Lotus Connections 3.0 released!

I just checked IBM Software access catalog and found Lotus Connections 3.0 was released on Wednesday the 24!

'Search this view' view bar disappears / persistent folder display on open - Lotus Notes 8.5.2

Here are the symptoms of the issue. I would open Lotus Notes and the mail database is open to a folder automatically, not the inbox. At this point the 'Search this view' is enabled and is displayed at the top of the view for full text searching.

Clicking on the inbox the search this view frame / area goes blank with a white background color.

Clicking on the original folder still shows a blank frame. Going to the View -> 'Search this view' to hide it and then going to View -> 'Search this view' to display it still shows a blank frame. Only when closing the mail tab and re-opening shows the Vew -> 'Search this view' frame and the original folder shows up. However when clicking on the inbox the search view frame / area shows blank again. Both restarting Lotus Notes and restarting Windows did not fix the issue.

Also checking the database properties under the launch tab, I checked to see if 'Restore as last viewed by user' is checked and it was.

Since it is, this is also broken because the last view I had open when I closed the mail tab did not show when I opened it. The same folder would display every time I opened the mail database.

I tried clearing the cache.ndk and that did not work. I ended up navigating to the workspace to locate my mail database icon. I right clicked on it and choose 'Remove from workspace' and repeated for all servers so that I did not have an icon on my workspace for my mail file.

I closed notes and reopened and that fixed the issue for both the 'Search this view' disappearing and the persistent folder displaying when the database was opened.

Note: for local mail databases, I had to rename the .nsf extention or move the database outside the /data folder, start notes, remove the local workspace icon, close notes and rename / move back.

Note: when removing your workspace icon you will loose your personal settings on view column sorting.

Lotus Traveler beta 2 not installing on Samsung Epic 4G ( Galaxy S )

The other day I tried to install the Lotus Traveler beta 2 on a co-worker's Samsung Epic 4G phone. I would browse to the traveler website to download the Android installer. I launched the installer, click ok on the security screen, then go to the application settings and check the 'Unknown Sources'. Then going back to install the Lotus installer and the phone would say application not installed! I've never seen this before and I tried it again and it failed with the same message.

I noticed the phone had two apps on there, AVG anti-virus and lookout. I believe the AVG was disabled but  could not disable lookout. At first I wondered if the Traveler beta 2 would not install on Android 2.1 so I launched my Android virtual device ( AVD ) with 2.1 and it installed, drats! The next day I tried installing it again on the Samsung Epic and it worked! I am not sure what changed, maybe the phone was restarted, maybe the lookout software needed time to update with application setting for unknown sources. I am curious to see if anyone else has the same issue.

Sprint outage

It seems there is network outage for Sprint cell phones. I noticed this around 3:30 pm central for downtown St. Louis. It's weird because I will have half or full signal, and then no signal. When I try to place a call I get the following message:

Call origination attempt fails due to an immediate signal loss ( signal fade or no service avaialble )

Sprint has confirmed the outage and they are working on it. I hope they fix it soon...

App Inventor for Android Beta

Last Thursday I was accepted for Google's App inventor for Android Beta. It is a visual programming language designed to create applications on the Android platform. To sign up for the Beta go to:

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

and click on the complete "this form":

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/appinventorinterest/

It took me little over a week to be accepted. However Google did not notify me, I just visited the website ( http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/ ) every day and click on 'My Projects' until I stopped seeing the signup form.

The visual programming has a learning curve to it but after that it is pretty cool. However I have issues with the activityStarter and textToSpeech modules crashing on my Evo and G1. Heads up, to run your programs you will need to download and unzip the Android SDK and locate the adb.exe program. Also you will need to install the HTC sync software so that the Evo device ( actually all you need is the HTC driver, you can uninstall the HTC software ) will run the programs.

Evo HTC sync:
http://www.htc.com/us/support/evo-sprint/downloads/

Traveler for Android, Beta 2

Traveler for Android Beta 2 was released last week. I have it installed on my phone and many new features and visual enhancements are greatly improved. If you have access to download the Beta 2, I highly recommend you download and install it. I have it installed on 8.5.2 ( and it installs with no issues, unlike the Beta 1 code ).

the workspace page cannot be used for database icons error

Recently someone ran into an issue with their Lotus Notes client ( 8.5.1 FP1 ) showing an error after login:
update:please read the last paragraph 08/22/2012
"the workspace page cannot be used for database icons"

We just upgraded this person to roaming and after a client restart this error kept showing up. So as a troubleshooting measure (and a process of elimination in which we renamed names.nsf, bookmarks.nsf to .000 extension, launched notes, a message about roaming the workspace popped up and out of the three options I choose the middle one, basically saying to ask me later. Then the notes client errored out saying it cannot find names.nsf. Lotus Note closed and then we renamed names.000 back to names.nsf  ) we renamed the bookmarks.nsf to bookmarks.000 in the person's machine and Lotus Notes launched with out that error. However the new bookmark file does not have the same replica id as the one on the server and it did not pull down the bookmark.nsf from the server.

So we created a new replica of the bookmark.nsf from the roaming\ folder on the server to the local machine in hopes that the existing bookmarks.nsf was corrupted. We closed Lotus Notes, swapped the current booksmarks.nsf with the one replica made from the server and sure enough that fixed it.

After getting this issue over and over, I found a notes.ini parameter for the Lotus Notes client that prevents the client from roaming the workspace. This also fixed my issue without having to delete or restore my bookmarks.nsf ( however, the issue still exists, and will come back when you configure a new client minus this notes.ini parameter). Try using this notes.ini parameter on you workstation to prevent this error from happening again. Also, this notes.ini parameter was introduced in 8.5.1 and it clears your workspace and your view settings:

DISABLE_WORKSPACE_ROAMING=1

good luck :)

reference

LO62488: "THIS WORKSPACE PAGE CAN NOT BE USED FOR DATABASE ICONS"

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1LO62488