Fact #1 – I never read manuals or instructions. So I merrily downloaded the Ubuntu 9.10 installation ISO, created a CD and then set about upgrading my 9.04 installation. And then I got to the options… install as a separate partition or erase the current installation and install the new version? Neither thanks, I want to upgrade. It was then I checked the Ubuntu site and realised that the upgrade option was a separate download.

But actually there was an easier option… just go to the Update Manager in the Ubuntu System Administration, check for updates and then let it do it’s thing. And that’s what I did. It took a couple of hours, but only because I was doing other things (it was a day off work) and there were some OK buttons that were required to be pressed. The process said the final part would take about four hours but actually completed in about fifteen minutes… not a terribly good estimation, but better than estimating fifteen minutes and taking four hours I guess.

Overall impressions… excellent, a big improvement on version 9.04. It doesn’t really look any different, but the performance is much better, especially things like the screen redraw which were awful with 9.04 because of the display drivers for the ThinkPad W500. Now the display performance is great (better than Windows XP on the same laptop) and I can use the advanced wobbling screen effects. Suspend and resume (always previously unreliable) seem to work fine. Overall 9.10 feels much more polished.

So what about the Canonical claim that configuring via the command prompt is a thing of the past? I think if you properly understand the Synaptic Package Manager then you are very likely to avoid the dreaded Terminal. Although I did resort to the command prompt to upgrade Notes to version 8.5.1 I could actually have avoided it. My Linux knowledge let me down, but doesn’t that tell us that it’s still not as user-friendly as it could be? I never had any such issues with the Apple Mac which I felt at home with instantaneously.

The other negative is that the ThinkPad’s trackpad is permanently on (aarrrggh, I hate the thing) and there’s no way in Ubuntu to turn it off. I tried creating a configuration file (following advice from a tip on the Interweb), but that didn’t work. So I’ll have to turn the trackpad off at the BIOS level.

On the positive side Ubuntu 9.10 is packed with great utilities, the WiFi is a doddle to configure, and time from cold boot to ready is extremely quick. Both navigation and the customisation to get your own comfortable look and feel are very easy. It seems like a very viable client platform growing in maturity, and I hope it gets some serious consideration from companies who are looking at the costs of upgrading to Windows 7.

Back in January I blogged about the rise of Firefox coupled with the fall of Internet Explorer. At the time Firefox had risen to a very precise 21.34% while Internet Explorer continued to lead the ‘market’ with 68.15% (but was on the way down).

Ten months later the two haven’t waved at each other as they passed in opposite vertical directions, but the gap has closed a bit. According to The Register, Firefox now claims 23.75% while Internet Explorer has lost more ground and sits at 65.71%. Those of you who boast impressive mental arithmetic will see that Internet Explorer’s fall is only 0.03% larger than Firefox’s gain. Where that missing 0.03% went is anyone’s guess, but I’d put my money on Apple’s Safari. Or maybe Google’s Chrome.

To add to Mozilla’s chest-beating, their CEO John Lilly claimed that Firefox gained over 30 million unique users in a recent eight weeks period. Since then (if you haven’t heard), Windows 7 has been released – so it’ll be interesting to see whether the glacial-like erosion of Internet Explorer’s share continues to take place.

Karmic Koala? No, I haven’t been smoking something grown in a hippy’s window box. Like many, I’m a) fed up with hearing about Windows 7 and b) looking forward to the release of Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (otherwise known as Karmic Koala) later this week. It seems that Microsoft’s unofficial PR machine in the UK (BBC News) has taken ten minutes off from fawning over the new Windows version to recognise that technology companies other than Microsoft, Google and Apple do actually exist… and also name some of the companies who have freed themselves from the Microsoft shackles. I knew the French Police had gone down the Ubuntu route, but didn’t know that San Francisco Airport had taken the leap. You can view the article here.

