JoyDrop: Give • Get • Share

This evening Apple approved the JoyDrop app that I developed for the Children’s Cancer Association.

“JoyDrop offers a place to share spontaneous moments of joy.Your “drops” of joy, collected with others, can create a sea of joy. At the Children’s Cancer Association we like to call it the Joy Effect.We invite you to share your found joy, moment by moment, drop by drop by using the JoyDrop app.Please share often.”

JoyDrop for iOS

The app allows you to share your words of joy and post them to Facebook if you want. Not only can JoyDrops be seen in the app, they can also be added and viewed on the Children’s Cancer Association Facebook “JoyDrop” Fan Page app:
JoyDrop Facebook App

For you geeks out there the iOS app was built with Appcelerator and stores data in an IBM Domino database. There are no more than 400 lines of code for the Appcelerator portion of the app. The app utilizes an XPages “XAgent” to post data and a Domino Access Services view to send JSON data back to the app to display JoyDrops. It literally took only minutes to develop the app interfaces in XPages. The Facebook app was built with XPages and the Facebook Graph API. It’s pretty cool how easy it is to utilize the Graph API within XPages.

The next version of the app will incorporate photo sharing from the iPhone and some other goodies. After that I will work on getting an Android version of the app developed.

A big thanks to my friends Matt White, Jeremy Hodge, Serdar Basegmez, Julian Robichaux, Niklas Heidloff, Mark Hughes, Per Henrik Lausten and Thomas Gumz for their support.
Stay tuned for a NotesIn9 video on how this app was put together.

Podcast: The Evolution of XPages

Russ Maher of QDiligence (@russelmaher) and Paul Calhoun (@ptcalhoun) of NetNotes Solutions talk to us about the evolution of IBM’s XPages rapid application development platform. Russ and Paul are also the instructors of The View’s popular XPages Bootcamp which is taking place in Las Vegas and Chicago this Fall. We would like to thank The View and their XPages Bootcamp for sponsoring this show.

We talk about:

  • History of the XPages Bootcamp and how they kept the course material in-line with the XPages point releases
  • Upcoming changes in Domino 8.5.4 (Niklas Heidloff’s blog post)
  • The new Java jar design element in 8.5.4
  • Server-side JavaScript Debugger in 8.5.4
  • What OSGi plugins are
  • OSGi and the Extension Library and how it has evolved
  • How XPages in Domino 8.5.4 has evolved since 8.5.0
  • How OneUI has grown over the years
  • Dojo and how it has evolved within the context of XPages
  • XPages in the Notes Client (XPINC) and how it has evolved
  • and much more..

The show runs 44:50.

Listen now >

Podcast: IBM Connections, Social Recognition, and TemboSocial

Steven Green, CEO of TemboSocial (@TemboSocial), tells us all about The Hive. It’s peer-to-peer social recognition software that integrates with IBM Connections to help share knowledge, stories, and corporate culture among employees. Topics we covered included:

  • The importance of awards, achievements, and peer recognition
  • How all this ties into corporate culture and values
  • 400,000+ stories on The Hive site for TD Bank since 2009
  • How does this integrate with IBM Connections?
  • Is it difficult to get management and/or employees to use something like this?
  • The way that stories become company assets
  • Analytics and reporting
  • The use of promotional banners to bring employees back the site

As we mentioned in the podcast, there is a video demo on YouTube and plenty more information on the TemboSocial website. For more information, Chris Miller also has a video interview with Steven Green you can check out.

This show runs 39:32.

Listen now >

Podcast: What’s New in IBM Mobile Apps, with Chris Reckling and Rob Ingram

We spoke with Chris Reckling (Program Manager, Mobile UX at IBM) and Rob Ingram (Manager of Mobile Strategy, Social Business at IBM) to get the inside scoop on what’s new with IBM mobile apps.

Topics we cover included:

Even if you don’t have Connections or Sametime in-house, you can try those apps out against Lotus Greenhouse, and you can also download a version of IBM Worklight that’s free to try (look for a link to the Developer Edition on the Worklight home page). Also, don’t miss the upcoming IBM Connections mobile tech talk on August 15.

