Just thought you’d like to see this, some proof that we do use our own technology. Ed Brill is coming over to the UK for the UK Lotus User Group event next week and it only took a few e-mails about potential customers and his schedule before I said “whoa, hang on, let’s use an activity to do this”. So we did.

Okay, I will admit that I’ve Paint Shop Pro-ed this a bit, but only to remove some customer names for the sake of privacy and cut out some boring detail. Basically we have a master document (Ed’s schedule), some to-dos, a comment from Ed, and a few e-mails with some logistical details shared with the team. Everyone who is involved with this schedule (including some Lotus account managers and members of the Technical Sales team) can get instant up-to-date access to all of the info they need for Ed’s visit.

Obviously we do use Lotus Activities for more meaty stuff than this, but this is a good example of how we can quickly and easily pull together a place to manage the information and tasks.

Note: at the bottom of the image you see the word ‘Online’ – this is new functionality with Lotus Notes 8.5 allowing you sync your activities and access them offline.

It seems that a couple of times a year the world holds it’s breath while Steve Jobs takes to the stage, probably wearing a black jumper / sweater / pullover / cardy (choose garment based on your nationality and age). Thanks to some numbskull, photos of the 4th generation iPod nano had already hit the Interweb, and someone was speculating that it was going to have GPS built in (wrong).

Today’s set of announcements, by Apple’s standards, were not incredible. Even the BBC News pages didn’t go overboard, but of course they gave Apple more coverage than they gave the Archos 5 a couple of weeks ago even though Archos’ announcement was a bit more revolutionary.

Firstly, the 4th generation nano… hey, what do I know? I’m sure Apple have done market research on what people want and the devices they have to fit into the market to suit peoples’ requirements. The nano’s raison d’être is that it’s small. So what have Apple done? Made it bigger. To be fair, the capacity has jumped up to 16gb and the screen is a bit bigger, which is nice. They’re also claiming it’s the slimmest iPod so far, but looking at the pictures it looks less flat than the 3rd generation iPod nano (I shall have a look at Lauren’s tomorrow). They come in loads of colours which is nice for people who want to choose a nano based on a colour preference, but bad for indecisive girls who will buy a pink one and then spend the next year wishing they’d gone for purple. Or orange.

Apple have added some interesting features to the nano… shake it and it will shuffle your music selection. I presume you can lock it otherwise that ‘feature’ will be a complete pain in the arse if you’re jogging. And like the iPod touch, if you tilt the new nano the screen will go into landscape mode (that’s quite cool for a small device).

The iPod classic is now available as 120gb, which isn’t terribly exciting news. The iPod touch has a slightly different case, external volume buttons and a built-in speaker. The iPhone 2.1 software update has less bugs and doesn’t crash as often (Mr Jobs is refreshingly honest at times).

All of the new devices, and iTunes 8, (which thankfully now features an install option to prevent it creating iTunes and QuickTime shortcuts everywhere) support a new feature called Genius. Setting up Genius involves the rather frightening announcement that iTunes is going to look at your music library and send the results to Apple. Mind you, I have nothing to hide, all my music is legitimate… and it’s not like I have anything by Westlife or Scouting For Girls to be embarrassed by. After a while, Genius tells me that it’s been turned on (ooo-err) and I can now create Genius playlists and use the Genius sidebar. Errr, okay, and this does what exactly?

“To make a Genius playlist, select any song from your library and press the Genius button at the bottom of the window. Genius playlists and recommendations will get even better over time, as more iTunes library information is gathered from you and other Genius users.”

Oh right, so just a couple of hours after launch I shouldn’t expect too much right now. So here goes, this is live… I clicked on ‘Talk Shows on Mute’ by Incubus. It told me I was missing ‘Earth to Bella, Pt. 1′ – which actually I have, but spelt ‘Part 1′. And if we’re going to be really anal (and I am), it’s not correct to use a period (.) after ‘Pt’ because the last letter of the abbreviated word is there. Genius also suggests that I should buy something by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but it’ll learn in time (because it’s a Genius) that I don’t like them.

Let’s try another… ‘Perfect’ by Smashing Pumpkins from the ‘Adore’ album. It suggests five songs that I’m missing, three of which I have (genius). And it also suggests I’d like the Stone Temple Pilots, Interpol, Pearl Jam, Pixies and Alice in Chains… which I guess is a fairly accurate stab at matching the genre. Oooh, and ‘In the Meantime’ by Spacehog – that IS a great song that I don’t have. Genius indeed.

Now, call me cynical, this doesn’t seem to be creating a playlist, it seems to be creating a list of music that Apple can sell you. I know an organisation who could learn from Apple’s marketing, but I’m not saying who.

Addendum: actually there is a little button down the bottom which does create a playlist of stuff I already have. Sorry Apple. Mind you, why it would put ‘Go With The Flow’ by Queens Of The Stone Age with ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys is anyone’s guess.

