Vodafone 3G Dongle and OSX 10.7 Lion - They Not Be Best Friends Forever ...

One apparent casualty of moving to Lion is that my Vodafone 3G "dongle" no longer works, with: -

Mobile Connection Error

Could not create network settings.

Try re-starting the application or your Mac.
If the problem persists, try deleting the preferences, or re-installing the application.

and: -

The "NetManager" service could not be used because the application could not be found.

Try reinstalling the application.

This looks to be a known problem, as per this: -

<snip>
Preview Edition of Vodafone Mobile Broadband for Mac

If you have a brand new Apple Mac with OS X 10.7 Lion, or have just upgraded your Mac to this system, older releases of the Vodafone Mobile Broadband for Mac application may not run correctly. Vodafone is currently verifying the application on OS X Lion, and will release it as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you have OS X 10.7 Lion and would like to manage mobile and AirPort connections, and SMS text messaging on your Mac, you can download this special Preview Edition of Vodafone Mobile Broadband.

Full Lion-ready Release of Vodafone Mobile Broadband for Mac

The Preview Edition will only be available until the full OS X 10.7 Lion-ready version of the Vodafone Mobile Broadband for Mac application is released. After 9th September 2011, the Preview Edition will advise you to download the latest release, which will have full support for OS X 10.7 Lion. The full release will completely replace the Preview Edition, and remove the advisory message.
</snip>

and there is a "beta" version of software that *MAY* just work here: -

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3193326?start=0&tstart=0

Am downloading it now ….

… and it appears to work e.g. I don't get any errors when I try and connect, but I do live in a no-3G area so will not know for sure until I get to my client's offices tomorrow ….

Tivoli User Group 2011

One of my IBM colleagues, AngusJ, drew my attention to this: -

The Tivoli User Group is a community, independent of IBM and it's partners, that exists to facilitate the exchange of ideas and provide a collective to steer IBM product direction. Our aim is to offer a forum whereby users of IBM Tivoli products and solutions can come together to meet and learn from one another's experiences.

 Attendees of TUG meetings will usually have access to IBM subject matter experts, peer customer experts, senior IBM management executives, advanced IBM thinking (subject to NDA) and IBM certification.

We're pleased to announce that the next meeting of the Tivoli User Group will be held:

When

Tuesday 20th September

Where

IBM United Kingdom Limited
76/78 Upper Ground
South Bank
London SE1 9PZ

Directions

Agenda

We will be releasing the agenda at the beginning of August, but we can confirm that we're planning the following tracks:

• Monitoring & Event Management

• Lifecycle Management

• Workload Scheduling

• Storage

• Cloud Computing

We will also include Birds of a Feather roundtable discussions with other members and speakers, as well as an IBM Support Process clinic.

More details on the Orb Data site here, with an outline of the tracks here.

Mac Guidera - IBM Connections on the Android Market

This from Mac's blog: -

In an effort to bring the value of IBM Connections to everywhere knowledge workers are collaborating, we have been producing plug-ins, add-ons and extensions for may client applications, such as Notes, Outlook, Office, Windows, Rational Team Concert and Portal. To date our mobile interface has been through smart phone browsers, but that changes today.

Also, look for updates soon to App Store and App World!

IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes

The IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes provides the following features:

• Upload files for your own use or to share with others

• Drag and drop an attached file or a file from your desktop to Files

• Drag and drop or copy and paste a file from Files to your desktop

• Send an HTML link to a file

• Search for files

• Sort files for easier browsing

• Open Connections Files in a browser

The updated description: -

The IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes lets you upload and access files from the sidebar of your Notes client. ** New for this release is added support for Apple Mac OS X**

says it all :-)

But just to re-emphasise the point: -

he IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes supports:

• IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 (latest fixpack)

• IBM Lotus Connections 3.0

• IBM Connections 3.0.1

• Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP5

• Lotus Notes 8.5.2 FP1, FP2*, FP3 (FP3 is recommended)

• Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (32-bit)

• Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 (32-bit)

• Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit, 64-bit toleration)

• Apple Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6  (New in this release)

Walk, don't run, to the Greenhouse and download it today.

New Cloud Computing Whitepaper from IBM Global Business Services (GBS)

Saw this and thought ... hmm, that's worth a read ...

OVERVIEW
Cloud-delivered applications provide many business benefits such as scalability based on business demand, the ability to maximize resource usage, expansion of services, maximization of software and hardware investment,and the standardization and ease of use of IT resources. When considering whether to move an application to the cloud, it is important to consider both the business purpose of the application and the role that application plays in supporting business and IT strategies. This context is important for considering whether to transition an application to a cloud environment, or whether to re-architect or "transform" the application – and if so, how to do it. IBM has developed a unique methodology and tool for determining how to approach these decisions and optimize the benefits from applications being delivered from a cloud environment.

