Alex Hernandez's Weblog

a Brand new site

2006-05-11T09:58:00.000-04:00

work in progress, server RIP.

Time goes by....

2006-04-17T10:07:00.000-04:00

... and there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm just trying to become wiser than yesterday.

I'm 36 years old.

.::AleX::.

Happy Birthday Cristobal

2006-04-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday Cristobal!

Cristobal is 2 years old since saturday April 1st. We had a little party, only with the closer friends.

We had a good time! Check it out!

The born of a commercial star

2006-03-22T13:49:00.000-04:00

why you didn't tell us Bruce?

Domino Security Redbook

2006-03-22T10:21:00.000-04:00

The Security Considerations in Notes and Domino 7: Making Great Security Easier to Implement redbooks has been released. Check it out!

Tags: Redbook, Domino, Security

This nick...

2006-03-21T13:37:00.000-04:00

A problem, presented correctly, is a problem, practically solved.

... appeared today in on of my MSN contacts.

:oP

Tags: MSN, problem

AJAX/400

2006-03-21T12:08:00.000-04:00

When doing development you will frequently found that there's a lot of backend systems that store the real data that is used when implementing a business process into a business application. The biggest companies has the very unbreakable mainframe running OS/390 or whatever, or any UNIX flavor, or if working with IBM customers, an AS/400, iSeries, i5 system.
The tendencies when moving into the IBM branding are exposing the legacy applications to web applications (and lately as web services). Most of the time this integration is by using Host Access Transformation Services from Websphere, or Websphere portal or any other application server that interfaces the data stored in those systems. All in the Domino over i5 is a killer mix. The data stored into the i5 can be easily integrated with any Domino application by using LC or even DECS which can be a very useful partner when dealing with web applications that need to store data in the i5.

One amazing thing is that you can use Domino agents (or servlets if you want) to retrieve the data from the system and throw the results as XML, HTML, plaint text or whatever. This is crucial when trying to create new applications or enhance application with stuff like AJAX, for example.

The AS/400, oops again, i5 customers are resigned to use those ugly green screens that even when using transformation tools remain in the same way of old fashioned application. So, if you pretend to increase the user experience in your web applications and you don't what to spend a lot of money, just expand your AJAX skills and integrate Domino in the middle. You'll be providing high performance applications that only take a snap to retrieve information from a system that is famous by slowing down the user experience. You'll be a rock start after that.

Tags: AJAX, Domino, AS/400, i5

Try it if you can

2006-03-20T13:23:00.000-04:00

Firefox 2.0 Alpha released

2006-03-20T12:35:00.000-04:00

Firefox 2.0 Alpha has been published. I'll play with it later. Will update any result.

Download Firefox 2.0 Alpha

Update: I've Installed it and it works fine (still don't crash) but one sad thing (as expected) is that all the plugins doesn't work :-(. But well, is a Alpha release I can't complain.

Tags: Firefox

Microsoft iPod

2006-03-17T19:00:00.000-04:00

Check what would happen if Microsoft redesign the iPod.

IBM goes for the Open Source ISVs market

2006-02-28T11:31:00.000-03:00

Zimbra and Scalix both have been exposing their powerful features a lot and catching some attention and promising the collaboration heaven for companies that want to save some money on mail and basic collaboration. Both have commercial products and offer a community edition version that is an Open Source version with some restrictions in the features and functionality.

With that philosophy in mind, sounds weird hearing that IBM is doing the same for some of their products: Websphere Application Server Community Edition and DB2 UDB Express-C.

You can download and use those products for free and optionally buy support from IBM. This is very useful for ISVs that need to deploy applications that need just a web container plus some other features and a SQL Database. Those ISVs that are actually creating applications using LAMP or WAMP are the main target, taking IBM a step further into the Open Source arena. How good will it go? Let's see.

.::AleX::.

Dominoblogs.com

2006-02-27T14:52:00.000-03:00

Hey, looks like the new Domino bloggers directory is taking shape. I've just signed up.

Interesting that I'm the only one blogging from south america.

.::AleX::.

Back to the desk

2006-02-24T11:18:00.000-03:00

Wow! 3 weeks in a row. I think that was in 2000 the last time that I took the whole vacations.

