The last day in Brussels was very productive.
I managed to visit all 3 attractions I planned for, although I walked to the Mannaken Pis on Wednesday evening.. closer to my hotel than I thought.
The Royal Museum of Art and History is located a metro ride away, and coupled with 2 other museums, The Royal Army Museum and Autoworld Brussels. I only visited the first, but I think AutoWorld is definitely worth a visit, next time in Brussels – I’m a big car junky… and from the sneak peek I took they have a wide collection.
As for The Royal Army Museum – living in Israel makes one feels comfortable around military, firearms and army, so I think I’ll pass.. I get my share of army twice a year during my army reserve training.
It was a nice day in Brussels, 20C, more clouds than I’m used too, but no complaints. I spent about 3 hours in the Art and History museum, and particularly liked the non-European exhibition. You can see collections from the Americas, far east, Tibet and Nepal, China and Japan, the Oceanic cultures and more. Highly recommended.
After that I decided to visit the Belgian Center for Comic Strip Art, located at the center of the city. After several circles in the same block I found it, but had no time to enter, only to enjoy the freebies at the entrance. If you’re a comic fan, you’d appreciate this museum. Next time I’m in Brussels, will make some time for it..
I had some time on the plane (4 hours), so I decided to take my Google Reader content offline, and catch up on some reading. A very wise decision I might add. Carl Tyler wrote about this article, a very interesting piece published on InstantMessagingPlanet.com, titled “Is Sametime Losing Ground in the EIM Race?” Although the title sounds a bit intimidating, it makes a fair analysis of the corporate IM market, and the 2 major players: IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Live Communication Server. When discussing the future landscape of this market, the article says both players are here to stay, without major changes in marketshare.
“I am not aware of any company which has ditched one platform in favor of the other. If you are already running Notes and Domino then you get Sametime for free, so choosing Sametime is really a no-brainer.” There are other good insights in the article, and you can access the full version here. Concluding the article, the author states what most of us already know: “Lotus does have one major factor in its favor: no-one ever gets sacked for buying IBM.“
Another interesting post was published at The Quickr Blog – Top 11 reasons for using Lotus Quickr. I particularly liked reasons 2-4:
- No to proprietary tools – Support for multiple HW/SW environments, open standards
- No Rip and Replace – No need to replace your workstations to upgrade to Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007
- Batteries are included – All components (RDB, LDAP, etc.) are in the box – and can scale
Here’s the link to the full post.