Being a BBC reporter, Gary Parkinson does of course take the opportunity to see everything from a Windows point of view, but I suppose this is understandable. He homes in on the fact that iTunes isn’t available on Linux operating systems, and then discusses the fact that Linux (even Ubuntu) hasn’t always been seen as user-friendly. Windows, irrespective of what you think of it, has been honed to be pretty user-friendly over the years… rarely (if ever) do home users have to go to a command prompt to configure things. Thankfully Canonical’s Chris Kenyon says the new release puts a stop to all of that (I’ll tell you later in the week if it really is true).

Parkinson talks about recommending Linux to older family members or friends, but is that really where Ubuntu wants to sit, with the home user? Certainly I’d have no bones about recommending Lotus Symphony or OpenOffice to home users, and indeed I have. But I see Linux as something that needs to be properly rolled out, supported and maintained within organisations, like those named in the Beeb’s article. A lack of support for iTunes isn’t really going to matter there. Home users (in my humble opinion) should buy an Apple Mac… it’s businesses that have the potential to decrease costs through properly maintained open-source software. Whatever your opinion, it’s very important that Microsoft have competitors in this space, and thus improvements to Ubuntu can only be a good thing.

Warning: this contains spoilers, so don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie in question.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather this week, so Mrs A gave me a day off from working down her usual long list of Saturday must-dos. After getting my hair cut and cleaning out the hamster house I decided to take time out to watch ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ which I recorded some time ago – a movie which I promised myself I’d watch on the big screen at home, not on the mini-screen of the Archos while at an airport or on a flight to somewhere.

The first concern was whether the aged Harrison Ford could still hack it as the adventurous archaeologist… yes, but only just, and to be fair they made reference to his advancing years a few times. At least they didn’t pass him off as some spring chicken. But then there’s the bad news. Cate Blanchett’s delivery came straight out of Russian Accent 101 classes and made me cringe every time she spoke. If we’re supposed to hate the villain, then that worked. I was sorry that she wasn’t polished off within the first ten minutes… instead she nearly made it through to the end credits.

On the whole the story was an Indiana Jones check-list. Underground tombs… check. Ancient mechanical devices…check. Ancient legends setting up the story… check. Chases, guns and jumping from one vehicle to another… check. And so on.

Now, let’s think about the subjects of the earlier Indiana Jones movies… finding the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt, a brutish Indian cult, and a hunt for the Holy Grail. Great movies, even if that old knight at the end of ‘The Last Crusade’ was a bit daft. So here’s the next problem with ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ – it’s about the skull of an alien. Yes, an alien. Aliens in an Indiana Jones movie. Okay, it’s an ancient artefact… but it’s the skull of an alien. And there’s thirteen alien skeletons sitting in a space ship. No no no no no no no no. What were they thinking?

In summary, it was okay. It entertained me for two hours. But the next time I watch ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (which is still one of the best movies ever made) I’m going to try to forget that this final instalment ever happened.

Let me start by saying that I’m not knocking the requirement for airport security. In fact, thank heavens that they’re now very thorough even if they have started letting suitcases resembling small wheelie-bins be taken on as hand luggage – as I said years ago, if you need wheels to move the bloody thing is it ‘hand luggage’? What annoys me about airport security is the lack of consistency. At some airports you don’t have to take your laptop out of your bag – at some you do. This, I’m told, is because of the variety of equipment at different airports. Fair enough.

However, then you get a lack of consistency at the same airport… Heathrow for example. Some days you do have to remove your shoes, some days you don’t. I’ve even been there on days when one queue has to remove their shoes while the others don’t. So Mr Security, don’t get annoyed with me if I don’t follow the rules of the day immediately.

With all this in mind, I was interested in this article on the Beeb’s news site covering Manchester Airport’s trial body scanner. Like a scene from Total Recall (great movie) it provides an image revealing details down to a naked level (okay, not quite down to the skeletal level). It’s heralded as a breakthrough to please people who don’t like the traditional ‘pat down’. But judging by the sample images, it looks like it’s important to be confident about your choice of underpants.

Spokesperson Sarah Barrett says that passengers concerned about the revealing images could refuse to be scanned. That would seem to defeat the object… any potential wrong-doer concealing a weapon, or Wile E. Coyote (no doubt carrying something from the Acme Bomb Company), would immediately exercise that right. You’d hope that they’d then be subjected to the normal rigorous searches.