This show runs 41:01.

Listen now >

Podcast: Getting started with IBM Connections application development

In this episode of The Taking Notes Podcast (@takingnotespod) we talked about developing applications for IBM’s Connections social software platform. We were joined by three very special guests:

Topics covered during the show included:

  • Overview of the options available to developers (APIs, Widgets, Java)
  • How widgets and apps are deployed within Connections
  • Integrating apps with the Connections Profile
  • Surfacing apps and widgets within Communities
  • How IBM Connections Next will utilize OpenSocial and ActivityStrea.ms
  • How Kudos Badges was built and how it integrates and is managed within Connections
  • Why developers should use XPages to extend Connections
  • How you can work with iWidgets and XPages
  • How to access the Connections REST API’s from XPages
  • Where you can find and download sample XPages apps
  • What other extensibility features might be important for XPages developers
  • and much more…

Resources:
http://ibm.co/StartSocial – Landing for all things ICS development related including Notes/Domino “Next” and Connections “Next”
http://xpag.es/?ForConnections
http://openntf.org/p/xpages%20for%20connections

Listen now >

Podcast: IBM’s Ed Brill and Trust Factory’s Wouter Aukema

On this episode of the podcast we were joined by IBM’s Ed Brill (@edbrill) and Trust Factory’s Wouter Aukema (@waukema) and talked about:

  • The new partnership between IBM and Trust Factory first announced on Ed’s blog
  • Trust Factory’s DNA services offerings
  • What the partnership means for IBM customers
  • A special offer made by Ed
  • Ed’s new book project
  • What the book will and not be about and when it will be available
  • Who else will be contributing to the book
  • Notes Social Edition and what exactly it is
  • Some of the new enhancements made in the Notes Social Edition
  • When it will be available for customers
  • How it can be deployed
  • Integration with IBM Connections “Next”
  • and much more

Listen now >

So what’s there to complain about here?

On the Harvard Business Review Blog:

and when you click through:

If you then click through the various tabs you will learn that IBM isn’t only trying to market a single product and/or service (say IBM Connections) but offers some substantive services (and products) that in my humble opinion show the business and technical breadth needed to truly tackle some of todays business problems.

Don’t just read this blog post. Leave a comment.

Podcast: Learning XPages with Mark Myers and Matt White

Based on his recent blog entry about learning XPages, we brought Mark Myers on the show to discuss his approach to wrapping your head around XPages, especially coming at it as a person with a strong Java background. Matt White was also on the podcast to offer the perspective of someone who has been helping people learn XPages for several years now. We discussed things like:

  • NOT thinking of XPages as “another Notes design element”
  • Coming to XPages from the Java developer perspective
  • The amount of learning resources and help available now versus a few years ago
  • Using Java and server-side JavaScript (SSJS)
  • Some of the struggles that newbies might face
  • And more…

Mark and Matt are both members of the London Developer Co-op, and they have graciously renewed the TakingNotes discount code for XPages101 online training courses. If you go to the XPages101.net website and sign up using the discount code “taking notes”, you will receive a 33% discount off the list price of your subscription.

Listen now >

Podcast: ICS Tech Tweetup with Paul Mooney and Gab Davis

A quick 14:15 podcast to discuss the specifics of the IBM Collaboration Services Technical Tweetup being put together by Paul Mooney and Gab Davis on Wednesday July 18th at 6pm BST (1pm EST). The hashtag will be #icstt, and Paul and Gab will put up a page with more information next week (I will add the link when it’s live).

Also discussed: Paul has announced dates for two USA instances of his Ethical Hacking course, Paul and Gab continue to add great content over at connections101.net, and don’t forget to register for UKLUG!

Listen now >

IBM Notes/Domino mobile solutions podcast roundup

Over the last couple of months Taking Notes (@takingnotespod) has interviewed three companies who provide software, tools and services that can help you mobilize your Notes and Domino applications:

We also recently had some other mobile related shows that you may find interesting: