Is IBM on the right track with IBM Community Tools?

{cross-posted to IBM Community Tools newsgroup}

All -

I subscribed to IBM Community Tools (ICT) when I heard about it last month.  

My question is:
If you could get to ICT while at work, would you use it?    I would also use an 
ICT PollCast for this, but since I'm at _work_, I can't use ICT right now.

I don't plan to leave Midrange-L, but I like to utilize as many tools as I can 
to make my job easier.  

ICT looks like a promising tool, but because of issues regarding ports that ICT 
needs to use I can only use it from HOME, I CANNOT use ICT from work.  I'll 
never get the ports needed by ICT opened up on our network because of security 
exposures that opening these ports could reveal.  ICT support Socks 4/5, which 
we do not have available.  If ICT supported HTTP proxy, which we DO have 
available, then I could probably use ICT at work.  

Along with several others, I posted messages on the ICT newsgroup 
(community.ngi.ibm.com) about this issue, but apparently it is of low 
importance to the WebAhead team and it is apparently on the back burner.

Here is an article that confirms this problem:

http://www.the400group.com/aiw/free/03-1003.html


I would just like to know how many of you are currently using ICT, and how many 
of you WOULD use it if you could while at work (where you most need it!).  You 
would think, given the recent press about Malcom Haines coming back to the 
iSeries, that new ways of connecting iSeries users as a community would be a 
priority for the whole iSeries team...

Quote from yesterday's iSeries Nework News Wire Daily:

<quote>
The best marketing campaigns, Haines said, have nothing whatsoever to do with 
the technology being sold, "but everything to do with connecting with human 
beings." For example, in 1995 for the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft, among 
other stunts, took a group of Polish journalists out on a submarine to show 
them what it would be like to live life without windows.
</quote>

See full article at:
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/news/nwn/story.cfm?ID=16189&channel=home

Just my opinion,

Steve Landess
Austin, Texas
(512) 423-0935