new Ajax(url, {
method: 'get',
onComplete: processResponse
}).request();

towards something like this:

new Request({
url: url,
method: 'get',
onComplete: processResponse
}).send();

The other thing which caused us a little trouble was with the tooltips we use on the Dashboard page in IdeaJam. When I say trouble, it took about an hour to fix, we're not talking serious effort here! Anyway, the default CSS settings changed a little, so we just had to add a few extra lines to our CSS file, no biggie.

Finally for areas which you'll want to be careful with, it's third party add on functions and code. For example we use Phatfusion's sortableTable class in the Top Innovator's screen. This was written for MooTools 1.11, so I had to make some changes for it to work properly with the new version.

From an IdeaJam point of view, the reason for the upgrade was so that we can start to use some of the newer Clientcide plugins in areas that may not get much airtime on the public IdeaJam site. One of the main customer feature requests for this new version is what we call the "Implementation Plan", it's the first feature to use some new MooTools functionality, but you can expect more in the next few weeks as we add a new way of linking ideas together.

So why should you use MooTools? Well to be honest, these days most big web shops seem to be going with jQuery and there are a lot more resources out there for that framework. But I still have a soft spot for MooTools, it seems to fit the way I think which is an important consideration when you'll be spending days, weeks or months using the API.

Really the main benefit of MooTools these days is the wonderful Clientcide add ons which handle the UI side of things and the superb documentation and also the core and more builders which allow you to configure the javascript files which make up MooTools to such a degree that it will do exactly what you want, a great boon for managing your deployments.

But for the moment, I thought I'd pass along one little tip which we ran into. Inevitably during our own testing we had missed this bug. When you're in an idea you can "Click to show votes" and what happens behind the scenes is that an Ajax request is fired off to our votes database, an agent runs and send back a list of the votes related to that idea, when they were cast, who by and so on. That agent had been set up with the following code at the start:

Print |Content-Type:text/javascript; charset=utf-8|

Print |Cache-Control: no-cache|

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token <

So what I've come up with is a new website (same URL as before though) at xpages101.net. From here you can see the details of the classroom based course but there's a whole other section of the site devoted to online material. Now to make this work for me (I run a small business on my own and this stuff takes a *lot* of time to put together) there is a charge for the content. But I've tried to make it as appealing as possible.

You have two choices, either a single user account or a five user account. In both cases you'll get full access to the site, all of the videos and support content for a full 12 months. The aim from my side is to keep on adding new videos every week or two for as long as there are interesting things to talk about. I just worked out what I have to create lessons on and it will take me well into May just from my initial list!

Also, to thank you for your early interest in the site, you can use the coupon code "earlybird" at check out and get a 33% discount until February 26th.

So please, go and check out the site, let me know what you think and if you have any areas that you'd like covered the please either comment here or use the contact us form on the site.

Overall it seemed to go pretty well, the timings need some work, I went a little fast at some points which may have left a few people overwhelmed at the fire hose of information we got through in a short period of time! That will not happen again now that I understand how it all hangs together a bit more.

The feedback from the attendees was really gratifying...

Obviously there's always room for improvement and there were some great feedback comments as well...

"A real eye opener for me as I've not looked XPages prior to the course."

"Excellent value for money. Pitched just right for the first steps into XPages."

"It gave me a very good understanding of XPages under the bonnet."

"It was great being here, great course, the XPages start I was looking for."

One of the things which I had consciously not done was provide lots of handout materials. The aim was to reduce the costs of the course as much as possible. From the feedback it seems people would have been happy to pay extra to get more paper based materials. So I think in future iterations of the course we'll change that around.

The other area where a couple of people expressed an interest was for an "intermediate" course. This leaves me in a bit of a quandary, as I'm not sure I know what intermediate is. So if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Overall though, as I said earlier, it was a great day. Good fun for me, and hopefully useful to everyone else.

I designed the course to cover as much as possible in a day and the price to be low enough that independent consultants and contractors (my background) can afford to send themselves on it.

So I hope to see you in London next week. If you can't make it during the day for some reason then we are also having a LotusBeer gathering in the evening of the 9th February at the Founders Arms from around 6pm. You're more than welcome to come along if you're in the area.

I'm guessing this is due to much the same reason that the Kindle is crippled over here, the lawyers and copyright deals.

