Lotus Notes is cool

I’m not deleting this and I’m keeping it for posterity, but notesiscool.com has now been decommissioned. However notesiscool.net rose from the ashes, and actually looks a bit like my original.

By now I’m one of the last people to blog this (apart from Ed Brill) – this morning I launched a brand new web site, Lotus Notes is Cool.

The idea has been buzzing around my head for a while, and the inspiration to do it went into overdrive after I Love Lotus Notes was recently launched. So during half-term last week, in between washing the car and packing away the trampoline for the Winter, I worked on the site and created some content.

Why do this? There’s a few reasons…

1. I speak to customers and internal IBM people who aren’t aware of some of Notes’ capabilities. I’m not so surprised when people have never seen live text, but I’ve had some people look at my inbox (in the vertical orientation) and ask “how do you get your inbox to look like that?”. I show them the simple ‘Preview on Side’ option and they have a eureka moment. So I think that if people don’t know some of these simple things, they need to be shared.
2. Almost everyone who whines about the Notes user interface and usability is using a pre-8.x version. So I want them to see what the up-to-date version looks like, simple as that.
3. And following on from that thought, it’s somewhere that Notes supporters can point people to when they come out with the mis-informed behind-the-times statement about Notes being “old and clunky”.
4. Notes is a great e-mail / calendar client, but it’s so much more… so let’s get it out there in the open.

The reaction this morning was overwhelming. There was a huge number of tweets and re-tweets, and already a huge number of visitors. Without wanting to boost his bulging ego further, I expect the visits to grow further when Ed Brill does get around to blogging it (Ed, luv ya buddy).

I’ll pick out a couple of choice quotes from the blogsphere today. First, Volker Weber… much respected and very knowledgeable, we all love him, but he loves to fan the flames. In his blog entry Darren Adams is cool (can’t argue with that) Volker wrote:

Darren Adams, who works for IBM in the UK, has finally done something Lotus Marketing has not been able or willing to do in 10 years: show the product.

He also called on Lotus General Manager, Alistair Rennie, to give me a pay rise. Volker, can you remind Mr Rennie when you see him at Lotusphere?

Secondly, David Vasta… the picture of himself on his blog may lead you to believe he’s a bit bonkers, but his words make perfect sense. In reaction to my goal of telling the world about the great features David writes:

Now I can agree to that and to all the Microsoft people out there, what do you have that can compete directly with Lotus Notes & Domino[?]. I will go ahead and answer that for you, nothing!

Finally, I’ve just received a very interesting e-mail from the IBM UKI marketing team…