot, we should be prepared for a rapid uptake and changing usage patterns. Effectively this means build with added headroom above what you might normally size for a production system.

Principle 8: By the People, For the People

Rationale: Social software is designed to be used by the people and for the people, we must be very clear on the aim and purpose of the system and remove barriers to adoption that prevent and hinder people sharing information with each other.  This includes promoting Internationalisation and Ease-Of-Use UI’s which facilitate easy use (no-one ever received training on LinkedIn).  The counter to this is that we have an Enterprise Centric Approach where the information and it’s use is driven and mandated by the Enterprise which is quite different in principle.  This is not saying Enterprise Information has no place, it does (see Principle 2), it just means that the Enterprise is not the end consumer of the information (it may be the benefactor), people are.

Principle 9: No User Content Creation Work-Flow

Rationale: Social software solutions promote the sharing of information and activities, deriving value from the flow of this information through the eco-system. Approval processes hinder the value of this conversation, reducing the incentive to participate in the system. Strong requirements for content-creation work-flow potentially suggest that either social software is the wrong solution for the business, or that the business is not yet culturally aligned with social software.

Principle 10: People not Documents

Rationale: Social Software is about people connecting to people and discovering and carrying on a conversation. It’s not a document centric publishing and storage platform (although it may potentially extend to that if documents aid the conversation).

So it’s with great interest that I can see some of the things I was blogging and thinking about beginning to become a reality.  I was a user of Plazes for a while, but ultimately gave it up because to some extent I just didn’t get it and I think having seen BrightKite now, it was missing the fine-grained access I needed to feel comfortable at that time (it may have it now I haven’t re-checked).

BrightKite is a very compelling and interesting service, provides reasonable privacy settings, but also links in to Twitter by default to set either your location or tweet it.  I’m going to see how it evolves, but I can see BrightKite becoming part of my tweeting in the future (especially when I get a new phone in the next couple of months).  It will potentially be my photo-log of where and what I’m doing, auto-feeding this in to Twitter as appropriate, while I’ll use Twitter directly through it’s various other clients for my 140 character tweets on the world and the community.

Another interesting feature of BrightKite is FireEagle. FireEagle sounds like it’s the DataPortability answer to Location Based Services, an open exchange for location information and the fact that a player like Yahoo is making a move in this space suggests we are at the cusp of big things to come.

Dopplr also adds to the picture of location based services, although in this case Dopplr fulfills a “Where am I going” rather than a “Where am I” feature.

I speculated early on, that LBS would potentially be of use for the Enterprise, but I couldn’t quite touch on the use.  The big area I could see is staying in touch with the people who are part of your Enterprise as they move around, with BrightKite and it’s GEORSS feeds, Dopplr and it’s “where am I going to be” and services like FireEagle, I can see that in the next 6 - 12 months, this will start to become a reality.

To paraphrase myself from over twelve months ago:

As Architects, understanding how location works and what location information is needed to tie the system together will be critical steps that can be taken now to ensure early mover advantage when it finally becomes a reality.

I’ve removed a lot of the background information here and just shared the key points that are generally relevant (there are a couple of principles I’ve skipped which are just too specific to our circumstances).  There are also other more general architectural principles that we would under-pin these with, for example “Buy Not Build” but these are not included here.

Similar to these, there are some related business principles we’ve proposed for consideration that are not technical in focus, I’ll share these separately.

Principle 1:  Limit Social Software Data to Basic Security (Username/Password) Only

Rationale:  Social software is by it’s very nature social! While user security is important, information requiring complex, 2-Factor security solutions is generally not considered appropriate for how social software will be used.  In general, open read access is preferable.

Principle 2: Social Software should use Authoritative Sources for relevant Information.

Rationale: Internally we store a lot of information about users, including their phone numbers, contact details etc., we shouldn’t require them to re-key this and it should be updated automatically.

Principle 3: Simple Ubiquitous Online Access

Rationale: Social Software should be considered an online access solution (ie.  limited facility to access the information in an off-line capability), but access should be facilitated from multiple points, not just a browser.

Principle 4: Global Sharing (largest number of users)

Rationale: The value of a trusted network dynamically increases with its size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law

Principle 5: Modular, Highly Integrated Services

Rationale: Services should be designed to maximise simple re-use and allow users to mashup up modules to meet their specific requirements.  Common standards support is key to enable this.

Principle 6: Configuration not Customisaton

Rationale: Social Software is rapidly evolving, we should only configure the software, not customise it t allow rapid roll-up to future versions and capabilities as these improve.

Principle 7: Build for Rapid Growth

Rationale: Social Software is difficult to control and pilot, we should be prepared for a rapid uptake and changing usage patterns. Effectively this means build with added headroom above what you might normally size for a production system.