EVALUATING CLOUD APPLICATIONS
When considering cloud delivery, one of the major challenges faced by enterprises is the lack of the right implementation plan for moving existing applications to the cloud. Adapting an application for cloud delivery requires up-front analysis and
planning. Enterprises often limit cloud deployment to new applications without fully considering if, and if so how, existing applications can be transitioned. In some cases, business and IT objectives and conditions warrant larger, more comprehensive changes to an application that is moving to the cloud than are possible under the transition approach. For clients who have made the decision to transform an application, IBM has developed a comprehensive methodology to help inform and guide the migration process. This methodology is encapsulated in the IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor.

The PDF version of the whitepaper is here.

IBM Lotus Symphony 3 - Service Pack 3 Released

I'd missed this on Monday, but IBM released Service Pack 3 for Lotus Symphony 3.

From the website: -

Lotus Symphony 3 Fix Pack 3 contains fixes for a few critical security vulnerability issues and other low risk, high impact fixes. It is cumulative and contains all of the fixes from Fix Pack 1 and Fix Pack 2. For more detailed instructions and the list of fixes contained in Fix Pack 3, read the complete version of the release notes.

It is a cumulative fix pack, and rolls up those in SP1 and SP2.

Well, I took advantage of the high-speed LAN to which I was connected, and downloaded and installed the SP last night.

So far, so good :-)

The full release notes are here, but this is the fix list: -

• Symphony freezes when Ctrl+Left is pressed at the beginning of lines with bullets.

• Symphony crashes when opens the sample .doc file that contains a user defined toolbar

• Left indentation of the paragraph lost when opening a .doc file in Symphony.

• The position of a graphic is changed when opening the .doc sample file in Symphony.

• Sometimes, Symphony crashes when new a numbering style is selected from the selection list.

• Header and footer are lost when opening a .docx file in Symphony.

• Symphony crashes when loading a .docx file that contains empty parent bullet styles.

• Symphony crashes when opening the sample document on Linux operating systems.

• Font size of all the hyperlinks become bigger, the font color is lost after editing the .doc file in Symphony.

• The custom properties field of a file cannot be changed after it is created

• Graphics in presentation are lost if the Symphony temporary files are missing

• Symphony freezes when opening a presentation that contains many complex graphics

• Spell check doesn't work properly when opening the .ppt file that is created by Symphony in Microsoft PowerPoint.

• Enhance the look and feel for the Calibri font

• The PNG graphics in template are damaged after the first slide in the presentation was modified and saved.

• Template does not display in Slide Templates window on the sidebar after save it to template organizer

• When the slide contains huge size bullets, it doesn't display properly in Symphony

• Texts on X or Y axis bar is not visible in screen show

• It takes long time to open the .pptx file that contains complicated tables in Symphony.

• The connection of shapes linked with connectors are broken in the duplicated slide

• New a presentation and then close Symphony application on MAC, sometimes Symphony crashes.

• The appearance of the Slide thumbnail are not acceptble.

• Pressing F5 or Shift+F5 to return to the current page of the slide show does not work.

• The order of chart data is not preserved when opening a bar chart that was created in Symphony 1.3

• Chart is incorrectly printed when printing in Handouts mode

• When apply Title Only layout to a slide, the background of the slide is changed

• Sometimes redundant text boxes are created after you click the text box button once.

• Table is always selected even put the cursor outside of the table

• Grid lost after double-clicking the Microsoft OLE objects in Symphony

• When creating or opening a presentation file, JAWS does not recognize the new name of the file.

• When the tips for a cell that contains validity criteria is too long, the text cannot be displayed completed.

• The sample spreadsheet cannot be saved when it contains invalid characters in the DataPilot table.

• If you delete the cell contents in the last line of a DataPilot source, the DataPilot range should be kept as it was.

• The range of sorting in instant filters should not include the first line

• Can not insert columns after any filter has been applied

• Open a large .xls sample file with DataPilot that contains invalid reference for Value, modify it and save, and Symphony crashes.

• When copying a sheet that contains a cell with a check box and it links to other cells, the link is not updated in the new sheet.

• The 3D pie chart becomes higher than the actual size when open the Excel file in Symphony

• The association of the images and their assigned macros breaks when opening the Excel file in Symphony

• The copy and paste behavior of emtpy cells with a background is incorrect

• The Excel files are corrupted in Microsoft Excel after editing in Symphony when the file contains two pilot tables with the same names in different sheets, and the pilot table is reference in VBA code.

