I’ve been testing various offerings which synchronize a calendar between Lotus Notes and Google Calendar. None of them are perfect but one is rising up quickly – SyncNotes2Google. Despite the name, it does support bidirectional sync. It does support timezones which was an issue I found with GooCalSync.

There’s not much to say other than I’ve tested it and it did what I expected. The bug i encountered has already been reported – "Issue 12: Reoccuring meetings get sync twice from Notes to Google Calendar".

I have not yet tested Companionlink but they describe the exact scenario I am looking at with an Android device as one endpoint. They also handle contacts and tasks which I have not found elsewhere. (image source: CompanionLink)

I hope to look at Lotus Traveler soon.

Here is a graphical depiction of how to sync your Lotus Notes contacts with an iPhone or iPod Touch …

The whole purpose of this "experiment" was to keep my personal contacts in sync with my iPod Touch so I could then use Google Voice (aka GrandCentral) as my new telephone solution. This is part of the "one device to rule them all" challenge. Thus far, the iPod Touch is taking up the gauntlet very well. It now has control over the phone (calls, answering machine, and SMS), the music (my iTunes library, Genius playlists, Last.fm, ambient sounds, and alarm clocks), and video (movies, Hulu TV [experiment], and TV series on DVD).

I could kick myself if I were more limber … I spend 5 hours completely rebuilding my work machine today because I *thought* I had some security software gunking up the works. I was wrong, it was just Microsoft Windows being a PITA.

The problem:
Lotus Notes “Single Login” aka “Log in to Notes using your operating system login” aka “single sign-on” etc. is set but the password prompt always appears.

The clue:
You look in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer and you see an application error “Lotus Notes Single Logon” that reads; “Notes Single Logon will not function properly: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.”

The solution:
Launch RegEdit and navigate key: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/NetworkProvider/Order” then edit the value (a string of comma delimited labels) and find the value “npnotes” and move this value in front of the “WebClient” value.

Please don’t ask me why this works. It just does … at least for me <sigh>

We use IBM Lotus Notes for email and a number of useful applications where I work. There has been a significant shift with Notes since the introduction of it’s Eclipse framework – or more correctly the addition of Expeditor. This made a big difference for me when I was using Ubuntu as primary work environment. Notes with Expeditor – officially called “Notes Standard” – runs on Linux and Mac. The older style – now officially called “Notes Basic” – is still available but only runs on Windows.

Well, with my switch back to Windows for my work PC, I now have the option of using the new and richer Notes Standard client and adding lots of cool plug-ins to the side panel, or go back to Notes Basic. I chose the latter. “Why ?!” I hear people asking. Simple – “performance” was my number one reason. Notes 8.0.2 is reported to have improved performance and I will definitely watch for it. My favorite comment on the subject was “I already set ClientRunFaster=1″.

Secondary was that some events in the Eclipse framework tend to “single thread” everything else. In switching, I do lose one of my most favored capabilities. With Notes Standard, I ran Sametime in the side panel and that allowed me to save my chats directly into my mail file. I really like that. But I will give it up and run Sametime as a separate application to keep my machine running smoothly (and quickly).

BTW – savvy readies with elephant memories will recall I’ve reverted to Notes Basic before. … and who said, “there’s no going back” ?