These videos are made of win
Wed, Feb 1st 2012 9:30p Nathan T Freeman It has long been my opinion that good software
designers should understand the basic economics of trade. Ours is a highly
specialized practice, and it produces an absolutely staggering surplus
when we trade. But this can be very difficult to understand unless you
grasp the concept of Comparative Advantage. (Understanding Asymmetrical
Information is also a good idea, but let's save that for another day.)
Because of the absolutely marvelous
title, I stumbled upon these videos from Prof [read] Keywords: ntf
RAAWWWWRRRR!!!
Tue, Jan 10th 2012 11:00p Nathan T Freeman There's some tuning left to do, but I wanted
to get this out to the world before Lotusphere.
I've created an XPages
SDK for Eclipse RCP, so you can
install the latest version of Eclipse and easily set up Notes or Domino
as your target platform for your Java code. I assigned myself the task
of documenting this internally for GBS in January, and I realized that
I could spend a day documenting it, or spend two days writing a program
that would do it automatically.
It was really n [read] Keywords: domino
lotusphere
notes
ntf
xpages apple
eclipse
java
mac
openntf
56
A thought experiment
Sun, Dec 11th 2011 10:50p Nathan T Freeman In this time of vibrant political debate
in the US, I am frequently confronted by the notion of the social
contract. I find this idea
very challenging; both to accept or to refute. So I created a thought experiment
that sums up the issue for me...
Let us hypothesize for a moment that
you are a slave. In your captivity, you are permitted to procreate. Your
owner proposes the following:
"I will buy your unborn child in
exchange for an extra meal for you and your spouse each day. [read] Keywords: ntf
exchange
exchange
wiki
25
Do not settle
Thu, Oct 6th 2011 12:10a Nathan T Freeman Forget what you know about Apple products.
Learn from Apple's founder. "You
are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
You will be missed, Steve. [read] Keywords: ntf
apple
36
Welcoming our newest colleagues
Thu, Sep 29th 2011 10:48a Nathan T Freeman If you read this blog, you've probably
heard by now that Synaptris
is part of GBS. I'm very pleased
to welcome our new colleagues.
As it happens, my team has been working
closely with Synaptris engineers for several months now. We tapped them
to work on our Dojo Grid control for surfacing Domino views presented in
Transformer apps. They have done a spectacular job. We're looking forward
to deepening the integration even further to leverage their expertise in
content searching and [read] Keywords: domino
ntf
xpages applications
dojo
email
integration
52
The ultimate Domino Designer performance improvement for XPages developers
Mon, Sep 19th 2011 10:10a Nathan T Freeman If you're an experienced XPages developer,
chances are you live in the Source tab of the XPages editor. But even if
you live in that editor, you'll notice that various
things seem to slow down Designer
with mysterious causes.
If you're willing to give up some of
the bells & whistles, like drag/drop from the Controls Palette, custom
editors for Properties, or icon cues on the Outline, you can switch from
the XSP editor to the native XML editor using the following preference
se [read] Keywords: domino
ntf
xpages properties
xml
44
True then, true now
Wed, Aug 24th 2011 6:43a Nathan T Freeman Economic
reality hasn't changed.
We'll miss you, Mary Beth. But the world
needs a serious UX effort put into 3D modelling software. When you leave
it to code slingers, you
get this. Please end the suffering. [read] Keywords: ntf
interface
33
April 24, 2002
Sat, Aug 6th 2011 9:43p Nathan T Freeman Name that speaker....
The congress and
the president will shift radically towards expanding the size and scope
of the federal government. This will satisfy both the liberals and the
conservatives.
Military and police powers will grow satisfying the conservatives.
The weflare state, both domestic and international, will expand, satisfying
the liberals.
Both sides will endorse military adventurism overseas. This is the most
important of my predictions.
Policy changes [read] Keywords: ntf
policies
security
33
When 14 trillion ain't enough
Sun, Jul 24th 2011 8:43p Nathan T Freeman In general, I try to avoid blogging about
political topics, mostly because I already alienate enough people through
this site. But today, I was watching some news coverage on the US national
debt ceiling while feeding my newborn son. For those not in the know, the
two controlling political parties in the US, the Democrats and the Republicans,
are battling "to the brink." Currently, US law limits the federal
government to a maximum debt of $14.2 trillion dollars. Apparently, the
current [read] Keywords: ntf
blogging
office
29
My suggestion was rejected...
Mon, Jul 18th 2011 11:41a Nathan T Freeman GBS is sponsoring a
poker tournament this year at IamLUG.
While our marketing team was smart enough to make it an open bar tourney,
they didn't move forward with my suggestion to make it STRIP poker.
I guess the thought of 80 attendees
clawing out their own eyes if I
lost wasn't an acceptable risk.
At any rate, if you'd like to attend,
the link above can direct you to the registration page. It's free, just
like IamLUG itself. And if you're not too bleary-eyed the next morn [read] Keywords: ntf
xpages bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
40
wow Wow WOW
Thu, Jul 7th 2011 10:50p Nathan T Freeman Apple
announces that it's AppStore has passed 15 BILLION downloads.
Mind boggling. Don't miss the tail end
of the article: "Apple also paid out more then $2.5 billion to developers
building off the iOS platform" [read] Keywords: ntf
apple
Revisionist history
Wed, Jun 1st 2011 10:43p Nathan T Freeman While searching for an old reference this
evening, I happened to wander down memory lane to this post http://vowe.net/archives/010599.html
It struck me as amusing, since the theme was "IBM got involved with
OpenNTF and now the process that used to work is going to be destroyed."
Reconcile that idea with this one http://vowe.net/archives/012450.html
where it's apparently only a lone IBMer that manages to get anything done.
Niklas Heidloff brings tremendous value
to OpenNTF.org. Cert [read] Keywords: ibm
ntf
community
openntf
26
Making Domino Designer work like you want
Sun, May 8th 2011 11:30p Nathan T Freeman If there's any common refrain I hear from
developers when it comes to Domino 8.5, it's that they have issues with
Designer. Struggling with an IDE is always painful, no matter the platform.
Simple issues like how to auto-format code or how to control content suggestions
can make a developer feel incompetent and frustrated in about 10 seconds.
Developers are, in fact, the worst kind of users -- always expecting their
tools to implement the "do what I want" interface.
With great pow [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
ntf
community
eclipse
interface
23
Microsoft Windows still galactically stupid
Sun, May 1st 2011 10:58p Nathan T Freeman As a responsible participant on the Internet,
I try diligently to keep my patch levels up to date. Security vulnerabilities
on individual systems are at the heart of almost everything that sucks
about being on the net, so I'm eager to not be part of the problem.
First and foremost on the list is my
operating system, which unfortunately, is still Microsoft Windows (for
reasons which readers here can probably guess.) Microsoft recently delivered
Windows 7 SP1, and so I thought it wise [read] Keywords: collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
ntf
applications
development
linux
microsoft
security
vm
ubuntu
35
Trendsetting
Thu, Apr 21st 2011 11:50p Nathan T Freeman So I was browsing through old blog posts
tonight for reasons which will remain unstated for now (watch for a blog
post coming soon!!) But in the process, I came back to a post about language
from 3 years ago that I think rings perfectly true today. I was
LITERALLY laughing out loud as
I read it.
Even though I think some of the numbering
of references may be out of order, the trend of the conversation is just
hilarious.
And, for the record, "in the fullness
of time" has become [read] Keywords: ntf
25
I wish I could declare a consequence-free zone
Mon, Apr 18th 2011 9:55p Nathan T Freeman Ed wrote an interesting post about
living in a Microsoft-free world.
This hardly seems like an adequate goal to me. What I'd really like
to live in is a consequence-free zone.
In a consequence-free zone, life would
be easy. For instance, I would be self-employed, so I wouldn't have to
worry about the needs or expenses of anyone else, so I could just do whatever
I wanted and as long as that was okay for me, then that would be the end
of it. Then again, I suppose if I couldn't hav [read] Keywords: ibm
ntf
apple
google
microsoft
office
oracle
New OpenNTF.org project
Wed, Mar 30th 2011 3:00p Nathan T Freeman I have recently become a big fan of Linus
Torvalds' SCM solution: git. The model for distributed source code management
is very reminiscent of the NSF replication concept, and the ease with which
you can branch and merge makes it a very effective choice for complex team
code bases.
But I was saddened to discover that
the only Eclipse Team Provider for git, EGit, was only available for Eclipse
3.5 and later. Domino Designer is, of course, based on Eclipse 3.4, and
thus EGit wouldn't [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ntf
eclipse
java
openntf
19
What moves me
Sun, Mar 13th 2011 5:00p Nathan T Freeman The recent months have been overwhelming
for me personally. Bringing two babies into the world at the same time
-- my son in June, and my product in April -- is proving a formidable challenge.
I've never been very good at balancing professional and personal responsibilities,
but with the amazing support of my family, my employer and my team at work,
it's all managed to come together.
For me, the only way to keep up under
pressure is to find constant sources of inspiration. I have to [read] Keywords: ntf
29
The last word on the XPages Extension Library
Thu, Feb 10th 2011 9:04p Nathan T Freeman If you're doing XPages development, and
you're not using the XPages
Extension Library, you might as
well be running DOS. Yeah, I'm serious -- you're missing out on that much.
If you want to run Lotusscript in your
XPages, you need to talk to GBS, but if you want to do ANYTHING else, then
you probably just need the Extension Library.
It's free. It's open. And all the code
is written by IBM. So you don't have any excuses.
STFU and go install it already. Here
endeth the [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusscript
ntf
xpages development
openntf
19
Lotusphere2001 Opening General Session
Mon, Jan 31st 2011 6:50a Nathan T Freeman In the Opening Session. Time for some thought
streaming. Comments disabled until it's over.
Opening band is MASS
Ensemble Their Earth Harp is amazing
and takes up nearly a third of the room. Killer performance of 'O Fortuna' [read] Keywords: ntf
21
private class HellWeek
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 10:20p Nathan T Freeman private
class
HellWeek extends
Workweek { //Just
sayin'... if I don't talk to you, it's nothing personal
HellWeek()
{
while(!(dead
|| isLotusphere))
{
code();
}
sleep();
}
} [read] Keywords: ntf
40
Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya
Thu, Jan 20th 2011 10:30p Nathan T Freeman I was driving to work yesterday and had
a startling realization: 2011 is my 20th year of working with Lotus Notes.
Yup, two decades. Honestly, this is a period of time difficult for me to
grasp. I started working with Notes the same year Jay Leno took over The
Tonight Show (the first time, at least); the same year Brett Favre made
his first start with the Packers; the same year the Catholic church lifted
it's edict of Inquisition from Galileo. And the multi-tasking environment
of choice [read] Keywords: collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
ntf
application
applications
bug
microsoft
15
If you don't comment on this blog post you suck!
Thu, Jan 13th 2011 5:02p Nathan T Freeman Did you know that vowe.net is so important
now that if someone doesn't reply to him on his blog, it means they're
"not social?" It's true. You can tell it's true because
he got an email from someone telling him it's true. I guess he's can also
get 40 million dollars from the Deputy Minister of Oil for Arundi Barundi
AND have a larger penis by taking some pills.
And if you don't comment on this blog
it means you're gay. [read] Keywords: ntf
email
facebook
18
2010 in review
Fri, Dec 31st 2010 6:53p Nathan T Freeman BEST. YEAR. EVER
Here's how it ended today...
#{javascript:LSVM.getContext(this).getEventAdapter().postopen();}>
Let that sink in. [read] Keywords: ntf
javascript
12
2010 in review
Fri, Dec 31st 2010 6:50p Nathan T Freeman ont size=2 face="sans-serif">BEST. YEAR. EVER.
Here's how it ended today...
#{javascript:LSVM.getContext(this).getEventAdapter().postopen();}>
Let that sink in. [read] Keywords: ntf
javascript
12
A moment of hubristic gratitude
Thu, Dec 30th 2010 1:11a Nathan T Freeman I was just reading Peter Presnell's latest
blog on the
Power of Notes, and several things
occurred to me...
First is that Peter has done a brilliant
job over this series carefully documenting the specific behavior of the
Notes client. His basic premise in this series is that Notes development
is a largely untapped opportunity for most people, no matter what version
they're working in. I, for one, have learned an enormous amount about what
the client actually DOES over the course o [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
ntf
applications
bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
community
development
office
11
An introduction to irony
Thu, Dec 23rd 2010 9:22p Nathan T Freeman Over at Carl
Tyler's blog today, he laments
the still-present spectre of spam messages, in spite of near universal
distaste for them by anyone in a decision making capacity. Amazingly,
Frank
Paolino responded with a commiserating
comment about his own dislike for email spam, while touting his own partner
catalog site for 5 paragraphs, including a link. That all by itself was
funny, given that Frank's company, Maysoft (nee Mayflower), is renowned
for its association with the
resale o [read] Keywords: lotus
ntf
community
email
20
The Session you CANNOT MISS at Lotusphere
Tue, Dec 14th 2010 12:05p Nathan T Freeman ....well, if you're a developer anyway.
My good friend and colleague Colin Macdonald
is an 11th-hour addition to the Lotusphere agenda, where he'll be presenting
along side the mighty Karsten
Lehmann.