• All fontworks are moved to the front of cells when any group is expandedp.

• Copy the style of cells from Microsoft Excel to Symphony, and if the style already exists, Symphony creates a duplicated one.

• Error message prompts when copying a cell with more than two lines of text to notes

• Trucations in check box label or radio button label

• Sometimes, Symphony crashes when opening the Microsoft Office item in the preference dialog

• Notes crashes when debugging Symphony Lotusscript code before opening any document.

IBM Collaboration Solutions Community Meeting - Tuesday 26 July 2011

This from Joyce Davis, Community Manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions and Social Business

Hi all - I hope you'll join us for our July IBM Collaboration Solutions community meeting! Below is an outline of this month's agenda and a link to register for the call. 

Date: Tuesday, July 26th 10:00 AM Eastern time (US)

Agenda:

• 
Community updates (including a social media update!)
• Community member spotlights:

  • Eileen Fitzgerald, GSX

  • Colleen Walker, IBM
• Special topics:
  • Symphony update - hear about the latest fixpack and how community feedback led to product improvements (Leah Backus)

  • Overview of IBM Collaboration Solutions community - a demo of the online community, with suggestions on how to participate, and how to find the information or people you're looking for (Joyce Davis)

Click here to register: https://www-950.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwojdas8c7la5〈=en

 

To learn more about our community, including how to participate, visit our community landing page at: http://bit.ly/icscommunity

RT @CuriousMitch - Using the DB2 Control Center to Connect to a Remote Database

This is very timely, because we've had a similar requirement here, where our DB2 servers are running on "headless" Linux servers ( for some reason, I always think of Harry Potter when I write "headless" ).

Thanks to "Curious" Mitch Cohen for this rather useful blog post: -

When using DB2 you might want to use the Control Center GUI to query or manage a database that resides on a remote machine, took me a little time to work out and I promised others I would share this.  I am sure there is more then one way to accomplish this, your mileage may vary.

Before you begin you need to collect the following information

• Fully Qualified Hostname where the DB2 database resides

• Services file entry for the database – this will include the instance name and port number (default is 50000, but could be different depending on your DB2 Configuration

• The Database Name to connect to

• The operating system of the DB2 Install

• Username & Password to connect to the Database

IBM Webinar - Drive revenue and increase brand loyalty by creating personalised web experiences

This from my IBM colleagues in the Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) team.

E-commerce is no longer simply about selling online, it's about delivering a tailored shopping experience across all customer touchpoints.

Register for this webinar to discover how IBM are bringing together the capabilities of their Web Experience and IBM Coremetrics web analytics solutions to provide you with real time insights into how your customers are interacting with your brand online and across multiple channels, and how this data can be used to optimise your customers' interactions.

During this session we will provide you with insights into: -

• Current Trends: social, mobile and email
• The Challenge: customer engagement
• Creating compelling experiences
• Consumer insight and relentless marketing
• Real life case studies

Webinar details

Date
26 July 2011 @ 14:00 UK

Presenters
Mike Spradbery, UKI Business Leader, IBM Web Experience Software

Neelam Kharay, Solutions Architect, IBM Coremetrics

Duration
60 minutes


URL
http://livedemos.coremetrics-events.com/livedemo-webinar.php

Bling with WebSphere Portal - A tutorial in five parts

On a random Google, looking for information about iWidget performance in the Page Builder theme in WebSphere Portal 7, and found this useful series of articles from Mr Cody Burleson Esq: -

You want to whip out a kick-ass portlet base for your next application? I got the mojo right here, baby. In this series, we'll build a new portlet from scratch; JSR 286, Spring, Dojo, Ajax, Apache Tiles, and SLF4J over LogBack for logging – all the latest bling, bling. Today, we'll start by creating a basic portlet in Rational Application Developer (RAD).

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 1

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 2

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 3

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 4

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 5

Must find some time to run through the tutorial ....

Want to learn HTML5 ? If so, has developerWorks got an offer for you .... ? Well, yes, it has :-)

A nice little series of articles up on the IBM developerWorks site

Part 1: Getting your feet wet

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article is the first in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design, the creation of forms, the use and value of the APIs, and the creative possibilities that Canvas provides.

Part 2: Organizing inputs

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the Web and in the cloud. This article is the second in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design; the creation of forms; the use and value of the APIs; and, finally, the creative possibilities that Canvas provides. This second part introduces the concept of HTML5 form controls and touches on the role of JavaScript and CSS3.

Part 3: The power of HTML5 APIs

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article is the third in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design, the creation of forms, the use and value of the APIs, and, finally, the creative possibilities that Canvas provides. This installment introduces HTML5 APIs, using an example page to demonstrate functions.

