Every time I hear some "2.0 evangelist" sing the praises of Gmail my stomach churns a little, my heartbeat quickens and my face tenses as I ponder what could have been if more attention had been paid to the Notes UI years ago. I both enjoy and hate giving the "Lotus Notes did that a decade ago" speech. I enjoy it because I like showing people that these awesome new features are neither new nor innovative. I hate it because it reinforces how IBM was never successful in getting people to like using Lotus Notes. Gmail is perceived as lightweight, simple and clean while the Lotus Notes desktop client is large and clunky and complicated. Sadly, few people know that Notes mail can be accessed via a very nice web UI.
What Gmail does so well is focus on the everyday use cases that 99% of people need. Simple email. Simple calendar forms and views. Simple search. Gmail also has the advantage of requiring no installation, meaning people always having the latest and greatest version. Find me a single Notes user (other than a Developer or Admin) who understands how to upgrade their client and mail file template. Gmail Labs makes it simple to turn on cool new (experimental) features, find me a Notes user who understands installing eclipse sidebar plugins.
So in the wake of all the excitement over Gmail adding a categorized inbox (something IBM's mail template has had for a decade, I think OpenNTF Mail experience may have it as well), I was thinking about the cool things that Notes mail does that most other email clients do not. Here is a quick list off the top of my head.
- SwiftFile - QuickRule - Intelligent mail addressing (I love how Notes bubble up the names you use more often rather than just pattern matching) - Full offline support, including directory catalog - Livetext and sidebar widgets - Convert email message to calendar entry - Create distribution list (group) from email recipients - rich text is simple to add, ex: tables
The problem is, while these are all great, they are fringe features that I guarantee few people use. Notes does a lot of powerful things, but does not do some of the simple things well*. For example, look at how complicated the calendar form is or how odd search behaves compared to other services people use. (* I've not used Notes for a while, so correct me if I'm wrong)
I use Gmail/Gcalendar/Gchat at work and while I do miss the features listed above, I do not miss the complexity of Notes.
Discussing The Pros and Cons of Activity Streams on Taking Notes Episode #150
Fri, Feb 10th 2012 1:40p Alan Lepofsky Since my recent posts discussing activity streams have garnered a great deal of attention from customers, product vendors and other analysts, Taking Notes Podcast hosts Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux thought it would be a good idea for us to discuss some of the pros and cons. Below are a some of the areas of activity streams that we discussed: ⢠What's the difference between streams of information like Facebook and Twitter, and what we'll see in business in the coming [read] Keywords: notes
enterprise
facebook
mobile
podcast
taking notes
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Keeping Up With The Acquisitions
Thu, Feb 9th 2012 9:00a Alan Lepofsky Acquisitions related to Social Business. (HR, mobile, etc) Announced Company A acquires Company B Terms Industry Feb 9, 2012 Oracle Taleo $1.9 billion Talent Management Jan 31, 2012 Peoplefluent Strategia Talent Management , Learning Management Jan 31, 2012 IBM Worklight Mobile Dec 19, 2011 Telligent Leverage social business software Dec 15, 2011 Salesforce.com Rypple Human Capital Management Dec 3, 2011 SAP SuccessFactors $3.4 billion Human Capital Management Nov. 14, [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
application
archive
consulting
enterprise
facebook
javascript
mobile
network
oracle
sap
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Infographics For Social Business Software
Wed, Feb 8th 2012 10:40p Alan Lepofsky So who will be the first e20/social business/collaboration software vendor to take the usage stats for employees and create infographics which can be displayed on people's profiles and shared in their activity streams? Sure many vendors have stats, reports, charts... but I've not seen a product with integrated infographics. Should we dub it "Visua.ly for the enterprise"? [read] Keywords: collaboration
enterprise
twitter
151
Upcoming Presentation On Social Analytics
Tue, Feb 7th 2012 11:30a Alan Lepofsky On Feb 16th I'm presenting at the Virtual E2Conf on Social Analytics. The way I've structured my presentation is to first define how I see social analytics, then provide examples we see in our consumer lives, then map those to examples at work. I'll be covering the business use-cases via examples from various e2.0 vendors, but no I'm not endorsing one over another. If you have not yet signed up, please register here. Here is a teaser version of the slides I'll be using. (the full deck [read] Keywords:
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Sharing Was the Training Wheels of Social Business Software
Mon, Feb 6th 2012 2:10p Alan Lepofsky "Sharing" was the training wheels of social business software. For the last few years social software has been explained by talking about use-cases such as: Employees can now share status updates, links and files with everyone Ask questions and get answers back from people in any part of the company Everyone now has a voice and can provide ideas for improving products or business processes These are all great ways to get people started using blogs, wikis and activity streams. But now it [read] Keywords: social software
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Making Activity Streams More Manageable
Fri, Feb 3rd 2012 1:10p Alan Lepofsky Activity Streams - Jambalaya or Steak and Potatoes? In my last post "Don't Cross the Streams" I challenged the idea that integrating multiple sources of information into activity streams is a good thing. This struck a nerve with some people (mainly vendors) while others completely agreed with me. A friend of mine an fellow industry analyst suggested that I follow up by posting possible solutions, so below are the few of the areas I think can help: 1. Don't put stuff in there that doe [read] Keywords: admin
connections
ibm
community
email
enterprise
facebook
google
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220
Don’t Cross The Streams
Wed, Feb 1st 2012 1:20p Alan Lepofsky I've found myself discussing the pros and cons of activity streams a lot lately. While streams, or news feeds, can be a great way to display information and encourage conversations, they can be a huge contributor to information overload. I'm sure your first reaction is to quote Clay Shirky's famous "There's no such thing as information overload, only filter failure" line. Yes, filtering is EXTREMELY important, and the combination of manual controls, automated filtering via analytics, and c [read] Keywords: collaboration
application
enterprise
social software
