Mick Moignard’s Blog

Photos of my 345 on Blackstone Models website

Mick Moignard — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:32:31 +0100

A couple of pics of my C-19 #345 have appeared on Blackstone's web site at http://www.blackstonemodels.com/modelphotos/modelphotos.php#moignard

Thanks, guys, for placing those photos. Proud to be in the same company as the photos already there.

345 is a reworked first run C-19, detailed specifically as the Durango, Co., switcher in 1951 before it was wrecked in the making of the movie Denver and Rio Grande, where it sat in for #268.

Tender detailing includes all-new piping on the tender sides, and new coal. The loco has much more extensive work with many new scratchbuilt details: flanger blade on the pilot truck and the actuating cylinder and levers on the deck, new oilboxes on the smokebox sides, new soldered brass spark arrestor, rear sander lines and valves on the rear of the sand dome. The bell and whistle castings have been reworked and redetailed, and the flag holder on the right cab side was replaced with a new one in the correct location.

The loco was then carefully patch-painted where needed, and weathered according to photos taken in May 1951, and a crew added to the cab using modified Woodland Scenics figures.

If you use Domino Designer Help in 8.5....

Mick Moignard — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:33:23 +0100

If you like the old Designer Help in 8.5, and want to continue to use it like you've used designer help for the last however many years it is, then I suggest you keep a copy of the Designer Help database before you install Domino Designer 9.

The new Designer help in 9 does not contain anything very useful, so you have to use the Eclipse-based help in Designer 9 to check stuff. I'm sure that there is a good set of use cases for this change, but I for one think it's retrograde. I find looking up syntax way faster in the old Notes database style than in the Eclipse one, and for @formula and LotusScript, rather more usable too. But I guess I'll get used to this new help management.

Camp 93 at Abingdon

Mick Moignard — Mon, 4 Mar 2013 09:03:43 +0100

We took Camp 93 to the Abingdon Club's show on Saturday, and came away with the best in show award; see the pic below.

Thanks to Phil Baxendale and Steve Probets from my club in Princes Risborough for coming along as the layout crew, and Max Brayne for helping out on Saturday.

Photo from Anne Diamond.

Bug fix for Andre Guirard’s Design Element Search

Mick Moignard — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:16:14 +0100

Back in 2007 Andre Guirard (by the way, Andre, are you still in the Notes world?) described his Design Element Search tool. A month ago I needed a tool like this one, and Google showed up Andre's post.

5 minutes later, I was testing away, and found that it wasn't detecting some text items in some script libraries. Much debugging time later (by the way, if debugging SAX parser events, you need to set breakpoints in them before processing the SAX, otherwise you never get to see the exits in action), I found the issue.

Andre uses the DXLExporter to translate items to DXL, and piplines the output straight in to the SAX parser. And what I found was that in the piece of code that actually searches the XML for the specified strings - the function SaxChars in the object DxlScanDesElementFilter, the string "characters" was truncated at what was the first "<" sign in the code.

So what I did was this: to understand what was going on, in the Sub New for DxlScanDesElementFilter, instead of pipelining the output from the DXL exporter to the SAX, I captured it so I could look at it. And here, I could see the that the "<" characters in the code were expressed in the XML as < - along with > and & for > and & symbols. Now I was in business; knowing that these characters were there expressed like that, I could deal with it.

Here's Andre's original New for the class:

Sub New(ncoll As NotesNoteCollection, searchTerms As Variant, langFlags As Integer)
' ncoll = design notes to scan.
' searchTerms = array of strings to search for,
' langFlags = which languages to search in ("or" of SEEK_ values)
Dim dxle As NotesDXLExporter
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim saxp As NotesSaxParser
m_langFlags = langFlags
m_searchTerms = searchTerms
Set m_db = ncoll.Parent
Set collection = m_db.CreateNoteCollection(False)
Set dxle = session.CreateDXLExporter(ncoll)
Set saxp = session.CreateSAXParser(dxle)
On Event SAX_StartElement From saxp Call saxstartelem
' We have all the info we need, so parse immediately.
dxle.process
End Sub

And here's what I did to it; running the data out of the DXLExporter to a stream, reading the stream as a single item, doing a replace on it, and then rewriting the stream before pushing it into the SAX parser.

Sub New(ncoll As NotesNoteCollection, searchTerms As Variant, langFlags As Integer)
' ncoll = design notes to scan.
' searchTerms = array of strings to search for,
' langFlags = which languages to search in ("or" of SEEK_ values)
'modified Mick Moignard Feb 2012: search all LotusScript properly...
' run the DXL export thru a stream, fix some characters in it, then parse it....
Dim dxle As NotesDXLExporter
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim saxp As NotesSAXParser
m_langFlags = langFlags
m_searchTerms = searchTerms
Set m_db = ncoll.Parent
Set collection = m_db.CreateNoteCollection(False)
Set dxle = session.CreateDXLExporter(ncoll)
'push the DXLEport data into a stream
Dim dxlout As NotesStream
Set DXLOut = session.CreateStream
Call dxle.setOutput(DXLOut)
dxle.process
'change certain character strings in the stream to something else
Dim streamtext As String
streamtext = dxlout.readtext
streamtext = Replace(streamtext,Split("<,>,&",","), Split("#,#,#",","),,,1)
'rewrite the stream and do the SAX
dxlout.truncate
dxlout.writetext(streamtext)
Set saxp = session.CreateSAXParser(dxlout)
On Event SAX_StartElement From saxp Call saxstartelem
' We have all the info we need, so parse immediately.
saxp.process
End Sub

Worked perfectly, unless, that is, you wanted to search for strings with <> or & in them, that is.

OpenByReplicaID tries to open the Wrong DB and Fails!

Mick Moignard — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:30:16 +0100

Have an application that's been running for years and years, and works just fine, apart from one user who is reporting an error.

The line of code in question is run locally on the client, from a local database, and tries to open another local database with:

If userdatabase.OpenByReplicaID("", "") = True then

It fails for just the one user with a 4060 error, User cannot open database . The database noted in the error is available locally, has a different replica to that used in the call, and can be opened manually by the user.

I've checked

Is there another local replica of the database we want to open which won't let him in?: No.
Can this user actually open the intended target database manually?: Yes
Does this user have anything odd about ACL access to the database running the code: No. Same as everyone else (it's via a Group of which he's a member)
Does the user get an ESA at that line of code: No (I have not checked his local ECL, but it appears to be being refreshed from the Admin ECL which means it should be the same as everyone else

When I run the code in the debugger, that line of code triggers the error handler. At that point, Userdatabase is not open, doesn't have a replicaID value, but does have the filepath set - to that of the erroneous database.

Client version is 852FP3: everyone else for whom the code works is running either earlier versions of 852 or some eversion of 853, and apart from a local corruption of some sort, that's the only thing I can think of at this point in time.

Any suggestions?

Embedded View Show Single Category selection error.

Mick Moignard — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:21:40 +0100

Had a problem reported last week to do with a Show Single Category embedded view showing the wrong documents; documents that strictly didn't match the embedded view selection.

The parent document has a reference number* value, and that's used to drive the selection in the embedded view, of bill documents. What we had was parent documents numbered:

1000
100000001

And some bills for parent 1000. But those bills showed up in the embedded view for both parent documents. And that was confusing at best and plain wrong the rest of the time.

Fortunately, once I'd done the due diligence on the error reports: yes, there are only four bills in total here and yes, they all really belonged to 1000 and not 100000001, and yes, there was no error in how they were generated, there was an easy fix. The bill documents had the correct reference, and the embedded view, when opened as a view by itself, showed them correctly, so the issue was localised to the way Notes handles the show single category in the embedded view. What Notes is doing is a partial match, so bills for 1000 matched 1000 and 100000001.

