China was the (other) center of attention this week, at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Beijing, where IBM committed to the future of ODF (Open Document Format) and presented a roadmap for Lotus Symphony, a free alternative for Microsoft Office suite (Word/Excel/PPT).
Earlier Nov. IBM released Symphony 1.2, which imporved the perfomance of the product, and also introduced a plugin library, specifically designed for Lotus Symphony. The next release of Symphony will be based on OO 3.0, that would allow for seamless operatibility for Office 2007 formats, and support Visual Basic macros. The latest release, 1.2, is also available for Mac OS (Beta), as well as Ubuntu Linux (Beta).
I’ve been using Lotus Symphony for several months now, and it does take some getting used to, but the features are quite the same, if you’re an average user, like me. If you’re a power user, you might miss some functionality, but there are ways to compensate for that.
The updated plugin library is a true asset, where the community shares its knowledge and expertise, with cool additions to the client. The one I liked the most is this cool one that allows you to export a presentation to a flash file (or .gif) – very nice !!
Time for the links:
Lotus Symphony – http://symphony.lotus.com
IBM press release – IBM commits to future of ODF with Symphony roadmap
Keynote of Michael Karasick, IBM China Lotus Dev Labs Director, at OOoCon
InformationWeek.com – IBM unviels Mac support, roadmap for Lotus Symphony
CIO.com – Sun, IBM launch ODF tools initiative
FoxBusiness – IBM commits to future of ODF with Symphony roadmap
Ed Brill – Symphony news from OOoCon
OpenOffice.org Conference, Beijing 2008
Chris Pepin – Lotus Symphony 1.2 available
Old dogs, new tricks – it’s possible with Lotus Symphony
