IBM extends Lotus Symphony with widgets

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 11:00

IT Industry - Development

In an attempt to broaden the appeal of its Lotus Symphony productivity software, IBM has released a number of widgets that boost the suite's collaborative capabilities.

Lotus Symphony is IBM's free alternative to Microsoft Office. The software accommodates widgets (add-ons based on Eclipse and Java) to extend its functionality.

Existing widgets work with Google and Wikipedia to retrieve information from the web.

New widgets released by IBM focus more on collaboration:

Team Workspace Widgets simplify the use of documents stored in systems such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Quickr;

ChartShare Widget allows presentations to be displayed on up to 20 PCs, with presence awareness and instant messaging capabilities; and

Symphony 2 Wiki Widgets help create content Symphony and then publish it to a wiki.

Other new widgets include the Lotus Symphony Learning Widget (blends local and cloud-based learning resources), Treasure Box (a Favourites list for presentations, documents, graphics, applications and other items), and the Export Graphic Widget (export Symphony images to gif, jpeg, png, bmp and other graphics formats).

"Symphony's open collaboration model can offer businesses limitless options - cost-effectively - at a time when many organizations are increasingly concerned about investing in Microsoft Office," said said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus Software.