BP212: Deep Dive into XPage Expression
Language Syntax
One of the most powerful features of
XPages is the ability to compute nearly any value or attribute on the fly,
from column headers to labels to styles to validation rules. But how do
these runtime computations actually [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusphere
lotusphere2011
ntf
xpages application
consulting
javascript
12
Lotusphere 2011 Sessions in ODS
Tue, Dec 7th 2010 9:30a Nathan T Freeman Since IBM has published all the Breakout
Sessions for Lotusphere 2011,
but in a traditional Domino format where only one track can be viewed at
a time, I thought it might be handy for people to be able to look at them
all at once. So I made a spreadsheet out of them that might help.
Hopefully this will only be an interim
solution for people until Ben
provides his session database again.
Download it here,
or click on the link to the right. [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
lotusphere2011
ntf
ods
database
23
My two sessions at Lotusphere 2011
Sun, Dec 5th 2010 3:40p Nathan T Freeman I'm honored to have been selected to present
at Lotusphere again this year. I have two sessions, both joint efforts
with IBMers.
There and Back Again: Strategies
for Refactoring Notes Applications to XPages
If you're trying to figure out how to
take the last 15 years of your custom application work into the new world
of XPages, you are not alone. If you're wondering how the new design patterns
and user experiences afforded by XPages can be applied to your existing
assets, you'v [read] Keywords: administration
domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
ntf
xpages application
applications
development
openntf
14
Whither @NathanTFreeman?
Tue, Nov 30th 2010 1:49a Nathan T Freeman Several people asked me today what happened
to my Twitter account. Well, to put it simply, I deactivated it. I did
so deliberately and voluntarily, based on the realization that Twitter
is a severely anti-social means of communication. It engenders terrible
behavior among people who would otherwise be at least cordial, if not outright
friends. The concept of "followers" works well for people who
use the service for primarily personal communication. If you want to ask
for reminders to bu [read] Keywords: ntf
twitter
10
Seeing the Evolution Transformer in action
Mon, Nov 29th 2010 1:30p Nathan T Freeman Since the number one thing I'm hearing
from the discussion at TWiL
is "I didn't get to see the demo," I thought I'd make it easier
for everyone and just provide a link to the complete MP4 demo video. This
should be playable on an iPad/iPhone as well.
Evolution
Transformer demonstration video [read] Keywords: lotus
ntf
xpages iphone
8
Manufacturing Dissent
Wed, Nov 24th 2010 12:44a Nathan T Freeman I've noticed something. "Social media"
encourages political correctness. People tweet things that are transient
thoughts, or post blog comments they mean tongue-in-cheek, and they get
treated as serious publication.
And you know what political correctness
cost us? In America, it cost us honest discourse, and it cost us humor.
People couldn't (or can't) describe a situation honestly, whether
trying to solve it or simply trying to laugh about it. Speak honestly,
and you are drumm [read] Keywords: ntf
blogger
facebook
network
twitter
wiki
21
The Xmage gets an Xprentice
Mon, Nov 22nd 2010 2:25p Nathan T Freeman I am extremely pleased to welcome Atlanta-area
Notes developer Keith
Strickland to the team at GROUP.
Keith officially starts early next month, and his job is most easily described
as "clone Tim."
If you've been reading Keith's excellent articles on Dojo
Drag & Drop controls in XPages,
you'll know that he's already off to a great start. He'll be working with
my team on the Evolution Transformer, so the kind of thing you find in
his tutorials will be the kind of thing you'll [read] Keywords: notes
ntf
xpages applications
dojo
openntf
11
Comment services restored.
Fri, Nov 19th 2010 4:03p Nathan T Freeman I think, at least. Cycled the HTTP task,
and my tests seem to post now.
If you have trouble posting a comment,
feel free to IM me, tweet me or drop me an email. Sorry for the inconvenience! [read] Keywords: ntf
email
19
The iPhone is an artifical calcuation device and is not capable of independent thought...
Thu, Nov 18th 2010 11:50p Nathan T Freeman ...however it is not without a sense of
irony. Case in point: I was on a phone call tonight with a well-known Notes
developer in our community.
Me: "Can I ask you a frank question?"
Developer: "Sure"
Me: "Now you've seen the demonstration
of the Transformer and understand that it works. Do you like what you see?"
Developer: "Umm... well...."
*click*
The phone battery had run out.
Those of you who have iPhones might
know that once it turns off because the batte [read] Keywords: notes
ntf
community
iphone
Ray Ozzie's most important lesson
Wed, Nov 10th 2010 11:54p Nathan T Freeman I can't confess to knowing him myself.
