We got a dog in January, didn’t go on holiday during the Summer, and then the weather was rotten which made the fact that we didn’t go on holiday just that bit more depressing. I changed jobs in April and I’m now spending less time in Scandinavian airports. Christmas was fun but came and went too quickly.

My best wishes for the time period between the 1st of January and the 31st of December, which is basically a range of dates decided upon by a Roman guy who died a long time ago. There is no real reason to cheer and kiss people at midnight.

Something we’re often asked… when would you use [IBM Lotus] Quickr and when would you use Connections? My frolleague Louis Richardson, who just so happens to be our Worldwide Sales Executive for Social Software, has provided some thoughts on this question in the Collaboration Soapbox blog.

I’ve covered off this issue with customers in the past, and reading through Louis’ article I’m glad to say I wasn’t far off with my answer. Just as when people have asked questions like “does Domino integrate with XML?” it should be answered with another question – “what do you want to achieve?”. Sure, there is some overlap (the solutions have to stand on their own two feet) but the right solution can only be decided on by looking at the requirements. And isn’t that true of most things?

Slightly old news as Ed Brill has already blogged it, and Traveler Product Manager Jan Kenney has also provided a detailed write-up. So what more value can I add?

Late this morning a member of the IBM UK Public Relations team contacted me and asked if I’d be available to speak to journalists about the announcement. Nursing a slightly sore throat wasn’t going to impede me, so the answer was yes. By lunchtime an appointment had been set for 14:30 with Dan Worth of v3.co.uk. Not long after the interview, and after I’d gone back to Dan with a couple of clarification points (thank you to Jan and also Matt Newton), the finished article was published. I think Dan paraphrased one of my thoughts rather well…

Lotus Notes 8.5 introduced the ability to overlay other calendars onto your own. The ‘other calendars’ can come from a variety of sources:

• Other users’ Notes calendars
• Notes TeamRoom calendars
• Notes application calendars (e.g. an application for managing events or a workflow application with milestones and deadlines)
• Google calendars
• Open standard iCalendar feeds
• Lotus Connections Activities

Lotus collaboration advocate Chris Crummey talks about the idea that work / life balance is a myth, and what you’re left with is work / life integration. So, while it’s important to be able to overlay the calendars of colleagues and applications onto your own calendar, it’s also important to be able to add some personal things, such as:

• The calendar of a relative (I have the current Mrs Adams’ Google calendar available)
• The Arsenal fixtures, so I can see when they’re going to scrape a 2-1 win or a disappointing draw
• The birthdays of my Facebook friends

So what about the weather? We love talking about the weather in Great Britain, so wouldn’t it be good to have a forecast readily-available?

A couple of days ago I was watching a presentation by my frolleague Jon Mell, and one of the screenshots contained a calendar (not a Notes calendar, but that’s not important) with information from a number of sources… one of them being a weather forecast. A light-bulb lit up just above my head (not sure if anyone else in the room noticed) and I thought “that’s a good idea”. Notes supports calendar overlays provided by the iCalendar format, and after a brief search I found a site providing for weather feeds for UK towns (wunderground.com). Camberley wasn’t an option, but Bracknell was and that’s near enough to give an idea of the weather conditions in my home town.

If only they could predict the weather more accurately…

Click on the image below for a larger view.

Update…

There were a number of requests for more information about this so I wanted to add a basic how-to.

Go to http://www.wunderground.com and search for your home town (or the nearest place). When your place has been found, you’ll see a green iCal indicator on the right. Do a right-click on this and copy the link location.

Now go to the Notes calendar and click the ‘Add a Calendar’ link. In the resulting dialog box you’ll need to select an iCalendar feed, set it to a public calendar, add a label (such as ‘Local weather’) and then paste the iCal feed URL into the URL field (click on the image to see how it should look). Select some tasteful colours and press OK.

That should be it. Please note that the feed only shows weather for week ahead, but bear in mind that most weather forecasters can’t accurately predict what the weather will do tomorrow, let alone in six days time.

A couple of months ago I blogged about Plantronics’ headsets, and it’s no secret that we have a very good relationship with this supplier of extremely high-quality audio equipment. Yes, Plantronics do work with other vendors of Unified Communications solutions (why wouldn’t they?) but it’s good to see that they’re extending the integration with Sametime.

Late last night I got an e-mail from Carl Tyler of Epilio, who are providing Plantronics’ Sametime integration via a plug-in. A previously-supplied plug-in allowed users of supported Plantronics headsets to control calls directly from the headset itself (for example, picking up and ending a call). Carl’s e-mail detailed a beta of a new plug-in which not only provides call-control, but also changes the user’s status if they’re on a VoIP or Sametime Unified Telephony call, or a call using another application, using a supported Plantronics headset… see below.

The messages are configurable, and I can make a distinction between a VoIP and an SUT call, and a call using another application such as Skype. It just tried this, and my Sametime status changed when I was on a Skype call.

No word yet on when the plug-in will move from beta to final, but after a number of SUT calls today it seems to work perfectly.