IBM announced the availability of Lotus Notes 8.5 collaboration software with social computing features for all Mac OS X Leopard-powered computers. In addition, IBM's free Lotus Symphony document, spreadsheet and presentation software will be available later this month for the Mac.

Lotus Notes 8.5 provides significant storage savings over previous versions. Notes has an intelligent storage savings feature that ensures that only one copy of an attachment is kept on the mail server, resulting in an estimated 40 percent space savings.

Lotus Notes 8.5 includes a new look that arranges the user's collaboration tools onto one screen, showing links to team rooms, instant messaging, to do lists, calendar, Internet browsers and other tools. Social characteristics include new integration with Google, Yahoo, and hundreds of other public Internet calendars.

Using Notes, with just a check of a box, a worker can display the Lotus Notes work and the family Internet calendars in one view.

IBM also announced new Lotus iNotes 8.5 software, which allows anyone with a Notes user license to access Notes through a Safari browser from anywhere. iNotes allows the user to integrate the Notes calendar with Google calendar and also supports most standard widgets.

In addition to availability for the Mac, IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 software is also available for Windows and Linux devices. It also works more efficiently with Lotus Sametime for collaboration and unified communications and Lotus Quickr for file sharing among work teams at various levels. Lotus Notes 8.5 works closely with Lotus Sametime software, allowing individuals to see who is available, and to begin instant message and voice over IP (VOIP) conversations.

The real-time community tools in Sametime make it easier to find information and share expertise in real time with groups of people, enabling the user to take part in persistent chats and to share screens with others instantly.