Yes, True Believers, that's me on the front page of IBM developerWorks Lotus Developer Domain!

I was interviewed for a new segment called Meet the Developers!. Each month (I believe...), IBM will feature an interview with a community member. And with the release of Lotus Notes Domino Designer in Eclipse 8.5.1, I hope we all have the problem of needing to introduce the contributing members of the Lotus Online Community to new and eager developers!

Hopefully my interview isn't too boring -- hey, I got to mention Stormtrooper Zombies! -- and properly kicks off a great series that puts faces and personalities to some of the names that really make this product tick.

One of the reasons I've written my Domino CMS engine - which I hope to demo sometime this week - was that I've been playing around with a new purpose if you will. Specifically, I want to take it from blog to online resource. Mind you, I'll still be running the site. And there will still be a weblog as a part of this site... but I want it to be more. I think - after all these years - it needs to be more. So I thought that I would outline a few of the features here while I'm adding them to the site (as well as ask for suggestions and requests).

First, the site - as mentioned - will run on my Domino CMS engine. What this means is that the website will no longer be viewed from a NotesDatabase (and this site is today), but rather maintained and generated from a NotesDatabase. Yep, the Domino CMS engine creates end-result files - such as XML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. - based on the content and "configuration" of the Domino CMS NotesDatabase. This allows me not only complete control over what's rendered, but will infinitely speed up the delivery of content. At least... that's the plan.

The site will contain the following sections: my Weblog, Articles, Reviews, Examples & Downloads, Upcoming Events, and my Drawing Board.

My Weblog will continue, but I plan on expanding it. For those of you connected to me on Facebook, you'll note that I often post things to my profile (such as Lotus community news, upcoming Lotus community events, various geek-related content, etc.) that just don't quite make it to this site. I plan putting more content on the weblog, but specifically making it more my weblog than a community information and development tips repository. Hopefully that makes sense...

The more detailed content will go into the Articles, Reviews, and Examples & Downloads sections. Here I'll host My Gear product reviews, detailed topics and development deep-dives, and I'll be putting more demos, examples, and usable product out there for consumption.

The Drawing Board... that will be a microsite containing all of my one-off development endeavors and I wonder if... type of content. Sure, you'll see errors in your browser and all sorts of ugliness with these half-baked (or still-baking in most cases) solutions, but I think that will help a lot of people see how someone in their field does things...

Events. Simply put, this community is starting to have more and more online and real world/physical events to help spread the good/yellow word. The problem is, not many people know what's going on, when, where, etc. I plan on providing a simple click-to-add facility of community events using iCalendar as a cross-platform standard.

There was a concern from some of the early-reviewers of my Domino CMS engine regarding comments. Specifically, how would I handle a submitted content against a particular post if my CMS was not externally facing?

There were multiple options - the best being a specific NotesDatabase that handled a comment submission and proxied it to my Domino CMS, which I didn't like. So as I planned to use Google Friend Connect to allow you to join this site, I thought I would simply use their Comments engine. Why re-write the wheel, right?

A few other features will include some things that you see on other sites today: a mini-feed of my latest Twitter updates, various galleries, an implementation of ShareThis! and countless other nice-to-haves that I've been wanting to get on DominoGuru.com for a long time now.

Are there features that you would like to see in this space? Different categories that I might be overlooking? Make yourself heard in the comments (which are still a part of this NotesDatabase design)!

I was contacted the other day by someone who came across my website -- specifically my Disabling $KeepPrivate documents! article -- who was looking for a method to add a Readers-type NotesItem to selected emails in his mail NotesDatabase. The issue that he was running into, he explained, was that his company prohibited personal Agents (and I suspect that each user only has Manager access to their mail NotesDatabase).

After explaining the potential issues with doing this - from the obvious "you could potentially lock yourself out" to the potential legal and corporate policy implications - I found out that he was concerned about his "nosey" boss reading his email.

Now, while I want this person to know that there are capabilities within the Lotus Notes client that will allow them to gain a richer experience and can improve the way that they perform their day-to-day functions, I don't want to condone such actions by me telling him how to do this.

And therein lies an issue: where do you draw the line?

I like to consider myself - at times - a Lotus White Hatter, but one person's White Hat can be another's Black Hatter. And in this particular case, I think the actions - at best - would be considered black hat, if not actionable!

So, Constant Reader, have you run into a similar situation?

Greetings Constant Reader! I thought I'd take a few moments to fill you in on my plans for the upcoming weeks. Nothing as boring or self-serving as a site redesign (although I think that is in order once I get some of the bigger items in the list checked off), and there's one rather large item on my list that I can't really get into just yet...

But I'll worry about that later - let's just jump right into it!

• Public Build Projects

  Yeah, once I complete the Event Calendar, these will make sense... but I plan on doing an entire series of DIY builds, documenting various stages in the development cycle ala Bob Vila: show enough to get someone going, fade to black, and when you come back all of the grunt work is complete! Based on feedback I've already gotten from the Event Calendar builds, it sounds like this is a winner already. So, expect more projects!

• Product Reviews

  This will go far beyond stuff like "My Gadgets", and more into quickie-to-deepdive overviews into technologies that we should know about. From development toolkits, vendor solutions, business partner solutions, and other things that - quite frankly - pique my interest. My thoughts are "If I want to know about it, you might be interested as well!".

• Interviews

  As the old saying goes, "Membership has it's rewards". I've been doing this - blogging about technology, mostly specific to IBM/Lotus technologies - since 2002 (or 2003, I dunno, it's been a while). In that time, I've met a lot of amazing and talented people. I plan on bugging them. I am not proud. ;-)

• Products

  Something's gotta pay the bills, right? Well, I intend on making a few fleshed-out products available for purchase on the newly formed BleedYellow Marketplace. Nothing bank-shattering, but I'd love to be able to cover the annual costs of a Vimeo membership, etc.

• (eventual) Move to ND8.5

  I prefer to give you something that you can use today. Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 rocks, and you can do some absolutely amazing things with XPages, Themes, and Server-Side JavaScript... but how many of you are actively running 8.5 in production? I plan on moving toward 8.5 as my primary release for the content of this site, but to be honest I think it's too soon. Doesn't mean I won't pepper the stew with occasional ND8.5 content, of course.

So that's the short list.

There is one other item on the list that only a handful of people know about - more because I want to get that going fullsteam ahead before I mention it (and have my schedule require that it stagnate in a corner somewhere)... but the feedback that I've gotten from the idea makes me believe that it will be an absolutely awesome community episodic... thing. Yeah, I don't want to say too much there...

I just had an exchange that left me feeling horrible. And the more and more I think about it, I can't help but feel worse.

This morning I received the following:

Subject: Please update your site

Can you please update your site re: your flash banner/Company X
We purchased the business and have changed the website and your banner is no longer longer being used. However, it shows up in the google search.
We have purchased all the rights to the name of Company X, and no longer wish to have that posted on your site.

This email refers to the following article, where I was showing off (with the permission of the owner at the time of publication) the Flash banners and their integration with Domino (via our CRM solution). Now, the only real mention of the company - now Company X - was in the title of each article and in the body of the first.

If you Google, well, Company X, you would see the article as the second hit, with their website being the first.

So, while the mature, level-headed now-30 me was very "meh" over the whole thing, that damn-the-man 19 me wanted to break something. So, after taking a few moments and chatting with some friends over it, I replied with the following:

This is a surprise to say the least - especially as most organizations prefer as many positive context inbound links for their business websites, thus pushing their own website higher in search results indexing, as possible!

While I don't think there is precedent requiring that I remove references to "Company X" as 1) I had express permission of it's usage from the original owner and 2) it is a fact that - at the time of publication of the articles in question - Company X was both an active customer of Clearframe, LLC and used the subject Flash banners, I have nonetheless removed any reference to Company X from the 3 publications on DominoGuru.com.

Yeah, I made the changes. I made them, but modifying a published article on this site - let alone at the whim of a new company owner who is solely interested in boosting her Google statistics - well, it left me feeling... victimized, maybe? Certainly was a buzzkill, and has put me in a mood that I wasn't in before I read that email.

Am I over-reacting here? I'm not going to ask if I was right for modifying the articles, as I am a firm believer in karma and want as much good coming my way as possible... but am I wrong for first getting upset about this and - post change - having regrets? I feel like I took a step backwards today...