IBM have launched a new set of web pages under the title of Web 2.0 Goes to Work for Business. It features information about existing solutions such as IBM Lotus Connections, Quickr and Sametime, new solutions such as IBM Mashup Centre, and solutions from the other IBM Software brands which allow you to build Web 2.0 applications.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that IBM Lotus kicked Microsoft’s butt at the Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston (June 2008). I know it’s already been covered on edbrill.com (amongst others) but it’s worth enjoying those quotes again…

“IBM’s Lotus Connections looked, at minimum, a year or more ahead of SharePoint in its social computing capabilities out of the box. It was a lot prettier looking, too.”
C. G. Lynch, CIO Magazine

“IBM came off looking better for various reasons. They fielded a more focused demo team – never to be underestimated – but also because Connections has some slick Ajax interfaces, and SharePoint does not … SharePoint in contrast, came off as quite boring, and in the ‘back-channel’ chat room a lonely, dogged Redmond representative got tortured by attendees.”
Tony Byrne, CMS Watch

Great, just what the world needs, another free browser. That was my first thought. I have Firefox and love it (along with a few essential extensions). I have Internet Explorer, mostly because it’s installed with Windows but also because occasionally I encounter sites that have been developed explicitly for Internet Explorer. I have Safari, only because I installed it to have a look and then didn’t de-install it. I had Flock for about ten minutes (that was all that was required for me to decide I didn’t need it).

Why would I want yet another browser?

And yet, there was absolutely no way that I wasn’t going to install Chrome and give it a whirl. I’m actually writing this blog post using Chrome right now. It has some great things, it has some major deficiencies (for example, it’s not spell-checkking this as I type). Some of the important things are under the hood – the separate threading which will stop one rogue page killing all of your browser session (nice). And the strengthened sandbox approach to ensuring your personal data isn’t captured.

I guess the important thing is that Google have recognised that browsers, despite having more and more features stuffed into them, haven’t really changed much in ten years – but the Interweb is a very different place. Chrome, if you believe the blurb, sets out to address the changes in the way we work. I think I’d have to give it a more thorough test drive, and I aim to do that for a week or so, to see whether their claim holds up. In the meantime, what’s good about Chrome…?

• The architecture – security, multi-threading, security, all that stuff you don’t see.
• When you create a new tab, it shows you your most-visited sites, recently-created bookmarks, a history search bar and recently-closed tabs – the idea being that you may want to return to some of those things (I’d like Firefox to do that).
• The tab mechanism that lets you pull off a number of tabs and group them in a separate window.
• The address bar goes one better than Firefox – as well as suggesting URLs from your history or bookmarks it also suggest sites you might want to visit based on the word you type. A completely random example, type ‘wyoming’ and it’ll suggest the State of Wyoming Government page.
• Screen real-estate – lots of it. Who needs menus anyway?

But there is some bad news…

• RSS feed support – I couldn’t find any. As someone who uses Firefox’s live bookmarks this is a big omission (granted this is a beta, so it may come).
• Memory usage – the apparent downside of it’s protected sessions is that it uses more memory. At the moment I have five Firefox tabs open and I have the same pages loaded into Chrome… it’s using over half as much memory again as Firefox.
• The toolbar – it’s a bit too minimal, the option to add other buttons would be nice.

In summary, there’s nothing here to make me switch from Firefox but I do find myself liking Chrome. A bit of competition in the browser market (I say market, who ever paid for a browser?) is no bad thing and can only foster further innovation. Time will tell if Chrome addresses the missing features in later betas and the finished first version.

All of this talk about tall buildings (see earlier ‘Chicago’ post) reminded me of a piece I wrote on the old dadams.co.uk site in response to Lauren’s question “what’s the tallest building in the world?”. Being quite an interesting topic (well, depending on your tastes) I thought I’d resurrect it and update it.

At the time of writing the original text, the answer was not as simple as you’d think, but we’ll come back to that. In just over a year from now the answer will be very simple… the Burj Dubai (far left in the image below) will reach 818 m (2,684 ft) at it’s highest point (i.e. the top of it’s antenna), the roof will reach 688 m (2,257 ft) and the top floor will sit at 636 m (2,087 ft). On all counts the Burj Dubai will be the tallest building, tower or structure. I say “will be”, actually it already is, but it won’t really count until it’s finished. Which brings us on to the current record holder, and this is where things get a bit more complicated…

Ignoring the Burj Dubai, the honour had gone to the Petronas Towers (in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – second from right) until Taipei 101 in Taiwan (third from left) was finished. The Petronas Towers peaked at 452 m at their highest points, but Taipei 101′s spire hits 508 m (some sources state 509 m). However, the tallest man-made structure (that’s structure, not building) on Earth was the KTHI TV-tower in Fargo, North Dakota. At 629 m there was no argument. But it’s not classed as a building as it has no accommodation for people and it’s primary use is for telecommunications – any building which takes the ‘highest building’ title must be built for residential, business, or manufacturing purposes.

