Palm, Inc. announced an agreement through which IBM becomes a U.S. reseller of Palm handheld computers. The agreement not only broadens the handheld product choices for IBM’s large customers, but also brings Palm handhelds to the attention of small- and medium-size businesses that purchase from IBM. Customers can now purchase any Palm handheld–from the entry-level Palm m100 series to the higher-end Palm m500 series, or the Palm i705 handheld with integrated wireless–from IBM.

CNET News.com reports that due to technical glitches, Microsoft has stopped offering for download a free program it introduced last week that allows Palm handhelds to synchronize with the Macintosh version of Office.

CRN reports Microsoft hopes to ship to beta this fall an interim release of Exchange Server, code-named Titanium, which will meld support for mobile devices into the mail server. According to the article, “IBM’s Lotus Software group will beat Microsoft to the punch with Domino 6, if it ships as planned this quarter with integrated mobile device support.”

CNET News.com reports businesses using IBM’s e-commerce software will be able to access stored information via Palm handhelds, under the terms of a partnership expected to be announced Tuesday. According to the article, IBM said it will offer later this year the ability for Palm handhelds to get to information stored on servers running WebSphere, IBM’s e-business software.

Palm Infocenter has an article on the Palm Application Compatibility Environment (PACE), which interprets the instructions of existing applications designed for the Dragonball processor, and makes them run on the ARM processor. According to the article, because the biggest change in Palm OS 5 is the switch from Dragonball processors to ARM-based ones, which would have required all developers to rewrite all their applications.

nReach will premiere its Mobile Content Kiosk within The Gate Escape

TealPoint Software’s TealGlance won the “Best Program for PDA’s” award at the 2002 Shareware Industry Awards, in St. Louis, Missouri. TealGlance is a pop-up task and appointment reminder that displays a “quick view” window on power-up showing commonly-needed information such as date, time, day of the week, upcoming appointments, unchecked tasks (to-do list items), and the current battery level. A wide variety of activation and customization options are available, including analog or digital clocks, alternate task categories, and scheduled activation.

The Shareware Industry Awards were presented on July 20, 2002 at the twelfth annual Shareware Industry Conference. This year the conference took place in St. Louis, Missouri, and was attended by shareware authors, press, and shareware enthusiasts from all over the world. Programs are nominated and voted on by developers and other shareware industry participants.

Palm Infocenter reports Infineon is showing off the GSM/GPRS Data Module, a wireless networking Memory Stick, at the Wireless Japan 2002 conference. According to the article, the GPRS Memory Stick has a slot to plug in a SIM card to allow people to use a single wireless account with several different devices.

AvantGo and ArcStream announced a new white paper about mobility and medical education, to be released at the sixth annual meeting of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE). The paper’s content is based on AvantGo and ArcStream’s implementations with top medical schools including Harvard, the University of Southern California, and the University of Cincinnati. AvantGo and ArcStream will be hosting an online mobility seminar geared towards educational institutions on August 20, 2002.

Ironwheel Works introduced Version 2.0 of its PenJammer software that takes Palm handheld users through the entire Graffiti character set–letters, navigation, numbers, punctuation, extended characters, and even accented characters–teaching the proper start points and stylus movements to quickly master the Graffiti script. The new version, priced at $12.95, adds an improved interface and a game-like exercise designed to make PenJammer easier and more fun to use.