Reading on, I think I’ve experienced one of these scanners.

They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth

New York, 2005 – the 9/11 atrocities still fresh in their minds – I’m sure I went through one of these scanners to get up to the base of the Statue of Liberty. It surprised me at the time that the security checks to get onto the ferry, onto the island and then into the statue complex were more rigorous than the checks to go up the Empire State Building. Why surprised? Well the Statue of Liberty is out on an island while the Empire State Building is slap-bang in the middle of Manhattan. Whatever the reason, I can sleep safe knowing that I wasn’t wearing y-fronts that day.

Despite it’s small number increment, IBM Lotus Notes / Domino 8.5.1 is really a very significant release – not just because of the many new capabilities and improvements, but because it’s the version that many organisations have been waiting for to deploy. It’s nine months on from 8.5 and that extra time in development does show in an extremely positive way. I haven’t upgraded my Linux client yet, but the Windows and Mac versions provide a far better user experience.

Many other blogs and news sources are covering this today, so I’ll be brief. As you’d expect you can get more detailed coverage at edbrill.com and if you’re feeling really brave you can wade through the full announcement letter. For those of you with less time to spare, here’s an overview…

• Oodles of new features in the Lotus Notes client
• Lotus Traveler now supports the Apple iPhone
• Many improvements to Domino Designer, including new LotusScript and Java editors
• Significant improvements to the process of building composite applications
• Simplification of the licensing model, down to two Client Access Licenses (Messaging and Enterprise)
• Domino Designer is now a FREE DOWNLOAD
• Some bandwidth-reducing improvements to DAOS

Notes / Domino 8.5.1 is scheduled to be available for electronic general availability on Monday 12th October 2009. My general advice to anyone is ‘upgrade’.

I was perusing PlanetLotus today and an interesting blog post from Vaughan Rivett caught my eye – what’s the worst email in-box that you have ever seen? Vaughan tells the tale of a user with a mail box weighing in at 11 gigabytes. This is what’s known in the trade as either a) hoarding or b) bad management. Mail boxes of that size could never be tolerated at IBM, because like so many companies we impose a mail quota – your mail box gets to a certain size, some things stop working, and the functionality isn’t given back to you until you’ve fixed the problem. But is that fair? After all, was it the mail box owner at fault?

I’m speaking as someone who recently had to concede that, after more than 10 years with a 150 mb mail box quota, I could no longer keep it within the limit every day – I was spending too much time managing the volume, so I had to apply to go up to the next level, 250 mb. Why, in an organisation with a rich collaborative infrastructure, was this necessary? I put it down purely to my change in role – suddenly I was communicating with many more people and there was an increase in data flying around. It reminded me of a slide I sometimes use on less serious occasions, such as the recent keynote at Collaboration University. Entitled ‘about me as an e-mail user’ it explains that I don’t like having a scroll bar in my inbox and I resent anyone who…

• Forces me over my mail quota
• Sends me two e-mails when only one was required
• Marks everything they send as high priority (yes, I know who you are)
• Starts an e-mail with “I know you’re busy but…” – but what?
• Sends me an e-mail and then immediately Sametimes me or phones me to ask if I’ve read the e-mail
• Continues to reply-to-all way past the point where I’ve ceased to be involved or interested
• Only knows how to use PrtSc rather than Alt-PrtSc

So in summary, just about anyone who sends me an e-mail.

A couple of years ago I did a small survey of some of our customers, not big enough or detailed enough to draw any great conclusions from, and asked the question…

In terms of e-mail efficiency what would benefit your organisation the most – improvement in user practises around e-mail, or operational improvements?

71% said user practises, 29% said both, but no-one (0%) said operational improvements alone. So the conclusion is that end users need to be given the tools in order to become more efficient with how they disseminate information, but they also need some clarity about the right tools to use and when.

