Adam Gartenberg's Blog

A Transition Time for NotesBuddy

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• Author: Adam S Gartenberg
• November 19, 2007
• Category:  Sametime 

Whether you know it or not, if you're using Lotus Sametime 7.5.x today, you owe a large debt to alternative IM clients that were developed and used heavily inside of IBM.  The most heavily used of these was NotesBuddy, which at its peak was used by over 100,000 IBMers.

It is a time of transition for both NotesBuddy, which is being sunset as IBM looks to standardize internal IM usage on the Lotus Sametime 7.5.x (and beyond) client, and for its creator, advocate, and diligent caretaker - Alan Tannenbaum.  

As Carl Tyler notes, it looks very likely that Alan will not be with IBM much longer, and I'd like to echo Carl's request that if you use or used NotesBuddy, to head on over to his post here and leave your comments for Alan.

I know there are a lot of strong advocates for NotesBuddy, as at times it felt like I spoke with all 100,000 of its users as I had to explain why their favorite feature wasn't (yet) included in Lotus Sametime.  And Lotus Sametime is a much better product because of all the capabilities brought over - things like screen capture, primary buddies, emoticon palettes, chat history in the message transcript, to name just a few.  I'm also pretty sure I remember hearing that NotesBuddy has downloaded more than any other AlphaWorks code, yet another testament to its value.

Actually, a little search through my hard drive uncovered this list of NotesBuddy "firsts."  (And this presentation is from 2004; I'm guessing Alan could probably add at least a few more lines to this list.)  Again - you'll recognize a lot of these capabilities that are now available as standard features in Lotus Sametime.

Feature	NotesBuddy
Multimodal interaction, voice content, TTS reading	04-1999
Easy email filtering with alerts (TTS, pagers, sounds, visuals)	04-1999
Visual themes (skins)	08-1999
Optimize for small real estate for messaging (tray, inbox...)	03-2000
Integrate Notes & POP3 email and Chat into single client app/UI	04-2001
Status icons blink when changing states	04-2001
Treat contacts as first-class objects	04-2001
Respond to email with chat (e.g., Start Chat Now)	04-2001
Speak chat msgs with TTS, including common smileys w/inflection	04-2001
Awareness in all email/chat headers fields, even if not in buddy list	04-2001
Intelligent management of keyboard focus	04-2001
Awareness in Inbox/Folder views	10-2001
Subject lines in chat sessions (for storage/retrieval)	04-2001
Save chats to email folders (Notes .nsf or pop3)	04-2001
Respond/forward chats as email	04-2001
Use contact list for all messaging (including offline email)	04-2001
Persist chat history across closing/opening chat sessions	05-2001
Extract key info from corporate directory with auto updates	11-2002
Use buddy pictures in chat and email windows	11-2002
Unified authoring tool for chat & email w/graphics, rich text, etc.	11-2002
Provide directory info on hover  (phone nos, job descript, etc.)	11-2002
Use HTML as interchange format for IM	11-2002
Animated set of emoticons with palette	11-2002
Drag/paste content from web/file/other messages	11-2002
Personalized graphic palettes and editor with imported content	11-2002
Primary contacts area with picture/list views	11-2002
Integrated screen capture tool	03-2003
Separate privacy list to allow chats during Do Not Disturb	09-2003
Dynamic word bubbles attached to emoticons	03-2004

Link:
Carl Tyler: Did you use NotesBuddy?

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