Still using Lotus Notes? My condolences.

If there was ever an example of software that makes life easy for IT administrators at the expense of users, Lotus Notes is it:

Where Notes does win praise is from those who administer it, who say it is secure, stable and flexible. Databases can be tied together, and there is even a "bridge" to Microsoft's Outlook.

[...]

Delay's remarks brought one sharp user retort, who observed that "Notes's backend functionality has no bearing on us 100m or so end-users. As far as we are concerned the GUI is the system. And boyo... is the GUI client a heap of ill-conceived, non-intuitive rubbish."

I used Notes years ago and found it painful even for the most simple of tasks. This was about the time when we were starting to build collaborative software over the web, and Notes became far too painful to use. Replication alone was a huge waste of productivity, especially from a hotel room over dialup.

While Lotus Notes claims that its strength is collaboration, I've typically seen it used only for email and calendaring, sometimes in situations where the companies also use collaboration products like Documentum.

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Powered by Bleezer

Just ship it.

For a couple of months now I've been writing, among other things, a Java-based blogging client named Bleezer. Hey, you try finding a domain name that isn't taken.

I've tried a number of blogging clients, but I haven't been happy with them. And the fact that I blog from multiple platforms - I use a Mac but also own several PCs - hasn't helped. So I decided to write my own, just to see if I could. And in the process I've had to overcome a number of problems, especially poorly documented APIs and some multi-platform issues.

I've had a few folks testing it and they've given me some excellent suggestions, which I've implemented. It will continue to grow as well.

I use it myself, and have since the first successful build. In fact, I'm soaking in it right now.

It does some neat things:

• Blog from anywhere. It's Java-based, completely multi-platform, and tested on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
• Work with any blogging service, even Blogger. It works with them all. You can even define multiple services, and re-post items or move them around just by selecting from a dropdown box.
• Add tags for any tag service. Technorati, del.icio.us, or your own, or all of them and more. It's fully configurable.
• Create custom markup. You can define your own key combinations for your own custom HTML markup.
• Spell check. Yes you can make sure that everything is speeled spelled ok.
• Ping. Currently it pings Technorati, weblogs.com, ping-o-matic, and Pingoat, but configurable pinging is coming soon.

And there's more planned:

• WYSIWYG editor.
• Support for structured blogging and microformats. Yes you'll be able to create hCard or hCalendar items to start with.

Though the week of CES is a bad one to announce little things like this, Bleezer will be available for download in a few days as a JAR for Windows and Linux, and as an App for OS X. I hope you'll enjoy it. After all, it's free.

And for those who are interested in what it takes to build a blogging client, it will also be open source.

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Entrepreneur Exchange.

Ross Mayfield has put up a new wiki for startups entitled Entrepreneur Exchange:

Entrepreneurship is the discipline of starting a company in absence of resources. Today the Entrepreneur Exchange opened, a renewable resource (wiki) for entrepreneurs.

It's all over.

Chapter 3 is history. With hope, the roughly 350 attendees heard something useful, got to ask some questions, and network with folks who've done the entrepreneur thing successfully.

If you were there then let us know what you thought.

Today's the day!

We're just a few hours away from Chapter 3, which happens later today. This post was originally going to be titled "Tomorrow", but Blogger was down.

I've got the startup bug too though, so I've been working on something that lets me post even when Blogger is down it seems. Unfortunately it wasn't really in a working state tonight.

Anyway, we'll see you all in a little while.

Tony Perkins founder of Red Herring and AlwaysOn, spoke at the opening of Entrepreneur Week. The man who predicted the burst of the dotcom bubble believes that "the greatest Internet companies have yet to arrive."

Tony believes that blogs, and the "blogosphere" are part of an open media revolution - the "open web", or Web 2.0. Hey, you're soaking in one now.

From Canada.com:

"Every great industry -- airlines, television, automobiles, railroads, you name it -- was built on the back of a financial mania during which the average investment generated a negative return," Mr. Perkins said yesterday in a keynote speech at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation's Venture and Technology Summit.

"But the real action happened after the blowout," said Mr. Perkins, 46, who is based in Silicon Valley.

He believes that stronger companies are emerging as they reap the benefits of lower startup costs and ongoing Internet penetration. He predicts that 70 per cent of the best firms will end up being founded between 2002 and 2007.

In other words, it's time to get started.