The title says it all – LotusLive iNotes has won an honour in this year’s Everything Channel’s CRN Tech Innovator awards. iNotes won the award for the best small / medium business software productivity solution. According to the press release:

The winners were recognized for introducing innovative new solutions to bridge the widest gaps between current problems and solutions facing channel executives today.

iNotes’ mention is brief, but you can read about the full list of winners here.

As usual, Ed Brill got his blog post in before me, so I’m not going to repeat Ed’s rather thorough overview of the LotusLive Notes announcements. But if you want a quick overview of the new bullets:

• $5 per month, 25 gigabyte mailbox
• Onboarding, data migration and custom mail template services for LotusLive Notes
• LotusLive Notes access from Apple iPhone and iPad, Windows Mobile and Nokia / Symbian devices
• BlackBerry support coming soon

We also announced the new LotusLive offering, the Collaboration Suite, starting at $10 per month and offering LotusLive Notes e-mail with web conferencing, social networking, instant messaging and file store / share services

LotusLive Engage and Connections received a face-lift, and got a major new element… communities. If you’re familiar with IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 you’ll know that communities offer places for teams or people with similar interests or skills to gather and share information. Well, same approach here, the new LotusLive-based communities offer file-sharing, bookmarks, activities and discussion forums.

If you want to try out Engage or Connections, head over to the LotusLive site.

A couple of years ago I recorded a series of videos for GuruOnline. Our contact John has often mentioned that the series has been viewed a considerable number of times (over 19,500), so when the chance to record some more videos came along I needed little persuasion. However, I had forgotten how tortuous the process of filming is… well, for me anyway. I can stand up and give a presentation without a moment’s thought. I can sit across the table from a customer and talk until the Sun expands and swallows the Earth. But stick me between a green-screen and a camera, and gremlins will enter my head.

After a slow start, a large number of profanities and enough out-takes for the GuruOnline team to release an 18-rated DVD box set in time for Christmas, we managed to get thirteen videos in the can. This time around the subject was ‘collaborating in the cloud’… no product names mentioned, but you can read between the lines.

My frolleague Steve Heeney also recorded a set of videos on the same day, rattling off nineteen in just over an hour (impressive). So Steve probably has a better chance of a career in t.v. than I do.

And a bit of trivia to end with… I took four ties with me, changed my mind twice minutes before the camera rolled, and I’m happy with my eventual choice.

You can view the videos, and my tie, here.

To start with, I think this article has an amusing opening line…

Once the neglected stepchild of IBM’s colossal services business and systems unit…

Presented in the style of a slide-show, this article describes why software is now big business in IBM (which I’m rather relieved to hear). The Lotus brand gets three slides right at the end, describing Project Vulcan, LotusLive Labs and the expanding support for mobile devices. So, head straight to slide 25.

It’s a busy week for announcements in Lotus-land, but that tends to happen around the time of DNUG (which is this week, so there you go). Already this week Stuart McIntyre blogged about the new version of Lotus Quickr 8.5, which we have available internally with IBM and is a major upgrade (and a great product). More about that another time.

The other big announcement this week is the support for IBM Lotus Notes Traveler on the iPad. This momentarily had me scratching my head, because I set up Traveler on an iPad a couple of weeks ago – it’s a great e-mail, calendar and contacts experience, and simple to get running. So what’s the announcement? It’s official support for Traveler on the iPad, and also for the Traveler Companion which manages encrypted e-mail.

In time other applications will be supported… LotusLive Meetings and SnappFiles for Quickr. Both of these work fine on an iPad today, they’re just not supported yet. And I’m sure there’ll be more iPad applications to come.

Here’s a chance to register for some Lotus  webcasts during June…

• A deep-dive on building Lotus Domino applications with XPages (17th)
• Drive growth and deliver outstanding business results through exceptional web experiences (22nd)
• Harness a changing workforce and drive growth with social software (23rd)
• Collaboration in the cloud: grow your business and reduce costs (24th)

To register go to this page and then follow the links to the individual webcasts.

LotusLive Meetings is now available for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch… click here to visit iTunes and download. The application is free, so for LotusLive Meetings there’s no charge to be a meeting delegate whether you’re using a web browser, an iPhone or a supported BlackBerry device (client still in beta).