So all I had to do was

Change the view categorised column formula from fieldname to fieldname + "*#*"
Change the enbedded view Show Single Category formula also to fieldname + "*#*"

And all was well again.

* It's not a real number, it's a reference value stored as a string, which like so many things of this type is referred to as a number. I know that real numbers are things you do arithmetic with.

iOS6... Downloading now.

Mick Moignard — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:09:27 +0100

Just downloading to my iPhone 4s now.... ...

SoundTraxx Dealer Training

Mick Moignard — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:47:22 +0100

I'm now SoundTraxx and Blackstone Models Factory Trained, having been on the factory training workshop last week along with Ted Smale and Jon Jewitt from Sunningwell Command Control. We had a great week in Durango with Soundtraxx, and I'd recommend this seminar to anyone who is selling and servicing SoundTraxx and Blackstone products.

Now, Durango takes a little getting to from the UK. We took the 4:00 bus to Heathrow, then UA929 to Denver. This stops at ORD where we enter the US, and then becomes a domestic flight, requiring us to go through immigration and customs there, and then continue on a different plane, even though the flight number is the same. Good thing it was delayed about 40 minutes in departing, otherwise we'd have missed it in the delays in immigration and then getting back through security again - as it was, we arrived at the gate just as the last passengers were boarding. We'd planned a 7 hour stop in Denver, so that we could go visit Caboose Hobbies. DIA is rather well planned, and the total time from gate to hire car could not have been more than half an hour in, and when we got back again, hire car to sitting down to some dinner in one of the many restaurants didn't take much longer. Went downhill a bit after that, when we got to the gate area for United's local flights, to find that these services out of Denver were majorly disrupted because of the heat affecting aircraft takeoff weights. United's desk staff had little more idea than the passengers did of what was going on, and the line at the customer service desk - two staff on duty - was at least 200 feet long at one point. Fortunately, our flight was just late, rather than cancelled, which meant that we were three hours late to Durango, arriving around midnight-30, hotel around 01:30 once we'd collected a hire car. Yes, National's staff stayed around to deal with our reservation. Good on them.
Tuesday we went railfanning. After chasing the third train as far as the underpass beyond Hermosa, we stopped off at my friend Mark Kasprowicz's place in Hermosa. He took us to visit a huge O-scale Great Northern layout, Mark drive us up to Silverton and on to Animas Forks. 80 degree heat, even up there above 11000 feet. Fascinating stuff, especially if you've read Sloan's Rainbow Route, to see the remains of the the Silver Lake, Sunnyside and Gold Prince mills, and the ghost towns of Eureka and Animas forks.

Wednesday we started the course itself, with a meetup at the factory and a factory tour. Here we met office, development and production staff, as well as a quick view of the factory room itself. Soundtraxx design, but don't actually make, the blank PCBs for their products, but they do install the components to the boards, and do all the rest of the assembly at this now a little cramped location. Boards are populated with components that are already programmed, so once the solder operations are done, the board is ready for test and packaging. They also do any repairs to decoders here - and be assured - decoders that can be repaired are repaired. You don't automatically get a replacement. We could also see why the "purple" Tsunamis are more expensive than the board replacements, because the (incredibly expensive) flexible wires have to be hand-soldered to the decoder before the purple shrink-wrap is added.

That over, we all headed up to Fort Lewis College the other side of Durango for the rest of the week. The rest of Wednesday was a high-level overview of the company, of DCC and DCC sound, and then went on to product line descriptions - not just the Soundtraxx-brand decoders but also all the OEM ones, as well as the Blackstone Models range, and we also covered some sales tools and methods - and there was some good advice in here about how to raise footfall with clinics and other demonstrations. We then wound down at the Bar-D Chuckwagon - but no beer!

