Stop Press: Collaboration University 2010 is coming!

With a deep-dive technical focus on Lotus Quickr and Sametime, related integration and strategy sessions, and expertise concentrated in one place, you get the most in-depth training possible, with unprecedented access to well-known industry experts."This great little conference has had such an impact on the skills of so many people that we often hear back months - and even years - from attendees, with success stories linking back to what they learned from our experts" says Rob Novak of CU. You can see more at http://www.collaborationuniversity.com

Stop Press: Connecting Quickr to the iPhone, iTouch and iPad
Our partner SNAPPS has introduced SnappFiles - its a free app available on the Apple App Store that delivers secure access to and collaboration on corporate documents stored in IBM Lotus Quickr or Filenet P8 ECM systems. for more info go to http://snappfiles.snapps.com

Stop Press: UC2Ready Assessment Gives You Easier Deployment Of Sametime 8.5
Lotus Sametime 8.5 offers companies a core set of integrated real-time communications services - voice, data and video - that make it easy for people to find, reach and collaborate effectively with colleagues, customers and business partners. Epilio and The Turtle Partnership have come together to help customers speed the deployment of Lotus Sametime 8.5 with the UC2Ready™ Assessment. A UC2Ready™ assessment for Lotus Sametime will allow your organization to plan and prepare for the deployment of Sametime 8.5, providing a high-level summary and planning document with a number of components to enable your organization to successfully deploy Lotus Sametime 8.5.

For further information or answers to any of your questions on IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5 please contact us - Epilio: Sales@epilio.com - 
US Tel: +1-866-9 Epilio www.epilio.com or The Turtle Partnership: mikes@turtlepartnership.com - UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8941 6994 
www.turtlepartnership.com

Stop Press: UCHear Sametime Podcast
Gabriella Davis of Turtle and Carl Tyler of Epilio talk about Sametime 8.5 in their UCHear podcast series - "In our.....podcast, we start by giving you an insight into some of the things you’ll find in Sametime 8.5 and many of the things you’ll need to prepare for." Carl and Gabriella have presented at Collaboration University - and at other events such as Lotusphere, AdminCamp and UKLUG. You can hear it here

Do You Know What 'Lotus knows'?
Its worth clicking on the button below to find out more......



First Here Are The Tools....

Mail Analysis Tool - Turtle Hatched
Basically it cuts all your mailboxes down to size. This tool lets you easily discover messages in all your organisation's mailboxes that are over a pre-set size. You can then either delete them right now or run a regular process that will do it for you		448k

Replica Change Database - Turtle Hatched
A great Turtle tool, change the replica id of any database at will. Turn a database copy into a database replica, invaluable.		256k
RGB Calculator - Turtle Hatched
We built this for ourselves and it's so useful we've decided to share it. If you ever use passthru HTML you need to convert from RGB to Hex colour values and vice versa, this tool does it for you.		256k
Resets Calendar Appointment Owners - Turtle Hatched
Lets you easily change the owner of every appointment in a mail calendar from "Person A" to "Person B" at the click of a button. Useful when ownership of a mail database changes, or a user is removed from the system.		320k

And here are some other useful tools....

notes.ini Database - Have It Handy On Your BlackBerry
Thanks to Rudi Knegt at RKJ-Soft for agreeing to let us link up to his notes.ini database. We have now ported it to the BlackBerry platform so you can search through all of the thousands of current entries using any part of the notes.ini setting or its description. We hope to keep this synchronised with Rudi's database as well. The initial load of data can take a couple of minutes and you will see it updating the record count as it goes. Any problems or suggested enhancements please email us at info@turtleweb.com.

If you have a BlackBerry device other than a Storm then you can install the notes.ini application OTA by going to http://lotusphere.turtleweb.com/notesini.jad
If you have a BlackBerry Storm then please install the alternative app version OTA by going to http://lotusphere.turtleweb.com/notesini2.jad

iFidelity - Make Sure Your Email Always Makes A Good impression
Great product that ensures that if you send mail sent between different email systems it keeps its formatting. In other words your email is not mangled by the transition and the recipient gets the best impression! To see more go to http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/iFidelity

CoexLinks - Letting Domino And Outlook Coexist
Very useful product that lets Domino coexist with other mailboxes. Its easy to set up and can be configured to send NDL files, Notes URL's or HTTP URL's to non-Notes mailboxes. To see more go to http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/CoexLinks

