Posts Tagged 'notes'

CRN: Top 10 IBM Stories of 2008

Published December 19, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Alan has been showing his super strength this past few weeks by posting some IBM related stories before my Google Alert caught up with them. Kudos my friend !

Following last week’s article about Lotus Symphony wins 2008 Product of the Year, CRN has published another IBM piece, this time part of a series – Top 10 IBM Stories of 2008.
As Alan mentions, Lotus grabbed two spots in the top 10, #8 and #10:
Socially Acceptable:

In another example of IBM thinking deep thoughts about IT, the company announced in September that it was creating a think tank called the Center for Social Software in its Cambridge, Mass., laboratory for developing social networking applications.

and, Domino Not Dead Yet…:

…in 2008, IBM made some moves to broaden Notes’ appeal and make it available to a wider audience. In September, IBM began offering a version of the software, dubbed IBM Lotus iNotes ultralite, for Apple’s popular iPhone. IBM also teamed up with Nokia to offer Notes on Nokia S60-based mobile devices and smartphones.

Links:
CRN: Top 10 IBM Stories of 2008
Alan Leposfky – Lotus earns 2 of the top 10 biggest IBM stories of 2008

Symphony to my ears

Published September 18, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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IBM announced today (Tue) a new desktop productivity software, Lotus Symphony, free of charge.
The new software, announced at Collaboration Summit in NYC this morning, includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool, and is available for download for all users: business, professional, academic and customers.

Lotus Symphony runs of both Windows and Linux machines, and support Open Document Format (ODF), Microsoft Office and exporting to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).
The software is build on Eclipse and Lotus Expeditor, and can also handle Lotus SmartSuite files.
Lotus Symphony is a stand-alone version of the Productivity Tools available in Lotus Notes 8 client, and provides the end-user with the flexibility to work on a productivity software of his/her choice, saving as ODF and exporting to PDF.

More coverage is available here:
IBM takes on Microsoft again, with Lotus Symphony (C/Net)
IBM giving aways social networking (ZDnet)
IBM releases IBM Lotus Symphony free software suite (CNN Money)
IBM Symphony pushes Microsoft buttons (InternetNews)
IBM launches free, online Office applications (PC Magazine)
IBM sets an alternative for Microsoft Office (TheMarker IT – Hebrew)
IBM Lotus Symphony – supports multilingual languages, including Hebrew (DailyMaily – Hebrew)

Lotus Symphony: ibm.com/lotus/symphony

Top 8 reasons for loving Lotus Notes

Published August 2, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Shalom everyone, sorry for the long pause…
I had couple of very long days this past week, as 2 sales managers from Spain visited Israel, in order to familiarize themselves with the local market, our unique business climate, meet some customers and business partners. As you can probably imagine I had very little time to do anything else, even write a post… I’ll comment about the visit at a separate post.

During the many meetings I had this week, with BPs, customers and IBMers the sales manager and myself always stressed the one aspect that differs Lotus brand from the other 4 brands in IBM Software portfolio: Lotus is the people brand. You’re probably wondering why WebSphere Portal is here, it’s not yellow ! But, WebSphere Portal allows people to increase their productivity in the context of the work they do, so it’s ours.. (Lotus).
Lotus brand, which includes 5 families of products – Notes/Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections and WebSphere Portal – is the only brand that appeals to the end-user. We are obviously interested in the IT managers, CIO/CTO, but the person who will eventually use Lotus software is not the IT guy but the every employee the company has. And that require some of us to change the way we do business. At least from my view.

I saw an interesting article this week on w3 (IBM Intranet) – “Top 8 reasons for loving Lotus Notes”. And here they are:

  1. Enjoy working with a new and improved interface
  2. Improved productivity with quick access to your critical business applications in a single interface
  3. Save time with new, easy to use email, contact and calendaring features
  4. Conveniently edit and create office documents without leaving your IBM Lotus client
  5. Make decisions faster with integrated instant messaging and presence awareness
  6. Manage inbox overload with personal and public document libraries and activities
  7. Find information faster with advanced search options built into the IBM Lotus Notes client
  8. Complement the way you work, don’t change it

There’s also a neat article on Lotus website, with Top 10 reasons to choose Lotus Notes for corporate messaging and collaboration.

