Lotus notes to Iphone (EMail and Calendar) - Answer

My company uses Lotus Notes 7.x version. I own an iPhone and was upto my wits end to figure out a way to synchronize LN email and calendar to my iphone. While there are many solutions out there, none of them seemed to work for me. Here are some solutions:
1. NotesPro - A native Lotus notes app, expensive at $15 in the app store. Not too many satisfactory reviews. I was not about to spend 15$ on something that may not be reliable.
2. iAnywhere - Free app, but requires some server side work. Ruled out for me.
3. iClink - Very expensive. Period

So here is the answer that works for me.. It is free and it is reliable.. Until I find a native iphone app that works, I am going to live with this solution..

For Email:

1. Forward your email to a gmail account using a LN rule.
2. Add your company email address as one of the "accounts" in gmail. Google will send an email out to your company email address to verify.
3. Verify your company email address.
4. Create a new POP email account in iphone. Here is the trick to make your company email address appear in your replies: When you create a pop email account on iphone, use your company email address, but the smtp and pop servers should be smtp.gmail.com and pop.gmail.com respectively.
5. Now your emails starts appearing in your iphone and you can reply without a problem.

For Calendar:

1. Download lntogooglecalsync from http://lngooglecalsync.sourceforge.net. Its in beta 0.2 as of now. I have watched this opensource program develop from release one to what it is now and I like what I see. As far as I know, future releases are coming too..
2. Extract the files from the downloaded file, to a folder in your computer.
3. In your computer go to command prompt and navigate to the folder that has the extracted file. Navigate to the folder called "dist".
4. Type java -jar icalbridge.jar and enter
5. A window opens that will ask the url to your mail file. Easiest way to find the url for your mail file is to open your inotes. Copy the link and paste it.
6. Enter your gmail address and password.
7. Hit the Synchronize button.

Now your calendar has been sync'd with your google calendar. Use Nuevasync (http://www.nuevasync.com/)to sync your google calendar to your iphone calendar over the air. Thats it! You will have your calendar synch'd with your iphone calendar.

The whole process should not take more than 20 mins, for anybody who is used to google mail, calendar and iphone.

Emails comes to you automatically. Anybody who has written command scripts can automate the calendar sync part. I have done it. My calendar sync's first thing in the morning.

This solution is not an elegant solution, but it is free and it works. If you are worried about forwarding your emails to google account, I am sorry you have to live with the current apps in the appstore or wait for cheaper one to come!

Hope this helps!