Vaughan Rivett's Blog

Due to the popular success of my online training video's for Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino Server, I have decided to try to a series of Online Lotus Notes Training Seminars.

The first in my weekly series will be online at the following time (depending on your time zone)
8:00am, Friday 27th June 2008 (GMT +12)

1. Lotus Notes client navigation
2. Creating an email in Lotus Notes
3. Replying to and forwarding an email in Lotus Notes
4. Questions and answers

This seminar is free of charge.

If you wish to attend please email me for the details which will allow you to get connected online.
vrivett@rivettassociates.com

For some time now the price of oil has been going up and here in New Zealand it is now at an all time record high.  Now it is at the point whereby I have to ask myself if I really need to use the car.  In the past few weeks I have even made use of the "Car Pooling" idea.

I remember about 4 years ago, I was pushing for the use of IBM Lotus Sametime as an alternative to having to use a car to have meetings with clients.  It meant that there could be cost savings by cutting down on the use of fuel as well as not having to sit in the traffic for hours each day.

Around the time that I was trying to push Lotus Sametime in this way, there wasn't too much interest in the technology that it has to offer.  I am about to do an experiment now that the cost of fuel is so high to see what will happen.  Will more people be interested in Lotus Sametime?  I wonder?

I will keep this blog up to date with my progress.

It is with interest that I have been finding that Planet Lotus is a far more helpful resource than IBM.  Even though I live, breath, eat, cry and ......... all the rest IBM, I hardly ever hear about what is doing on in the world of Lotus Domino Server anf Lotus Notes client.

It is with interest that I am learning about what's new through Planet Lotus and the blogs that are represented there.  For example over the last few days I have been reading articles about Xpages.  To this day I have not heard about anything like this from IBM New Zealand.

I am on my way to see a client who is wanting Lotus Notes.  This is a great sale to make because the client only has about 4 staff.  However, with Lotus Notes he is going to be able to make use of databases which will enable him to provide a better service to his clients.

Every time this company gets a new client, he has to get them to complete a form about their medical and health conditions.  The completion of this form takes a few minutes.  To help streamline things he wants to have the form online for that the client can complete it before being treated by him.  Therefore, when the client arrives onsite, the form can be printed and be ready for signing.

Yes, I am going to be moving his email and everything else across as well.  

The other day I was at a conference which had nothing to do with computers, but I meet someone from Microsoft who provided all the entertainment that I needed for a few weeks!

The story goes like this:

I was talking to a young guy in his early to mid 20's.  He asked me what I do for a living so I told him a little bit about the software that I work with from IBM called Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino Server.  I mentioned how good the software was and how it is a IBM is a lot better than Microsoft because you could use IBM products and still have a choice about things like the Operating System it should run on, their compliance with Open Standards etc.

As the conversation went on, I found that a group of about 7-8 people began to gather and listen to the conversation.  After I had said most of what I could think of about how great Domino is, I asked him, "What do you do for a living"? (at this point I had no idea who he was).

He responded by saying "I working in the marketing department at Microsoft".  Everyone around me just burst out laughing, even I did.  Then I made a comment.  I turned to the crowd and said "At this point I should be embarrassed and red in the face, however I am neither!  This is because I stand by everything I just said".  The guy from Microsoft looked a bit put out by that comment!

Oh the joy of winning an argument against someone at Microsoft.  He just could not think of anything to say.

I wonder what stories other people have like this???

I have just downloaded the full release of Firefox 3.0.  It seems to be working a lot better than the beta versions with the likes of Lotus Domino Web Access.

Also, I have found that a lot of my old plug-in's now have updates which work with this new version.

Over the last few days I have been at the Parachute Noise Conference.  This conference was attended by close to 1000 people who are involved in Praise and Worship.

Guest performers and speakers at the conference included the following:
Darlene Zschech
Paul Colman
Jeff Crabtree
Henry Seeley
Joe Pringle
Leo Hansen

I was invited to do the multimedia for this event.

In this case, I had to run 2 computers which went from both of them doing the same thing to doing completely different things.  One of the computers was connected to a large screen and the other was connected to 6 wide-screen LCD televisions.  Below are some photo's of the event:

The following presentation is about SpamSentinel which is a product which does an amazing job of blocking SPAM at the Lotus Domino Server SMTP level before it gets anywhere near a Lotus Notes Client.

This presentation shows just how it works:

| View | Upload your own

This slideshow is my first in a series which will help people understand how I am working with Web 2.0 and Social Networking to actually make real money through the internet.

| View | Upload your own

The other day I called my fixed copper line provider (Telecom, New Zealand) to report noise on the line.  

A couple of days latter I had a technician arrive to sort out the problem.  Within minutes the problem was sorted out however, my broadband ended up going at less than 2.5Mb.  I told them about it and the initial response was that that was the best speed available based on the distance of my home from the Telecom Exchange.

As I am use to speeds which are greater than 5.5Mb I told them that that was not correct and they needed to sort out the problem.  They tested things back to the exchange and managed to get over 6Mb at the gate of my house.  Even though my speed was at about 5Mb that morning and nothing had changed with the wiring inside my property, they charged me $135.00 to install a splitter to get me speed at only 4Mb.

I was not happy about this at all.

Here is today's speed test