What with that and the micro SIM card which means you won't just be able to swap out the card from your 3G USB dongle and use it in your iPad. Maybe you need to think twice about buying one straight away.

Shiny as the new Steve Jobs goodness may be, look before you leap and definitely read the fine print.

Down in the Product Showcase it was the last day and it seemed everyone suddenly realised it as we had by far our busiest day with lots of people coming by to chat about IdeaJam, IQJam and to the rest of the LDC guys.

We shut down the stand and then headed upstairs to see the Oral history of Notes session given by Ed for the 20th anniversary of the release of Notes. It was a fun trip down memory lane with a couple of the R5 adverts that they played (Dennis Leary and "I am" of course) getting huge rounds of applause.

Warren Elsmore and Mike Smith hosted a Lotus User Groups BOF for the last session of the day. Huge turnout and a great chat. I'm not sure how much was learned, but I suppose the fact that people now know of a few more LUGs around the world may well help us all out.

The Wednesday night party was at Hollywood Studios, the one park that I hadn't yet done, so I've finally completed the set. It was actually pretty fun with the Toy Story ride providing particular amusement (we were all in particularly juvenile mood so no more shall be said).

I made the silly mistake of heading up to my room to drop off the badge at around midnight, checked email etc and just crashed. As always happens at Lotusphere, the days (and nights) catch up with you and the first time you stop during the day you really need to force yourself to get going again. On the up side I did get a full six hours sleep for the first time in days so I may make it through to Vegas tonight at 3am without keeling over.

As we're working down here, we have to negotiate as to which of the other sessions we get to go to. I ended up getting along to see Declan Lynch and David Leedy's XPages CSS and Themes session. It was a really great explanation of the power of themes, I think you can expect to see a lot more of that subject in the future, the look and feel of Web 2.0 apps is all important, so the tools to implement good design really need to be understood.

Of course, Tuesday night is party night. There are all sorts of vendor, business partner, developer and other parties going on all over the campus. The Penumbra group and then GSX were kind enough to invite me along to their gatherings so by the end of the night in Kimonos I was full of very nice ice cream and steak. 

Lotusphere is definitely a little more low key this year, it was just a 1am finish for me. But that's no bad thing, we had to get downstairs to set up the stand for the last day of the product showcase.

You can get the zip here.

It includes:

• The presentation slides
• The start and final session databases
• Script snippets file

Sunday saw Tim and I present the first repeat of our XPages Show 'n' Tell session. Apparently we overflowed the room and although we ran out of time (trying to squeeze four hours of content into two really is a challenge) the people that we talked to seemed happy. We're repeating this morning at 10:30 in the Swan again and then I am done for the week on the presenting front (yay).

The OGS was great fun for us bloggers, we got really comfortable sofas up front, power and ethernet which allowed several of us to live blog the session. I think there were around 600 people involved in the live blog from all around the world, it makes the event even more fun from my point of view. 

Before the OGS started, Alistair Rennie came over to say Hi to us all. He had asked if we needed anything and I jokingly said a coffee would be nice, so (and this is ten minutes before his first OGS as General Manager of Lotus) he took Mitch Cohen and I behind the scenes at the main stage, gave us a tour of the (very cool) tech and finally sorted out some drinks for us. A very cool guy and a great replacement for Bob Picciano. 

On the stand front things have been going well, we're not doing a "hard sell" demo approach this year, but instead just chatting with customers, friends and anyone who wants to come along. During the week Mark is writing a Flex app which talks to our IQJam product, so you can come and chat to him about Flex if you like. Ben and Julian are also around for general geeky chats. 

Last night was the UKLUG drinks reception at Shula's. The things we learned from the evening are that apparently there are no fire regulations for room occupancy in Florida as the room was very very busy. It was a great evening all round, so thanks for coming along. Also thanks to Alistair and Bob for both showing up for a drink, they had a huge day and it's these little things which really make the difference compared to previous GMs.

So onwards to today, more sessions, more Showcase and Bruce is presenting in the App Dev Keynote which is a huge thing. 

So Lotusphere has really kicked off with a bang. My plan on the tech side of things is to write later on in the week, there is simply too much going on, and still too much to find out, for me to reliably give an opinion on what has been announced so far. Except to say that it's all very interesting of course.