IBM on Oct 6th 2009 in a press conference confirmed that its new Lotus Domino Designer 8.5.1 will be available for developers community and students for free of cost. If you are one form Lotus Notes Community then you will remember how company’s are moving away Lotus Notes to some other technology majorly due to cost. This step from IBM will sure make company think twice before making such decision.
Lotus Domino Designer 8.5.1 much awaited from the Lotus Developers Community. its was powered by Java and Eclipse, Web 2.0 application development capability and Ajax Framework like DOJO. It also gave birth to new concept for Domino called XPages which makes Web application development more easy and powerful for Domino developers. It also support Lotus Notes application development for iPhone and many other mobile platforms including Nokia Symbian.
I am yet to explore it and definitely i will be downloading it and updating the review on techgearz, at last its free now 
If we talk about Lotus Notes 8.5.1, its more than just an email. It will be paked with many collaborative application.
Lotus Domino 8.5.1 is the first version to natively support the iPhone via Lotus Notes Traveler software. This extends Lotus Domino automatic synching for e-mail, contacts and calendar data to the iPhone, helping address the growing user demand to access Notes and Domino collaboration software on the road.
The new features, which include push e-mail, contacts, and calendar, enable iPhone users to work off-line, while allowing confidential data to be erased remotely if an iPhone is lost or stolen. iPhone users can also take advantage of a corporate directory look-up feature which helps them find contact information behind their company firewall.
IBM Press release also says that, IBM will be revising the Licensing policy for Lotus Notes.
Click on the icon to download Domino Designer ( 618 mb 
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