Thursday we did some installs - split into advanced and beginner groups, and worked with locos kindly supplied by Bachmann and Kato. The advanced group, which I joined, did a moderately complex install in a Bachmann 2-10-2 which involved rewiring the entire loco and tender all but the headlight, and using a DBX9000 between engine and tender. The Kato F40PH install was much simpler. The loco is already fitted with a speaker clip and the board with two LEDS, so all we has to do was add third LED to the board and solder two wires to the speaker, and snap it all back together. After that, we did some programming with NCE-supplied Powercabs - and I have to say that the bulk of this was about how to drive the Powercab rather than programming the Tsunami, but still interesting. End of the day was a D&S roundhouse and yard tour hosted by Soundtraxx's Jarrette Ireland and Blackstone's Jeff Johnson, followed by a Mexican buffet in the museum, this time with beer. Evenings don't get much better than that.

Friday was break day. Given the course material - model train DCC, and the location, Durango, a ride on the Durango & Silverton could not be missed with my favourite K-36, #486. For those who've ridden, you know what the ride is all about. For those who have not, all I can say is go and ride it. I've ridden quite a few heritage trains, and the D&S is about the best there is. It's certainly better than anything we have in the UK from a scenery point of view, and the length of the ride.

Saturday saw three breakout sessions, of which we could attend any two. Ted and Jon covered SurroundTraxx, while I did Advanced Programming and Creative Decoder Installs. Jarrette covered the programming session, two hours reviewing and hands-on playing with much of the features of the Tsumani, using the two locos we'd installed on the Thursday as guineapigs. Pity there wasn't time to cover more. I thought I knew the Tsunami well, but there were still things I learned from this session, particularly diesel-related functions. I'm more of steam man. George Bogatiuk discussed Creative Installs - particularly alternative decoder selections, speaker location planning and more. Mostly concentrated on diesels, but with some very useful hints and tips.

Rest of Saturday was a Q&A with SoundTraxx staff; where we pressed them on what's coming next, and they played coy, as you might expect. Specific questions I asked were on UK versions of the Tsunami, adding cylinder drain cock sounds to steam Tsunamis, suppressing the first chuff, and more. No promises were made, but they are listening acutely to these sorts of requests, so we live in hope.

Overall? I think that there were two things specifically that I brought away from the week. Or three. First, SoundTraxx staff are incredibly passionate about their products and about the company they work for. SoundTraxx as a company comes over as an employer with high but fair expectations of it's staff, and every bit willing to help the staff meet those expectations. Indeed, on the Friday, Steve Dominguez - President and Chief Engineer, and Nancy Workman, VP of just about everything else, missed the train ride because they were in Denver at the Colorado Companies to Watch 2012 awards. Secondly, the effort that they put into the week showed. Everything happened and worked as intended, or if it didn't, they covered up so well that nobody noticed. Nothing went wrong, and everything happened exactly to schedule. I've attended many training courses and business conferences, and none - and that includes Lotusphere - have been as well organised as this one, though some have been close. Thanks have to go to Allison, Jaime, Jarrette, George, Jeff, Jessica, Dan, Steve and Nancy for all of that and looking after us so well, and to Fort Lewis College for their facilities and services. The third point of note: Durango itself, and of course the D&S. What a location! I'll be back. .

Pointless Error Messages #2147

Mick Moignard — Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:15:41 +0100

We've all seen pointless dialog boxes before. Here's one from Db2 Express-C 9.7:

Ethically Hacking Domino

Mick Moignard — Tue, 29 May 2012 13:51:17 +0100

Went to Paul Mooney/Bluewave's Domino Ethical Hacking workshop last week, and I'm rather glad I did. Tom Duff's comment on Paul's post is pretty much on the money, very scary stuff indeed, and really made you think. Paul showed and discussed a whole range of tools and techniques that are used by the bad guys out there, and each time then brought the discussion back to what you need to do in your corporate and Domino environment to be able to guard against them. Not all the solutions, by any means, are in Domino. Some are plain and ordinary good practice. Some are education. Some are firewall and network configurations, and then there are things you can and should do in Domino - and hopefully you've already done the important ones in your own environment.

