The WAP Forum's WAP Congress 2000 hosted in Seville, Spain by IBC Global Conferences has announced the winners of their 1st annual WAP Awards -- #1.) "Aspiro's Fleet Manager for Best Use of WAP in a Business Application"; #2.) "Distractions Mobile Entertainment Portal for Best Use of WAP in a Consumer Application"; #3.) "Sonera's Pointer Guide for the Service Provider's Award"; and #4.) "Webraska Mobile Technologies for the CEO's Award for Innovation in WAP."

Lucent Technologies has announced "ORiNOCO USB Product for Homes and Offices" that is geared to make creating wireless networks even easier. The device is Wi-Fi certified, supports 11-Mbps networking, has a range up to 1200-ft, and connects to three ORiNOCO access points (RG1000, AP-500, AP-100). This product is also compatible with other companies networking offerings (Acer, Apple, Dell, Enterasys/Cabletron, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Melco/Buffalo, Sony, & Toshiba).

iambic Software has announced that they have opened up a new international office in Montpellier, France. This office will be focused on expanding European sales and working on localization issues.

CNetX has announced a Microsoft PocketPC version of HandyZIP that enables ZIP compression on handheld devices for not only mobile files but also email attachments. CNetX was already shipping a Microsoft Windows CE specific version.

Sybase' iAnywhere Solutions and Broadbeam have announced a new alliance to integrate each other's complimentary technology to be able to offer to developers and service providers a single all-in-one wireless application server solution.

PhatWare has announced HPC Spell v2.5 (US$20) for Microsoft PocketPC and Windows CE devices. The application includes a basic notepad interface and also integrates into built-in applications. The basic configuration comes with a 90,000 word English dictionary.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)