For those of you wondering why the menus at the bottom of our pages haven’t worked for the past few days, well, uh, we broke them. When we did our mondo content management system upgrade, we knew something was going to break and that something was, apparently, menus. Oopie.

In any case, we’ve just finished upgrading our upgrade and the menus now work. Hopefully, that’ll be the biggest oops of the upgrade, but, hey, this is software. Let us know if you see any other glitches.

The good news about the upgrade, at least from our perspective, is the menu fix took under an hour to find and repair. That was actually the purpose of this major upgrade: to make maintenance easier and to make it possible to change our pages much more quickly. With the old system, fixing this would have probably taken about a week and would have, without a doubt, broken something else. With this new framework, the fix is isolated to its own object, so even if we did something wrong in the fix, it wouldn’t cascade to everything else.

So, clearly, at least from our own internal operations perspective, this first test is helping to prove the effectiveness of our new framework. Yay!

Easus’ new DOS Partition Recovery software makes it easier than ever before to repair and recover hard disk partitions when the computer falls to boot. The Partition Recovery Bootable CD ver3.5 is designed to resolve partitions with an error, recover the deleted, lost and corrupt FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, EXT2, EXT3 and SWAP partitions on IDE, ATA, SATA, SCSI and removable hard drives under DOS.

In addition, the software provides useful functions, such as backup partition tables, restoration of partition tables, fixboots, and checks of partition properties and partition errors. Users can configure every parameter of the DOS system’s partition tables. Finally, the software also rebuilds master boot records (MBRs) and edits and copies sectors. An undo function helps guard against unwanted errors.

To power businesses and consumers with mobile Web computing capabilities, IBM announced that it has expanded its relationship with AT&T, Sprint, and other wireless carriers to provide broader email access to their customers who use IBM Lotus Notes and Domino software on their handheld devices. AT&T and Sprint have certified for use by their customers, IBM’s Lotus Notes Traveler software which enables wireless replication of Lotus Notes email, calendaring, and personal information management (PIM) data on select smartphones.

IBM’s Lotus Notes Traveler software can be loaded with all of the set up information pre-configured. This means it is now "wireless replication-ready" as soon as the customer starts using his new device. Standard data usage charges apply. The devices from AT&T that have this capability are the AT&T 8525, AT&T Tilt, Moto Q Global, Palm Treo 750, PantechDuo (Mustang C810), Samsung Blackjack, and Samsung Blackjack II (i617). The devices from Sprint to include it are the Touch by HTC, Mogul by HTC, Samsung ACE, Palm Treo 700wx and Palm Treo 800w.

IBM announced new software and services for mobile devices that more closely mimic desktop features formerly found only on the PC. Designed for both business users and consumers, the new offerings can help individuals make better business decisions faster, while connecting friends, work colleagues and teams beyond what has been available in the PC era. IBM is combining its software, services and research expertise to develop new products and services. The new software includes products with business intelligence, collaboration, social networking and business performance capabilities. In addition, IBM is providing developers with new tools to make existing software applications run on mobile devices. IBM’s software is built on open standards so it can be used with most mobile platforms including Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Symbian.

IBM is announcing new business consulting services to help companies manage a mobile work environment. Called Mobility@Work, the consulting and implementation services can help employers increase productivity by as much as 30 percent and cut real estate costs, the second largest corporate expense after salaries and benefits. Mobility@Work helps increase the flexibility, efficiency, resiliency and employee satisfaction of companies by providing a mobile work environment that allows employees to collaborate across business and geographic boundaries while providing secure access to applications and connections to colleagues.

The Learning Continuum Company’s newest distance learning course, Using XML and Web Services in Notes Domino 8, will introduce the Domino Developer to XML and web services. The basics of XML are covered including terms such as "well-formed" and "valid." Developers will learn how to incorporate XML into Domino Applications using standard design elements such as agents, forms, pages and views. Both LotusScript and Java will be used to parse and import XML data into Domino applications. The use of XLST style sheets to transform XML data in Domino agents is also covered. The Domino XML Language (DXL) is used to both export and import Domino data and design elements. Developers will also learn to expose Domino data via an RSS Feed. Finally, an extensive series of lessons will detail how to use Domino 8 to make available web services (using both LotusScript and Java) on a Domino server for use by any web services client. Consuming web services from the Notes client will also be covered. In addition to Domino Designer, the course makes use of either Eclipse or IBM Rational Application Developer as an alternate application development platform when developing Java agents and web services.

This course will prepare the student for the Exam 805: Using Web Services in IBM Lotus Domino 8 Applications. Passing this exam will earn the IBM Certified Advanced Application Developer – Lotus Notes and Domino 8 certification (for developers who are already certified at the Application Developer level.)

What will the Web look like in 10 years? Will we still be using something similar to current Web browsers or will there be a radically new interface for the Web? And will we even be using something like a PC or will all access be through mobile devices and dedicated appliances?

These and other questions are what Mozilla Labs is hoping to answer with their Concept Series, which is dedicated towards discussing and preparing for the future Web. And one of the first and most interesting projects from the Concept Series is Aurora, a fully thought-out idea of a browser in 2018.

Gartner now refers to customer data integration (CDI) software, which helps companies consolidate data from disparate sources to gain a "single view of the truth" about customers, as master data management (MDM) for customer data.

But, whatever you call it, the recent Magic Quadrant report on the topic lists IBM and Oracle as the top vendors in the space, just as it did last year.

This article gives you an example of how to build a customized search center using the IBM Lotus Quickr content services. In the example, the Lotus Quickr search service is used to get search results and the Lotus Quickr document services are used to retrieve detailed properties of the search results, which are then used to implement customized functions such as sorting, categorizing, and filtering.

Internet lockout is a new feature of IBM Lotus Domino 8. This article describes Internet lockout, documents the configuration, and provides a sample that shows how to create a custom login form.

Download the IBM Cognos Validation tool, a command line utility written in Java using the IBM Cognos SDK. This tool can run a complete validation check of all the reports in the Content Store by automating the Report Studio validate process.