... did I tell you that I have an iPhone now? An iPhone 4, actually. And prior to that, I was testing an iPad. This on the heels of purchasing two iPod Touch devices for my children (oldest girl and boy birthdays are only a few calendar weeks apart).

And I can say that I'm becoming more and more of a fan of iOS. In fact, I'm currently downloading 4.1 while I write this post. My poor Zune 30 is sitting here on my desk, it's last charge well-past spent, and I'm almost completely used to the clunkiness of iTunes.

Why the sudden jump? Well, I have customers that wanted the iPhone... after a C-level employee was given an iPad as a gift.

Funny how that works, huh?

... the problem that this particular customer ran into was that they were unable to upgrade their Domino infrastructure. They are currently mid-upgrade of their environment, and for some reason are upgrading the Lotus Notes Clients before they upgrade their Domino environment. Cart before the horse, I know... but it's the reality that they're steadily working through.

So, how do you implement IBM Lotus Traveler 8.5.2 in a Domino environment that you can't upgrade?! Simple really... but let's first look at a standard Traveler implementation...

(Click thru for more...)

I wanted my upcoming XPage Maps proof of concept (IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPages + Personal Address Book + Google Maps Mashup) to be a little more user friendly than I had originally intended. See, my original goal was to simply query address data from the Lotus Notes Client Personal Address Book and use that address data for runtime queries to Latitude and Longitude info... and then show those as locations on the map via pin overlays.

A decent demo, but it really doesn't do much in the way of using the data.

So I thought that I would not only generate the balloon/popup overlays triggered via an onclick on the given pin, but also use -- if available -- the ContactPhoto for the individual pin overlay.

Now, for those of you not familiar with the concepts I'm using here -- which rely as much on traditional IBM Lotus Notes Domino Web Application Development as much as XPages and SSJS -- here is the short, short version of the principles used here.

Combining IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPages with the Google Maps Data API, my proof-of-concept mashup app leverages NotesData stored in the Personal Address Book (names.nsf). Article - complete with source code - should be available later this week!

If you're interested in being part of the demo, send me your business-friendly vCard containing your contact info -- complete with OfficeStreetAddress, OfficeCity, OfficeState, OfficeZip, and ContactPhoto -- I'll get them into the local Personal Address Book NotesDatabase.

This site - dominoGuru.com - runs on IBM Lotus Notes Domino... but you wouldn't know that from the URL. This quick tip highlights the technique of using Domino URL Substitution Rules for domain-specific Internet Site Documents to create cleaner URLs while still maintaining Domino NotesData Domino URL Command functionality.

(Click thru for the complete tutorial...)

... have you ever had to open the Domino Admin client just to sign a freshly-downloaded OpenNTF.org project or a 3rd-Party NotesDatabase Template? One of the new Domino Designer features with 8.5.2 addresses this issue: you can right-click on a NotesDatabase from the Designer Working Sets Pane and sign it... but that's in 8.5.2.

Even in 8.5.2, you can't click-to-sign a NotesDatabase with a Production ID. Y'know... since you shouldn't let Domino Developers to write code in production, nor allow them - via their IDs - to execute code in production... so you have a Production ID.

That's where Tesla, my IBM Lotus Notes App Signer Utility, addresses a simple need: to quickly and securely sign a NotesDatabase Template without the need to access the Domino Admin Client (or the 8.5.2 Domino Designer Client for that matter...).

(Click thru for more...)