Lotus Notes Application developers now have a new marketplace to promote their application: www.notesappstore.com. Frank Paolino launched the service as a volunteer project after a client had trouble finding a partner’s application on IBM’s ever expanding website.

“People just wanted one place to find a Notes application that fit their needs.  We started NotesAppStore.com to provide a simple way to find solutions and their company websites without having to sort through a ton of search results pages.    They also wanted some input from the Notes community whether the application was reliable and customer support readily available so we added user reviews as well.”

Apple launched their app store for the iPhone and developers continue to add thousands of application per day.   With fewer developers for Lotus Notes market, the need for an application marketplace is even greater.

According to Mayflower Software‘s Frank Paolino there may be a new email virus emerging just in time for the holiday shopping season.

“We detected over 520,000 new virus variants in a single day! Because we are watching email patterns worldwide, we detect most new viruses outbreaks solely due to their email distribution patterns, and often before they have been given an “official” name.”

Some of you have heard about XPages, but then again, some of you have not.  But for those who have never heard of an XPage, Intranet Journal recently described its benefits and advantages when you’re writing an application.

XPages are a new design element within Domino Designer on Eclipse 8.5.  This design element is a new way to display data in a Domino web app, and it separates the design of the page from the data within your app.  Thus, you can bind various data sources to your XPage.  Multiple existing forms and views can be bound to the page, and you can then use that data on the page in question.

Plus, surfacing a view through an XPage allows you to make it look a lot more modern.  The difference between XPages and the traditional default view can be seen when you look at tabbed tables, as it allows you to see contents of each tab without the reload of a page.  This can make your app seem to run a lot better to end-users.

For those of you that are avid readers of LotusNotesDomino.com, then you may remember as we reported last month about the development of a Lotus Notes widget for LinkedIn.  But, according to Super Blog, this widget is now available.

It appears as if this plug-in will dynamically display LinkedIn profiles, status, and other information in the Notes 8 sidebar.  This plug-in will also be a great example of what Ed Brill, the Director of Product Management for Lotus Notes at IBM, calls “contextual collaboration.”  Users will be able to access relevant information without having to leave what they are already working on.

With the ease of recalling email addresses in LinkedIn, this plug-in seems to be a great idea for those that use Notes.  The reviews have only been positive and for more information, visit http://www.linkedin.com/lotus.

Ever wonder how you could make an RSS feed application in Lotus Notes/Domino?  Well, thanks to Ali Ahmad, there’s an easy solution.

In the Lotus Notes View, the following tags make up the structure of each item/row in the RSS Feed: item tag, link tag, description, publish date, author.  The overall idea is to have each document that’s created in Notes render its values as XML tags to generate RSS feed items.  But, you’ll need to make sure that the view property “Treat view contents as HTML” is enabled.

This application works in Lotus Notes 8 and higher, as well as Internet Explorer 6.  For more on the formulas that are used, click here.

Yesterday morning, Dexmar Ltd announced the release of a collaborative email archiving solution for Lotus Notes and Domino.  Named Dexmar E2M, the system enables organizations to manage emails using defined business processes.  This process is quite extensive as it not only determines what is archived and how it is indexed, it also considers how long the mail is retained based on its value to the business.

Dexmar also claims that once organizations have implemented their system, they will store less email data and retain it for a shorter period of time.  This will reduce the cost of managing email data, and by ensuring these companies only store necessary business information, legal and compliance risk can also be reduced.

So far, Dexmar E2M has already been approved by the UK National Archives, which can provide some reassurance that this system uses good practices for records management.

In a press release, SWING Software has announced the release of SWING PDF Converter for Lotus Notes.  This converter will enable Notes users and developers to export documents and emails into standard PDF format.  By converting Lotus Notes documents to PDF, individuals will be able to share, archive, or print their documents via the web.

This new software doesn’t require client side installation of a printer driver or DLL files.  In fact, the converter is very easy to use for end-users, as a PDF icon is added to the Lotus Notes toolbar.  This allows users to covert one or more Notes documents or emails, and the user experience is fully customizable.

Additionally, LotusScript API is provided so that developers can create server-based agents which can produce PDF files unattended.  Developers can also enhance the out-of-the-box toolbar functionality, or grab the PDF converter libraries and insert them into any Notes or Domino application.

Lastly, SWING PDF Converter greatly simplifies email archiving capabilities, by producing PDF packages from any email or document collection.  For more info, visit http://www.swingsoftware.com/pdf-converter/overview

Some recent news was recently came from the Lotus Notes Domino World, as it appears as if there is a bug in Lotus Notes 8.0.2.

According to Ruddigkeit.net, if you have “password checking” enabled or use a password policy in Domino, Lotus Notes remembers the last 50 passwords you used to protect the Notes ID file.  If you try to use one of these passwords you will get the error “You have used this password before.  Please choose a new one.”

But in Lotus Notes 8.0.2 there is a reproducible bug with this function, as you will always get the message, “Your password change succeeded!”  By not receiving the message that the password was changed or already used, it can confuse a user who tries to log in the following day.

But, it appears as if the bug is fixed in version 8.5.

Recently, IBM released Lotus Notes Diagnostic which can be used as an add-on for your IBM Support Assistant workbench.  But, what exactly is Lotus Notes Diagnostic?

According to IBM, Lotus Notes Diagnostic is “an unsupported utility that you can download and use to automatically perform repetitive taks associated with anaylzying files from a Lotus Domino server crash, hang, or performance issues.”

But that’s not all, as Lotus Notes Diagnostic runs on Windows.  Yet, it can analyze Domino server files from any platform.  It should also be noted that Lotus Notes clients version 5 and above are supported.

For the latest version of this tool, click here.

Recently, 73% of iPhone users stated that they did not see their device as a business tool.  While Apple’s reaction to this news remains unclear, IBM has actually stepped in to curb that public sentiment.  Last month, IBM unveiled the beta availability of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 software.  According to Geek.com, iPhone users have already had access to Notes through IBM’s Lotus iNotes ultra-light mode.  However, this new version supports Exchange ActiveSync which allows for real-time updates of mail, calender and contacts from remote servers.

In addition to making these new features available on the iPhone, IBM recently began development practices that incorporate social media.  They have been utilizing “blogs and Twitter to collect and make hundreds of refinements suggested by people who want to work smarter.”  These new features, which include refinements to search and ways to edit messages, are now present on desktop software and some are even available on the iPhone.

IBM has previously worked with Nokia and Samsung to bring Lotus Notes Traveler support to smart phone customers.  They are currently working with AT&T, Spring, Verizon Wireless, and Orange in order to keep expanding Lotus Notes.