Sears has announced plans to deploy over 15,000 Palm OS Symbol Technologies SPT 1740 wireless handheld devices in 860 stores. The plan also calls for ordering 25,000 Spectrum24 WLAN cards from Symbol for wireless networking connectivity.

iambic has announced the release of TinySheet v3.2 for Palm OS (US$20 spreadsheet) that includes the following improvements: date/time formulas; math functions; scrolling features; and other GUI enhancements.

Intego has announced a new virus protection application for Palm OS called VirusBarrier 1.0. The package will retail for US$14.95 and will be sold via: buy.com, CompUSA, MacZone, Outpost.com, Computertown, Club Mac, MacWarehouse, MacMall, ComputerWare, Computer Store Northwest, J&R, Microcenter, CDW, and Developer Depot.

Beatnik has made two significant new announcements: #1.) Texas Instruments has optimized Beatnik Audio Engine (BAE) for TI's OMAP digital signal processor (DSP) architecture; and #2.) ARM has ported BAE to their new 16/23-bit embedded ARM7/ARM9 RISC microprocessors.

Infowave Software has announced that their Wireless Business Engine now supports integration with Lotus Notes Domino.

Ectaco has released Language Teacher PocketPC (Windows CE v3.0) that supports English-Hungarian and English-Serbo-Croatian running on MIPS, ARM/StrongARM, or SH3 CPU-based devices.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)