IBM moving to electronic support only
Starting June 2012 customers are "requested" to start opening IBM Serbice Requests (SR) using the electronic support portal and from 2013 only electronic entry will be possible for severity 2, 3 and 4. This is in no way a surprise and makes IBM move funds from the probably costly phone based support they are offering now and probably also makes a lot more sense for supplying all the relevant information. This is all well and good so long the quality of the data entry forms are top notch. More information can be found at the announcement.
Joda Time comment
Ulrich Krause has an interesting post (Joda to the rescue) and I just had to comment on as I - probably to no surprise to many - work a lot with dates for the OnTime Suite. Ulrich is using the Joda Time library to compare two dates to see if they are on the same day by first stripping the time component which isn't easily possible using java.util.Date. My comment is to remember that the Java Date object is just a wrapper about a UTC long so math can do the trick. Below is my comment.
While Joda Time is a great library there is an easier way to accomplish what you are trying to do. Simply remove the time component by doing a simple modulus calculation. I am not trying to be smart about it but we do this quite a lot at OnTime :) Code could look like so:
Date d = new Date(); long lngTime = d.getTime(); lngTime -= lngTime % TimeUnit.DAYS.toMillis(1); Date dNoTime = new Date(lngTime);The latter date object creation isn't actually necessary for the comparison. An utility function could be like so:
private boolean isSameDay(Date d1, Date d2) {
long lngTime1 = d1.getTime();
lngTime1 -= lngTime1 % TimeUnit.DAYS.toMillis(1);
long lngTime2 = d2.getTime();
lngTime2 -= lngTime2 % TimeUnit.DAYS.toMillis(1);
return lngTime1 == lngTime2;
}
Hope it helps and it helps remove the dependency on Joda Time if that's all you're using it for.
Day in the Life presentation with Chris Crummey
Chris is an excellent presenter and I had the pleasure of seeing him present again at the keynote at BLUG. The video runs 12 minutes and it's an excellent overview of the IBM collaboration solutions.
Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work
Excellent TED video on why work doesn't happen at work.
"Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. At TEDxMidwest, he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work."
"Jason Fried thinks deeply about collaboration, productivity and the nature of work. He's the co-founder of 37signals, makers of Basecamp and other web-based collaboration tools, and co-author of "Rework.""
Go the f*ck home!
Really loved this Ignite Talk with a very provocative title - Go the f*ck home! (link to video on YouTube) as it confirms something I'm a strong believer in - you do not get more done just because you spend more time at the office. The talk also points to an interesting study on this (SCHEDULED OVERTIME AND LABOR PRODUCTIVITY: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS).
AWS Marketplace
Just got word today that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is now offering a Marketplace (aws.amazon.com/marketplace) where ready made Amazon Machine Instaces (AMI's) can be easily purchased. Besides featuring instances from many top software vendors it also features AMI's for OpenSource solutions such as Tomcat, JBoss, MongoDb etc. There are currently 7 IBM AMI's available.
- IBM DB2 Workgroup Edition
- IBM WebSphere Application Server
- IBM DB2 Express Edition
- IBM Tivoli Monitoring on Linux - 50 Virtual Cores
- IBM Domino Enterprise Server
- IBM Web Content Manager Standard Edition
- IBM Mashup Center
Tag til brugergruppe i Norge
Kan du ikke deltage i Dannotes i starten af maj og/eller trænger du til at se nye mennesker eller få nye impulser så tag til den norske Notes brugergruppe LSBG d. 23. og 24. maj i Larvik. Jeg var deroppe sidste år og det er et virkelig lækkert sted helt ud til vandet relativt tæt på vandet. Larvik nås nemt med Norwegian fra Kastrup (kender ikke mulighederne fra Billund). Agendaen kan ses på hjemmesiden hvor der også er tilmelding. Kan klart anbefales.
Amazon gives Google a run for its money with CloudSearch
I'm a big proponent of Amazon Web Services (AWS) so it came as no surprise when Amazon today announced its latest addition to the AWS family - AWS CloudSearch.
"Amazon CloudSearch adds search capabilities for your website or application without the administrative burdens of operating and scaling a search platform. Amazon CloudSearch seamlessly scales as the amount of searchable data increases or as the query rate changes, and developers can change search parameters, fine tune search relevance and apply new settings at any time without having to upload the data again."
Amazon CloudSearch is further described on their blog in an entry aptly named "Amazon CloudSearch - Start Searching in One Hour for Less Than $100 / Month". Using CloudSearch is as easy as 1-2-3 and everything is managed through the AWS Management Console:
- Create and configure a Search Domain. This is a data container and a related set of services. It exists within a particular Availability Zone of a single AWS Region (initially US East).
- Upload your documents. Documents can be uploaded as JSON or XML that conforms to our Search Document Format (SDF). Uploaded documents will typically be searchable within seconds. You can, if you'd like, send data over an HTTPS connection to protect it while it is transit.
- Perform searches.