First let’s look at the performance. According to the what’s new page, 3.5 is more than twice as fast as 3. I actually think that measuring browser speed is pretty tricky – if you’re visiting lots of sites the connection speed, the amount of content, the page design and logic all contribute to very different experiences. If you’re accessing a web server which is perilously under-specced, swamped with traffic and connected to the Internet with a length of garden twine, the performance will suck. However, it does feel as if 3.5 is zipping along so I’m not going to doubt the performance claim. They also claim “smaller memory footprint” – with twelve tabs open and a handful plug-ins installed, this hungry fox is weighing in at 235 mb in memory. So much for the thin client.

Next up is a rather fun feature known as ‘location-aware browsing’ which allows Firefox to tell applications where you are (subject to privacy and permissions). The demo application showed a blue circle hovering over Camberley, probably about half a mile in diameter, and Adams Towers sat just within it… so they got it right. I can see this being quite useful – imagine you want a pizza, the provider’s web site could show you the nearest outlet. Or a retailer could give you an instant answer for a delivery cost to your location.

Firefox 3.5 boasts an increased number of open standards, including the emerging Ogg Theora video standard – this will allow the browser to play embedded videos without the need for other plug-ins.

A neat new feature related to tabs – you can pick one up and drag outside of the browser to spawn the content in a new window.

Finally, the big new feature which is ‘private browsing’. This is described as the ability to browse but not leave any trace of what you’ve looked at. There isn’t any reference to it now, but there was a scenario put forward along the lines of “you could be shopping on-line for a gift and you don’t want a family member to see what you’ve been looking at”. Absolutely… I can’t think of any other scenario where you might want to cover up what you’ve been looking at on the Internet. Any ideas?

Later today, you’ll be able to sign up for a 30-day trial of the newest offering, LotusLive Connections. This service was announced at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference (the setting for Microsoft’s drubbing at the hands of Lotus Connections 2.0 last year). To quote the press release “as part of the unveiling, LotusLive was voted the winner of The Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Computing Technology Buyers’ Choice Award. IBM’s cloud services won in a side-by-side comparison with Google Apps, EMC and other vendors’ cloud technologies, as voted by the Enterprise 2.0 conference attendees”.

To summarise, the main difference between LotusLive Engage and Connections is the omission of web conferences, forms and charts. However, the good news is that the stream-lined set of core capabilities will be available at a lower cost than that of Engage. So many businesses are interested in the possibilities of enterprise-grade social collaboration – we have already provided this in the form of IBM Lotus Connections (available to deploy on-premise), but the LotusLive offering provides an easy way to get started with minimal investment and to start collaborating with your extended enterprise and external contacts.

The base installation was extremely easy. Part 2 seemed a little complicated but I was assured that this was because they had all of the necessary updates downloaded to a cached proxy, and they had also provided an automated script to install IBM Lotus Notes 8.5, Symphony, Sametime and Mobile Connect. So in next to no time everything was set up.

Okay, let’s be honest – I’ve been a Windows user for 18 years. There are still some things I need on Windows, so there will be times when I need to put the other hard disk back in. Work stuff like Hyperion and some personal stuff like my favourite genealogy application (and my 1-2-3 spreadsheet used for financial planning – it uses 1-2-3 macros) aren’t supported on Linux, although I could use Windows XP in a VMWare session. That’s fine, I didn’t expect to drop Windows cold turkey-style – I’m expecting to phase it out as I find Linux alternatives. I expected to lament the loss of Paint Shop Pro, but I’ve already discovered the built-in graphic editor known as GIMP.

First impressions of Ubuntu Linux? It boots up faster than Windows, it’s ready to use immediately after login (Windows still takes a good 2 to 3 minutes to sort itself out), the wireless networking is so simple that someone over 40 could do it (kids are no longer the benchmark for simplicity because they often out-techno their parents), and it seems very easy to navigate and configure (time will tell if that’s reality day in day out, but it’s looking good).

What you see above is the result of entering ping /? at a DOS / Windows command prompt. From the available parameters you’ll see that there’s actually no way to ping someone via IBM Lotus Sametime or ‘ping a note over’ to someone.

Please see here for more details, and please stop using the term ‘ping’ incorrectly.

Symphony 1.3 boasts a number of enhancements – ‘DataPilot’ tables (they’re called something else in Excel and include the word ‘pivot’) for analysing data, some new animation effects for presentations, and widget and live text support (just like Notes 8). Personally I think the new DataPilot tables are the highlight, and they’re easier to use and change than the Excel equivalent. The image here shows the context-sensitive configuration panel which allows you to simply drag and drop the fields to table pages, columns and rows in order to change the way you can visualise your data.

I was also very pleased that I was able to provide the PR team with two customer references for the press release – and there was one more we could have used but it was decided to save that one for another occasion. So, we have information about the plans of leading UK retailer John Lewis Partnership and international property business Cluttons. Note that Mark from Cluttons says “we plan to use the cost saving to further invest in Lotus productivity tool sets”.

I’ve heard people talk about the Microsoft Office ‘tax’ stifling innovation – how true is that? I think Mark’s quote puts the ‘tax’ thought into context – Cluttons are going to use the money they save to implement new capabilities which will help their business… they’re increasing their available functionality with a move to Symphony.

However, as it turns out, this is rather like the Smashing Pumpkins’ greatest hits offering ‘Rotten Apples’ which featured a generous selection of previously unreleased and difficult-to-obtain tracks. ‘Monuments and Melodies’ contains the latest single ‘Black Heart Intertia’, some b-sides (such as the wonderful ‘Neither Of Us Can See’ featuring Chrissie Hynde), the two extra tracks from the Japanese version of ‘Light Grenades’ (namely ‘Look Alive’ and ‘Punch Drunk’), an acoustic version of the old favourite ‘A Certain Shade Of Green’, a cover version of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ by Prince, and four other new songs I’ve never heard before. All-in-all that was six new tracks for me, which will tide me over until the next studio album is released in 2010.

The key word here is ‘unified’. It’s very rare to ask a customer what they have in terms of telephony and get an answer that includes just one vendor. The answer is usually “a bit of everything”. Different locations, different business units, sometimes different departments (like the customer service centre) often have heterogeneous (impressive big word) telephony solutions. Users shouldn’t have to care, or even know, about this – they just need a set of telephony functions, and it shouldn’t matter that Bob in Glasgow is connected to a vendor’s PBX which is different to Brian in Cardiff or Kim in Florida.

That aside, SUT does some really cool things – these features have tremendous business value, but they’re also pretty cool:

1. I can use my computer as a phone
2. I can click on someone in Sametime, or in a Notes e-mail or application, and call them… and…
3. SUT dials the right number (office. mobile, home or computer) depending on their status and location – I don’t have to worry about where they are and which number they’re on
4. I could be using my home phone for a call, but then need to leave for an appointment – using SUT I can transfer the call to my mobile phone without an interruption
5. I can call someone and then turn it into a conference call by dragging and dropping people onto the call window (admit it, who knows how to conference other people in using their desk phone?)
6. I can divert an incoming call to my office, home or mobile phone… or to voice-mail
7. I can set up my own rules so that a particular phone rings depending on my location and / or status
8. I can see when my colleagues are on the phone (and they can see when I am)

Something I always mention in talking to customers is point #5. All-to-often we use an external tele-conference provider to facilitate conference calls between internal staff members – do you know how expensive that is? Eradicating or even reducing that practise would save a lot of money, and this is just one of the ways that SUT can reduce costs.

During my first couple of weeks as an SUT user I utilised an old Labtec headset – this worked fine until a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned to Mrs A that it had no sound coming out of it, and then she admitted to sucking the cable up in the vacuum cleaner.

This was a good excuse to set up a wireless headset (the CS60) that the guys from Plantronics gave to me on permanent loan just before LCTY. It took about 5 minutes to install, a couple of hours for the initial charge, and was available for SUT to use without doing anything else. The sound quality is amazing, and it allows you to roam from your desk – I walked downstairs and into the kitchen without Pete Hampton hearing any difference in the sound quality. As David Angel from Plantronics said, the final three feet of the solution is incredibly important… why spend thousands of dollars on a telephony solution and then compromise it with a poor-quality headset?

The other thing I was going to blog in May was my new job, but there were a few delays and it didn’t get formally announced until today. I’m not leaving IBM, I’m not leaving the Lotus brand, but I am spreading my wings a bit to lead the Messaging and Collaboration business in North-East Europe reporting to Vice President Aidan Troy… and thus I am officially ‘Messaging and Collaboration Business Unit Executive, North East Europe’. I may have to consider trimming that or getting an extra-long business card. In IBM-land, North East Europe consists of:

• UKI (that’s UK and Ireland)
• Nordics (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland… and Iceland too I think)
• Germany (that’s, well, Germany)
• Alps (Switzerland and Austria)

Admittedly, some of these are strange fits for ‘North East Europe’. Ireland and Iceland are the most westerly countries in Europe. The Netherlands is further North than both Switzerland and Austria, yet the Netherlands is classed as South West Europe. But it still makes more sense than South Africa being part of North East Europe, and it’s not any more.

Naturally, I’m irreplaceable, but the glutton for punishment who’s been elected to give it a whirl is Pete Hampton. Seriously, congratulations to Pete – he has a long history in the Lotus brand, full of successes and valuable experience, and from the moment he heard about the opportunity he pushed himself forward and proved his worth. Great news for Pete, and great news for me too as I have created a mail rule to forward anything that starts with “I was given your name by…” straight to him. He has agreed to leave it at least a month before he starts doing a better job than I ever did.

And then our guest speaker Barry Cryer… I expected him to be great entertainment, but he exceeded expectations. For the entire half an hour he weaved stories and rattled off jokes at a pace and with a delivery that would shame any professional comedian (most of the jokes I’d never heard before and all were hilarious).

He then went the extra mile – enthusiastically shaking the hand of everyone who wanted to meet him, he talked and joked with them all, and posed for photos. When my colleagues and I left for our four hour car journey, Mr Cryer was still delighting the delegates. He could have just done his spot and left with his cash, but that was obviously not the nature of the man. Even before he’d taken to the stage he’d spoken to people attending the event, made a note of their names and said hello to them in his routine. I’m certain he added to his fan-base today, and I’ll include myself. In an earlier post I described him as a comedy legend, and I was absolutely right.

In Mark’s words, in the business world you hand someone a business card – in effect, a token. In the world of Facebook you can ‘poke’ people (personally I never have). So put the two together and you have a Poken. Need more of an explanation? I thought so…

Your Poken is a small character which hides a USB input. Attaching the Poken to you computer allows you to access a web page where you enter your contact details and the social networking sites that you are a member of (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, etc). Then you carry your Poken in your pocket and when you meet someone else with a Poken and want to swap details you press their palms together until they glow green (it’s called a high-four, look at the picture and you’ll understand why).

Back at the computer you re-attach your Poken and somehow (I haven’t actually done it yet) it manages the linking up of you and your new friends on the social networks you have in common.

Mark bestowed a wonderful gift upon me… a Poken Piggy. To me it looks like a baby because it’s sucking a dummy and wearing a nappy, but it is actually called a Piggy. You can also buy Fox, Panda, Geisha, Monkey, Bee, Alien and Voodoo, and searching the web also reveals designs for Ninja, Dracula, Elvis (Presley, not Costello), Frankenstein and Munch’s Scream.

If you’re at LCTY and interested in obtaining a Poken, have a word with Mark. If you already have a Poken, my Piggy is ready and waiting to high-four you.