Posts Tagged 'mac'

Notes/Domino 8.5 announced at Macworld Expo

Some great coverage of IBM presence at Macworld Expo, courtesy of Ed Brill.
First, IBM announced the availability of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5, which has been highly anticipated, including some great new features – both client and server side, and Mac support. You can also review the deck of ‘Introducing Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5‘ over at slideshare.
Head over to Ed’s post for more details on this important announcement.

Secondly, IBM also announced release 1.2.1 of Lotus Symphony, the open-office based productivity suite, available for free download at symphony.lotus.com.

Thirdly, great press coverage from the event.

Links:
Ed Brill
Alan Lepofsky
Chris Reckling
IBM announcement
IBM press room

Lotus Symphony Roadmap – OpenOffice.org Conference

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

IBM’s Commitment to Lotus Notes/Domino

My friend Alan Lepofsky, who’ll be keynoting our Lotus Collaboration Event on March 20th, wrote an excellent post on ‘The Cure for Fear of Commitment‘. Ed Brill also mentioned Alan’s post. Alan posted this in response to a customer’s CIO asking how committed IBM/Lotus is to Notes/Domino family. Instead of sending an email, he posted his thoughts and hard proof on his blog, for all to see and use. Highlights from Alan’s post:

At Lotusphere 2008, IBM announced:

and

roadmaps*:

  • Calendar enhancements including better iCal support and Group calendaring.
  • The future Domino Designer running in Eclipse. This will provide developers the modern UI they have been asking for, a ton of new features, including the new XPages design element.
  • A new “Web 2.0” makeover for Domino HTTP applications.
  • For the Domino server, simplifying Notes Identity management and authentication, options to replace Domino Directory with alternative LDAP directories, optimize and reduce attachment storage, further reduce I/O bandwidth, improved quality of service with the Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT), and Dynamic Group Policies.

* All future plans are subject to change!

Head over to Alan’s blog to read the full post.

Alan – see you in Israel next week 🙂




Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.