But seeing and discussing the techniques and tools Paul mentioned should make you more wary of your own internet usage, too. One hacking technique in use involves capturing logon information and stealing the web session - web sites that use SSL for logon only and then revert back to HTTP for the rest of the session are vulnerable to this technique, and there are other things that this session will make you more aware of, too.

If you get the chance, and you have an interest in keeping your Domino servers secure on the web, go along to Paul's session. And be ready to be scared.

Connections How-To

Mick Moignard — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:58:00 +0100

Big shout out to Paul and Gab for Connections101. Not something I'm personally interested in right now, but two/three years ago when I set up a Connections pilot on connections 2.0, I used a guide that Jon Mell had produced, and was heartily grateful for it. Even with it there was a step I missed, which Stuart McIntyre showed me how to solve. Another example of assistance and learning from those who've gone before you, and trying only to make new mistakes yourself. I failed that one.

My experiences with Connections as a longtime Domino person were painful, even with the guides and help I had. I'm sure that Connections101 will make a big difference, and I'll keep and eye on it as it grows, More power to you both.

Time for Change

Mick Moignard — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:22:06 +0100

No, I'm not leaving the Yellowsphere. But I am leaving Unipart, my employer of 28 years, as they've decided that Lotus Notes consulting isn't core business and are closing that business unit.

I'm setting up on my own - to do Lotus Notes and Domino business rather much as I have been up to now. Starting off working with some loyal customers whose business I appreciate and treasure. I'm hoping to be able to find the time also to go find new customers, learn some new skills, and hopefully have some fun doing so. I'm a reasonably positive sort of person, so none of this is getting me down - to be honest, I'd rather seen it coming anyway. At least, I figured that the thing itself would happen, but not exactly when.

So now I have even more reason to spend as much of Lotusphere 2012 as possible in the bar, er, I mean networking. See you all there.

Someone’s missed a trick here...

Mick Moignard — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:09:21 +0100

It's been quite a wait for a Sametime client for iPhone/iPad/iPod devices, and the two come along almost at once. And one of them is rather more useful than the other.

IBM's is at least free, but requires first that you have Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 installed and also that you have a Sametime Proxy server installed as well. While you can get the app right now in the Apple AppStore, you won't be able to use it for a while.

However, Conundrum have had their QuipIM product in the app store for a few weeks now. It's not free (�2.99), but it works with earlier versions of Sametime, and it does just work. I had to set it to use Port 80 rather that 1533 to get to my corporate site, but it could see im.bleedyellow.com directly via port 80. And it does just appear to work. It can also log in to two separate Sametimes at once. I can't see whether IBM's can do that, but then again, as it can't connect to either site I tried, I don;t actually know whether it can do two simultaneous Sametimes or not.

I've suspect that IBM 's version has all sorts of features and functions that QuipIM doesn't, but when you're faced with a choice of a product that works now and one that doesn't, which will you go for?

Tsunami Clinic: now available as Handouts

Mick Moignard — Tue, 8 Nov 2011 18:14:43 +0100

I was asked at the Slim gauge Circle meeting last Sunday if I could make a version of the Tsunami slides that isn't 51 pages. There's a handouts version of the slides as a PDF on the downloads page.

Mick

Clinics at NMRA Bournemouth - slides posted.

Mick Moignard — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:01:01 +0100

Slides from my two clinics at the NMRA BR Convention in Bournemouth are now posted on the downloads page. I hope you find these useful, and for those hardy souls who came to the Sunday one on Tsunamis, where my laptop was playing up, I don't think you - and I - actually missed much, now that I've looked again at the slides.

Do let me know iif there's anything that needs expanding, and if anyone would like me to come and do these clinics at their club, let me know.

