SnTT: @Unique. Everything you ever wanted to know.
I've had this for almost 10 years now. It came from an internal Lotus source back when I worked there as a developer. I took the examples out so its a partial document. For the record it was flagged 'Public' when I obtained it. I have removed the 2 paragraphs that were marked <<End of Public Information>>. If I can loose my house over this, please someone let me know asap and i will take it down.
Warning, what you are about to read is ubergeek.
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The string that @Unique returns when invoked with no arguments consists of two parts: the first part (the prefix) is generated using the common name of the Notes ID in use. The second part (the suffix) is generated from the current time. The two parts are separated using a hyphen ("-") .
For a given Notes ID, the prefix will be constant. The suffix will vary depending on both the system time and the frequency of invocation.
The prefix is (usually) a four-letter string, consisting of uppercase alphabetic characters (A-Z); this gives an absolute maximum of 26^4 unique prefixes, or ~450,000 strings. In practice, however, the number of prefixes generated will be reduced since people's names do not contain a uniform distribution of letters.
The prefix is selected using the following algorithm to select the four-character prefix, stopping when four characters are selected:
- Select the alphabetic uppercase characters in the common name.
- If three characters have been selected, use the last character in the common name; if not, select the character after the last selected.
- Translate the four characters to uppercase.
The suffix is a six-letter string, consisting of digits and uppercase characters from the set [2-9A-HJ-NP-Z]; this gives an absolute maximum of 32^6 unique suffixes, or ~1000,000,000 unique strings. In practice the number of unique strings is reduced as the value of the strings is not random. The first three characters are based on the number of days since a fixed date, the last three characters, is based on the number of seconds since midnight.
The first three letters of the suffix are therefore identical for all sequences generated on the same day, and different for any sequences generated on different days.
The last three characters of the suffix are generated based on the number of seconds since midnight. Within a Notes session a check is made to ensure that the last three digits are not based on the same time (e.g. using the F9 key to refresh will generate sequential (base 32) numbers). If the Notes client is restarted, however, the sequence is generated from the time directly without regard to any previously generated sequence. This means that the sequences may 'restart' earlier than those generated using the F9 key. For example, if F9 is pressed 30 times, the sequence number corresponds (roughly) to 90 seconds in the future. If Notes is restarted, and a sequence generated less than 90 seconds later a sequence number may be reused.
In practice for non-automated use of @Unique the sequence should be unique if:
1. The prefix differs
2. The sequence numbers were generated on different days
3. The sequence numbers were generated using a time for which the
effective clock time differed
This information is provided to assist in assessing if the @Unique function is appropriate for a given application. It is possible that the algorithm used may differ between releases, and may be changed in a future release. Applications should not depend on the behavior of @Unique documented in this document other than that the value returned should under most circumstances be unique.
The most popular planetlotus.org FAQ. Where’s the feed?
I've been struggling with this question since day one. What's worse; every day I come up with a new reason. Here is where the problems start; I give out the reason de-jour, the one on my mind and never all of them. So what better way to air them all...
Feel free to quell my feelings on the matter but the truth is I don't see a feed anytime in the near future.
*. This site replaced my 81 Lotus blog feeds and may have replaced a lot of yours. I feel it goes against the very premise that site set out to accomplish if I publish a super feed.
*. With this approach to viewing blog posts; all on one page, there is no guilt, the guilt you feel when you see hundreds of piled up unread marks… plus nothing to manage.
*. If put in place why would anyone come back to the site? I would be in affect driving traffic away in huge numbers.
*. One of my favorite features on the site would be devastated, the post view counters. I could put in the feed the same url that counts them but again, if you used a feed reader why would you come back to the site?
*. I could mimic the logic of the satellite and bring you back to the main page with the post highlighted… after a while this would get annoying.
*. I'm still hung up on the drudgereport.com my single favorite website on the web. I go there when I want news, no flood of feeds to be guilty for not reading, I just go to the site, get my news fix and leave. When I started writing this post I was this close to saying, when drudge puts up a feed, I will.
*. I already post everyone's rss feed on the front page and have since day one.
*. Then there is Velonews.com. Cycling is my favorite sport, (first time you've heard an American say that? . Last summer I broke down and subscribed to the feed. It actually slashed my reading. I was inundated with to many stories, where as before I could pick and choose on the page.
*. Advertising. Yes, the ads. I'm not expecting this to put my 3 kids through college but it is fun and exciting the watch the pennies roll in. Again I'm guessing a huge nose dive on the revenue side of the house.
*. Think about your blog and your feed. You can put a teaser in the content to get people to click and view your page. PlanetLotus is a completely different model. With a feed there is ZERO reason to ever visit the site. When your site is feeds and you give out the site in a big feed it leaves you with… a website people use to go to…
*. “Don't worry about it. Only a small percentage of people use feeds.” This is true but the percentage of those that do are the very eyeballs I care most about; yours.
*. Loss of that community feeling, ever notice when you watch a taped show it loose its luster, you're missing out on the communal viewing factor. The feeling you get when you know your laughing with millions other around the world at the same time… again rss would kill this. I'm addicted to planetlotus.org, I just don't maintain the site but I'm reading almost all of your posts. The most rewarding part was watching my boss get HOOKed on the site during Lotusphere. He was on the site for hours reading every Lotusphere post.
