Agileview

We were rebuilding our off-site backup Linux server last week and needed a basic case with lots of ventilation and cooling, since this server would be running 24×7x365 in a off-site location, with an array of hard disks, tape unit and kept in sync using Notes replication and Linux rsync.

I took a punt on the iCute 0301SL case and looks like we hit jackpot, for $88 she’s a real beauty!

So what do you get for $88? Personnally, I wouldn’t expect you to get much. However, this is one ripper deal. Here’s what you get:

• 8x 80mm quiet fans - yes, that’s right 8 fans!!!
• 2 of the fans are that trendy blue glow style - very geeky
• No power supply
• Strong steel case with rounded edges
• Paint seems to be that tough powder coating stuff

There’s 6 fans at the front and 2 at the back. The power supply we inserted had 1 fan also, so we’re running 9x 80mm fans in this box. And the result is that you can feel the suction at the front intake, there’s a strong breeze across the motherboard and air is literally blasted out the back.

We’ve got a 80GB and 200GB HDD directly behind the bank of 6 fans, so I don’t expect they’ll be getting hot anytime soon.

And it’s really quiet, which is the truly amazing thing. With 8 fans you’d be forgiven to thinking that it was “ear plugs time”, but no the little guy runs really quiet.

Here’s a few piccys’ of the little bugger…

And with all the optional extras (which I didn’t buy)…

I wonder how long those fans will last… will keep you posted

The CSS rendering in Internet Explorer can be a real pain sometimes and calls for IE-specific work-arounds in the CSS. However, these work-arounds cause things to break in other Web Browsers. So what do you do? Here’s a quick and easy tip to solve this small but fundamental problem.

The underscore hack, where an attribute with a leading underscore is recognised by Internet Explorer as if it had no underscore, but ignored by all other Web Browsers.

A classic problem in IE6 is the Floating Background Bug (aka Peek-a-boo bug). In most cases, this can be simply resolved by inserting a position: relative attribute into the offending element. However, this may also cause unexpected results in FireFox and other non-MS Web Browsers. So what do you do? Underscore hack to the rescue, simple enter the _position: relative attribute which is then ignored by FireFox and detected by IE6. Great! Example below.

#primary-menu tr {
background : transparent url(slogan2.jpg) left bottom repeat-x;
/*Internet Explorer will read this attribute whilst all other Web Browsers will ignore it - awesome!*/
_position: relative;
}

Looks like Google have joined the Open Source community in a big way. They are releasing selected pieces of their code to the world on what looks to be a weekly cycle. The code they have released initially is licensed using using the BSD license and code released in future is envisaged to use any of the BSD, Apache, MIT and GPL licenses.

They are also featuring one open source application per week that was developed using their Google API’s. This is their way of saying thankyou to the developers and providing them a means to get their code out. Google are releasing their code through the sourceforge network they say “because developers here like Sourceforge”

The best part about all of this is that they have given access to their Web Search API (using SOAP), their AdWords API, and their Desktop Search API for anyone whio is willing sign up and create an AdWords account. So off I went and did just that. I did so as I wanted to see how long it took and what was actually involved. It took about 5 minutes and was really really easy!!!

They provide example code in .Net and JAVA showing how top use the API’s and limit you to 1000 queries per day. Not bad for a small business application and you could easily build monitors into your software to ensure that you did not exceed these limits anyway.

This is a pretty exciting launch from Google and one which you can only think has been extremely well thought out (as all Google activities appear to be) and will be of great use to web developers for small businesses who can now implement Google features into client sites.

Now that I have said that I do think that I read somewhere that these API’s are free for non-commercial and not for profit activites. I will have to look at this again so be warned, I could be WRONG about the usage terms.

I know I will be looking at some of the API’s with a keen interest (and hopefully able to find a real use for them as well) and I can’t wait to see how other web developers use these API’s.

Rock on Google!!!

Just posted the wrapup of Bob Balaban talking at the March 2005 meeting of Walnut (the Canberra Lotus User Group). I really enjoyed listening to Bob talk and especially meeting him in person. Bob wrote the first book I ever purchased on amazon.com - Programming Domino 4.6 with Java and so it was great to finally meet the man behind the legend, who turned out to be very down to earth, incredibly knowledgeable, open minded, positive and totally unassuming. Great guy.

Again, we took the opportunity to capture the talk and we are sharpening our skills when it comes to the capturing the Walnut meetings on video & audio. Here’s a short summary of the lessons we learnt this time round:

• Newer video cameras rock!
• The iRiver recorded an excellent MP3 audio of the entire talk, the lapel microphone recorded excellent sound quality.
• Turn off the auto-focus feature of the video camera. It will constantly try to focus on the brightest object. And when the speaker is moving in front of a projection screen this causes the camera to over compensate and darken, then lighten again when the speaker moves back.
• Don’t bother trying to use the Helix server on a Linux 2.6 kernel. It does not work. Do not even try to download the code to build it, the make files don’t work either. Helix server will only run on a 2.4 kernel.
• Use the Windows Real Producer application to convert AVI to Real Media. Linux Real Producer just does not work.
• Have a spare removable hard disk available to move the large AVI files extracted from the video tape.
• Helix server on Linux 2.4 requires minimal resources. We have it running on a spare Pentium 3 with 384mb RAM and it’s showing less than 1% usage when 2 streams are active.

I thought I’d also share these interesting stats about the production process.

• Total duration of the talk was 2:03hrs.
• 2 video tapes were used.
• Audio was recorded as a single mp3 file using the iRiver @ 128kps, total size 119 mb.
• Uncompressed AVI (video) from the 2 video tapes was 27 gigabytes.
• Real Media compressed the 27 gigabytes down to a more manageable 636mb, whilst retaining clarity of image and sound.
• Real Media compression took 13 hours to complete, a 2-pass compression was performed for streaming at audiences of 56kbs, 256kbs and 512kbs. This was using a dedicated Pentium 4, 3GHZ with 512mb dual DDR2 RAM.
• Total time wasted trying to build Helix server from source 2 days. Task was abandoned.
• Level of annoyance with the Helix server project - high
• Total time spent building a brand new Linux 2.4 server from scratch and installing Helix server - 1 hour. This is now the dedicated Helix server.

Well it is now official and I am pleased and excited to announce that Agileware have set a date for their first Introduction to GNU/Linux course. Agileware will be hosting the course in Canberra on the 12th of April this year and guess who the presenter is…. Me!!!

This course is targeted at an introductory level for those that might be starting to use Linux on the desktop and in the server environment. Even if you have never used a GNU/Linux PC before then this course is for you. There are no pre-requisites and the pace is nice and steady. There is also plenty of time for all your questions to be answered.

The course includes:

• A demonstrated full installation of a GNU/Linux operating system.
• Navigation of the GUI desktop.
• Remote access via SSH.
• Overview of the filesystem layout
• Use of the command line to
• Navigate the filesystem
• Edit text files
• Check system operation and performance
• Start and stop system services

Everyone gets their own networked GNU/Linux Desktop PC to use for the day, so the whole course is hands on and you will be able to put all that theory to work right there and then.

We have included tea, coffee and a catered lunch to keep everyones hunger satisfied. You will receive a printed copy of the course material, and a bootable Live CD to take home and use after the course.

So don’t sit back and wait thinking that one day you might get around to exploring the fastest growing operating system in the world. Come along and get your hands dirty in this excellent introductory course and be blown away by how great and easy to use this computing environment is.

Numbers are limited so book early!!!!

Click here for details on the course and how to book.

See you there.

I thought I’d post these blogs/articles that I’d bookmarked recently which covers IBM’s recently announced support of PHP and continuing efforts to enable businesses to deploy Linux on the Desktop.

Zend Core for IBM technical roadmap - IBM developerWorks

“The Zend Core for IBM® provides a seamless out-of-the-box PHP development and production environment, supported by Zend and integrated with IBM’s Cloudscapeâ„¢ and DB2® Universal Database® (DB2 UDB) database programs. The product includes native support for XML and Web services in support of increased adoption of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). It delivers a rapid development and deployment foundation for database-driven applications and offers an upgrade path from the easy-to-use, lightweight Cloudscape database, to the mission-critical DB2, by providing a consistent API between the two.”

IBM/Zend Initiative Offers Open-Source Web Development Option - Gartner

“Companies seeking a well-regarded tool for rapid development of database-enabled Web applications should consider PHP, but should also be aware that this choice represents a path separate from the two major platforms (Java and Microsoft .NET).”

