For most of you this information is probably not new any more. However, I am back from my three weeks holidays now and it’s time to catch up with all the major things that happened while I was away. My immediate attention back at work will be:

• The daylight saving changes in New Zealand and their impact to Lotus Notes and Domino products
• The ‘gold’ release of Lotus Notes and Domino 8

Unfortunately I came back with some kind of nasty bug that prevented me from being at work for the best half of last week and most of the current week. And I haven’t even been in any tropical country, just Germany! Once fully recovered I will hopefully be able to maintain this blog a bit more frequently.

Computerworld New Zealand recently published an article naming the top ten dead or dying skills in the IT industry.

While I am glad that Lotus Notes and Domino is not part of the list I am not particular sure if this aggregation is 100 percent true for New Zealand market since the original script had been published via www.computerworld.com and the absolute market share for Lotus products in New Zealand currently does not seem to be in best shape.

Nevertheless it is definitely to early for Microsoft to celebrate. From my perspective IBM recently recognized their lack of awareness in the local market during the past few years and does a great effort now to keep the current stakes as a first priority and to gain parts of the market back subsequently.

I knew there must be a catch with the upgrade to WordPress 2.2. Whereas everything seemed to be all right short after the installation I recognized today that all the linked uploaded files could not be found any more.

The reason for this seemed obvious. Since I followed the upgrade instructions to delete/remove all the existing wp-files replacing them with the new versions in the way that I removed the whole wp-installation replacing it with the new code. Given that all uploaded files are being placed in the wp-content/upload folder they could impossibly re-appear after the upgrade.

Fortunately I did a full backup of all my files and folders (and not only the customized once) prior to the installation so I could restore them pretty immediately after I discovered the issue. The next time I am pretty much wiser and will remember that the wp-content folder does require some special care.

Well, I thought I won’t get too excited about the Beta 3 of Notes/Domino and kind of decided to wait for the ‘Gold’ release before giving it a next try. I guess i have to admit that I already got somehow addicted and I am currently downloading the Beta 3 of the Notes 8 client available since about 2 hours at the Beta 3 download site.

I have just updated this blog to WordPress version 2.2 and I am positive surprised that everything went so smoothly. It has basically truly been as the instructions describe: Upload the files, unpack the folder, run the update and away you go. On top of that I of course had to re-initiate the plug-ins and my custom theme again but I guess this are some of the basics you should know how to deal with.

By the way – someone might wonder why a lotus chap is not using the IBM provided blog-template. Haven’t really considered it yet since I do not own a Domino server where I could run this application and I do not have enough funding to buy into an own dedicated server facing the web. Whereas I would like to do that .