IBM Notes Sidebar App for Kudos Badges

Following from our earlier annoucement about the Kudos Badges Mobile App for IBM Connections, we are also pleased to announce our latest IBM Notes Sidebar App/Widget for Kudos Badges. The integration of IBM Connections and IBM Notes 9 Social Edition really meant it was a no brainer to provide the same level of integration with Kudos Badges. Now users can access their Kudos Leaderboard from within their Notes client, view their Badges and Thanks peer to peer rewards, as well as post Thanks to their colleagues all within the context of the Notes client.

But wait....there is more to come....Now that we are into IBM Notes Social Edition, with the awesome new integration points we will have another (I think the most important) annoucement coming up soon! So watch this space!

TripIT and Lotus Notes 8.5 Federated Calandars

I have been using the Notes 8.5 beta for a month or so now and one of the best features is the federated calendars.

Essentially this feature allows you to overlay additional calendars with your own. For example you might want to add some of your colleagues calendars or you might have an events calendar for your organisation. Well with Notes 8.5 you can simply select which calendars you want to overlay with your calendar. On the left hand panel of your calendar go to Show Calendars and you can choose to Add a Calendar...

You choose a calendar to add and you have the option of using a user's calendar, Notes Teamroom Calendar, and even a Notes application Calendar. The ability to bring together disparate calendars is awesome. We have been able to look at shared calendars in the past and use Group Calendars to kind of compare different calendars but this is just seamless calendar overlays.

An example of how I am using this new feature is leveraging TripIT. TripIT is a new Web 2.0 type service that enables me to forward all my airline and accommodation bookings to it. When I email a booking to it the clever team at TripIT somehow automagically reads the itinerary and adds it to my TripIT Calendar. Now I can access my TripIT calendar directly via a web browser or via my Blackberry Bold's browser but I can also subscribe to an iCal feed.



 So all I do is Add a Calendar, select an iCalendar Feed as the source, enter the URL to my TripIT feed, select a colour, and their you go. Your flights etc are automatically added to your calendar!!



So all I do now is email all my flights to TripIT, there secret sauce reads the document, and they add it to my calendar!! Now there is a reason to upgrade to Notes 8.5 when it arrives! 

IceTV Guide Via Notes Sidebar

I just purchased a BeyonWiz DP-S1 PVR. It is a Dual HD receiver with 250 GB drive, wireless access, etc etc. For those in overseas etc reading this it probably isn't a big deal but PVR's are relatively new devices in Australia. In particular ones with downloaded TV program guides. The great thing about the BeyonWiz is that it supports IceTV's Interactive service which allows you to program the recorder via a web site. The Beyonwiz then periodically connects to the IceTV service and downloads the current schedule of things to record. So for someone that travels as much as I do and constantly rings home to ask for something to be recorded that is just great.

But it gets even better. IceTV have a service for mobile devices at http://remoterecord.com.au that allows me to log on from a Blackberry browser for instance. But even cooler is that using my Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Sidebar I have created a Widget that automatically logs onto the site and shows me the TV Guide. I can simply select what I want recorded from my sidebar and the Beyonwiz is updated!

Now that is a great use of the Notes 8 Sidebar Widgets if you ask me!