Cloudscape Extension For PHP - Julian Robichaux

“But Cloudscape is portable. No installation required. All you need is Java and the right set of JAR files. So does that mean that I can build a PHP app that uses Cloudscape on the backend, and then just zip up all the PHP pages along with the Cloudscape database and hand it off to someone? And then they can just copy everything over and use it without having to set anything up? Hmm, useful.”

IBM backs open-source Web software - news.com.com

“The two companies intend to devote programmers to make PHP work better with corporate databases and Web services protocols. IBM also plans to establish an area dedicated to PHP on its developer Web site, which will include technical resources such as white papers. Zend Core will be available as a free download in the second half of the year.”

Scripters are People Too - stephen o’grady

Q: What’s in it for IBM?
A: They gain developer goodwill both by backing an important open source project as well as acknowledging the scripters out there. On top of that they can ensure that their databases play nicely with PHP, which is more important than many realize given the popularity of the platform. It was also interesting that Andi mentioned that IBM would like to see support for their proposed Java standard, Service Data Objects, in PHP.

Also worth reading along this line of thought are:
IBM Linux Event: First Impressions - stephen o’grady
IBM Linux Event: Further Impressions - stephen o’grady

Now as a PHP developer, I’m very pleased to have IBM validate PHP as a enterprise-class development tool. Fantastic to have IBM’s support here.

Linux on the Client - Steve Robinson, Vice President, IBM Software Services for Lotus

“As I toured the floor, I was on the desktop hunt to see whether Linux on Client was gaining momentum. I was quite pleased with what I saw. Several companies were touting Linux client, and I was impressed with the support and announcements made by Novell, Sun, Redhat and the OpenOffice organization. Sun was announcing a new release of their Star Office suite that looked very slick. One of the issues that we continually run into with accounts and Linux discussions are how they can support their Microsoft macros on Linux. Sun demoed to me some of their new macro translators, and I was very impressed with the progress they appear to have made. Next stop was to the Novell booth, where I got a chance to talk to them about their new desktop environment. It was great to hear Novell folks tell me that they have moved to Linux on the client for all of their employees and they have also moved 8 major accounts over as well. We shared some thoughts on migration methodologies, and I had a good chat with their services teams.”

Great to see the momentum building up behind the Linux Desktop wave.

Workplace Rich Client and Lotus Notes - Ted Stanton

“Using the Workplace Rich Client notes plug-in, you can access you mail, calendar, contact, and any other database found on your bookmark page in your IBM Lotus Notes 7 Beta 3 client.”

Notes Plug-in Screenshot 1 and Notes Plug-in Screenshot 2

Looking good, and I am looking forward to the day (not too far away now) when I can shutdown Windows and reboot into a Linux Desktop… never to return.

We’ve decided to try out IBM’s Workplace Services Express at Agileware as it looks like promising technology. We will be documenting our experiences about installing and running a Workplace Services Express server from scratch (real go to whoa style), in series of blog entries on the Agileview.

In Part 2 of the series, we discuss installing Workplace Services Express v2.0 on our new Suse Linux Enterprise Server 8.0 (dev.agileware.net) and our initial experiences using Workplace Services Express.

Part 1, Buying And Building The Server Hardware
In this entry, we discuss buying and building the required server hardware components, since we do not currently have any spare hardware that meet the minimum requirements (and it’s a lot of fun shopping & building your own hardware!).

The documented hardware requirements for Workplace Services Express are:

• Processor: CPU speeds of late-model, mid-range to high-end servers are recommended. Pentium 4 processor at 2.0GHz or equivalent at a minimum.
• Physical memory: 2 GB at a minimum per processor; 4 GB per processor recommended for production environments.
• Disk space: 17 GB at a minimum.

From Workplace Services Express InfoCenter via the excellent Workplace Channel Blog.

We have a pseudo policy at Agileware that all CPU’s must be AMD64 based, so from the start we are going to diverge slightly from the requirement for an Intel CPU. The simple reason is that in our view AMD64 outperforms cost-equivalent Intel CPU’s for server applications.

So let’s build the hardware shopping list. Firstly I can highly recommend AusPC Market for all components, they provide excellent service, deliver next business day and are very price-competitive.