Traveler and iOS5: just works. Well nearly.

Mick Moignard — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:08:25 +0100

Installed iOS5 on my iPod Touch last night and this morning.

Like many people, I got the stuff downloaded last night, but suffered the 3200 error with Apple's servers being busy and could not complete the install. So I did the actual install this morning, where it worked first time, though only the standard apps worked once it "completed" the setup. Took a complete power-off of the iPod and a restart of Windows and iTunes before iTunes would see the iPod again and put everything back on it.

And Traveler continues its reputation: it just works. Mail is fine. I've not seen any mail issues with any of it in playing with it sporadically during the day,. There's a few changes you'll see quite quickly - such as Mark as Unread on an inbox item is now just Flag - and you have the choice to Flag it or Mark it Unread. Mark Unread syncs back to Notes as it did before, but the new Flag doesn't. I'm also not entirely keen on how conversations display in the inbox if there's more than one unread item in the conversation, or when an unread item isn't the most recent in the list, but I guess that's an Apple gripe rather than a Traveler one. What I'd really like to see is All Documents synced to the device: which the iPod does seem to be able to do with Gmail - showing All Mail.

Contacts seems to work just fine. Not seen any issues here.

However, there is a calendar issue which is quite serious: it seems to be totally lost on repeating meetings that were set up in Notes. One example: I have one that I set up yesterday, that repeats 4 dates, 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month for 4 meetings. Notes has it as 25/10, 8 and 22/11 and 13/12. The iPod has 25/10, and if you open that entry, it says it's repeating weekly. However, it also only appears on the correct dates. Another example is one that was set up for 17 June repeated every 3 months, which on the iPod appears from 17 June onwards repeating every two weeks: and actually appears on the iPod calendar on those dates. Moral: check back with your Notes calendar via iNotes or the client!

IOS5 has a new reminders app. Not wanting to undermine the efforts of the guys behind NotesF1 - which doesn't yet work on iOS5 - but it would be nice to see this reminders app connected to the Notes to-do list.

Some other Notes-related things I've tried also work: SnappFiles, and the IBM Connections app both work OK, too.

Putting your head above the parapet. You may get shot at.

Mick Moignard — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:35:34 +0100

No, this is nothing about the riots over here in the UK. It's about making statements and opinions, and finding that other people may disagree with you.

DominoPower magazine is running a my review of Eric Mack's eProductivity Essentials, which is one of his family of Getting Things Done toolsets. This new version is a free but limited capability version. You install it and it is supposed to work as the full version for 21 days, and then, if you don't purchase a license key, backs down to the limited-function version. The key issue here is that the limited version supports only 25 open actions. The app comes preloaded with a bunch of content that acts as a rather neat tutorial, which you work through, learning the product and creating actions along the way. All well and dandy, except that at the end of the 21 days, if you've not completed - or deleted - those sample actions, you'll run out of slots to create more actions.

The copy I installed didn't do that, and I wrote that it didn't. I didn't see it as a major issue, noted what I did to get out of it (deleted actions and generally cleaned up), and moved on. However it seems that this part of the review has riled Eric a little, and we've had an exchange of emails. Seems that the issue is that because I've previously installed a version of eProductivity, some expiration date or other timebomb is stored somewhere on my computer. This new installation found that, and as a result has gotten itself a bit bent out of shape. It , in that it considered that the free period had already expired. But the Mind Coach, which also is supposed to expire after 21 days, was still working. And it still is. Maybe something has got more bent than it should have done.

I've looked at the license details. Find these on the Action Bar at eProductivity/Installation Tools/Manage License Information. It says:

It's at feature level Professional. I don't recall getting and adding a license key or activation key to upgrade it. I also note that it says that it will expire on 31/08/2011. I installed it on the 05/05/11 - at least, that's the database creation date,and that's way beyond any 21 day limitation. I've just added a load of actions, and the 25-action limit that I saw is now gone.

