Microsoft is 19 times as interested in iNotes as IBM?

What has been said:

826.1. Ed Brill (06/20/2009 09:12 PM)

ASW much, Ben? I read your post -- I, like almost half of IBMers in the US, work in a home office and you would have seen a comcast.net hit rather than an ibm.com one. Microsoft hasn't groked telecommuting yet, so many more of their employees work in an office environment.

826.2. Ben Langhinrichs (06/20/2009 09:58 PM)

Ed,

You have a point. I honestly was trying to come up with a good reason, and that is a fair one, especially over a weekend. I was not really aware that Microsoft is so much less into telecommuting (although you would likely know that better than I), but they did have a large lead when it was still work yesterday. Never forget that there may be an obvious reason that you just don't know, I guess.

Ben

826.3. Eric Mack (06/21/2009 01:30 AM)

Perhaps the reason that Microsoft doesn't have many telecommuters is that they do not have a product like (or are unwilling to license) Lotus Notes so they could work anywhere.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I think Ed's comment makes sense.

Eric

826.4. Ed Brill (06/21/2009 02:36 AM)

@Eric, who said Microsoft doesn't license Lotus Notes? :-o

826.5. Mike (06/21/2009 07:28 AM)

Ed is spot on. I read your post, I am an IBMer, and whilst I was working from home this would have appeared to have come from my ISP rather than IBM.

826.6. Anthony Holmes (06/21/2009 07:35 AM)

... Just to back up Ed's comment (because he's only one IBMer). I'm from IBM. I read your post. But the odds of my IP showing up as being from IBM are minuscule. On your stats over a period oftime I would show up as 3-5 non-IBM IPs/IP ranges. I work and connect at home, at a minimum of five customer sites, on trains, in cafes, in airports, whilst walking down the street (often). Even when I happen to be inside an IBM office, there's only a 50/50 chance I'll connect via IBM: odds are I'll just keep using my 3G account because that's what I normally use. And that way of 'working for IBM wherever you happen to be' is the way that all my colleagues work.

It's not necessarily better. It's not as simple as "at the office = working"/"not at the office = not working". You need a bit of discipline to remain organised and maintain work/life balance. But I like it.

From time to time I need to remind myself that this isn't the way that everybody works.

826.7. Mr Ports (21/06/2009 09:53)

Tracking web stats for anything other than general awareness is a mugs game. Lies, damn lies and statistics etc. Another IBMer working from home.

826.8. Bruce Tan (06/21/2009 10:55 AM)

Just another IBMer. Yup. Read yr blog. Won't be from an ibm ip address. Android phone. 3g ip addr from Singapore. And not German :) any feedback is good feedback. Thx.

826.9. Ben Langhinrichs (06/21/2009 12:21 PM)

Thanks to the IBMers and others who have chimed in. I think I get the message that there are more readers from IBM. This is good, as besides trying to promote a product, I am trying to make a point that might be of interest to IBM.

I will point out something that nobody else has. Putting aside the ratio mentioned in the title, which didn't make any sense which is what prompted the post, the flip side is that 29 (new updated stat since I wrote the post) different Microsoft people who do read this from a Microsoft account (and not counting those who over a weekend might read a blog on a home account) HAVE read the post.

So, perhaps the title should have said:

Microsoft interested in iNotes?

It still seems worth noting, even if tracking web stats is a mug's game. I am relieved that there is IBM interest, and, as someone generally unaware of IBM mobility, am intrigued by the ways that IBMers work. I am also intrigued that Microsoft would be so interested.

826.10. Bill (21/06/2009 14:16)

Personally, I use google reader -your unlikely to see individual hits from there for each person that reads your site.

The main premise - is MS more interested than IBM - depends on whether they see your tooling and expertise as useful in terms of migrating enterprise customers such as GSK to their technology.

Surprised they havent made an offer yet.