I have excluded the hard disk and DVD drive from the shopping list, as we currently have a few spare Western Digital 80Gb’s (”JB” 7200 RPM ATA/100 IDE Hard Drive, 8mb cache) and a LiteOn DVD+RW which we will use for the new server.

Option 1: The Dual AMD Opteron, 4GB RAM
Using server grade, quality hardware we can assemble a dual Opteron 244 with 4GB RAM for just over $AUD 3,200, which exceeds the minimum hardware requirements for Workplace Services Express.

• 2 x AMD Opteron 244 1.8GHz 64-Bit CPU, 1mb L2 w/AMD fan/heatsink - $AUD 748.00
• 4 x PC-2700 1024mb 184-pin DDR REGISTERED ECC (Corsair 166/333mhz) for servers - $AUD 1,460.80
• 1 x Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Dual Opteron board, w/8x DDR, 8Mb ATI video, 3x LAN, 4x 64-bit PCI-X, 2x PCI, SATA/RAID - $AUD 698.50
• 1 x Antec 550W TruePower EPS12v 24-pin Power Supply, suits Tyan Opteron or Xeon boards, 2-fan - $AUD 180
• 1 x Antec Plusview 1000AMG ATX tall-tower case, no PSU, metallic grey with side window - $AUD 132
• Total cost: $AUD 3,219.30

Option 2: The AMD64 3200, 4GB RAM
Using the latest desktop hardware we can assemble a AMD64 3200 with 4GB RAM for just over $AUD 2,300, which again exceeds the minimum hardware requirements for Workplace Services Express.

• 2 x PC-3200 2048MB GeIL 184-pin DDR SDRAM w/blue heatspreader, CAS 3, 2x 1024mb sticks $AUD 1320.00
• 1 x Gigabyte K8NF-9 Skt939 nForce4 board, PCI-x16, 4x DDR, 2x PCI-x1, 3x PCI, SATA/RAID, LAN, Audio $AUD 209.00
• 1 x ABIT Radeon RX300SE-GURU 128MB PCI-X16 video card, 128-bit with DVI, VGA, TV-Out $AUD 148.50
• 1 x AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) 64-Bit CPU, 90nm Socket939 w/AMD fan-heatsink, 540K cache $AUD 324.50
• 1 x Antec 550W TruePower EPS12v 24-pin Power Supply, suits Tyan Opteron or Xeon boards, 2-fan - $AUD 180
• 1 x CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 Case, Black - $152 (from PC Case Gear, as AusPC Market did not have this item in stock)
• Total cost: $AUD 2,334.00

Decision Time
It’s decision time, do we go dual AMD Opteron or single AMD64? The key objective of this entire exercise is to build a Workplace Services Express server for internal trial, internal development and customer demonstrations only. It does not need to be a production-ready server. So to keep the initial costs down, we select option 2, the single AMD64 with 4GB RAM.

Motherboard Problems
After placing the order with AusPC Market they quickly inform us that even though the Gigabyte K8NF-9 motherboard can take 4GB RAM it will only use 3.4GB. I ask them to verify this, so they offer to build the server and install Windows 2003. Later that afternoon they report back that only 3.4GB is available. Bugger. I sent off a few emails to Gigabyte in Taiwan and they agreed, 4GB is not achievable using the Gigabyte K8NF-9 motherboard. Bugger bugger.

Change Of Plan
Continuing with option 2, we reduce the memory from 4GB to 2GB and place the order, the revised total cost is now $AUD 1674.00. 4GB definitely would have been nice to have, but in this case is hard to justify for the extra cost.

Putting It All Together
Michael put all the bits together in about 2hrs with the end result being that it powered-on without going *fizzle*. I took some work-in-progress photos…

Most of the bits assembled within the case

Working out how to plug all those fiddly motherboard connectors

Tying down the mass of cables (which are blocking the fans)

Installing The Operating System
One of the following operating systems is required on the server where Lotus Workplace Services Express will be installed:

• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server 2.1 for Intel (x86), update 3
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for Intel (x86) 8 2.4 Kernel
• Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise
• Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP4

Again, from Workplace Services Express InfoCenter via the excellent Workplace Channel Blog.

Being a strong Linux advocate, we downloaded Suse Linux Enterprise Server 8.0 from Novell, copied that to a DVD and installed that onto the Workplace Services Express server. It took less than 1 hr to perform a complete install and only required a single reboot. Nothing much to report here, it was a simple process and Suse automatically detected all most of the hardware devices.