Part 4: The final touch

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way we now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article, the fourth in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, introduces the HTML5 Canvas element, using several examples to demonstrate functions.

Nice :-)

Social Connections - the very first ever IBM Connections User Group meeting ever anywhere

As previously mentioned, I took some time out today to pop along to the oh-so-shiny headquarters of The Salvation Army, in Queen Victoria Street in London, to attend the inaugural Social Connections event.

This was ably organized by Sharon Bellamy and Stuart McIntyre, along with a cast of many, including Mr Mark Calleran, CIO of The Salvation Army.

Arriving around 0900, after an excellent walk along the the Thames, with my friend and colleague, Alastair Hillis-Wragg of the IBM Betaworks team, I was soon into the important part of the day - the coffee :-) Sharon and I did a good job of getting through the first few flasks, but the catering team were way ahead of us, and kept the beverages flowing.

Apart from the kind hosting from Mark and his team ( who also doubled up as cameramen, audio experts, key grips and general goto-guys ), the event was sponsored by three BM partners, ATech, Collaboration Matters and Portal, and supported by IBM ( there were a fair few IBMers there, so it gave me an opportunity to catch up with those people who I see so infrequently, thanks to project fun off-site ).

Despite a few hinky travel-related moments, Stuart kept things running to schedule, and I was enthralled by presentations from: -

Daniel Siddle from Headshift

Jon Mell from IBM ( Portal and Social Sales Leader for North-East Europe )

Joseph D'Armi from Portal

Mike Roche from IBM ( Chief Architect for IBM Connections, Dublin Labs )

Michael Ahern from IBM ( Connections development team, Dublin Labs )

- Michael even managed to squeeze in a real live demo of that "Norwegian Army Knife" known as Tivoli Directory Integrator ( TDI ) - also known as IBM Blue Glue :-)

Sadly I had to leave and go do some "real" work after lunch, so missed presentations from Mark, Andy Piper, Claudio Proccida and others.

Even more sadly, I missed out on the opportunity to go for beers with the team after the event :-(

On a more positive note, I believe Stuart is going to ensure that the presentations are posted on-line soon, so I commend you to go and take a look ....

In the meantime, I gather that the live streaming was well received, judging by the Tweets directed to the back of my head :-)

So, in closing, a great session, well organized, well-run and well delivered - my thanks to Sharon and Stuart and the rest of the hard-working band.

Looking forward to the next event - which is, apparently, in Cardiff, which is in Wales :-)

Get Social, Do Business - And have fun - Social Connections, 4 July 2011

This from @StuartMcIntyre

Good morning.

The first Social Connections event is now just days away, taking place on Monday 4th July.  Thank you for registering for the event, we can't wait to meet with you on Monday.

The event takes place at Salvation Army's International Headquarters in London.  The address is:

The Salvation Army
International Headquarters
101 Queen Victoria St
London
EC4V 4EH

Here is the Google Maps link. There is no parking available on site, so public transport is definitely the preferred method of getting there.  The Blackfriars underground station is closed at present (though the mainline station is still operating), so use either Mansion House (Circle/District Line) or St Pauls (Central Line) - both are within 400m of the location.  On entering the building reception, turn right to go down a level to the Cafe 101, a you will see signs pointing you to the area being used for this event.

Registration opens at 9:00am, with the welcome and keynotes kicking off at 9:30am.  Thanks to our great sponsors (Portal and Ascendant Technology), breakfast will be served as you arrive, and all refreshments will be provided through the day. Sessions will end at approximately 5:00pm, with the option to retire to a local pub or restaurant for those that wish to continue the conversation - more information will be provided at the event.

The full agenda has been published on the Social Connections site - we have a packed schedule lined up, with a series of 30 minute sessions to keep the pace high and the topics varied.  We have a mix of great speakers from IBM UK, the IBM Dublin labs, business partners and customers, and will be covering both technical and management areas.  There is also the opportunity to provide feedback directly to Mike Roche who heads up the Connections development team in Ireland on new features for Connections Next, to ask questions of an expert panel, to discuss how this user group moves forward, and to network throughout the day.  In fact, we will encouraging all our speakers to make time to speak with you - there is no speakers' lounge at this user group, it's all about the connections we can make in the precious time we spend face-to-face.

In short, the organising committee is really excited that so many of you have registered and thank you for making the effort to attend. It will be a great day!  See you on Monday.  If there are any questions before then, please do not hesitate to ask.

(If for any reason you cannot attend the event, please could you cancel your registration on the Social Connections site.  Having an accurate count of numbers really helps us with catering requirements. Thanks.)

See you there :-)