Aliens at the ‘Sphere

A visit from Beldar Conehead and 3 Blue Men started off the morning events at the Lotusphere 2009 Opening General Session. Then down to business, or at least the business of IBM Lotus. The big news items include:

• RIM support of most things Lotus, including, Connections, Quickr, Symphony (Docs for now), and XPages.
• The new iNotes interface is very Web 2.0-y and didn’t look like a browser app.
• Bluehouse has a new name: LotusLive. The first of the product/feature bundles, Engage, includes SaaS-based comms and collaboration applications.
• Sametime integrated telephony is handy allowing group calls (with video), switching phones mid-conversation, availability detection based on calendar entries and user created rules, and supports different working modes.
• XPages are cool, although no deep demos of them.
• “Atlantic” is planned for released as Alloy in March (or thereabouts).
• Mashups are getting easier to use and understand.

Oh, gosh, and a whole bunch more. I have to say the one thing that stuck out for me was the iNotes interface. It didn’t get much airplay in the OGS so I’m planning to explore more in the showroom this week (and soon at my own job). There were plenty of demos but attendees really only got a whiff of new functionality areas. The deep dives are being saved for the 3 other “mini-keynotes” being held throughout the week. I will report more as events unfold.