I've had two or three email exchanges with the man Bill Gates called "one
of the top five programmers in the universe," but nothing that could
be described as important. But one of the most important things I ever
learned about software hit me in 1994. This was just before Notes 4 came
out, and I happened to be in Boston on a night when my boss was attending
a dinner hosted by Iris Associates, and though I wasn't officially on the
guest list, I [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
ntf
ray ozzie
development
email
enterprise
google
microsoft
14
Catching Up
Mon, Nov 8th 2010 3:00a Nathan T Freeman Some days, weeks or months it's hard to
come up for air. And certainly the last few months have been exactly that
for me. When I finally get to what seems like a lull in the storm, it's
only a quick moment before the squall resumes, and things get back to the
breakneck pace that's rapidly becoming my everyday life.
But then those who know me know that
I wouldn't have it any other way, would I?
So, as a result, here's a brief blog
post to rattle down some recent events...
[read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
ntf
xpages lotususergroup.org
15
An even better hidden gem in Notes 8.5.2
Wed, Aug 25th 2010 11:44a Nathan T Freeman After much gnashing of the teeth and bearing
of the claws over this item since Notes 8.0, IBM has finally added "Delete"
to the context menu in the Mail address type-ahead. This is an excellent
way to purge email addresses that you know are defunct.
In fact, I'd very much appreciate it
if you'd take a moment and do this for me by removing my old lotus911.com
address!
Unfortunately, the process displays
a rather annoying confirmation dialog, but it's still a huge improvement
[read] Keywords: ibm
notes
ntf
email
43
Now running 8.5.2, and a hidden gem
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 2:00p Nathan T Freeman Domino 8.5.2 is GOLD! Just finished the
upgrade on our internal dev server as well as the server that hosts this
blog.
One thing that I don't think anyone
talked about during the beta cycle was the massive performance improvement
in start time of the later server. Check this out...
08/24/2010 01:45:48
PM Begin scan of databases to be consistency checked
08/24/2010 01:45:48 PM End scan of databases: 1 found
08/24/2010 01:45:49 PM Event Monitor started
08/24/2010 01:45:52 PM [read] Keywords: admin
administration
agent
domino
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ntf
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java
server
smtp
YellowDay: Meet @Transmogrifier
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 2:54p Nathan T Freeman So let's say you're a long-time Notes developer
that just starting to cut your teeth on Xpages. You probably know your
way around Lotusscript pretty well, but what's even more likely is that
you know your way around formula. You can't so much as build a view without
formula code, and while working with @ can occasionally be challenging,
for the most part, it's the most direct and simple way to get things done
in the Notes client.
Now you're looking at Xpages, and maybe
you noti [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
notes
notes client
ntf
xpages javascript
server
27
YellowDay: Partnering with IBM on Xpages Extensions
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 1:30p Nathan T Freeman The crazy few that attended our IamLUG
presentation in St. Louis already heard this, but because the live streaming
didn't work, it turns out that I get to make this announcement twice.
A few weeks ago, the mighty Philippe
Riand and I were discussing some of the missing ingredients from Xpages.
While Xpages gives Domino developers unprecedented power and flexibility,
many people (including we here at GROUP) were struggling with some of the
constructs that are part of the basic natur [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
notes
notes client
ntf
sametime
xpages dojo
openntf
20
YellowDay: Welcome to the new Escape Velocity
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 10:41a Nathan T Freeman In celebration of YellowDay 2010, I'm starting
the day with an official relaunch of my blog. Right now, you'll notice
that the only thing different is the URL, but over the next several days
and weeks, you'll start to notice some more dramatic changes, include layout
and platform. It is my most earnest belief that what makes this blog worth
reading is the incredibly rich interactive content that has appeared here
over the last 5 years. So my number 1 priority is ensuring that every pos [read] Keywords: domino
ntf
office
server
33
YellowDay: LotusLive Notes and the meaning of Hybrid
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 10:40a Nathan T Freeman Unless you've been on a cruise for the
last couple of days, you've probably heard about the announcement of LotusLive
Notes (LLN). Whether you take the angle that this pushes IBM into immediate
market leadership, or that they left out the crucial piece of custom applications,
or that Lotus simply isn't as good a hosting provider as their business
partners are -- you probably aren't aware of the key market differentiator
that LLN provides: the hybrid model.
Well, let me amend that: [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
ntf
applications
email
integration
security
server
tivoli
10
Aug 11 is here again!
Mon, Aug 9th 2010 11:21a Nathan T Freeman It's August again, and now that I've made
it through the crucible known as IamLUG, I've had a chance to make some
plans for this year's YellowDay. I'm delighted to say that my new
corporate overlords at Group are supporting the Yellow Day festivities
this year, and we'll have several cool new things going live on Wednesday.
Those of you who attended our session at IamLUG know at least one
of them.
So get out your Lotus shirts, hats,
cars, buttons, or whatever else you can th [read] Keywords: lotus
ntf