I believe that we’ve added the right things to the Lotus portfolio to help end users to realise better collaboration and knowledge management – simple things that make a difference. Firstly, think how your typical e-mail user would share a spreadsheet, document or presentation with a colleague (or group)… we all know the right thing to do is to post it to a collaborative space (which hopefully supports the business activity associated with the content) and then notify people of the content via e-mail. However, most e-mail users have escaped from Utopia via a small hole in the fence, so they’re just going to shove that file attachment in the e-mail regardless of the storage or content revision issues.

That’s why I love the Quickr approach – because it supports the users’ long-ingrained behaviour (shove in the attachment) but at the point of sending it offers to place the file in a document repository. The recipient sees a set of links, and they click to navigate to the content. Simple. So collaboratively we’re doing the right thing, but we haven’t interrupted the user’s normal pattern of work (in my head I’m picturing people grunting like Cro Magnon man did when he spotted a bison wandering across the Paleolithic plains, but instead they’re saying “ugg, file attachment”). The added bonus with Quickr is that you can also take existing file attachments that Cro Magnon man sent to you in the past and offload them to a Quickr place – you can retain the e-mail with the link replacing the attachment.

The other thing I love telling people about is Connections Files. To fully embrace the idea of Connections Files you do have to discard the caveman instincts and post that file… no, not in an e-mail, in your Connections file-space. Yes, I know this goes against years of bad habits, so the important thing is for users to realise the benefits. The first benefit is to other people – you are not contributing to ruining their day by sending that quota-busting spreadsheet. Okay, so you don’t care about their quota, how about a benefit for yourself? Have you ever sent an e-mail with a file attachment and then later someone else wants the file? And then someone else a bit later? This used to happen to me all of the time, but not any more. Rather than having to repeat the process of create another e-mail, type in the subject, find the file attachment in a folder (hmmm, which folder), add an explanation – I just share the file. The file in question is posted in Connections Files and I add another name to the share list. An e-mail is automatically sent, and the recipient grabs the content but doesn’t have to worry about the volume of data. If the file is updated, I simply add the update as a new version and note the changes.

Another great way to share content, in the context of a business activity, is Lotus Connections Activities, but I’ve already covered that in an earlier post.

So, here we are… Summer has officially ended, the first X-Factor live show is just over a week away, and Christmas merchandise is quickly taking over the local garden centres. There are two other important things I noted this morning, both on GMTV.

Firstly, the weather forecast from Kirsty McCabe. Earlier this week she speculated that we would have a mild Winter with no chance of a white Christmas – a pretty safe bet, given the last one was thirty-nine years ago. This morning she said that October and November would be mild with temperatures slightly above average (I suppose that’s what mild means). Given that the forecast for today now differs from what she said it would be on Monday, how much faith do we have in her ability (or that of any weather forecaster) to tell us what the weather will be like in eight weeks time? As Paul Daniels used to say, ‘not a lot’.

And then we have the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. You have to applaud Gordon Brown and his gang for not treating it like an early wake, and for keeping up the pretence that they’ll still be in power this time next year. Mrs Brown, there’s no point in looking at the interior of 10 Downing Street and thinking “we could do with new curtains”. Mrs Cameron will take care of that next year. So I was amused by the comments of the sprightly little political bunny David Miliband who this morning said something to the effect of…

Britain loves an underdog, and sometimes Britain wants the underdog to win.

Let’s put this into context Mr Miliband… Britain loves an underdog when Luxembourg are playing Germany in a World Cup qualifier. We love the underdog when a British player other than Andy Murray reaches the third day of Wimbledon. We’ll cheer for the British guy who turns up for a skiing competition and stands alongside Swiss and Austrian competitors. Labour’s position is rather different – the reason that they’re the underdogs in the polls is that hardly anyone thinks they’re doing a good job or intends to vote for them. So come the general election next year, we’re hardly likely to cheer them past the finishing post like some marathon runner dressed as a smurf who’s taken seven hours but has raised £2 million for a cancer charity. Being an underdog, trying your best and valiantly failing with respect and dignity in a sport is one thing… making a hash of running a country is another.