There are things I want to tell you about. I've decided it's time to make a statement about some of them.

Why haven't I been posting all kinds of neato Lotus Domino tricks? It's this weird side effect of having access to more information. The more you know, the less you can say. A few cynical bastards have suggested that the only reason I'm IN the design partner program is to shut me up. If that's true, it's working and I'm grateful for it.

There's no rule against me telling you that I'm in the DP program. There's also no secret that part of the DP program involves trying out the earliest software builds IBM makes available. We can't tell you what's in them. We can't tell you what's not in them. We can't really tell you any of the really cool things we'd like to. That's a shame, because I'm almost all smiles at this point.

Here's my statement:

I have personally been using, on both laptop and workstation, as well as on my development server and one of my production servers, the most recent code that IBM has made available to me. I've been doing this since before the beginning of this year. I've been using whatever software IBM allows me to use as the ONLY version of Notes that I use and write code in -- with the very unusual exception of editing existing web services build in version 7 (for those, I use a VM and launch a version 7 designer). I will say that I'm very happy with the code that IBM has been allowing me to use, and that I have no plans to drop back to any previous version if I can help it at all.

Based on that statement, here's some advice: Start using and learning the newest features in Domino 8.5. Start using DAOS. Start getting used to the designer in 8.5.0 -- I know, it's a bit clunky still. Just start getting to know these tools. When the next versions of them come around, jump on them fast.