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Category teamstudio unplugged iPad iPhone apps
For quite a while--well before we came up with the idea for Teamstudio Unplugged--we’ve been pretty “plugged in” to what’s happening in the mobile world.  We use a mixture of mobile devices (mostly BlackBerries, with a sprinkling of iPhones, and even one Windows Mobile device).  Personally, I’m an iPhone user, and a self-confessed gadget hound, so it won’t surprise you to know that my iPad arrived on April 3, 2010, the first day it was available in the U.S.

I had high hopes for this device.  As I started to use it, I was very impressed with the browser experience, and found it to be a fantastic e-reader and video player.  I was very surprised at how well the keyboard worked, and once I installed the iWork (word processor, spreadsheet and presentation) apps, I started to believe that I could finally ditch my 5.6 pound laptop.  (The iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds.)

Add Teamstudio Unplugged to this setup, so I could access my Notes apps on my iPad, and this would be unbeatable, thought I.  (The iPhone/iPad version of Unplugged is due to ship in October.)

There’s just one problem.  Apple hasn’t quite sorted out the whole issue of file transfer.  If I create a document in Pages on the iPad, it gets stored into “My Documents,” a file storage area that is specific to that app.  If I want to store that document on my laptop, I have to “export” it.  Then, I can either email it to myself (yuk), or sync via iTunes and copy the file out from there (yuk).  The other option is to use the (beta) service iWork.com.  This seems to work OK, but requires me putting my documents in the hands of a third party (Apple), and although the service is free while it’s in beta, I assume it will cost money at some point.

All of this made me start to doubt whether Apple will maintain its lead in the tablet market as these devices start to make their way into the enterprise.  The fact that Dell, Acer and (allegedly) HP are bringing out Android-based tablets in the near future suggests that the competition in this area may start to heat up.  Corporate purchasing managers who are already committed to one of those three vendors for their PC needs may feel more comfortable with purchasing tablet devices from them.

However, Google doesn’t seem to be doing much to make Android corporate-friendly, with no support for remote wipe and only third-party support for Exchange syncing.  (Before you ask, Unplugged support for Android is scheduled for November.)

So, it’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.  Will the tablet take off as a corporate device at all?  If so, will Apple maintain its lead, or will the PC manufacturers add the features that corporate buyers need?  Whatever happens, at least you’ll be able to access your Lotus Notes apps on any of these devices.

Posted by Nigel Cheshire At 4:53 PM | Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Hiring

We are seeking top-notch senior software engineers to work at our corporate headquarters. Every time we've tried to do this in the past, we get deluged with hundreds of resumes, the vast majority of which are completely worthless. How do you sort the wheat from the chaff? When you think about it, resumes are largely useless. It's too easy to lie, and it's way too easy to email a resume to hundreds of jobs just to see what sticks.

So this time, we decided to take a different approach. We don't want people to send resumes. We decided to ask people to complete a programming task - something that is hard enough to be able to tell whether they are any good, but interesting enough that they will have fun doing it. At least it should be a lot more fun than writing a resume with a covering letter. Plus, the responses will tell us all we need to know about whether this person can do the job or not. The task is detailed below. Interested?

The job:

Languages: C++ and Java on Windows with some Objective C.
Hardware: a range of devices from iPhone to iSeries.
Things you'll be with working on/with: Eclipse plugins, iPhone/Blackberry development, Lotus Notes API, compilers/parsers/interpreters, cross-platform (Win32/64/iSeries/AIX/Solaris/Linux/OS X), build and release automation, unit testing.

The environment:

Our offices are based in the Cummings Center, Beverly, MA. Ideally, we would like you to be office based, but if you live too far away to commute every day, one day a week in the office is OK. Software engineers here at Teamstudio get private offices and a range of great benefits. But the main reason they work here is that they love what they do.

How to apply:

DO NOT SEND A RESUME. Instead, we would like you to complete the task below. Submissions should include your code and any related files, along with any details you would like to provide about the tools and development environment you used, and should be emailed to sserecruit@teamstudio.com. You can use a language of your choice, but keep in mind that most of the code written at Teamstudio is in C++ or Java. This is the only way to apply for this position. We will not accept resumes. If you have technical questions directly related to the task, you can send them to sserecruit@teamstudio.com.

The task:

Write a program that will read a source file written in the LOLCODE programming language and execute it.

Posted by Nigel Cheshire At 11:56 AM | Location Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Category Domino Designer 8.5 Teamstudio CIAO platforms

Any time there's a significant new release of Notes/Domino, especially one that includes a new type of design element (e.g. xpages), we get a flurry of questions from customers that go along the lines of "when are you going to support the new version of N/D?" The implication is that they really need, say, CIAO support for the new design element, because they're starting to use the new version right away.

Of course, in some cases that's true, but in some other cases, while the early adopters in the dev team might be playing with the new features, it will take a while for the new version of the platform to be rolled out to the extent that the new design elements can be incorporated into production apps.

Although we've been a design partner for 8.5, that doesn't significantly help with getting even a compatibility release out within a short time after 8.5 ships. The reasons are simple, and there are two of them. First, the internals of N/D keep moving around right up until the ship date. So we can't finalize our release until after that happens. Second, you might be surprised at how many different product variants we actually support. I was!

• We have 8 client-based developer tools, plus two server-based tools that are supported on Windows only (i.e. 10).
• Add to that 2 server-based tools that we support on 5 different O/S platforms (another 10 for a total of 20).
• All of the above are supported in two different languages, English and Japanese. (That makes 40.)
• Plus two (English-only, O/S independent) filter packs (42).
• Build Manager + Agent Registry are currently English only, Windows only (44).
• Usage Monitor + Security Manager are supported on 5 different O/S platforms and in 2 languages (64).

So, we have a total of 64 different product configurations to update, build and test for each release. By the summer, that number will balloon to 86 configurations. Oh, and we support (and therefore test) all of these configurations across all versions of Notes/Domino from R5 up.

So, when you hear that it'll take us a few weeks to get our 8.5 compatibility release out, please go easy on us. We have a lot of work to do!

Posted by Nigel Cheshire At 10:17 AM | Location Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Discussion Industry News
Throughout the history of Teamstudio (going back to January 1996), we've always tried to do the "Right Thing." I suppose it's a bit like Google's unofficial motto "don't be evil" (on a much smaller scale, of course). I remember back in 1997 or '98, we made a release of Configurator that had the potential to corrupt a database design. It was pretty unlikely to happen, and we thought pretty hard about whether we wanted the hassle of updating and distributing a new version of the product. But we stuck to our principles, and made a point to mail out a new CD (remember those things?) to every single Configurator customer. We even posted a note right on the homepage of Teamstudio.com telling the world about our screw-up. We wanted to do the Right Thing.

So, that's why it irked me so much to find out that an employee of IT Governance, the publisher of Craig's book, has been spamming the DeveloperWorks forums, as well as LinkedIn discussion groups (and God knows where else) in a pathetic attempt to promote the book. We've contacted this person, and asked her to remove these spam posts, but of course she is not a Teamstudio employee, so we can't make her do anything. The thing that really bugs me about this is that she chose to mention Teamstudio in every single spam posting. Ugh.

Anyhow, for anyone who's been irritated by these acts of online vandalism, all I can do is apologize on their behalf. We've made it very clear to these people that we disapprove of their marketing approach. It's not what we would call doing the Right Thing.

Posted by Nigel Cheshire At 10:29 AM | Location Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (2) |