On the following years after that date, I used to take from 1 week to 2 weeks only, and spending some time, alone here in Santiago, while the whole family is enjoying the south of Chile for a couple of weeks.

This time we went to some green places in the globe near to Temuco, my hometown. We did, Temuco, Conguilio, Temuco, Lican Ray, Temuco, Pichilemu, Santiago. 3 awesome weeks with the kids and some relatives (we went to Conguillio with my sister in law and family).

Foor those that have Google Earth here are the *.kmz files.

The bad of the vacations is tha stupidly I have lost the digicam and can't find it :-(.

Anyways I preferred to start blogging this "labor" year with an entry that reminds me that vacations are waiting for me again at the end of the tunnel.

See you soon!

.::AleX::.

@Santiago

2006-01-25T19:20:00.000-03:00

Yes, no SWU 4th post. Had a problem with the hotel so I had to move to the Venetian (:-D) . The change was good but I didn't had time to post from there.

The last tracks I attended were awesome:

Designing SOA Solutions: was piloted by the SOA guru Dr. Ali Arsanjani, the session was incredible. It was a sort of interactive class were we were sitting in round tables instead of the tipical, "classroom" style, and with a lot of people that knows a lot of SOA. I definitvely learned a lot.

The last track I took was Ed Brill's lecture about how to beat Microsoft and it's crappy Exchange stuff.
Way cool presentation from Robert Bry, (another Lotus hero), simulating being a MS excutive trying to convince me why Exchange and all the MS Application Army, can help me to be more productive. Even introducing this revolutionary concept.. errr.. how was the name?.... oh yes! Awareness!.
After that Ed deconstruct all the MS arguments agains Notes and give us the key concepts to fight the Bill Gates's golden pot.

Thanks to you guys, today I had to sell Notes against Exchange and is very easy putting all the things clear on the table when you know exactly how your competition works. Know your enemy (if RATM says so...) then we could win.

And as not everything is about work. I dislike this a lot.

.::AleX::.

IBM Software University Day 3

2006-01-19T23:56:00.000-03:00

One of the latest IBM acquisitions was Pure edge, now known as Workplace Forms. Today I attended a Hands-on lab that teach us the basics on how to build some amazingly perfect forms to be used with any data repository, as DB2 Content Manager or Lotus Domino.

It has an incredible Designer Client that is used to "paint" the screen with the imported form (can be imported from images, PDF, Word, etc) and is "pixel-perfect" in terms on how it position any element of the form to be completely accurate with the original paper form.

One of the main uses that this will have is for regulatory compliance, were, formats of forms are mandatory in the way they look, but with the advantages of the electronic forms, providing security, background logic and integration with the existing systems.

In my opinion, a great gem in the IBM e-business strategy.

Check for tomorrow news.

IBM Software University Day 2

2006-01-19T00:03:00.000-03:00

oof! I'm really tired, distances are killing me but I've been having a really good time here at Las Vegas. Today I went to various sessions but the most interesting one was a Lab were I Installed almost all the IBM Middleware in a Linux environment.

The lab consisted on installing Websphere 6.0, DB2 UDB Enterprise Edition 8.2, Websphere MQSeries 6.0 and Websphere Message Broker 6.0 in a Linux operating system to simulate an integration scenario. The lab was incredibly useful and didactic, the speakers really know what they were talking about and was very impressive to see all that good middleware running smooth and without pains.

Check for more tomorrow.

.::AleX::.

IBM Software University Day 1

2006-01-16T21:16:00.000-03:00

After a night walk under a freezing wind Gastón (a friend of mine from Chile who is attending too) went out to dinner and took some pics of the main attractions here in Las Vegas.

Today is the official first day and the opening Meeting at the MGM Hotel was very cool, Mr Mills encourage to every one to have a winner attitude in this year and sent a direct message to Microsoft to be scared about they role in the SW market. After all, this event is to leverage everyone's knowledge of the IBM middleware software, to obtain more information about products, sales strategies by industry or by product. Tonigth I'm attending to the Developers meeting and reception and tomorrow starts the tracks that we'll be attending. I'm scheduled to be in the Ed Brill's lecture about how to beat Microsoft in the messaging and collaboration arena on friday.

I'll keep up updated

Arriving Las Vegas

2006-01-14T22:45:00.000-03:00

Hey, after a long tired flight Santiago-Dallas-Las Vegas I've arrived to my Mirage Hotel room and I've enjoyed the benefits of arriving one day early. Registration for the Software University was fast, I've checked all the locations and now I have maps, directions and signs for all the sessions.

Keep an eye on this blog if you can and I'll try to upload some pics as well.

See you soon!

.::AleX::.

Notes in your language

2006-01-13T14:49:00.001-03:00

Una nueva traducción de Alan Lepofsky: Navigating Your Notes Calendar - Part 3, con su versión en español Navegando en el calendario Notes - Parte II.

.::AleX::.

Back to the Blogs

2006-01-12T13:10:00.000-03:00

Tomorrow I'll flight to Las Vegas, Nevada, to take part of the IBM Software University. This event is a unique opportunity for us, the Business Partners and Distributors to get the first source of "what's coming" no the software business for this 2006.

Personally, I will take a big percentage of SOA related tracks, since my objective for this year is to certify my self on Websphere Business Modeler (besides my pending update certification from Notes/Domino 6.5 to release 7).

SOA is becoming the hot topic of the year on terms of business integration, and the IBM offer is one of the most comprehensive, complete and right targeted solution in the market today. It covers from the design, analysis and modeling of processes, development, web services integration, process server and monitoring.

I'll be blogging about the tracks I'm participating. If some of you guys still remember this busy chilean guy, stay tuned.

.::AleX::.

Spare time coming

2005-10-03T12:43:00.000-04:00

Finally I will enjoy of some spare time to develop some ideas and projects that I have in my mind.

First, I will do some more translations from Alan Lepofsky, that I've have abandoned due to this over-work, and in second place I will start to write a sort of AJAX library for Domino.

In fact I have some approaches on how to use Ajax with Domino development and I'm amazed on how fast you can build applications.

I will post more in the following days on were is the best approach, how to facilitate the Domino development by using an Ajax library, etc.

Of course I will post to get some feedback and ideas from the people that works with Domino.

.::AleX::.

I want one of this!

2005-09-07T11:55:00.000-04:00

Atom Chip Corporation has announced this laptop that promises to the solution for all of us that work with IBM software.

With these specs (6.8GHz Processor, 1TB Memory, 1TB Disk Space) for sure that I could run, Websphere Business Integrator Server Foundation, Websphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition, Websphere Business Integration Modeler, DB2 UDB Workgroup Edition, Workplace Collaborative Services, Workplace Designer, Lotus Domino (several flavors) and Lotus Notes (all Clients) all in the same machine with no memory restrictions, a lot of space to store a bunch of MP3 to hear music while working.

Oof!

definitively I want one of this.

.::AleX::.

A new kid on the block

2005-08-30T11:55:00.000-04:00

Via Ed Brill (again) Domino/Notes 7 has been released.

I think that this is one of the hottest releases since R4.6. We are preparing a sort of migration pack for all our customers.

Here we go...

.::AleX::.

Workplace Designer is here

2005-08-26T09:44:00.000-04:00

Via Ed Brill.

IBM Workplace Designer 2.5 has been released. Some weeks ago I took a look at the tool and it seems that it will speed the way the Domino developers makes the transition from the smooth, soft, nice, limited but known Domino Designer to the hard, rigid, confusing J2EE world.

As I mentioned before, one of the issues is the "weight" of the tool. I still have Domino, and Designer installed in an old Pentium III with 128MB Ram at home and it works as good as in my Thinkpad R40 Pentium M with 1.2 GB of Ram. Do you need to change your machine? No problem! Just backup your data directory, take care of your notes.ini and voila!. Things become hard to maintain with Workplace.

At least, one of the things that I found in the news is that there's plans to include AJAX support in the next releases of Workplace Designer.

Anyways and after all the cry out for the complexity added to the concept of developing applications in the easy Domino style, but integrated into Workplace, I think that the evolution is good, and we should be prepared to live the future. Right here.

.::AleX::.

What?

2005-08-23T15:55:00.000-04:00

I always try to be very moderated when reacting to the news that fly over the internet.

Working in an IBM software world I've learnt a lot about the great features that each product has and presenting charts with incredible numbers on sales and growth forecasts.

Articles like this one makes me think. How can the same research company can have such differents results? I know that may be I'm being innocent and I'm not considering that sometimes those companies are hired to conduct a research on the company performance or directly comparing with the competition.

Anyways, the article is interesting if I would selling Microsoft, but as I am not, I'm worry. I hope Ed could give us some light.

.::AleX::.

Bye Bye Bob

2005-08-22T18:46:00.000-04:00

Robert Moog, the father of one of the most famous synthesizer died on sunday at age of 71.

Bob Moog machines were used in a great variety of music styles, being used by bands like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, and lot of famous bands.

The first machine he created and considered the first synthesizer were really big but they were getting more little versions including the mini-Moog, that was very popular since it was very portable.

Take this as a memorial Bob. Thanks for the sound.

.::AleX::.

Learning Spanish

2005-08-19T12:53:00.000-04:00

There's always something to learn or to try, many times you need to say some phrase in Spanish, but you don't know how to say it, don't worry, your problems are finished, if your are a gringo and you don't know how to speak Spanish, the Smart Gringo will be helpful in your learning.
For instance, we took some common phrases, just try them and you're gonna see the difference and how easy is to speak Spanish.

Instructions: Every sentence has three parts. The first one is the phonetical, the second is the spanish written phrase, and the third is the english translation. Enjoy.

Boy as n r = Voy a cenar = I'm gonna have dinner
N L C John = en el sillon = on the rockingchair
Be a hope and son = viejo panzon = fat old man
Who and see to seek ago = Juancito se cago=Little John shit on himself
S toy tree stone = estoy triston = I'm kind of sad
Lost trap eat toss = los trapitos = the little rags
Desk can saw = descanso = (you) rest
As say toon as = aceitunas = olives
The head the star mall less stan dough = deje de estar molestando = stop bugging me
See eye = si hay = yes there is
T n s free o ? = tienes frio? = are you cold?
T N S L P P B N T S O = Tienes el pipi bien tieso=your willie has gotten really hard
Tell o boy ah claw bar = Te lo voy a clavar = I'm going to nail you

.::AleX::.

Domiclipse

2005-08-17T09:47:00.000-04:00

Probably at this time you have just visited Volker's and Ben's weblogs to notice that there's an amazing piece of work that will ease the java development in Domino. Domiclipse becomes a nice approach on how to do java development within Lotus Domino.

For some of us that mix LotusScript development and Java development, always thought that LotusScript had some advantages since the editor is more friendly than the java editor. Now we have the option to spend our java development time using Eclipse for all that stuff that until now involved the cranky java IDE of Domino Designer.

Good for all of us and kudos to the people behind the project.

One of my favorites quotes from the site when they talk about the functionalities:

"Much, much more...Seriously... We're programmers, not a marketing executives!"

.::AleX::.

Running Mac over Intel. The future is around the corner

2005-08-12T15:06:00.000-04:00

I was talking with one of our Business Partners the other day and encouraging them to use VMWare Workstation in order to virtualize their Intel boxes. I bought a copy of it and is amazing how you can have more than one machine running into your single hardware.
With this approach is that you can have i.e. Domino7 running in a Linux server, and have a W2K server with DB2 while you run WinXP in the host Operating System doing all the integration by using Domino Designer.

With the annoucement that Mac dropped Power5 and chooses Intel as the processor for the next releases, the idea of running MaxOSX in a Intel machine is every day more and more strong and it will open the access to a big amount of great software that we the Intelers wanted to use since ages. Then thinking that VMWare will support Mac OSX is not an excentric wish. In the mean time there's some guys that are doing some "efforts" to make it real.

By now I'm waiting for the annoucement from the guys at VMWare. That will give us the chance to have the best of two worlds.

.::AleX::.

From Hell to Heaven

2005-07-27T14:54:00.000-04:00

Looks like finally IBM is taking the direction that a lot of us, web developers, wanted to see.

I've ranted before about the null support for other browser than IE in almost every IBM Product.

I haven't read it completely yet (a lot of work) but for sure I will take a brake with a 'cafe con leche' to give it a read.

.::AleX::.

Firefox 1.0.6 bug not fixed

2005-07-20T19:06:00.000-04:00

When I installed Firefox 1.0.3 some time ago, I had the following bug. ( when right clicking it shows a blank space that is very annoying if you rigth click close to the top of the screen. Grrrrr )

I rolled back to 1.0 :-(.

Now that I read in vowe's site that 1.0.6 was released, I ran to download it and check if I could use it.

Nope. Is not fixed. I think that this time I let them know. :-S.

.::AleX::.

New Notestip in spanish

2005-07-13T09:21:00.000-04:00

I've translated another Alan Lepofsky's Notestip to spanish.

Check it out here:

.::AleX::.

Ready for Domino/Notes R7 Beta 4

2005-07-12T09:58:00.000-04:00

Via Ed Brill

I'm just downloading this new beta and I think that I will play a bit more with it than with previous versions.

Looks great that now are included some of the extended products in the download page, like Lotus Quickplace 7, Lotus Domino Document Manager 7, Lotus Sametime 7 and Lotus Enterprise Integrator 7.

Give it a try, this is a ship arriving to port.

.::AleX::.

Workplace Collaboration Services on iSeries

2005-07-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

Today Luis Guirugay (a mate in a Tallard office in Venezuela) ping me on MSN to let me know of the release of Deploying IBM Workplace Collaboration Services on the IBM iSeries Server Redbook.

This work includes the participation of Mac Guidera who is one of the guys on the Lotus/Domino weblog gang.

Run for your copy now and start enjoying the best of both worlds.

.::AleX::.

New Notestip in spanish

2005-07-11T15:05:00.000-04:00

I've released another Alan Lepofski's Notestip in spanish,

You can check it out here

.::AleX::.

Reminder

2005-07-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

Every now and then I use to do a real clean up of my machine. That means, a good backup of installers and a well defined folders structure (My Documents should shine).

Well, this is my list of applications that I MUST install after new "refresh". Very useful, now that I'm in the middle of a cleaning plan.

This is my list:

Webart
Notes
Domino
xaamp
AOL
MSN
Firefox
Firefox Plugins
JVM 1.5
Topstyle
VMWare
Winamp
Skype
RealPlayer
Quicktime
1st Page 2000
Acrobat Reader
Puakma
WSADIE
DB2 UDB
NotesReloaded
nvu
ws_FTP LE
MS Office
Inkscape
Apache
Tomcat
mySQL
PHP
NetBeans
VNC
Dia
Gimp
Google Earth
Notepad
.............

Good enough for me.

.::AleX::.

Alan Lepofsky speaks spanish

2005-07-05T18:39:00.000-04:00

I've created another blog that will host some of the Alan Lepofsky Notes Tips so if you are a spanish speaker, now you can access some of the high quality Notes tips that Alan publish into his blog.

I am one of the fans of Alan since ages ago when we all started to discuss and learn more about Lotus Notes, so is a great honor to me to translate some of their tips.

Initially, some of their posts were translated to german thanks to Ray Guilliard from DaimlerChrysler. Well, now I'm the next in this crusade named Notes Hints and Tips Goes International .

I hope that you like it.

.::AleX::.

If you can't beat them, let them pay

2005-07-01T16:56:00.000-04:00

Via Bloomberg

Microsoft agreed to pay $775 million directly into IBM wallet to resolve claims stemming from the U.S. government antitrust lawsuit in the late 1990s.

M$oft has been a rude competitor in SW industry, having that market share is hard for everybody to get a piece of the cake. At least they will share a little bit of it fortune.

Read more...

.::AleX::.

Next Release : hangover

2005-06-17T16:43:00.000-04:00

Everybody is talking/blogging about Hannover and is creating a lot of expectation. In my personal opinion it looks great, and I'm anxious to try it.

What worry me, is the fact that Notes is growing and converging to Workplace and adding more and more features that in the near future will look more like J2EE like Domino/Notes. Just taking a look to Workplace Designer you can see that it will not be for kids.

Looking at it I just can imagine how big my machine should be to install Workplace Designer with the Workplace Collaboration Services that will come included in the package :-( that's not nice, since I can have all the memory that I want at the office. But, what if I want to play with it at home? For sure I will finish with a big hang-over.

.::AleX::.

a new hope...

2005-06-17T11:02:00.000-04:00

I'm just starting again.

All the past stuff is behind. No memories of the past. I'm just taking a new chance.

.::AleX::.