Lotus and Latitude Communications announced an agreement to integrate the voice conferencing capabilities of Latitude’s MeetingPlace solution with the Lotus Sametime collaboration platform. Under the agreement, the two companies will engage in joint development, sales, and marketing activities to provide a real-time offering that integrates Latitude’s MeetingPlace conferencing solution and Lotus Sametime.

Lotus and Microsoft today announced plans to integrate Microsoft’s Windows Media Technologies into Lotus’ Notes and Domino R5 via IBM’s HotMedia Connect for Domino technology.

"Today the moon was blasted out of Earth’s orbit, apparently due to a mammoth explosion on the Lunar surface. While nothing has been confirmed at this time, speculation within the scientific community suggests this catastrophe may stem from recent troubles with Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2, a lunar atomic waste dump maintained by Moonbase Alpha. The disposal area has recently been plagued by instability and numerous Green Peace protests." Remember Space 1999? For a generation of us, it was the ultimate high-camp — and SO far into the future. But time has a way of moving on. I chose to run this wonderful link as a way of honoring all those wonderfully bad programs that were an inspiration to today’s generation of engineers. — DG

News editor Heather McDaniel has been down in Florida for the weekend. Unfortunately, it appears Floyd is keeping her there a bit longer than expected. Regular DominoPower news coverage should continue tomorrow, Floyd-willing.

Both Visor devices are very similar to the Palm III series, except each supports an add-in port called a Springboard expansion slot. The Visor (without a cradle, interestingly) starts at $149 and is, for all intents and purposes, a Palm III clone with 2MB RAM and a Springboard slot. The Visor (with a cradle) is $179. The Visor Deluxe is a bit more interesting, in that it has 8MB RAM, and is available in a series of funky colors including yellow (not as nasty as it sounds), blue, green, white, and gray.

Software for the Visors is similar to what you’d get with a typical Palm device, although Handspring describes an enhanced Date Book (a few better views and better integration), a calculator with business, statistical and scientific functions, and a world clock.

Things begin to get very interesting with the Springboard expansion slot. The downside is the Springboard interface is proprietary (or at least that’s what it looks like on first glance). Therefore, all your PCMCIA cards won’t work with this device and you’re dependent on new developments for add-on devices. The company’s press release claims available or under development modules include phones, pagers, global positioning systems, remote Internet access products, MP3 audio players, voice recorders, digital cameras, smart card readers, bar code scanners, and field data collection probes. Interestingly, the Springboard slot is also being used to delivery software, similar to the game cartridges of old. One such cartridge that’s apparently available at launch is Tiger Woods Golf. Handspring’s Web site lists an 8MB Springboard module (presumably, this would allow you to bring the Visor Deluxe up to 16MB), a modem module, a "backup module" (possibly to aid in backing up Visor’s shipped without cradles), and the Tiger Woods game. Pricing on the modules is quite workable, with the backup module costing $39.95 and the 8MB module costing $79.95.

On the surface, the Handspring offerings are both exciting and a bit underwhelming. Fundamentally, they’re basically Palm III’s (even their shape is Palm III-like). Pricing is a bit less and the colors are more consumer friendly, giving them a possible edge with the rank-and-file consumer. But the inclusion of the Springboard slot with all devices opens very interesting new opportunities. For example, we expect the company to get considerable flack for selling their cheapest model without a cradle. But there are many people who can benefit from a killer organizer without having a PC (the Sharp Wizard was quite successful as a standalone device). Even so, without a way of backing up the data, there’s always a bit of risk. The Springboard backup module solves that problem and for under $200, someone who’s not a PC user can still have access to a Palm OS device.

This also sheds light on the inclusion of games and content on cartridges. Again, someone who can’t install software or isn’t prepared to download goodies from the Internet could add new software by popping in a module. And, of course, the software vendors get added protection from copying.

Overall, we’re quite satisfied with this introduction. Handspring promises unit availability directly from their Web site in October and as long as they can keep support, supply, and quality at the necessary levels, we think they’ve got a good start. Of course, we’d like to see new, interesting form-factors and further departures from the Palm III feel. But hey, that’ll give us something to write about next year. –DG

Handspring today launched a number of Palm OS-based devices. As you may recall, Handspring is the company created by Palm founders Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky after they left 3Com last year. Handspring has announced two devices, the Visor and the Visor Deluxe.

The Radicati Group released a study which looks at four segments of the Knowledge Management market: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products, Workflow Tracking products, Search and Document Management products, and Platform products. The study estimates that the market for CRM software products will reach $10.7 billion by the year 2003.

The Boston Globe has this article following Lotus’ announcement it will pull the plug on eSuite. Even though eSuite is no more, some features developed for eSuite will turn up in other products.

ComputerWorld reports that Compaq will announce Windows and Linux desktop thin clients and will position its new Aero 8000 Windows CE Jupiter machine as a mobile thin client.

3Com today announced that they’re spinning off Palm Computing as its own separate entity. According to their PR folks, "Today 3Com’s chairman and CEO, Eric Benhamou, announced plans to spin off the Palm Computing subsidiary and create an independent, publicly-traded company. The new structure will allow both companies to expand respective leadership positions by independently focusing on growth opportunities."