IBM Notes Traveler8.5.3 Update Pack 2 adds To Do functionality to the Traveler family. After a quick update to my dev servers this morning here is what it looks like on Android
To Do now appears as a sync option
Here is the To Do app (before any of my To Dos had a chance to sync, trust me you don’t want to see that list)
As Mr. Newman said “a whole lotta blue” (*The Blue Traveler icons were introduced in UP1)
If you use IBM Connections you should be running the mobile app on your phone or tablet. Â Today an update shipped adding lots of new features including support for multiple accounts, useful if you have a need to connect to more than one instance of IBM Connections. Â I received the update on my Android tablet, and am guessing that it is working it’s way through the Apple approval process and will be in the App Store soon
Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get
The same can be said for App Updates on your Mobile Device, except for the most popular apps (i.e. Facebook, some of the Twitter clients) there is very little documentation about what is changed in a new version. Once you upgrade there is no going back.
The most common item listed in the What’s New section for any app “bug fixesâ€, no details. Sometimes when I upgrade my mobile apps I am pleasantly surprised to find something fixed or a great new feature, just as often a feature I relied on changed or was removed.
How do you handle Mobile App upgrades? Do you check your devices App Store regularly for upgrades or do you wait and see?
I guess the same could be said for Gmail, Facebook, you name it………
Last week the Android client for IBM Connections was released in to the Android Market, over the last 24 hours the Blackberry and iOS apps found their way in to their respective app stores as well.
Remember you need to install the Mobile Fix on your IBM Connections 3.0.1 Servers before you can use the clients.
The IBM clients limit you to connecting to one Connections instance which should cover most people, if you need to connect to multiple Connections instances you can always check out iWildFire which supports multiple instances.
The Motorola XOOM is the only device currently on the market running Android 3.0, and was only released a couple of weeks ago so nice turn around on this fix by IBM.
The #1 Reason “Carrier Choice†is a little out of date, as he still has AT&T as the only iPhone carrier, but 2-5 are some really good points for Android.
You probably already know about the Genii Software 11th annual Lotusphere Sessions DB, and the extensions of that done by The Turtle Partnership for iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry. Â Last year there had been an individual effort at an Android app, which that individual chose not to repeat this year. Â So yesterday I was happy to find out that there is an Android app again this year for Lotusphere.
It was also interesting how I found out about it, about a week ago after Rob Novak reminded me about my formspring account I decided to add a link in the header titled “ask a question“, well someone clicked the link and asked about a Lotusphere Android App, though as it turned out they answered a question for me instead. Â Thak you anonymous tipster :-).
Traveler will install 5 icons in total on your Android device, they are
The installer is downloaded from the Traveler Server and used to install the other applications
These two should be obvious
Used to search the directory
This is where options are set for Traveler, and where I am going to show a few settings I changed to better suit my needs.
After Launching Notes Traveler use the Menu key on your device to bring up the settings menu, and select Applications
The first setting I like to tweak is the Signature option, by default it is enabled and set to “Sent by Lotus Notes Traveler†My personal preference is no signature at all, but even in cases where I want a signature, I never use a device specific one, so I simply disable, you can disable or set the default to suit your preferences:
The next step is to customize the Inbox view, and notification settings, from the Applications Menu select preferences:
The Message Preview option determines what you in your inbox, and also as a result how many messages will appear on your screen at once. On the left is an example using message preview, on the right is an example with preview off:
As you can see disabling message preview gives you 3 to 4 more messages per screen, personally I prefer to see more messages per screen and forgo the preview.
While in Preferences you can also set your notification options on receipt of new mail:
Finally the last option I am going to cover today is Auto Sync which you can use to control how frequently your Device syncs with the server. There are two periods you can define, peak and off-peak, the default is for peak to be “Always Connectedâ€, and off-peak “Every 15 minutes†To access these preferences select the Auto Sync option from the Settings menu, here you can set the peak and off peak time windows as well as the sync option for each:
As you can see I have changed my peak time period from “Always Connected†to “Every 15 minutesâ€, I find it is less of a drain on battery life (again you know I worry about these things), and I can always initiate a manual sync from my inbox if I need something more immediate.
I hope these tips help you customize your Traveler on Android experience, and if you have a good tip, do please leave a comment.
This has become a major annoyance for me when using Safari on iOS, and I wonder why Apple does not fix this.
When I use a browser on my desktop, if I want to search I simply type the term in to the Address Bar, this works in Chrome, Firefox, or IE, the three browsers I have installed on my machine.
On my Android device (Droid X) the experience is the same I can type a URL, or search term in to the Address bar.
Then we get to Mobile Safari on iOS (Screenshots are from an iPhone, but the experience is the same on an iPad). For some reason Apple had decided to split URL, and Search in to two different fields.
When you are in the URL field (on the left), the keyboard is designed to type URL only does not have a space bar, so you can not even try to enter a search term there. If you are in the search field (on the right) you then get the regular keyboard with the Space bar allowing you to search:
Is anyone else bothered by this? I frequently find myself trying to search in the URL bar, realizing after I finished typing (the first word) of my search string, only to have to do it over in the Search field, why doesn’t mobile safari just work like every other browser out there?
I am sure there are other browsers available for iOS, Opera comes to mind, Firefox Mobile does not seem to have iOS support yet, but I really haven’t bothered to look at it or other options, the browser that ships should be good enough for my mobile browsing needs.
In case you missed it, yesterday Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.2.1 shipped, officially adding Android support to Lotus Notes Traveler. There is a lot of positive I can say about what IBM has done in providing Android support. From making the right decision to write their own clients, as well as being responsive to suggestions given during the design partner and managed beta process, to delivering a client that throughout beta has been stable, lots of good stuff, however there is one thing I don’t understand and that is the distribution method they have chosen for the Traveler client.
Don’t get me wrong Installing Traveler on your Android phone is a rather simple process, you log on to your company’s Traveler server from your device, select the option to configure your Android Device, which downloads the Lotus Installer, which installs the components of Traveler. The Installer also provides a mechanism to provide updates to the Traveler client as they become available. So what is wrong with this? (should this sound at all complicated to anyone, I assure you it is not, and it is very consistent with the process to install many Android applications from the Android Market)
First in order to install an application from a source other then the Android Market, the “Unknown sources†option must be manually checked on the device:
Second, if you read the announcements carefully there is this little nugget
“AT&T: Lotus Notes Traveler for Android installs and run well on all Android devices, with the exception of Android devices from AT&T, due to an AT&T policy decision that supports the installation of applications only from the Android Marketplace. AT&T is planning to resolve this issue in early 2011.â€
Yep that’s right AT&T currently does not offer the option to allow “Unknown sources†so Traveler can not be used by anyone who has an Android phone from AT&T.
Both of these issues could be easily solved by distributing the Traveler client via the Android Market, I can not understand why this is not being done. While you need to be licensed to use Traveler, with out a server I am not sure what one would actually do with the client, so I don’t see the downside of having it available free in the Market. In the iOS world IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Companion which adds support for encrypted mail in iPhone and iPad is freely available in the App Store. Why would you treat Android differently. Also a Lotus Software presence in the Android Market would be a good thing, since they have virtually none today
Yes there are a few Lotus related applications, but nothing from IBM.
So why not put the Traveler client in the Android market, I can not see the downside, but I do see ease of use, and a real presence for Lotus in the Android Market as a huge upside.
