Widget tool
First, is a new Widget tool. You can grab widgets from a palette supplied, or from OpenNTF.org -- yes, IBM says they will be placing stuff on OpenNTF.org -- and add them to your sideshelf or include in composite apps. Indeed, there's also a one-button tool that enables you to have a view from any application made into a sideshelf window, too -- similar to the day-at-a-glance that came with Notes 8.

Then there is a new Live Text facility, which enables you to define text patterns and connect them to a supplied, third party (think Google Gadgets here) or custom-built widget. When text that meets the pattern appears, such as in an email, you click on it, and the appropriate sidebar widget is fired up and goes off to look for relevant data. The inevitable example is flight arrival information derived from a flight number in an email or calendar entry. The demonstration of this stuff was, to quote UK TV show TopGear, beyond cool; it's pretty much subzero.

Lotus Traveler and DWA
Notes 8.0.1 has Lotus Traveler; automatic wireless replication of email, with attachments, calendar, DWA (Domino Web Access) contacts and all, to Windows Mobile devices. Then there is a makeover for DWA to make it look and feel more like the Notes client mail experience.

DWA Lite will also be available, a fast, mail only version of DWA -- supposed to be lean enough to work on low-speed connections. This is the Lotus Notes for iPhones that had generated some twittering before the 'Sphere. It was previewed on the Lotusphere online site, and indeed was clean and snappy in use from my laptop.

Sadly Lotusphere 2008 crashed the browser on my Palm Lifedrive when I tried to road test it on my device, so I was unable to reach the DWA test to try it out. I gathered from other conventioneers that they'd had similar troubles.

Domino 8.01
Domino 8.0.1 has some more new features, too, of which the most interesting is document compression. Design element compression debuted in Notes 8, and now it's extended to documents. It only works on non-summary fields-- typically Rich Text only -- so the value delivered from it will vary from database to database.

The big hitter for it will be mail, where every item has a Rich Text body field. There's also support for 64-bit Windows servers, but unlike Exchange, you're not being forced into a 64-bit hardware upgrade to take advantage -- another way that you maximise investment in Notes and Domino and choose when to upgrade servers rather than it being forced upon you.

Next week: 8.5
But the much bigger news is 8.5, coming towards the latter end of the year. There's just so much here in the Notes, Domino and Designer space, and the Lotus people are so pleased with how it is going that a public beta of the Mac 8.5 client has already started.

Expect public betas of the rest of it during the year, and be ready to do strange things like run Websphere Portal Portlets directly in the Notes client, for example.

Stay tuned. I'll have another installment in my Lotusphere analysis soon.

Mick Moignard has been working and traveling with Lotus Notes since Release 2.0 in 1991. Mick is a DominoPower Senior Technical Editor and a Principal CLP with Unipart Expert Practices, a Lotus Advanced Partner in the UK. If you want to discuss anything to do with this article, or indeed anything else to do with Notes and Domino, contact Mick at Mick_Moignard@unipart.co.uk. Unipart Expert Practices will also happily discuss any opportunities you may have with any Notes and Domino application development or infrastructure projects you need help with. Unipart Expert Practices can be found at http://www.unipartep.com.