Ben Poole

Keep an eye on the LUG site today

Ben Poole — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:02:00 -0700

Apparently an interview with the new Lotus GM, Bob Picciano, will be published on www.lotususergroup.org later today. Good stuff!

Timeframe

Ben Poole — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:04:57 -0700

Timeframe is a fantastic date / time-range picker for the web. lastminute.com and all the airlines out there should incorporate this picker forthwith, sending Stephen Celis lots of money as they do so.

Check out the demo page and see what you think. Timeframe looks fantastic in Safari, and comes up pretty well in the other browsers too; its functionality is just perfect for travel booking applications.

Performance basics: a must-read

Ben Poole — Thu, 8 May 2008 15:09:02 -0700

At the risk of sounding like an echo chamber, I feel I must post about this: Andre Guirard has published a white paper entitled Performance basics for IBM Lotus Notes developers, surely a must-read for all self-respecting Domino code monkeys!

Thanks to Per Henrik Lausten for the tip.

If Twitter is...

Ben Poole — Thu, 1 May 2008 18:17:54 -0700

… the “bowel movement of Web 2.0” (thanks for that Paul), then what does it mean if your local council uses it??

Yesterday was local election day here in the UK. I thought I’d check out the results for my local council, and was greeted with this text on their home page. Cutting edge or what?

Follow updates at http://twitter.com/SouthendBC

Yep, as the votes were counted overnight, the council was tweeting the news! Crikey.

ILUG 2008 agenda!

Ben Poole — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:56:29 -0700

It’s here! Looks good! I’m scared!

ILUG 2008 Agenda.

Welcome to Great Britain

Ben Poole — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:15:28 -0700

Middlesbrough cops, goons and clerks grab and detain photographer for shooting on a public street

Father fined for overfilling bin

Software pricing madness

Ben Poole — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:15:44 -0700

I decided to check out some software for possible purchase. Can anyone see what’s wrong with this picture?

Why on earth does it cost more to download a product, than to have it delivered to my door? Craziness.

Techtarget can bugger off

Ben Poole — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:11:02 +0100

In much the same way that a piss-poor PR firm by the name of Vocus has incurred the wrath of Herr Weber, a load of mails received today tipped me over the edge. Who are they from? Why, our old friends at Techtarget of course. They’ve been peddling a load of old shite to subscribers to searchdomino.com for some time (their technical tips used to be good: they are now risible), and this reached a feverish climax when the SearchDomino doofi spattered Yellow Bleeders with Notes >> Exchange advertising recently.

Sadly however, the moronitude continues (ooh, I made up a word): like many others out there, I get reams of unsolicited email from various TechTarget sites (some of which used to be good, before the marketing half-wits dug their nails in—e.g. theserverside.com). These mails seem to think they’re acceptable in my in-box, because they come with nice “unsubscribe” links. But that’s a load of poo; I didn’t subscribe to any of this stuff, nor have I ever expressed an interest in receiving unsolicited email from them. TechTarget are spammers, pure and simple. I now understand why Ms. Herbert didn’t seem to last long there: she displayed some professional integrity.

So, Gmail filters to the rescue: everything gets bounced back to TechTarget and deleted before I see it. You only have to check out the front page of techtarget.com to see what they’re really about nowadays: marketing, marketing, marketing.

At least we know where we stand.