IBM’s recent announcement that it’s offering a IBM Lotus Symphony, a free desktop alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite, coupled with the recent release of Google’s online presentation application, should have the folks in Redmond sweating bullets. (As Matt mentioned in his Jaiku feed, IBM also recently announced its relationship with OpenOffice.org, in which they plan to contribute resources to.)
Lotus used to be quite a powerhouse in the spreadsheet industry — Anyone remember good ol’ Lotus 1-2-3? — which makes this impressive. An old favorite coming back … for free, no less. Wouldn’t it be great if Corel released Word Perfect for free? Oh, how I miss “Reveal Codes” !
Howdy folks! I’m an Instructional Designer at UT Dallas. I have a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education from Angelo State University and a Master’s in Computer Education and Cognitive Systems from the University of North Texas. I’ve been working in edtech for 11 years. Hmm… what else? I’m a *huge* fan of that little Irish band called U2, and I’m a bigtime Firefly/Serenity advocate.
I do remember ol’ Lotus 1-2-3! Wow. Hard to believe how long it has been since I heard that :)
I wonder if all of this effort to come up with an alternative to Office is due to people not being happy with Office, or just being Microsoft haters. Probably some of both, but I hope they keep focus on the fact that people want these tools to become more collaborative and web-based.
Yes! I started learning spreadsheets with Lotus 1-2-3. Talk about a throw back to earlier times!! I watched the Lotus Symphony presentation tour. Not sure that it’s going to be “better” per se than MS, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.