IBM Adds Web 2.0 With Notes/Domino 8

IBM has released an update to its Lotus Notes and Domino software, promising to take users beyond email and into the brave new world of desktop collaboration via instant messaging, office productivity and calendaring functionality.

The company said it had added new ‘Web 2.0′ features to version 8 of the Lotus Notes desktop client and Domino server to provide a single interface for office collaboration. For example, the new user interface is designed to provide access to people, projects and activities from the same place.

IBM appears to have learned something from Google’s approach to email management by providing users with a view of related conversations, rather than forcing them to scroll through lists of individual emails, while extended search functionality provides responses from web and hard drive searches, as well as email and contacts.

The company also announced that the Activities component of Lotus Connections – the company’s ‘social software for business’ – can be added to Notes, enabling users to share content related to a single activity and share it with select team members.

The product also includes integrated word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation capabilities with support for the Open Document Format and is available for Linux and Windows desktops, as well as Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, and IBM Systems i servers.