This iPhone application is incredibly easy to use – simply add the details of meetings you want to join (those details consist of your user name and the meeting ID). Then just click on the meeting name and you’re in. During the web conference you’ll see the shared presentation content and screen-sharing, and you’ll be able to view the participant list and take part in an instant messaging conversation. Of course I’ve already tried it this evening, the updates to the device are very quick, and it’s just a great application.

IBM Premier Business Partner Open Logic will be hosting four LotusLive webinars in the first half of May. Our own LotusLive technical specialist Thomas McErlean will be joining to help with the Q&A sessions.

To register simply visit Open Logic’s home page and click on the link.

Every time someone mentions ‘the cloud’ this week your mind wanders… are the talking about ‘the cloud’ as in that fuzzy collection of Internet-based services and storage, or that cloud of volcanic ash which is keeping the airport duty-free shops empty and raising the profit forecasts of car hire companies? The article I’ve been reading, from the BBC ‘Click’ web site, discusses the Internet-based cloud and whether your data is safe. If you go to any search engine and type in the name of a well-known cloud service provider beginning with G followed by “security breach”, you’ll find enough articles to consider that your data (whether personal or work-related) is not safe. In their own blog, they state that a recent attack was not just aimed at them but also at “at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses”. Google (okay, that’s who it was) are now suffering from having a big target painted on their back in the same way Microsoft have. And any other software company that goes to market with a campaign labelling themselves as ‘unbreakable’. Here’s my head, and here’s me putting it above the parapet.

Security is a big topic… by that I mean that it has many facets. I was once the lead UK Lotus Technical Sales Specialist for the Domino web server (many moons ago) and was fairly knowledgeable on the subject of public / private key infrastructures, X.509 certificates and the various flavours of Secure Sockets Layer. Whenever someone invited me to a meeting about security I’d have to qualify it – on one occasion I was lined up for a customer meeting about security which turned out to be about securing the server room (thankfully this fact was discovered before the meeting took place). Security is not just about encrypting data. Access control is an incredibly important aspect – if you start showing one person’s data to other people you’re in trouble. Authentication is pretty important too. So, anyone who thinks SSL on it’s own is secure better think again.

The chap from Evernote tells Click that their premium (i.e. paid for) service is protected by SSL. Our own LotusLive service is SSL-enabled, but not just for paid users – if you log in as a guest your traffic will be encrypted. IBM have a very good track record for security, but we’re committed to the fact that there’s no room for complacency in this space.

Here’s a favourite quote of mine, from the book ‘Digital Certificates’ by Feghhi, Feghhi and Williams (which sits on the bookshelf in my office)…

Cryptography is the science of making the cost of improperly acquiring or altering data greater than the potential value gained.

That may sound a bit dull, compared to (for example) a Groucho Marx quote (“time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana”). What it’s saying is that anyone who has invested in time and skills for nefarious purposes will be after the big fish in order to get a return on their investment. However, that book was published in 1998 and the world is now a very different place. Given that anyone – including the slightly gullible – can have a computer, an Internet connection, an e-mail account and a bank account, the average phisher can reach a decent economy of scale. The weakest link is not necessarily the technology, often it’s the operator.

I couldn’t really let the opportunity pass. The volcanic apocalypse is yet another example of the disruption that we all potentially face, one of those things that scuppers our travel plans. Other things outside of your control include inclement weather, terrorism, strike action, and incompetence – for example, you missing your flight because an idiot lorry driver has crashed and the motorway has been closed because his cargo of pigs is now loose. Don’t laugh, it happened last week. Ah, poor piggies.

So how can you reduce your chances of that important meeting being ruined by Mother Nature or worthless idiotic humans? The answer is LotusLive Meetings – the rich capabilities are easy to access (just provide the URL to everyone), easy to use, secure, and you can add audio and video to the experience.

Okay, you could never replace all of your face-to-face meetings with web meetings, but your first step in cutting costs would be to work out which ones could be replaced. Or look at it in a positive way – which meetings don’t take place today but could be useful if you could access the right medium to hold the meeting? And then there’s the education aspect – in the Lotus brand we have two or three scheduled learning sessions a week, all delivered via LotusLive Meetings. It’s a quick and convenient (and inexpensive) alternative to classroom-based training.

If you want to try LotusLive Meetings, or any of the other LotusLive services, just click here.