IBM has released v8.5.1 of Lotus Notes and Domino, the company's enterprise-level collaboration packages. Through Lotus Notes Traveler the software now has native iPhone support, allowing Domino to automatically sync e-mail, contacts and calendars. Push e-mail is supported, and owners of iPhones can work offline if need be.
A new version of PocketMac, a tool for syncing unsupported phones with a Mac, has been released for the iPhone. In the iPhone's default state it is only able to sync with Address Book and iCal, but PocketMac for iPhone adds additional syncing support for Entourage, Meeting Maker and Lotus Notes. Users can sync contacts and calendars from these applications, and select only the categories of data they would like carried over.
Owners of BlackBerry cellphones should now have more robust support on the Mac, according to an announcement. PocketMac, an app free from Research in Motion thanks to a licensing agreement, has been updated to v4.1.25 with a number of important features for Mac users, most notably the ability to sync iTunes and iPhoto libraries. iTunes playlists exclude any protected tracks, but iPhoto collections retain their album organizations, and can have images scaled down if necessary. Photos stored on a BlackBerry can imported directly to iPhoto.
In late January, IBM revealed it was considering the iPhone as a viable platform for its web-based Lotus Notes, and MacNN has revealed that the plans are drawing to a close, with a late 2008 release in mind. While Apple included support for Microsoft Exchange in its latest v2.0 iPhone operating system update, it still lacks several key collaboration features that IBM hopes to supplement through the so-called Lotus iNotes. No specific release date is planned.
Sybase has announced that its iAnywhere Mobile Office system now has extended support for the iPhone 3G. iAnywhere interfaces with corporate e-mail systems which might otherwise block the phone, due to security concerns; it instead provides an intermediate layer, which lets companies perform functions like attachment limiting, e-mail deletion, or even blocking a user entirely. iPhone owners can meanwhile use their native e-mail client.
Tungle on Wednesday unveiled a new iPhone interface for its free business-class meeting coordination service, designed to allow busy individuals to synchronize meetings across several calendar platforms. The service supports calendars such as iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, and BlackBerry, and syncs with the calendar program on the iPhone. Because the service is so widely supported, Tungle says that individuals don’t have to necessarily be a member to use it.
Apple will announce tight regulation of iPhone applications at its March 6th SDK event, say several anonymous sources. Although the SDK has been hotly anticipated as a means of turning iPhones into handheld computers, Apple will for various reasons restrict how iPhone software operates and is distributed. Users will for instance have to acquire applications through the iTunes Store, instead of through independent websites, where it may sometimes be more convenient.
The special event Apple has planned for March 6th will likely introduce better corporate e-mail support, argues Shaw Wu of American Technology Research. The analyst cites "industry and developer sources," who say that Apple has been conducting months of beta testing in order to make the iPhone function properly with Microsoft ubiquitous Exchange Server technology. The same sources suggest that support is imminent for Lotus Notes, for which IBM has confirmed that a web client is in development.