---* Bill

826.11. Bob Congdon (06/21/2009 10:17 PM)

I work for Microsoft (and this isn't coming from a microsoft.com address). Funny that you get all of these "I work for IBM too" responses but not a one that addresses the original issue.

The code in Domino to convert doclinks dates back to 1996. As you know more than most people, converting doclinks to URLs isn't completely straight forward. I'm not sure how and why this breakage occurs but I haven't seen the code in several years. Would be nice if someone from IBM could address this.

As far as Microsoft vs. IBM telecommuting goes. Connectivity to the office from home (and elsewhere) is at least as good at Microsoft as it was at IBM.

IBM has traditionally been more flexible about working from home than Microsoft but that's changing. My team has two people who work remotely (one in Colorado, another in North Carolina). IBM teams also tend to be much more distributed than at Microsoft. That's good and bad. The bad part was that it was very hard to have any sort of "group culture" when you worked with people who you'd never met.

Office facilities at IBM and Microsoft are quite different. IBM is a sea of cubicles (WTF5 is a rare exception). No private office for anyone below Band 10. Microsoft is primarily private offices. When I worked for IBM I knew quite a few people who worked from home as many days as possible because they hated cubicle life. It's much more pleasant to have you own office.

826.12. Ben Langhinrichs (06/22/2009 12:03 AM)

Bob -

Thanks for chiming is with your thoughts. Skipping the analysis of IBM vs. Microsoft telecommuting and cubicles, about which I have no experience or knowledge, you are right to delve into the nature of the bug. Here is my guess, although I am not privy to any inside information, and simply rely on my many years working with this stuff.

Essentially, there are two MIME rendering engines, the one in the Notes client and the one in the Domino server. While it might seem that the latter is used in iNotes, which is on the server, there is strong evidece that it is not. Instead, the Domino HTTP engine seeps to be used. While this may or may not share much code with the MIME engine, it has some clear and recognizable differences For example, a tabbed table sent via email and rendered to MIME becomes a regular table, but a tabbed table displayed through iNotes shows like a tabbed table does in a Domino web page - as links to different tabs. (This is a topic for a different post, as it then breaks completely when mailed)

Historically, the Domino web server doesn't serve up doclinks that link to a database which is not on that server. Hence, the doclinks in this example of not on that server, so the doclinks are not rendered.

The problem is, while this may have made a bit of sense for the Domino web engine, it makes none for mail, since the doclinks are likely to be from an application server and the iNotes server is a mail server. This problem thus arises frequently. The broken logic is that you would want to use the logic, and not mail it somewhere else.

- Ben

826.13. Bob Congdon (06/22/2009 04:20 AM)

Ben,

Yes, you're right: the Domino web engine would not serve doclinks for databases that weren't on the server. Beyond that, things get complicated.

The same HTML rendering code is used for both the Mail router and the Domino web server. The router uses it to dynamically convert CD records to HTML. The HTML rendering engine has a set of callbacks that make it behave differently, for example, for URL generation of images, doclinks. etc.

In the Domino web server, doclinks to local databases could always be resolved to URLs. For off-server doclinks I'm not sure if it had enough information to know whether the links would be reachable. Are you saying that when the Mail router generates these doclinks it's always, or at least usually, correct? What about replicas and the like?

826.14. Ben Langhinrichs (06/22/2009 04:50 AM)

Bob,

I certainly would not say that the doclinks going out via email are always correct, just that they are actually present. There are a number of issues with doclinks going out, but each major version, IBM gets closer to their working consistently. In R5, they were all stripped. In ND6/6.5/7, they were included but without dealing effectively with anchor links, private views, doclinks on subforms and some other issues. In Notes 8/8.5 (and 7.0.4), they have fixed the anchor link problem, at least mostly, but not all of the others.

Ben

826.15. Bilal Jaffery (22/06/2009 07:11)

Count another one here. Another IBMer who works from home and you will see a Canadian IP on top.

826.16. Roberto Boccadoro (06/23/2009 06:05 PM)

Ben, check also for Italian IP addresses :-)