Genii Weblog


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


Fri 30 Jul 2004, 11:11 PM
My daughter has told me many tales of woe about her friends and their difficulties getting a job.  The competition is fierce, and college kids or older people are holding on to jobs that would once have gone to high schoolers.  But this post is not about the economy or high school angst.  This post is about a very odd and eccentric, but surprisingly talented, pair of you people who have found a unique way to make a success of themselves.  They bill themselves as "Harry and the Potters", and they sing at a variety of venues, including the Shaker Heights Public Library.
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Picture two young men, both of whom are in character as Harry Potter, although one is supposed to be 4th year and the other 7th year.  They sing a wide variety of songs about life at Hogwarts, some of them very good songs, and some simply strange.  They came complete with at least one groupie, and with CDs, and stay in character the whole time.  My wife and son insisted on buying one of their two CDs, and we have listened to it several times since.  The music sounds like early Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, and I consider that a compliment.  Weird, eclectic, but catchy.  

If you are wondering whether these two could ever possibly be in your area, fear not.  They seem to go just about everywhere.  See their schedule, but I have excerpted part of the month of July below just to give you a feel for it.  Try to imagine a show like this actually going all over the country in their Pottermobile.  It wouldn't work without a healthy dose of initiative, and it would last without a healthy dose of talent.

Of course, it would probably be easier to go to one of their shows if you had kids along, but if you don't have any of your own, borrow a couple from a neighbor.  This is not to be missed.  And don't imagine that this is all sweet and bubblegum.  They really rock the place!

July 10th, Boulder Public Library, Boulder, CO
July 13th, San Pedro Library, San Pedro, CA + house party in Huntington Beach
July 14th, Sylmar Library, Sylmar, CA
July 15th, Los Angeles Public Library (Chinatown branch) + house party in Isla Vista (near Santa Barbara), CA
July 16th, San Francisco Public Library + 826 Valencia, San Francisco, CA, 2 shows!
July 17th, El Sobrante Library (outside San Francisco), El Sobrante, CA
July 19th, the Love Nest, Olympia, WA
July 20th, University Bookstore, Seattle, WA
July 21st, House show @ 4126 N. Commercial, Portland, OR
July 22nd, Veloshop, Portland, OR
July 23rd, Steilacoom Community Center, Steilacoom, WA
July 26th, 2 library shows! Littleton, CO and Broomsfield, CO
July 27th, the Dusty Bookshelf, Lawrence, KS
July 28th, Genesis House Coffeeshop, St. Louis, MO
July 30th, 2 shows! Shaker Heights Library and Mac's Backs in Cleveland, OH
July 31st, Altoona Public Library, Altoona, PA

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 29 Jul 2004, 10:53 AM
Well, I expressed the wish, but I probably just have to bite the bullet and rename the Midas sample databases as .ns4, .ns5 or .ns6 depending on which minimum version they have.  Does anybody think that will confuse people, assuming I make it clear what the names are?

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 28 Jul 2004, 11:37 PM
We have just released a press release that starts:
Genii Software, Ltd. and Granite Software, Inc. today announced a distribution agreement for Genii Software's CoexLinks for Lotus Domino.  This agreement enables both software firms to continue their growth strategies and strengthen their respective technology solutions while extending their product sales to existing and new customers.
I wanted to take this opportunity to explain the decision, what it does mean and what it does not, and why we are taking this step.

What will change?
Granite Software will become the primary distribution source for CoexLinks.  They will also be the first line of support, able to handle pre-sales and post-sales support, including the tough technical questions.  They will take the orders and distribute the licenses.  Granite will also handle evaluation licenses.  The Granite Software website will showcase CoexLinks along with their award winning spamJam.

What will not change?
CoexLinks is still our product, and we will continue to develop and enhance it.  We will continue to sell and support our other products, including the Midas Rich Text LSX (most popular LSX in the world, according to IBM) and other rich text products.  We will continue to develop new coexistence products, including a couple of very cool ones that have been hinted at recently.  Our webpage will still talk about CoexLinks, but will refer customers to the Granite Software site for evaluation licenses and orders.  Heck, I will probably even keep talking about CoexLinks on this blog on occasion.

Why?
There are times in life when you realize you need to "focus like a laser beam", and our focus is starting to drift a bit.  Genii Software is a great software development company, if I may say so.  The problem is, we have been spending so much time selling and supporting, it has been hard to keep developing, and we have way too much we want to develop.  Granite Software is a great software development company as well, as many of you who have used ZMerge and spamJam already know, but they have more focus on sales and support than we do.  On top of that, I have worked closely with Mark Ramos, Granite's President, on a number of projects over the years, and it just made sense to let him take a turn at tackling this tiger.  

In short, we get to develop more products, and focus more on supporting Midas, and Granite gets a great product that should be very appealing to its corporate e-mail customers.  Win-win!

What about existing CoexLinks customers and evaluators?
This is easy.  If you want support from us, we'll continue to support you.  If you want to buy from us, we'll still sell it to you (current evaluators or those who have already had contact with us).  If you want to take advantage of Granite Software's sales and support, go to them.  Granite Software is happy to provide support for existing customers as well as new customers.  Genii Software will continue to support existing customers who wish to keep dealing exclusively with us.  New customers will be steered to Granite Software.  We don't want to make this harder - we want to make this easier.  If it isn't easy enough, let me know personally.  I will make sure it is.

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 28 Jul 2004, 09:05 AM
For those of you who don't yet get nervous about electronic voting machines (after Diebold's CEO vowed "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" for example), there is news that the entire vote from the 2002 Miami-Dade Gubanatorial election, which has been repeatedly questioned because of voting irregularities, was lost in a power outage or two.  OK, now granted that anybody but the Floridians would have backed the information up on DVD's, I am just not sure we are ready for electronic voting.  Hanging chads are bad, and punch cards are a nuisance, but losing all the results?

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 28 Jul 2004, 08:53 AM
I know that it is not terribly constructive to wish this in our weblog, since nobody who can make this happen is listening, but since nobody who can make this happen has listened to such requests elsewhere, why not?

An evaluator tried to use our Send It! sample and got an error because it was in Notes 6 format, and made the justifiable assumption that the sample was not compatible with R5, which is not true.  The sample works great with R5, but when posting it the last time, I must have compressed it by accident after using in Notes 6.  Now, I could leave the extension .ns5, but that really spooks some evaluators, who think databases should always end in .nsf.

So, first, thanks! to the evaluator who actually mentioned it to me so I could fix the problem.  Second, I really, really wish I could set the ODS for a db explicitly without having to rename the extension.  Please, please, please!

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Mon 26 Jul 2004, 03:32 PM
As mentioned on Ed Brill's weblog...

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Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.