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Datamation have announced their ‘2008 Products of the Year‘ winners. As it’s only February I feel it might be a trifle early to assess the whole of 2008, but it’s probably like the Brit Awards 2008 where they announce the best of 2007 (but without the booze, drugs and egos).

A few mentionables among the winners… Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 won the Enterprise Linux category (there can’t be that many potential winners there, surely), the Apple iPhone’s mantelpiece gets a shade heavier, and IBM’s Innov8 wins the Business / IT Alignment category “by a landslide”.

However, most notable for me is the winner of the Office Productivity Software category… IBM Lotus Symphony. This win is described as “a major eyebrow raiser” and “a huge upset”. An upset for who? I’m not upset about it. This just shows that some people are prepared to be bold and break free from the perceived norm. If this were just a vote for open standards, you might have expected OpenOffice to grab the honour. The page promises to provide in-depth coverage of the winners over the next few weeks, so hopefully we’ll get to see why Symphony took the crown.

First bit of news… I’ve recorded yet another video, this time for VNU. It was an interview-style video, mainly about the Lotus brand and Notes 8, but also touching on other parts of the portfolio. I did it in one take, but we did another so they could get some flexibility in the final edit. A bit quicker than my ZDNet performance.

Secondly, my frolleague Brendan Tutt is this week’s star of ZDNet talking about social software… specifically, although not mentioned as per the rules, Lotus Connections. Brendan is a modest man, but I think you’ll agree he does a great job, a very polished delivery, on this subject. Click on the piccie to access this masterpiece.

Finally… oh I love this. The power of viral marketing. It’s a bit of a poke at the Redmond giants and an advert for Lotus Symphony all in one. Check out “Tired of Feeding the Machine?” on YouTube. You might be interested to know that there have been over a quarter of a million downloads of Symphony since it was first announced, and those downloads are continuing at a steady rate.

And while I’m at it I might as well mention that I’m now running Notes 8.0.1 (beta 1). A few new things (like e-mailing a Symphony document directly from the toolbar, and the mail quota indicator), it has Sametime 8 built-in (nice) and all-in-all it seems a bit more zippy and responsive than 8.0 (and this is on a old laptop which I’m using while my T60 is being repaired).

Back in June this year I wrote a post entitled “Should Microsoft be worried?” which discussed the open source productivity editors integrated into Lotus Notes 8. The message was clear for Notes customers… pay money for Microsoft Office or start using the editors which are effectively free because they’re already paid for courtesy of the Notes client license.

Let’s face it, Microsoft don’t even have to get out of bed to sell Office… the money just rolls in because most businesses and consumers believe there’s no alternative (and many get themselves tied into a license agreement which looks good value but is often an expensive option). I have a friend who had left her job at a large confectionery company and was starting her own business as a management trainer. She was talking about the cost of buying a laptop, and then having to buy Office to go on it - I asked why she didn’t just download OpenOffice for free, but to be honest her “what’s OpenOffice” reaction wasn’t a surprise. People just don’t know they have a choice.

Starting today, Lotus are getting very serious about competing with Microsoft in this space with the announcement of Lotus Symphony. If you were born in the 1970’s or earlier you may remember that there’s already been a Lotus Symphony, but this is a new offering which is effectively the Notes 8 productivity editors de-coupled from the Notes 8 client. This means that the editors are no longer just a free proposition for Notes customers… they’re free for everyone. Yes, you can download and use them free of charge.

Add to this the fact that IBM joined the OpenOffice.org community last week and you can see there’s a lot of commitment behind this move. What’s also interesting is that IBM (and Lotus) traditionally offer software for businesses, but now here’s something for the consumer market. Don’t forget that this is also an option for Linux users and at some point in the future Mac users. Okay, Microsoft probably aren’t shaking in their boots today, but that’s not the point… the point is that now you have a choice.

Final point - I pay taxes to the UK government and to my local authority. Millions of other people do the same. Some of that money swells the Microsoft coffers, and that makes me unhappy. There is a growing movement in the UK to stop this kind of behaviour and ensure that publicly-funded organisations take advantage of free open source software. Be part of it.