So (ignoring the Burj Dubai) is that the end of the argument? Taipei 101 is the tallest building, KTHI TV-tower is the tallest structure. Well, not according to the good people of Toronto – if you go to the web site of the CN Tower (second from left) they proudly proclaim it to be “the world’s tallest building”. And standing at 553.33 m high I’d say they have a point (although not for much longer). So why doesn’t the CN Tower hold the official record? It’s all to do with the definition of the word ‘building’ – the CN Tower is, for the most part, an enormous concrete erection (snigger) with no individual floors and housing nothing but elevators. Mind you, the elevators do go up to an observation deck which can accommodate people.

Now, if the people of Toronto are a bit miffed by this, consider the inhabitants of Chicago. The highest point of the Sears Tower (far right) is 527 m. Hold on… that’s higher than Taipei 101, the Petronas Towers and the Shanghai World Financial Center (third from right – this nipped into second place in 2008). Indeed, but the Sears Tower is currently the official fourth highest building on Earth. Confused? Let me explain – it now comes down to the rules and regulations of the World Council on Tall Buildings. The Council put in place four criteria – absolute top, structural height, the highest occupied floor and the height at the roof – criteria #2, structural height, is the clincher. The Sears Tower is the highest only because of it’s antennae – it’s main structure rises to only (only?) 442 m. But if you look at the image here, it appears that the main structure of the Sears Tower (on the right) is higher than the main structure of the Petronas Towers. Prior to Taipei 101 being completed, the Council gave the award to the Petronas Towers because the masts are an integral part of the structure, rather than just being bolted on. Bit of a swizz if you ask me. Taipei 101′s mast is also considered ‘integral’ and it’s 449 m at it’s roof.

So there you go… the world’s tallest building, according to the rules and regulations, is currently Taipei 101. But this record won’t last much longer as the Burj Dubai will be completed in 2009. By the end of 2013, going by official height, it’s likely that Taipei 101 will be shoved down to seventh place (possibly lower) behind the Burj Dubai, the Chicago Spire (609.6 m at the roof), Abraj Al Bait Towers in Mecca (595 m at the top of it’s spire), China 117 in Tianjin, the Dohar Convention Centre Tower in Qatar, and New York’s Freedom Tower (with a roof at just 417 m but a spire height of 541.3 m). Arguments will of course continue – if you go by pinnacle height the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower in China with it’s spire reaching 610 m would sneak into second place.

However, all of these buildings could be dwarfed by the proposed Al Burj in Dubai. Plans are not yet finalised and reports of the height vary – the roof could top 820 m and the spire could reach over 1 km. There have been reports that the spire will reach 1.4 km. Any volunteers to polish the top? Whatever, Steve McQueen’s fire chief character from ‘The Towering Inferno’ wouldn’t approve.

What do you buy for the woman who has everything? A box to put it all in? This was the dilemma for the current Mrs Adams as she approached her thirty-tenth birthday, and after hours of deliberation she decided that she’d like to go on a trip rather than receive material goods. Of course it did occur to me that a trip to some locations in the world might result in the heavy-duty purchase of material goods, but my attempts to persuade her that the Falkland Islands or Borneo were top-notch short-break locations failed miserably. Chicago (home of the Smashing Pumpkins, the Blues Brothers, Al Capone, and that musical, can’t remember it’s name) topped the wife’s wish-list, and so it came to pass.

I have yet to survey the wreckage of the family fortune, and I fear that I might have to do it under the influence of alcohol. The cases that were fairly light on the way out were ominously heavy for the return journey. Anyway, that aside – hey, it’s only money – Chicago is a great place to visit for a short break. The weather was fantastic (maybe a little too warm for my liking, but better than the miserable crap here) and the sightseeing was interesting and varied:

• The Sears Tower – the tallest building in the USA, and with the longest queue to match, Lauren and I went up while the wife shopped. At one point during the queuing process there was a sit-down seven minute movie about the Tower’s origin (which was very interesting).
• The Adler Planetarium – also visited while the wife shopped, Lauren and I watched ‘Cosmic Collisions’ in a 180° theatre, followed by a 3D movie, and then visited the exhibits.
• The John Hancock Center – the fifth tallest building in the USA, but with the fastest lift reaching an ear-popping 20 mph. As with the Sears Tower, the views were incredible.
• The John G Shedd Aquarium – dolphins, beluga whales, sea otters, loads of different types of fish, and (we just caught it before it departed after Labour Day) a komodo dragon which didn’t move but was impressively huge.
• Navy Pier – shops, a fair, live music, food, and fifty thousand people.

Some other observations – taxis were relatively inexpensive (compared to a London black cab they were almost free), the bus service was punctual and cheap, people were very friendly, and there was loads of places to eat and lots of choice.