Because we are using the latest Nvidia NForce4 chipset, we downloaded and installed the NForce drivers and hey presto, everything works. Still, ya gotta love that Suse

We were both pleasantly surprised to see that one of the Suse installation banners proudly proclaimed support for Lotus Domino, cool.

Coming Up Next
In Part 2 of the series, we discuss installing Workplace Services Express v2.0 on our new Suse Linux Enterprise Server 8.0 (dev.agileware.net) and our initial experiences using Workplace Services Express.

I was amazed to the potential of really high speed internet over power lines after reading an article on LinuxWorld yesterday. To my amazement Country Energy have been running residencial trials in Queanbeyan (yes the Queanbeyan right beside the nations capital Canberra) over the past couple of months.

Initially they have been trialling only a select few houses in one street. They have been using the BPL techonolgy to successfully get 45Mbps transfers after “each user had been provided with a laptop and a BPL modem to they plug directly into their power points“. This they say is only the tip of the iceberg as they are scheduling trials of 200Mbps in the coming months.

Unfortunately for the masses (you and me) it is not as simple as just providing everyone with these special power line modems. Country Energy say they need to use “Head-End boxes” which are used to convert Internet traffic into signals which can be sent of power lines and also need to install repeaters on power poles to ensure data integrity and signal strength.

They do stress that this is more of an exploration of the technology rather than a decision to go forward with a major rollout.

Imagine the potential, we all have power to our homes and businesses and there is no need to put more lines in or check the quality of the “copper” as there is with ADSL services. It doesn’t matter how far you are from the exchange, as long as the rollout has reached your area and the repeaters are in place then you would have high speed Internet through every power point in the house.

All I can say is that anyone interested in the technology should start making enquiries and let those that need to know we are keen to see more of this utlimately cool technology.

Lotus Insight 2005 was great. It had a good turn-out and good overall feeling & excitement. And in my view, showed that these type of events should be more frequent. So well done to Hala Bataniah and her Canberra team on a very successful event.

Now here’s a quick brain dump of the important bits I took away from Lotus Insight.

1. Lotus Domino R6.54 will be released at the end of the month. There are currently 631 fixes in this release, so as far as releases go this one is worth upgrading too.

2. IBM announced special new entitlements bundled with the Lotus Domino Utility Server license, these are:
a. Unlimited licenses for Domino.Doc (Document management system)
b. Unlimited licenses for Lotus Workflow (Drag & drop driven workflow process builder & implementor).

Now this is a fantastic offer and I’m surprised that I havent’ heard more details about it on the wire. If you’re a SMB (<1,000 employees) then for $AUD 4,5000 (check our price list) you have access to a enterprise grade Document management system and workflow system, this is a fantastic deal! I’ll try and find more details about this offer and post it to here and our website.

Update 17/03/2005 - Arthur Fontaine clarifies this special offer. Basically, it does not apply to Domino Utility Express. Bugger.

3. IBM’s Rich Client is scheduled to have Notes Plugin support for Linux with Domino R7.5/8.0. Which should be released sometime in 2006.

4. The Lotus Notes/Domino R7 release is focussed on enhancing Domino Server functionality. The Lotus Notes/Domino R7.5 release will be focussed on enhancing the Lotus Notes Client functionality.

5. IBM re-iterated the Lotusphere 2005 announcement, that customers who have an current Passport Advantage agreement/license will be entitled to a free 20 user pack of Workplace Services Express plus 12 months maintenance. This is a saving of about $AUD 3,750. This is a limited offer commencing from March 15th and customers have a 6 month period with which to register for this offer. Cool.

6. IBM’s Rich Client will be functionally equivalent on Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. These will be the first platforms supported, with a priority on Windows & Linux. Sorry Mac guys

7. Workplace Services Express R2.5 will be released around June 2005. This release will include the IBM Rich Client for Windows.

8. I learnt that the Workplace Services Express user-based licensing has no CPU restriction, which means you can run it on some pretty grunty hardware with no additional licensing cost. It is only restricted to running on the same server hardware.

9. To date, there have been 7 major roll-outs of Workplace Services Express in Australia. We were congratulated on our “early adopter” status.

