Bill Gates suprised just about everyone yesterday by stepping aside as CEO of Microsoft. Steve Ballmer will be the new CEO and Gates will be chairman and Chief Software Architect. News.com reports that Ballmer will become a member of the Microsoft board of directors January 27.

Binary Tree, Inc., officially changed its name to BinaryTree.com. BinaryTree.com continues to provide a line of product offerings including ezMerchant e-commerce software, the eTeam Corporate Enterprise Portal and the BT Migration Suite. BinaryTree.com also provides a Consulting Services offering to its partners.

Intraspect Software announced the immediate availability of the Intraspect Knowledge Spider for Lotus Notes, an enterprise collaboration tool that provides access to information held in Lotus Notes databases.

Ericsson Mobile Communications and Extended Systems announced that the two companies have entered into an agreement. Extended Systems will provide its XTNDConnect PC mobile data synchronization and management software to bundle with select Ericsson phones. XTNDConnect PC provides the ability to synchronize and manage information such as contacts and schedule between personal computers and Ericsson mobile devices. XTNDConnect PC supports synchronization of applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Goldmine with Palm Computing, Windows CE and Ericsson mobile devices.

Actual Software announced the release of version 3.1 of its MultiMail Pro product. MultiMail Pro allows users of the Palm Computing platform to send and receive email directly from an email server. MultiMail Pro can be used with both wireline and wireless modems. MultiMail Pro supports Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and most major internet service providers.

Lotus said that there’s a Y2K-related bug in Domino that can cause client software to crash when a document included in a Notes/Domino message contains a year date greater than 2000 or before 1950. According to News.com, the versions affected are R5, 4.6.6 and 4.5.7.

This article in InternetWeek says that IT administrators are asking if they should upgrade to Domino R5. The article also says that only a few organizations have upgraded to R5 since it was released last April.

Percussion Software announced that it has enhanced Percussion ServerAdmin Plus with a new mail file analyzer module and more than 100 other additions to existing modules. Percussion ServerAdmin Plus 6.5 is available in March 2000 for $1,200 US per-server.

Globalware Computing today announced that its PylonPro 2.6 product will be used to provide schedule synchronization for users of Palm Computing Platform devices at the upcoming Lotusphere 2000 conference. Conference attendees can download the conference agenda and exhibitor directory onto Palm handheld computing devices by visiting Lotusphere 2000 Online, located in the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel, Europe 1 and 2 conference rooms. PylonPro 2.6 will synchronize the show schedule with the attendee’s Palm device directly from any Domino server.

Global Compliance announced that Lotus Development Corporation has included Enterprise Desktop into its Domino.Doc family of products. Using Enterprise Desktop, line-of-business personnel throughout an enterprise profile any electronic document according to its department, sub-area, document type, etc. and it is automatically stored inside the Domino.Doc library.