PC World is reporting that Ericsson and Nokia are going to team with IBM Lotus to bring Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino services to next-generation mobile phones.

Solutions In Hand has announced a new version of their Palm OS spreadsheet application called MiniCalc v6.1 (US$30) -- key new features: improved GUI, Microsoft Excel compatibility, workbooks, data protection, and 80 built-in functions.

Avantgo is reporting that Republican U.S. Senators and staff members are using AvantGo Enterprise solutions to keep mobile users in-sync with their professional, committee, and personal data.

Symbol Technologies has announced that Germany's retailer Karstadt Warenhaus will deploy Symbol's wireless local area network, including Voice-over-IP (Internet Protocol) NetVision Data Phones, and the next-generation of handheld laser bar code scanners throughout their complete enterprise.

Boston PDA Developers Group will be having representatives of Palm Computing at the next meeting -- currently scheduled for March 27 at MIT (Room 3-123).

Reuters has announced plans to offer financial messaging services through Microsoft's instant-messaging technology. According to Jupiter Media Metrix (Feb 2001), AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM) has 29.1 million global users, and Microsoft's Messenger has 29.5 million global users. [SOURCES: PC World and The Standard]

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)