*. Future of the site. The blog feeds are only the beginning. With the site offering what does now with a super feed, it would feel so one dimensional and single purpose. I look forward to building out other concepts at the site that will make visiting well worth it.
If I were to do it… I have explored nontraditional ways of setting it up, a light version of a feed. In the end I view this light approach as “don't forget about the site feed”. For instance, every morning at 2 am EST I would post a new feed that had all the previous days news. Every link would come back to the same page which was dedicate to that days posts. The top of the page would state the number (say if its 17 days old) of newer post since this date, say 934. Clicking on that would bring you back to the main page. Just an idea.
So there you have it. Aired.
My run-in with Luis Suarez
First a little background. Luis and I had emailed back and forth about Twitter and Planet Lotus a couple weeks if not days before the start of Lotusphere. I had also been doing a lot of reading of his tweets and blog entries, suffice it to say, he was one of the many I was excited to meet at Lotusphere this year.
So there we are, a group of us waiting next the beer stand at Islands of A., waiting for the other half of our larger group to get off the Hulk. I turn to throw something away and see Luis doing the same... "Hi Luis, Yancy Lent"... The name doesn't register, fine... I'll try again. "Yancy Lent of Planet Lotus, we've been emailing back and forth...". Come on, how many Yancy's could there be… His face goes from confusion to disbelief. I'm trying to muster something to say that will remind him... and then a smile, then bigger and then he says the funniest thing I heard all week... "I though Yancy was a girl". I start laughing, he starts laughing and I'm pretty sure my coworkers behind us drowned out the both of us. It was hilarious.
P.S. I have since added my picture to linked-in, facebook, twitter and soon this blog 
Saying hello to Bloggers at Lotusphere…
On another side… how about blogger name tags, instead of the actual names we can use things like this…
Test: 
BleedYellow.com, the Good and Bad
Let's start with the Bad. The timing! Great for getting the word out, bad for those of us that can't play because we're racing to get to Orlando!
The Good… what an understatement. The site is amazing in so many ways.
Hands On
I've wanted to get my hands on Connections for a year now, almost exactly and forgive my ignorance if the Greenhouse provides this ability.
It's one thing setting up a stand alone box with your own boring data, it's another all together experiencing it with others. I need this experience. I've read white papers but it's just not the same.
Permanence
There is something about a site; like this, setup by an outside organization or group that has a feeling of permanence. You feel comfortable committing to it because it will be there tomorrow, it's not an event or release themed offering. This feeling makes it easier to commit. I won't treat bleedyellow.com like I'm checking it out, I'll treat it like a community that I want to build and see grow.
Getting the word out
Now all of us using the site can be advocates in our organizations in a way we couldn't say, with mere research on the web. I find the best way to get the power of something across is to feed off the moment, say in a meeting where someone brings up the need to harness the talents of those in external departments… you can not only offer a suggestion but, now, back it up with a similar solution you experienced on… bleedyellow.com.
I've been on the site all of 5 minutes and just feel it's a hit in theory and execution. One questions i do have is if we'll know what's out of the box and what's customized… guess we'll all have to wait for the podcast 
Awesome job guys!
Note To Myself – Don’t kill Greg
Greg's post was very timely.
Sure, mobile.planetlotus.org looks great on my Palm. But you know what? When some poor, unsuspecting soul clicks through to this site, it looks like . . . well, let's just say that this site isn't optimized for a handheld. Up until now, I was fine with it the way that it is, as the stats weren't pushing me to do anything about it.
I've been reading a ton of mobile.planetlotus.org on my old Blackberry 8700. I have to reset my battery at least once a day because a site causes it to hang. The hour glass just keeps trying no matter what i do or where i go in the device.
Have you checked your site on a mobile device? (..or should I check my Blackberry . I'm sure the mobile traffic will increase and maybe people are just being too polite in not informing you... like me.
Monster.com: Find your own path. Your calling is calling.
At the end, of course, you see the one that defied the path, found his calling and is of course a Monster customer. He found his dream, his calling, by going to moster.com, how about you?
Find your own Path: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XQAkwPgpsAM
Don't Fight Monday's: http://youtube.com/watch?v=npQC7v73TXg
Another reason to leave this site… enjoy the pictures
The new window randomly picks from the 1,241 flickr photos I was able to pull into the system using a yahoo flickr pipe. It's essentially a search of lotusphere2005, 06 and 07 tagged photos. I plan to do something more chronological as the new lotusphere2008 pictures start arriving via public feeds. Not sure if i'll get to this before Lotusphere.
So the question... Keep it up after Lotusphere? To distracting? Let me know when the novelty wears thin.
Blog Widget: Related posts
Declan Lynch just emailed me what I think is an idea so cool I had to pass it along.
Basically the idea is that you could optionally pass into the widget some 'Tags' and instead of the widget returning the latest posts it would return the latest posts with similar tags.
The widget would obviously apply only to the post page.
Look for it soon.
Yancy Lent
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