Lotus Symphony - A Free Enterprise-Quality Productivity Suite
Need to free up IT budget? Then consider IBM Lotus Symphony suite which can handle daily word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation tasks with a clear and intuitive UI - and its completely free with no need for costly licences. Symphony supports Open Document Format (ODF) and is built for mixed environments, so it can work with other product formats you may already have. To hear more about what Symphony can do - and what it can save you - go to http://symphony.lotus.com

ExtraFax - Faxing From Your Domino Network
We like the ExtraFax server for combining email and fax functions. ExtraFax is a 100% native Lotus Domino faxing solution that integrates seamlessly with Lotus Notes Mail and database applications, enabling users to send and receive faxes, text and multimedia messages directly from their Lotus Notes client. Easy to use and to learn, ExtraFax is an add-on application that was built from the ground up and is the winner of the 2006 Lotus Advisor Communication Award. For more info about ExtraFax either contact us or visit http://www.extracomm.com/

WorkplaceControl For Notes - Centralised Admin
Migrating to another server? Consolidating your servers? Switching to a new version of the Lotus Notes client? Adding, changing or removing icons? WorkplaceControl can really help. Its an excellent tool for centrally implementing migrations and consolidations. WorkplaceControl can also do easy audits of your workstations. We really like this tool. To see more about it go to http://www.workplacecontrol.com/ or contact Mike Smith at mike@turtleweb.com or call +44 (0)20 8941 6994.

Ad-aware - Scum And Spy Remover
Useful little utility that scans your registry, memory and hard drives for known spyware and scumware - the stuff that tracks what you do on the web or secretly modifies your browser. Take a look at http://www.lavasoft.nu/

Spybot - "Search & Destroy" Scum and Spyware
Brilliant little utility that can clean all sorts of spyware and scumware off your system.
Take a look at http://www.safer-networking.org/

The Brain
An interesting way of associating ideas on your screen - it really flies when used to navigate online information. Visit their site for a tour and get a freeware PersonalBrain demo at http://www.thebrain.com.

TouchGraph Google Browser
"See" websites as Google sees them with this intriguing and fascinating tool at http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Please let us know if you encounter any dead links - just email info@turtleweb.com

And some useful info....

PlanetLotus
Great site that aggregates all the many Lotus blogs out there for faster surfing.
http://planetlotus.org/

IBM Notes Documentation Database
Track down all those release notes and help databases for Notes, Designer, Domino and all related products such as Sametime or QuickPlace released in the last few years. You can read the files online, or download them in both Notes and PDF formats. http://www.notes.net/doc

IBM Lotus Notes & Domino Library
A great source of info about Lotus Notes and Domino - its all here: articles, tutorials, demos, webcasts, tech info, brochures, datasheets.
http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/notesdominolibrary

Simple Security Advice
Ever wanted to help someone with basic advice to keep their PC secure against zombification, viruses and all that? Well the UK Government has now published http://www.itsafe.gov.uk It provides the essentials in clear and simple language for non-techies.

UK Monitoring Guidelines
The UK Government has published guidelines for businesses who want to monitor their employees. You can find them on the UK Information Commissioner's website here - http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

The Story of Notes & Domino
Excellent site outlines the story of Notes & Domino - the laughter, the tears, the non-hierarchical replication...
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/today.nsf/lookup/ndhistory

Great Lotus Notes Reference Sheet From IBM
A very handy user guide to Lotus 8 from IBM Lotus:



Guide To IBM Lotus Buzzwords And Acronyms

BB
BlackBerry

BES
BlackBerry Enterprise Server

CAL
Client Access License - Lotus' term for the fee charged for an authenticated client to access a Domino server

DECS
Domino Enterprise Connection Services - Domino feature that allows real-time access to relational databases

DES
Domino Extended Search - Detailed searches across both Domino and other data stores across the network

DFW
Domino WorkFlow - another abbreviation for the Domino Workflow product

DGW
Domino Global Workbench - Works with Domino Designer to support multiple languages

DIS
Domino Import Services - means to import objects created by web authoring tools into a Domino database

Discovery Server
KM Product that identifies relationships between people, documents and topics, with expertise profiles, search tools, etc.

DL
Distance Learning - term Lotus uses for various products that support education of end-users and personnel

DOLS
Domino Offline Services - enables browsers and MS Outlook clients to work disconnected from the Domino server

Domino.Doc
Lotus' product for document management - creating, revising, publishing, versioning, archiving of any file

DNFS
Domino Network File System - ability to use Domino as a file server from a Windows Workstation

DTO
Domino Translation Object - Original language translator application replace by Lotus Translation Components

DUS
Domino Upgrade Services - Tools included with the Admin Client to migrate users to Domino from other mail systems

EDM
Enterprise Document Management - term to describe corporate policies to manage a document's life cycle

EI
Enterprise Integration - umbrella term for the many methods that can be used to integrate Domino to back end systems

E-workplace
An online collaborative environment that enables greater productivity

iNotes
Lotus' branding for MAPI and HTTP clients (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator)

J2EE
Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition

KM
Knowledge Management - Industry term that embraces collaboration between people, places and things.

K-Station
Lotus' product for end user portal with knowledge management features

LEI
Lotus Enterprise Integrator - Lotus' product to synchronous Domino with relational databases.

LHMS
Lotus Hosting Management Services - Application for ASPs to host Domino applications.

LMS
Lotus Messaging Switch - product to provide connectivity between multiple vendor mail systems - discontinued

LotusScript
Lotus scripting language that is part of the Domino server, allowing increased function for Domino applications

LRM
Lotus Records Manager - Desktop client that interacts with Domino.Doc

LTC
Lotus Translation Components - latest set of tools to translate from one language to another

LS
LearningSpace - Lotus' product for distance learning including Forum (asynchronous) and Live (synchronous) modules

LSX
LotusScript Extensions - Visual Basic-like APIs to allow communication between Domino and non-Domino objects

MSD
Mobile Services for Domino - umbrella term for wireless access to Domino and Domino applications aka "Mobile Notes"

MTA
Message Transfer Agent - Agent code used to transfer mail between Domino and Internet Mail (replaced by SMTP)

Passport
Lotus' volume purchase agreement for pricing discounts and additional services for customers

QP
QuickPlace - IBM Lotus' product for creating an instant webspace for collaboration on a project. Now called Team Workplace.

SIMPLE
SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions

SIP
Session Initiation Protocol

SMTP
Simple Mail Transport Protocol - protocol used to transfer Domino mail with Internet based mail

ST
SameTime - Lotus' product for instant messaging (chat), application sharing, whiteboard and video conferencing. Now called IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing.

WAP
Wireless Access Protocol

Web Services
A collection of emerging standards that simplifies application integration by providing a standard access protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

WF
WorkFlow - Lotus Domino's ability to add task routing features to an application

Useful Tips For Corporate IM Use
When using IM....

• They may be "online" but are they free to talk?
• Start each contact with a greeting or a polite enquiry.
• Remember that the recipient might not be alone so be careful about sending sensitive or personal messages.
• It is instant, you cannot call it back - so you need to think before typing.
• Beware - lack of other "conversational signals" means that carelessly composed messages can appear haughty, blunt or angry.
• Use normal type and proper sentences & spelling - and AVOID SHOUTING.
• If you started the contact then make it clear when the chat is over.
• If you ever present using your PC make sure your IM is switched off!

Online Meeting Tips & Tricks...

1. Review purpose & agenda

Review the meeting purpose & agenda once people have joined and you've formally opened the meeting. This is just as important for an online meeting as for a face-to-face meeting.

You might want to include the meeting purpose as part of the intro slide which you have showing as people are joining, and to have the agenda as the first foil to which you turn to start the meeting.

Note that a roll call is not necessary for an online meeting; see the Participant List.


2. Ensure maximum participation

The addition of visuals via online meetings technology does not reduce the need for encouraging and managing phone participation for maximum effectiveness.

a. Ensure that everyone can hear you.

The requirement is the same as for a regular conference call ... don't forget the remote attendees. Poll and acknowledge remote participants. The most courteous and helpful process is to ask remote participants, group by group, for their comments when a new topic is brought up.

b. Introduce everyone. If someone joins after that, acknowledge his/her presence.

c. Remind people to speak one at a time and not to overlap each other.

d. Have every speaker identify themselves. "This is Gerry again," "That was Sandy."

e. If someone needs to leave early, please announce their departure before they leave.

This gives everyone, especially the people on the phone, an opportunity to raise issues or questions for that person before he or she goes.

f. Ask people to try not to make noises near the phone.

Those noises will be heard instead of the person who is speaking. Encourage people to use the mute button if they are typing or a colleague stops in to chat.

g. Announce the end of the meeting before you hang up the phone, don't just disconnect.


3. Avoid the "presenter's pointing pitfall"

Remember that remote attendees can't see you. Pointing & gesturing at your slides either on the computer screen or as projected on the wall of a meeting room won't help the remote attendees. Use specific references; don't say (while pointing), "You can see right down here ...".

If you're presenting using the whiteboard, highlight key points as you come to them with an arrow or a box.

Your mouse pointer cannot be reliably seen by remote attendees under all conditions.


4. Remember the refresh time for new screens

Remember that transmitting a new screen to remote attendees will take a second or two. Don't keep asking if people can see the new slide.. if they can't, they'll let you know. Check once or twice during large meetings; people are often more reluctant to speak up in a large meeting.

Refresh times may be quite different for different attendees, depending on how quickly their connection is working at the time. This is independent of whether you are dial- or LAN-connected.

Meetings may be held successfully with some or all participants dial-connected, including the meeting moderator.


5. Keep an eye on the time

Keep an eye on the time. Remember that it's very easy for remote attendees to "walk out" if they have other things to do.

Ensure an orderly close to your online meeting by starting to sum up with 5 minutes to go.

Remember that the online meeting will end at the time you specified. Meetings cannot be extended after the meeting has started. It is advisable to book your online meeting to go 15 minutes past the time you have told the attendees that the meeting will end.

If necessary, tell your attendees what you are doing; book another meeting to start immediately; and tell them how to attend.

Tips On Scams, Spam and Security
To see more info about current viruses go to http://www.viruslist.com

It is vital that your colleagues are involved in the constant struggle with email threats. As an example here are some useful guidelines for email use from an end-users point of view:-

• Watch out for emails from unfamiliar names that tell you to click and go to a web site. The site might actually be waiting to do harm to your machine.

• Viruses and worms travel in many ways, and exist for just about every operating system. Don't open unsolicited attachments, even if it looks like it's from a friend of yours - if you're not sure then contact them before opening. The "From" field in your email might actually be a lie.

• Using your employer's mail system for personal mail may have unforeseen ramifications. Ideally keep all of the really personal stuff for your private email account at home.

• Beware heartwrenching stories, health warnings, "business offers," and so on. They might actually be hoaxes. Before you forward them to anyone, make sure they're legitimate: try the Urban Legends Combat Kit at http://netsquirrel.com/combatkit/ and HoaxBusters at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/.

• Beware virus warnings that don't come from the antivirus companies. They might be hoaxes too. Check Vmyths (http://www.vmyths.com/) before forwarding these on to your friends.

• Don't purchase services or products from a spammer. When one spammer manages to make money it encourages the lot of them.

Spam Reduction - Best Practice Tips
There are many products available to manage spam, plus some very useful features in Notes. But we thought it might be the right time to also discuss some of the ways that organisations can reduce spam through some simple guidelines.......

Conduct A Spam Survey
Knowing how much of a problem spam is for your users will help you gauge how aggressive a stance to take on stamping it out. Probably the best way to find out how spam impacts your users is to conduct a survey. You could combine a survey with an information campaign: inform users about what spam is and how to avoid it while finding out whether it is a problem for them or not.

Education Is Key
A key step is educating Users about how to avoid giving their addresses to potential spam sources. This will help reduce the amount of spam that comes through your systems. Some key points for your users would be:-

Never respond to spam. People that send spam are looking for a response. Advise your users of this and what the costs of spam are. Chances are, they are aware of it and dislike it as much as you do - but make sure that they know never to purchase anything from an unsolicited e-mail. A key reason that spam is a problem is that people continue to respond to it; if there were no buyers there would be no sellers. Make sure that your users are not adding to the problem by responding to the e-mail at all. This includes the "opt out" links that are often just used to verify whether or not a valid address has been found.

Ensure that everyone understands that many unsolicited e-mail offers are hoaxes or confidence tricks. Some examples to note are the "Nigerian bank transfer" scam, and the "Timmy is trapped in the well" hoax.

Explain that if an offer or e-mail seems too good to be true, it's probably spam. And many "cries for help" or "secret recipes" are just scams to try and create e-mail chaos and generate more spam.

Avoid Address Harvesting
Spammers can subscribe to any usenet group - and they can harvest what they find. After downloading posts from a usenet group, their news-bots look for xxxx@domain.com patterns in posted message content and headers. When an e-mail address pattern is found they store it for use in bulk mailing. The best defence against spammer news-bots is to simply provide human-recognizable alterations to the address that make it more difficult for the news-bot to recognize any e-mail address pattern.

Listserv harvesting Spammers develop programs that subscribe to list servers as any other user can, but they never send to the subscribed list. Instead they capture other list subscriber's e-mail addresses over time. The best defence against Listserv harvesting is to simply provide human-recognizable alterations to the sending and reply address to make them more difficult for an automated list-bot to recognize any e-mail address pattern.

• Advise your users to avoid having their e-mail addresses harvested by employing the following techniques: Have a personal or “junk” account from a free provider that is used specifically for newsgroup or commercial Web site interaction.
• Do not post their address on newsgroups or public Web discussions.
• Avoid publishing their e-mail address in public "people finder" directories or Instant Messaging directories.
• Avoid using standard e-mail addresses for domain name registration contacts; instead, create accounts specifically to manage registration contact.
• Have users avoid using "e-invite" or "postcard" services with their organizational e-mail address: these services often sell or solicit to the e-mail addresses that they gather.
• Make sure that users know to read the privacy statements on Web sites that they provide information to.

If you are posting to a newsgroup or to a Web discussion board where you suspect that your address may be gathered, consider "munging". Address munging involves changing your real e-mail address in a way that will make it unavailable for harvesting. Normally this involves adding a "NOSPAM" or some other text string that other people will know to remove before sending mail to that address. Harvesting programs are often not smart enough to distinguish between a munged address and a real address.

An example of such an e-mail address is john.example@NOSPAMibm.com.

Inform Your Users About Spam Avoidance
So its crucial to inform your users The more users know about the cause of their addresses being picked up by spammers, the greater the chance that they can avoid getting on the list. Here is an example of a spam information message for your organisation:-

Dear .........,
The Information Systems department is interested in reducing the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail (aka spam) delivered to our organization. We would also like to find out whether spam is a concern for you, as this will help us determine the best approach to take when configuring our systems to reject spam.

How to Avoid Spam
The best way for us not to receive spam is to prevent our e-mail addresses from being gathered by those that send spam. Here are some ways that you can help:

• Never respond in any way to unsolicited commercial e-mail. Responding can make your address a target for more spam - this includes any "opt out" links which are often used just to verify that yours is a valid address.
• Avoid giving out your e-mail address on Web sites or discussions. Consider using a personal e-mail address or a free e-mail address for non-work-related correspondence.
• Disregard chain letters or other spam that encourages you to send messages to others.
• If you send mail to several external users, consider putting the addresses in the "bcc" field so that all of the addresses are not visible.

If you are careful and avoid having your address get on the spam lists you can avoid having spam delivered to our organisation.

Sincerely, Your Domino Administrator

Introduce A Mail Policy
In addition to briefing your users about spam consider having a mail policy that covers the sending of spam. While you are working very hard to stop spam from arriving, it's good to make sure that none of your users is an unregulated source of this type of mail. Make sure that users know what the rules are with e-mail and what constitutes productive use of e-mail in your environment.

In some environments, inboxes are cluttered with jokes and other non-work related e-mail. If jokes are important to your organization, consider creating a discussion database for these types of messages; it can help to reduce the clutter. If users want to be notified, you can use an agent that sends a daily summary of the new items that are in the database.

And The Toys....

The 'Lotus knows' Bus
A very big toy in a great cause, caught at Boston - see more here http://www.lotusknows.com



Lotus At Your Fingertips On The Apple iPad
We have been very impressed by the iPad. And you can extend your Lotus Notes email, calendar, contacts and applications to the ground-breaking iPad device from Apple. Using iNotes and Lotus Traveler you can get your Lotus messaging at your fingertips.



The Italian Job
Our Mini Racer from the DNUG (Deutsche Notes User Group) racing events organised by our Penumbra partners GMI.