Archive for January 2010
The Apple iTablet Podcast
Scott Laningham and I got together via Skype this afternoon to debrief on the Apple iPad tablet announcement.
As I joked in the podcast, the iPad looks like an iPhone for for the Jolly Green Giant, but don’t mistake the seeming limitations of the razor for the giant opportunity to sell more digital razor blades.
Scott and Turbo Apple iPad Debrief Podcast (12:34, MP3)
Super Wednesday
Wow, tomorrow is gonna be some Wednesday.
First, the World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos, Switzerland. Once again this year, my tickets seem to have gotten lost in the mail.
Second, President Obama is slated to make his first State of the Union speech before Congress and the American people.
But we all know what the really big story is for this particular Wednesday: Steve Jobs’ introduction of the new Apple Tablet computer tablet thingamajiggy that I don’t think Apple has ever even confirmed existed, much less what its feature/functions are.
Once again, the brilliance of the no talky Apple marketing machine speaks volumes without ever even so much as a head nod.
Me, I don’t need another Apple device. But, I’ll likely end up buying one, anyway.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Almost most assuredly.
Can I go ahead and pre-order one now?
(Full disclosure: I bought some Apple stock recently. I’m banking on this tablet sucker taking their stock sky high, and with the profits I hope to make off the sale of the stock, I’m going to turn around and buy an Apple tablet.)
That means all the rest of you have to go out and buy one first so that you send their stock into the stratosphere so that I can make enough to buy one for myself.
Now, I don’t own many shares, so that means you all really need to go out and buy two tablets just to give me a safe margin.
Sound like a plan?
Of course, with Apple’s quarterly earnings announced yesterday against a record sale of Macs in a single quarter, we’re well on our way.
I just pray the new tablet isn’t the second coming of the Newton.
Who Dat?
I’m back in Austin and no worse for the wear.
I really enjoyed my first Lotusphere, and hopefully you readers out there got some value out of the coverage Scott Laningham and I provided.
From the moment William Shatner hit the stage to finally answer the big surprise as to who the surprise emcee was, to the moment I climbed on the plane to head back home, I was in full sponge mode soaking up all the news about the powerful collaboration story emerging from our Lotus brand.
I say emerging not to denigrate the storylines from the past, but as I mentioned in one of the podcasts, one of the business partners I had breakfast with mentioned that this was the first Lotusphere he’d been to (and he’d been to ten) where it wasn’t all about the next version of Lotus Notes.
That there was a more powerful story emerging around user-focused collaboration using the paradigms people have become most comfortable with (the browser), while bringing to bear all the great social and collaboration software that Lotus has already done so much work around.
Keep an eye out for more on Project Vulcan. And don’t be surprised if you see some after action podcasts where we interview some Lotus execs who were a little too busy to chat with us during Lotusphere.
Now let’s talk about some football (in this case, the American kind). Yesterday was an amazing day (and night) for it, wasn’t it?
I have to say, I was rooting for both the Vikings and the Saints – the Vikings because I have to root for any 40-year old quarterback, and the Saints just because I love the city of New Orleans, it’s people, it’s historical impact on American culture, and most important, it’s spirit.
And what a game. That’s the kind of NFC Championship playoff game fans dream about…and there it unfolded, right before our very eyes. As for Favre’s last interception, yeah, there’s plenty of second guessing that could be done, but dudes, he played his heart out and still turned in one heckuva performance.
It just wasn’t to be, and it was time for the Saints to go marching into Miami as the NFC Champs so they could play in their first ever SuperBowl.
With all due apologies to anyone in Indiana (or Colts’ fans), I’m all about the New Orleans Saints in the coming SuperBowl 44!
Who dat, indeed!
Live @ Lotusphere 2010: A Look at the Collaboration Market
The market for collaboration software is big.
As in, really big.
As in $14B big.
But it’s not just one market, it’s a lot of different markets with different sub-segments and user bases and geo breakouts (that’s marketing speak…pretty fancy, huh?).
On Wednesday, Scott and I had an opportunity to sit down with my esteemed colleague, Carol Galvin, principle segment analyst with IBM Market Insights who specializes in the Lotus realm.
Our discussion was far-reaching, including an overview of the collaboration market, the Lotus Knows marketing campaign, the cloud v. on-premise opportunity, and even the changing demographics and impact of the “consumerization” of IT on enterprise collaboration spend and user expectations.
I hope you’ll find it as fascinating a discussion as we did!
Listen to Live @ Lotusphere 2010: A Look At the Collaboration Market (MP3, 16:14)
Live @ Lotusphere Day 2.5 Podcast Recap: Speedgeekers Unite!
Scott and I did a Tuesday/Wednesday Lotusphere 2010 recap yesterday morning, chatting about SpeedGeeking, the Blogger Briefing, our visit to the IBM Innovation Labs demos (which were incroyable), Wednesday’s key announcements, and the overall tenor of the event.
Click on the following to download the podcast: Live @ Lotusphere 2010: Day 2.5 Podcast Debrief: Speedgeekers Unite! (MP3, 11:25)
Live @ Lotusphere 2010: New Insights
Scott Laningham and I were able to experience two very cool things over and just after lunch.
First, we sat down for a collaboration market overview with Carol Galvin, who is currently the principle segment analyst for IBM Market Insights, focusing on IBM Software and Lotus in particular. It was a far-reaching discussion which included great insights on the collaboration software market (including a segment breakdown and geo view), as well as some insights on the “consumeratization of IT.”
Keep your eyes peeled here in the Turbo blog and on Scott’s blog for that podcast soon.
Then, we had an opportunity to visit with the IBM Innovations Lab, where I saw several mind-blowing advancements in social data visualization, and some of the LotusLive Labs breakthroughs we heard about earlier in the week.
I wish I could just beam everyone here and do a walkthru (Can somebody bring back William Shatner!?), but Scott did some interviews there which we hope to have up later which will give you direct access to some of the insights we found there.
In terms of highlights, I saw the Shared Presentation experience, which would allow for real-time crowdsourcing of presentation building (No, give ME the mouse!), as well as an email/task in-box triage tool that’s about one of the coolest things I’ve seen in Orlando.
It’s predicated on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” principles and allows you to quickly “triage” your in-box. I’m praying Lotus will integrate that into the next version of Notes and Notes Traveler!
Things are slowly winding down here, but it looks as though there’s still plenty of traffic and plenty of folks to network with and learn from.
We’ll be here until the (almost) bitter end!
Click here if you’d like to see a rundown on the latest “Lotus” relevant news coming out of Lotusphere 2010.
Live @ Lotusphere, Day 3: Goin’ Mobile
It’s Day 3 at Lotusphere, and my brain is slowly evolving into collaborative mush.
I had a great chat with some business partners from New Jersey over breakfast, who explained that they were Lotus faithful and had been coming to the event for over 10 years now.
They told me how they thought this was the FIRST year they’d been here where the event didn’t seem to revolve completely around the next release of Lotus Notes, and that there was a much broader view into the Lotus collaboration portfolio.
And, they seemed to be digging it.
Well, gents, I definitely don’t think that was a happy accident, but we very much appreciate the feedback and are glad you think we seem to be heading in the right direction.
As to this AM, let’s get to some breaking news coming out of the second floor of the Dolphin hotel press conference.
First, more news on the emerging IBM Lotus mobile strategy, which includes a major expansion of IBM Lotus Collaboration software and delivery of enterprise secure email for Android, the iPhone, and Nokia Symbian-based smartphones.
IBM customer General Motors related during the event this week how it’s building for an increasingly mobile workforce, connected and equipped for anything, anytime, anywhere.
Specifically, GM chief strategy and technology officer Kirk Guttman explained he has thousands of people on iPhones and BlackBerry devices using their Lotus collaboration tools while in motion, increasing their productivity while in motion…just not behind me while driving down the Interstate, please!
As mentioned the other day, the Lotus Notes Traveler Companion, a plug-in that allows you to view encrypted email on the iPhone. Available in the Apple App store now.
Traveler will also be supported on Nokia Symbian smartphones and Windows Mobile devices, because we want to be sure Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie can securely read one another’s Lotus Notes email on their iPhones.
That was a joke! Get it, Ray and Bill, Lotus Notes, iPhone!? (Well, let’s give Bill credit…he did apparently just get his own Twitter account after three years of critical Twittering mass).
Next up, we had some great news on the online meeting front, which is where, as you know, I spend most of my life.
In fact, I think I’m supposed to be in an emeeting right at this very moment! Doh!
These new features in IBM Lotus Sametime offer a new online meeting experience that provides a consolidated calndar view and enables users to start or join a meeting with a single click…because taking a few clicks to open an emeeting was apparently a major labor on the part of IBMers and customers around the globe!
Just kidding…I love one click access, particularly to the delete button in my Notes mail inbox.
With this new feature, users are going to be able to easily invite participants to a meeting by dragging names from their IM contact list and dropping them into the meeting.
Participants will also be able to accept meeting invites with a single click as well as upload materials to the meeting with a drag and drop capability.
I presume this also means I can drop you OUT of the meeting if you’re misbehaving.
IBM Lotus has had a number of world class companies participating in a beta to test out these new capabilities.
Thomas Eidenmueller with Merck KGaAsaid that “With our planned deployment of Lotus Sametime 8.5 in the second quarter of 2010, we will be able to further lower travel expenses with our plans to run education sessions both internally and externally with our partners.”
Other new features of Sametime 8.5 worth highlighting: Always-ready, reservation-less meetings with password-protected meeting rooms…a zero-download Web client that makes it easier for companies to embed Sametime capabilities into their apps and Web sites…a new browser-based Apple iPhone chat client, for all you Macheads out there…and enhancements to the Sametime Unified Telephony capability, which helps users better manage their phone calls based on presence and location.
That one’s a no brainer for companies that have an exceptionally mobile workforce, and I’ve used that function when I was working remotely and didn’t want to run up a big phone bill from overseas.
Have wifi and Sametime Unified Telelphony, will travel.
Finally, for those of you on the small and medium sized business front, IBM announced today that it’s working with business partners to create solutions integrated with IBM Lotus Foundations to help small and medium business address the challenge of complexity.
Lotus Foundations is IBM’s hardware and software solution that helps SMBs collaborate with tools that include email, office apps, file sharing, and backup/data recovery and protection.
Lotus Foundations basically provides a one-stop shop for smaller businesses that want to focus on running their business (and not their IT infrastructure), and because the Foundations solution is autonomic, you can install, setup, monitor, and do problem resolution without human intervention.
Speaking of human intervention, I need to intervene with myself and cut off this post. That’s it, that’s a wrap, and I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever typed in my life…and I’m a fast typist (they don’t call me Turbo for nothin’).
More to come later today, including our podcast interview with IBMer Rawn Shah, author of “Social Networking for Business.”
In the meantime, I encourage you to read this thoughtful post from ReadWriteWeb’s Alex Williams about IBM vs. Microsoft’s approach to the open Web.
Live @ Lotusphere 2010, Day Two: Making Lotus Connections
Another session I attended earlier today (and a debrief promised from an earlier post) revolved around the Lotus Connections platform.
Sure, I’m biased, I work for Big Blue, but let me just say that before I get into the specifics, I’m a regular user of the Lotus Connections product by design.
IBM is definitely walking its own talk in this particular arena, and I can personally attest to the way it has changed the way I (and my extended global team) work.
For example, I run a weekly Web team call that has been continuous for going on six years now. Every Friday, 10 AM CST, sharp (except when I’m on a jet plane to nowhere).
I used to manage the communications for the call entirely through Lotus Notes, and while I’m a Notes fan as well, Connections has helped ease the pain of managing that call.
For example, I’ve asked all 70+ regular participants to go and “Join” the community I set up for the call in Connections, so now instead of having to manage an access control list, I’m crowdsourcing the subscription list.
You want to have access to information about the call (including call-in #s and the weekly Symphony presentation), then you simply join and you’re automagically emailed the info as soon as I send it out.
Talk about a time saver and productivity enhancer.
I’ve also used the Connections community for this particular call to share important industry news, and embedded several helpful RSS feeds so the group can follow some other important info threads.
We also have a discussion group there to discuss issues of importance to our global Software Web community, and the email function lets me easily send out dispatches to the global team no matter where in the world I am.
The SWG Web Marketing Community also allows me to take advantage of the blogging feature, so that I can share info about coming calls and anecdotes worthy of the community’s attention.
Finally, I share all my presentations from each week in the “Files” service, so that anybody can go back in time and download an earlier presentation should they be interested in reading more about that week’s given topic/call.
All of this in a single community, and all powered by Lotus Connections.
Testify, Turbo, testify!
In terms of today’s informative update, Suzanne Livingston and team shared insights about IBM’s own wider adoption of Connections, which will ultimately replace the IBM Bluepages directory.
She explained that social collaboration’s mission is simple: Lotus Connections is social software for business that is focused on people based collaboration that empowers you with the collective knowledge of your organization, your partners and your customers, and helps people build better outcomes.
Got that? Good, ’cause there will be a quiz later.
For organizations needing to cut costs and provide for workforce flexibility, all while helping leverage collective organizational expertise and communicating with employees as individuals, Lotus Connections 2.5 fits the bill.
Need more insight? The right info at the right time in the right context, and all while magnifying the value of your content?
Lotus Connections 2.5 fits the bill.
Need an advantage by leveraging your innovation across your full value chain, all while improving the strength and speed of making connections and depth of relationships?
All together now.
Okay, enough Kum Ba Ya and instead some details about the new version of Lotus Connections:
Improvements to Communities
Communities can be enhanced with additional tools: communitiy activities, blogs, files, and wikis. Community discussion forums have a new look and now show the number of replies for each topic; community owners can customize the look of their community and move widgets around on the community’s home page.
Wikis
Wikis let you create sites to collaboratively author and share documents. Built-in revision history makes it a snap to roll back to previous versions.
Files
Files makes sharing files with other people a snap, and reduces inbox bloat.
Mobile access
Support for mobile browser to Lotus Connections Profiles from Apple iPhones or Nokia s60 devices.
Federated Updates
The Connections home page has a new Updates tab that lets you see news items relevant to you from across your social network. Use the “discover” tab to easily browse content from across all of connections.
Microblogging
Profiles now features status updates and a profile “board” that lets you easily post messages to other users’ profiles. Go to the profiles home page to see a list of status updates for all the people in your social network. Discover profiles by expertise with the organization-wide tag cloud.
Improved Search
Easily search all connections applications, and filter by tags, person, or time range.
Activities & Blogs feature Community Integration
Tired of adding the same people to an activity or blog in order to share it with them? Use a community to start group-centric activities or blogs.
Visit here to learn how you can better connect your organization with Lotus Connections 2.5.
Live @ Lotusphere 2010: Day 1 Wrap-up Podcast
Scott Laningham and I met late yesterday afternoon to compare notes and record a recap what we learned at Day 1 of Lotusphere.
You can download the podcast here (MP3, 18:04).
In this podcast, we hit on what we thought were some of the highlights of the very informative first day and also recapped all the key Lotus announcements.
turbotodd
Turbotodd 