Comments on: A little bit of history….Lotus Notes http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/ the mark cuban weblog Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:14:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Michael Joyce http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5865 Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:06:16 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5865 In response to Phil.

\”in my 10 years of developing apps with it I have found that the people who hate it are generally the ones who just haven\’t got a clue about how to use it,\”

The whole point of email and calendar functionality is that they should be easy to use. Most people I have heard complaining are users. Users require things to be no more clunky and complicated than the functionality requires. I.e. simple rather than simplistic.

]]> By: wow powerleveling http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5862 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:28 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5862 It’s a shame that some people seem to “get” Notes and others not. When you’re pushing it as so much more than an email app and you see their eyes glaze over it feels like such a waste of a great app.

]]> By: runescape money http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5863 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:28 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5863 It was a completely new way of doing things, and as Mark notes, it should have become the front end to the internet. (Come to think of it, blogs are a lot like a basic Notes application from back then.) I was always surprised that it never took off quite the way I expected; when it did become popular, other companies were primarily using it for email and ignored its amazing potential for collaborative applications.

]]> By: Ben http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5826 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5826 What a wonderful stroll down memory lane. I got into Notes purely by accident when my then employer wanted it. We stuck it on a FSIOP in our AS/400, using a SMTP MTA for Officevision integration. It was a bit of a trial by fire – the ink on the Redbook was still wet :-)

I thought it was purely an email app but, as I continued using it, I gradually realised that it could do so much more and now it can do literally anything. I’ve been a freelance Domino Infrastructure Consultant since then and wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s a shame that some people seem to “get” Notes and others not. When you’re pushing it as so much more than an email app and you see their eyes glaze over it feels like such a waste of a great app. Saying that, it can be hard to explain to decision makers exactly what it can do.

Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Notes client. For the average user it’s just too clunky, cumbersome and non-intuitive.

However, it’s got a heck of a lot slicker on R6 and so iNotes web client in R7B2 is just superb – finally a useable alternative! In addition, with the rich client on the horizon I see the future as extremely exciting. I feel Domino’s only weakness was the client and with a fantastic iNotes web (and Outlook) client and the pending rich client plug-ins that weakness is finally being addressed.

Here’s to another 15 years!

]]> By: Phil Thain http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5827 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5827 I love Lotus Notes!

To all the Notes haters I have this to say: in my 10 years of developing apps with it I have found that the people who hate it are generally the ones who just haven’t got a clue about how to use it, how it can be deployed or what it can do for them …

]]> By: Paul Bowman http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5828 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5828 I have been developing with Notes, SQL, VB, Java and know c# for 5 years or so.
I agree that a notes database can be slow just like a Relational database can be if it poorly designed. Notes is an excellent product for what it does Email, Web, App Server all out of the box. If you want a Microsoft offering you have to buy all the bits and fit them together. I say that most people cannot pigeon-hole Notes like they can say Exchange (Exchange = EMail). Unfortunaltely IBM have a tendency to market their products poorly unlike Microsoft who do.

]]> By: ScottR http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5829 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5829 FYI:
Notes actually started life as an unsupported internal ‘chat’ application at Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 80s.

Running over DECnet.

On the VAX/VMS operating system.

Before PCs even existed.

]]> By: manish jain http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5830 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5830 mark,

so true that Lotus Notes could have been the “next big thing”, I still yearn for a way to take databases of information with me on the road but that is not possible with the way the web architecture is built and everyone is on-demand via HTTP pulls.

]]> By: Jason Chapman http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5831 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5831 Very interesting piece of history. I never particularly cared for Notes, however, I do NOW see the potential of what could have been. Great vision!

]]> By: Paul Zorovich http://blogmaverick.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5832 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:01:27 +0000 http://blogmaverick.wordpress.com/2004/12/14/a-little-bit-of-history-lotus-notes/#comment-5832 Good reading!

I remember going up to Lotus in Cambridge in ’91 or ’92 to take an Intro to Notes class — it was the weekend before Notes v2.1 was released, and all I could think of was “Damn, this is some hot stuff right here!” My current firm is a Notes shop, and we’ve never been shut down by trojans or viruses. Ever. Thanks for the memories, Cubes!

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