10. Workplace Services Express currently can support around 750 to 1,000 users, with about 10% of those being concurrent users (75).

11. You can still pick the IBM guys from the Lotus guys. Hint: IBM’ers love the grey suit.

12. Adam Osbourne and his company Preemptive Consulting had a stand demonstrating their product, The Vault, which is a very cool bit of technology. It looked like a lot of interest was generated, so hopefully a sale or two in there for you Adam.

13. I also met up with a number of people from the Blogging community (introduced myself, much to their surprise) and the IBM Business Partner community, in particular Frank de Sa who I often see in the BP Forums. So it was good to meet these guys in the flesh and say G’day! Frank’s company also gave away a U2 edition of the iPod which was won by Alex from the AMA (well done Alex!). Alex was about the 4th winner announced, the other 3 were not there to claim the prize. Bummer doods.

The other great thing about Lotus Insight was meeting up again with so many ex-colleagues from Wizard Computer Training. Each one is still active in some way with the Lotus community and so Lotus Insight brought them all together again.

UPDATE 15/03/2005 - IBM offers 20 licenses of WSE to Passport Advantage customers - at no charge

UPDATE 17/03/2005 - My review of the Workplace Services Express Roadshow today - Chris Miller

We’ve been using Open Office v1 now for quite some time (18 months or more?) and I am excited about the upcoming v2 release of Open Office. It includes subtly re-designed user interface which is more intuitive (”native desktop integration”), support for the OASIS open document format, a database front-end (similiar to MS Access), better PDF support, nested tables and improved support for conversion of Microsoft Word documents. *WOW*

With Open Office v2, everyone will have access to a suite of applications which can effectively replace the encumbant Microsoft Office and exercise a long lost right, that of software choice. Users will now have the:

1. Ability to run an office suite on all popular operating systems and share files between those operating systems.

2. Ability to save your files in an open and documented format that can be read by other applications.

3. Freedom to download and install as many copies of the software, as you require and where you require.

4. Access to enterprise-class & ready software, developed and supported by professionals world-wide.

And the news about Open Office is spreading. On Tuesday and today, we spoke to 2 businesses who want to roll-out Open Office as a Microsoft Office replacement. And by doing so, those businesses are taking a relatively painless step away from Microsoft desktop dominance.

In my experience to date, small business have been the early adopters. Their requirements are not complex (templates, mail merge, spreadsheets and macros), they are conscious of cost savings and they use very modest desktop hardware (Celerons with 64mb RAM to Pentium IVs). Money saved by using Open Office is ear-marked for hardware upgrades, OoO training, channelled back into core business activities and effectively reduce their IT spending.

I’m surprised that the Australian Government haven’t been more active and prominent in their adoption of this software (as a Tax Payer, I’m interested in all Government cost-saving measures), no doubt this is a reflection of their locked-down outsourcing agreements and perhaps in the next 5 years+ things will change. The other real motivator to move away from Microsoft Office would be to ensure the longevity of our information, afterall everything saved in Microsoft Office file is locked away in a proprietary format. And what of the National Archives Act implications for e-Permanence of records? This becomes a particularly nasty topic when you consider that Microsoft is planning on introducing Digital Rights Management into Microsoft Office. But I digress, I’ll save that for another blog, another day.

IBM definitely see the value of Open Office, their latest products for collaboration, IBM Workplace, which includes custom versions of the Open Office applications integrated directly into the IBM product. So when you open and edit a Word document, you’re using Open Office Writer. When you create a Presentation you are using Open Office Presenter. Fantastic!

I believe Open Office is a relatively painless way to severe one of the strangle-holds Microsoft currently has on our desktops. The upcoming release of Open Office will be a compelling reason to jump off the Microsoft “upgrade and license” treadmill and regain control of our destinies.

You can read more about the features in the upcoming release here, http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html

You might also want to read Erwin Tenhumberg’s Weblog, which has lots of other useful tips for using StarOffice/Open Office, http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dancer

And if you just want to see what Open Office looks like, then check out these screenshots.

But I highly recommend you just download and install it, try it out for yourself, you will be pleasantly surprised, http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

Lotus Script does not even appear on the TIOBE Programming Community index website, I wonder why? Lotus Notes/Domino apparently has an install base of 110 million users, so I would have thought it might be somewhere in their statistics. But apparently not.

“The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system.”

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm