Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Sun 29 Jun 2014, 10:58 AM
I finished up my story video, and it is now up on Youtube. I put it on a new channel, TheStoryTimeChannel, as I felt like it was sufficiently far removed from the IBM Notes and Gimp and product videos I do on my channel. Of course, that means I am starting with zero subscribers and zero view, so if you like this, it would be great if you could share it and subscribe. Plus maybe let me know what you think. This one took a lot, as I am trying to learn something about music mixing, and for this story, I wanted the illustrations to be derived from classic art. The next should be a little easier, as I have a different sort of illustration in mind.
 
Bonus: There's a subtle Garfield without Garfield effect for those who watch closely.
 
 
 

Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 26 Jun 2014, 08:58 AM
Status of turning my story, Lucia's Wish, into a video fairytale (key: not startedpartially donecompleted)

Narration of the story: recorded & edited
Intro page art before we "open" the book: done
Allocating text to virtual pages: All 17 done
Illustrations for pages: 6 of 17 done
Synchronizing text and virtual pages: mostly done
Magical integration of 3.5 minute music and 8 minute story: started
Closing credits: Not done
Post-production and publishing: Not done
Post-publishing party: Ha! 

For those who haven't been following me obsessively, Lucia's Wish is the first of a series of stories (not all fairy tales by any means) that I call Tangential Tales. This is tangential to the original Grimms Brothers tale, Beauty and the Beast. The plan is to produce each story as a video with music and illustrations, which will then be released free on Youtube. I may produce eBook versions as well (without the music!) for those who just want the text and illustrations without having to listen to my voice.

Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 19 Jun 2014, 09:15 AM
No, no hobbits or elves or elaborate war scenes. Also, no CGI. But I am working on three (possibly four) separate CoexLinks Fidelity videos at one time. Each deals with a separate aspect of why fidelity matters, and each should be short enough (aiming for 3 minutes or shorter) that you can pull your boss aside after a meeting, pull it up on your tablet or phone and say, "Hey, I think you should see this."
I figure by doing them all at once, I can keep down production costs.
Now I just have to decide whether to release them all at once or one at a time. Well, that and finish the darn things. 

For those interested in the production side of such videos, I figure that a compelling three minutes video takes roughly from three hours to three days to produce, depending on how hard the concept is to communicate. I could churn out dozens of them if I didn't work so how to communicate the concept clearly, concisely and compactly. A ten minute video is far easier than a three minute video, but it is like the concept of an elevator pitch or a brief demo at a conference showcase. You don't have ten minutes, because your viewers don't want to sit through ten minutes, and your viewer is not stuck in an elevator with you or waiting to get the tchotchi or t-shirt at the end of the demo. You need to be clear and succinct, and hopefully entertaining as well. After all, they could be watching Funny or Die videos instead.

Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 18 Jun 2014, 11:52 AM
The response to our Out of Notes Pt 10: To SQL Server or DB2 video has been very positive, but has raised an issue more than once, especially among those companies moving applications from Notes to SharePoint. I have had a conversation like the following with a couple of customers in recent weeks. Most customers aren't like this, of course, but a couple.
 
Customer: I want to be sure, we don't need to have any Notes developers for this?
 
Me: That's right. Our Export to CSV sample database will let you do it without touching any scripts.
 
Customer: That's good. Now, how do I get it into SharePoint?
 
Me: It is a properly formatted CSV file, so it is fairly easy to import into a SharePoint List and either use it there or move it into a custom SharePoint library. We can show your developers a sample script if that would help.
 
Customer: Wait, I thought you said we didn't need developers.
 
Me: I meant your SharePoint developers. Unless you just want to use it in a SharePoint List.
 
Customer: No, we want the app to do just what it does in Notes, but in SharePoint. At least at first, though we have a long list of user requests once we get it there. But we don't have any SharePoint developers.
 
Me (eyebrows raised): So, have you planned for consultants to work with you?
 
Customer: No, we have no budget for consultants.
 
Me (silently to myself): No Notes developers, no SharePoint developers, no consulting budget, but a mandate to migrate your applications and implement a "long list of user requests". This is where sacrificing chickens under a full moon and invoking the ancient magic comes in.
 
News flash to companies: If you want things developed, you have to spend money on development, whether you hire your own developers or pay for consultants. The ancient magic isn't going to make that SharePoint Library rise from the ground fully built. It really isn't.
 
 

 
Best viewed in HD. Closed captions available for following in English or improved auto-translation. Warning: Will not magically add features to your migrated application.
 
 

Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.

Mon 16 Jun 2014, 11:11 AM
Over the weekend, we posted new pricing options for CoexLinks Fidelity. Per server pricing didn't change much (base server still $8000, additional servers now $6500), but we added user based Enterprise licensing primarily to help Notes shops that want to use the new fidelity even though they are not migrating their mail to another platform.

For many years, CoexLinks was mostly about doclinks, both preserving them and using them strategically. But now, CoexLinks Fidelity is also about high quality rendering of emails both for your internal users who may be reading email forwarded to GMail, or on a smartphone or tablet, but also for your external customers and clients who may be using a variety of email systems. IBM Notes shops including multinational firms in many countries all the way down to mom-and-pop shops who don't want to look too mom-and-pop in their emails are evaluating CoexLinks Fidelity as a solution to professionalize their customer facing emails and recapture the functionality in their internal emails being read outside of the Notes client.

Hence, new pricing. A company with up to 50 employees can buy CoexLinks Fidelity for less than half the price by using the per user Enterprise licensing, and any company with fewer than 275 users will save money. But beyond that, larger companies can use the flexibility of per user pricing to put CoexLinks Fidelity on as many servers as they like. A company with 600 users may choose to use per user pricing to put CoexLinks Fidelity on multiple mail servers and an application server, all for less than the cost of buying two server licenses. Of course, some companies with larger centralized hub servers or a smaller set of gateway servers may find it much less expensive to buy a few server licenses. All the new pricing does is offer options, because every company is unique and has its own strategy both for deploying servers and for deploying CoexLinks Fidelity.

So, whether your company is very large or very small, and whether your email strategy is based on IBM Notes clients or the IBM cloud or Microsoft Exchange/Outlook or Office 365 or Google's cloud, CoexLinks Fidelity can offer you a way to improve both internal and external appearances and functionality at a price that is right for your unique organization.

Find full pricing details on the CoexLinks pricing page.

Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.

Mon 9 Jun 2014, 01:42 PM
Guess what? This isn't how

Seriously, anybody know why IBM's main pages would trigger this? I was just going to download some IBM Domino software, but want to be sure I haven't missed something.

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Copyright © 2014 Genii Software Ltd.