Do you have another reason? feel free to comment below.

Back to Lotus Notes 8 (Beta 3)

Published May 30, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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I’ve been with IBM for 6 years now, and Lotus Notes is the email client I’m used to, although I do work with Outlook at home from time to time. How do you know if someone is a Notes user? if he uses the phrase ‘new memo’ instead of ‘compose’ or ’email’…

I wrote 2 months ago about my recent upgrade to Notes 8 client, but the early beta was too heavy for my laptop, and slowed down performance, so I rolled-back to 7.
Now I’m back. The new Notes 8 Beta 3 (see demo) is available for some time now internally at IBM, for early adopters, but now it’s also available for customers.

The beta 3 Notes (and Domino server) are much more faster than before. In fact, there’s hardly any different from my previous 7 version.
New interface is much better now, with clear icons, in a web 2.0 style (rounded style with cute animation), there’s an improved calendar and address book, built-in Sametime (IBM internal messaging application) and collaboration tools and also a support for Office documents – you can create and edit ppt/doc/xls files directly in Notes, and even run your presentation (slideshow mode) directly from the client. There’s also an interface to Lotus Activities, a new web-based workspace for virtual teams, still under beta testing, and internal only.

Needless to say that Notes 8 was built and designed on top the recent innovations in collaboration and communications, and is an excellent platform for organizations who has information sharing and managing in mind. You can start today – download the beta code now.
You can also read and view a visual tour of Lotus Notes 8,recently conducted by Computerworld.

Pictures courtesy of Ed Brill, available in Flickr – check out ibm.com/lotus/getn8now

Back to Lotus Notes 7, after all

Published March 25, 2007 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Last week IBM Forum Israel hosted a Collaboration Event, with Ed Brill, WW Lotus Sales Manager for Software Group. The event was the second time I got to know Lotus Notes 8, the new (and still in Beta) version of IBM’s email client, Notes 7.

After some chats with technical colleagues from SWG I decided to download the beta version, a hugh 1GB file, that occupies some 1.6GB installed… not for everyone.. I backup all my C:/notes/data directory (another 4GB), and then started the process. Good to know that Lotus are thinking of bi-directional (bi-di) languages, and the installation was in Hebrew.. cute.

My first impression was very good. The new UI (user interface) is cool, good colors, web 2.0 kind of icons and some great improvements to the calendar and contacts views. It worked well, at first, but slower than my Notes 7. There was a delay between the actual click and the action itself, although the machine never froze, and you could work on other views while the inbox was refreshing. Some of my DB took a little longer to open, but I guess that an increased RAM would make it better (my T41 have 1GB, with Intel Pentium M 1.7GHz).

I roll backed to Notes 7 after a week of usage, for 2 main reasons:
First – the speed. Maybe an additional 512MB would make it better. 1GB would make a hugh difference. But with the current specs, it’s just too weak to support Notes 8.
Secondly, I think it’s a glitch in the system, surely not intentional, but I couldn’t switch my keyboard with Alt+Shift between Hebrew/English. Just didn’t work. Only in Notes 8. I had to go to the language bar and switch from there. Bothering, although I know the guys from SWG are ‘living’ like this for 2-3 months now… so it’s not that bad.

Once Notes 8 is official, I’ll definitely upgarde, but only after a 1GB boost to my RAM. Notes 8 is much more friendly, user interface is excellent and the collaboration options – which I haven’t elaborated, but you can read all about them here – are phenomenal. And I haven’t mentioned the possibility to create/edit Office documents, in Notes, what IBM is calling ‘productivity tools’.
Notes is climbing. Fast.



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.