So what's going on here then?

Now, don't take this all too much to heart. I'm not going to tell you now what my conclusions were, you'll have to read DominoPower again next week. But, regardless of what's being going on here, and I'll happily accept that these functionality entitlement issues may well be down to interactions with previous installations, this is a good product set. If you think you need some personal organisation help, look at this stuff. If you've ever looked at it before, you might want to ask eProductivity how to completely remove any previous installation, so that a new one behaves as you and they think it should.

Micosoft Buys Skype. Why?

Mick Moignard — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:26:04 +0100

Microsoft are to pay $8.5bn for Skype, apparently to use it to perk up their online and mobile strategy, according to a BBC report. How this deal will play with the Nokia/Windows Mobile deal is yet to be seen.

Skype doesn't make a lot of money. Only two years ago, it was valued at a bit over $2bn, so what is it that Microsoft have seen in Skype that nobody else has, that can generate that sort of premium? The BBC post suggests that there's a lot of potential, to deliver a variety of new services to new audiences beyond teleconferencing such as remote education and training, patient care, and so on. They also note that Microsoft will have an uphill task both with explaining to shareholders what they are doing, as well as actually making future product and service value by integration of Skype. eBay failed to make much of Skype while it owned it, so what can Microsoft do with it?

Nokia and Microsoft; Suicide or Desperation?

Mick Moignard — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:27:14 +0100

Following Stephen Elop's downbeat assessment yesterday of Nokia's situation, they've now decided to go in with Microsoft to make gear based on Windows Mobile 7,and shed a large number of jobs round the world.

The BBC report says that Nokia will sideline Symbian and go with Mobile 7 across the range. You can see some logic in that argument; supporting two operating systems - three if you include Nokia's not yet shipped MeeGo - would cost more, but I can't imagine the changeover will be cheap - unless of course Microsoft are going to fund it, which I suspect that they will, at least in part.

Nokia may still be big in Europe, but they aren't the force they used to be. These days when I visit business customers here in the UK, or talk to friends, I don't see Nokias as much as I used to, certainly at the smartphone end of the scale - I see Apples, Blackberries and Androids, mostly. Our Lotus Traveler has 5 Nokias listed, against 159 Apples - but does have 33 WM5/6 devices, and 6 Androids. When I spoke with Kevin Cavanaugh at Lotusphere, I asked him why he'd not mentioned WM7 as a device that Lotus would concentrate on, and he said "because I've never seen one'. And figures I've seen suggest that WM in all its versions has way under 10% of the market, possibly under 5% - though our Traveler suggest otherwise.

So, is this a last-ditch attempt by Microsoft to get someone big in the market to do WM7 - and they targeted Nokia, as being one of the weaker players, and run by an ex-Microsoft man, to boot? Is this decision suicide on Nokia's part, desperation on Microsoft's or some combination of both? What will the outcome be?

My speculation is that it won't result in serious sales, and that it will be the beginning of the end of Nokia as a serious player in the mobile phone market. I'd also suggest that it will wound Microsoft, too. Failure with Windows Mobile so far in what hasn't been very big-name gear in the market is one thing, but taking down Nokia would be quite another, should that be the end result.

A few months back when Ray Ozzie announced he was to leave Microsoft, I said "Look at the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones indexes of 30 years ago. How many of the top companies then are top companies now? How many of those companies of 30 years ago still exist? How many of them failed because their market walked away, and they failed to react. Will the indexes of 2020, 2030 still contain Microsoft as a player? ". Will this new announcement make that more or less likely?

Lotusphere 2011 in words.

Mick Moignard — Sun, 6 Feb 2011 16:43:50 +0100

Just completed my writeup for Dominopower and submitted it for the editor's blue pencil. Should see it appear over the next few weeks. Please keep an eye open...

I squirted it thru IBM's Word Cloud to see how the emphasis went: see for yourself: