Palm announced it has hired Ronald R. Rhodes to be a Palm senior vice president, global operations, reporting to Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer. Rhodes joined Palm from PSC–a maker of barcode-scanning technologies used in retail checkout, inventory management, shipping and parcel sorting–where he was a senior vice president responsible for manufacturing and the supply chain. Prior to working for two years at PSC, he served in a series of operations positions at Motorola for 25 years, culminating in being vice president for the company’s Americas Supply Chain Operations, personal communications sector.

iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase, and salesforce.com announced iAnywhere Sales Anywhere for salesforce.com’s AppExchange. Supporting the AppExchange on-demand platform, Sales Anywhere for salesforce.com’s AppExchange is immediately available for test drive and deployment in conjunction with the Salesforce Winter 2006 release. Sales Anywhere improves field sales productivity and effectiveness by giving sales professionals quick, convenient access to customer and opportunity management information while away from the office.

Region 16 Educational Service Center in Amarillo, Texas is a true-believer when it comes to putting handheld computers in the hands of its upper-elementary school aged students. On the heels of its recent success with improving student spelling performance with the aid of Leading Step’s SpellChamp! game for Palm OS handhelds, Region 16 has now expanded the program with 1,000 licenses each of Leading Step’s MathChamp!, Size it Up, and Shape Up: Geometry games.

Skyscape announced the release of MobileDDx Differential Diagnosis Tool formatted specially for PDAs and smartphones. “MobileDDx Differential Diagnosis Tool” enables medical practitioners to explore topics by organ system, symptoms, diseases only, or search across all topics. With over 1,000 medicine and surgery differential diagnoses included, this is the most trusted Current Lange series.

iambic announced a new eGift program that will enable users of the Agendus family of products to purchase additional iambic products for their friends at a 50% discount. The iambic eGift program is available for a limited time. It covers Agendus for Palm OS as well as other products in the Agendus family, EasyAddress and EasyNotes.

Symantec has started delivering product updates to users through the automatic LiveUpdate feature. Users of Norton Internet Security 2006, Norton AntiVirus 2006, Norton SystemWorks 2006, Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.0, and Symantec Client Security 3.0 got an update to their antivirus scanning engine through LiveUpdate in December. Users were also notified of a critical update and asked to manually download a new spyware blocking tool. LiveUpdate is a feature of many Symantec products and automatically downloads updates to protect users against the latest threats.

SanDisk announced that it completed the acquisition of Matrix Semiconductor. On October 20, 2005, SanDisk signed a definitive agreement to acquire Matrix, a pioneer in the design and development of three-dimensional (3-D) integrated circuits. Matrix 3-D Memory is used for one-time programmable storage applications where low cost is the paramount consideration, such as video games, music and other content, and for archiving.

Kingston Technology announced the launch of its new microSD memory card, as part of its strategy to support the rapidly growing smartphone market. The microSD is smaller than a paper clip, offering high-capacity storage and has been designed to be compatible with the latest slim-line handsets. To maximize flexibility and ease of use for the end user the Kingston Technology microSD cards are shipped bundled with an SD adapter for use as a full-size SD card. In order to protect against accidental data loss, the adapter has a built-in write-protect switch. The 256MB card is the first offering in the microSD product line, with larger capacities to follow.

The Los Angeles Police Department is scheduled to roll out a system for issuing speeding citations electronically from handheld devices. Officers retrieve the identification data encoded on the magnetic strip of a driver’s license by swiping the card on their handheld. The driver’s information pops up, and the officer toggles through several screens to fill out the citation. The offender signs the citation on the handheld, much like people do for package delivery. Officers can then print the citation on the spot via a wireless printer. The officers upload wirelessly all of the citations they have issued for the day at the end of their shifts. The data is transmitted daily to Los Angeles’s municipal court system for processing and billing, thereby automating a manual process.

Apple has been criticized over a new version of its iTunes program that can keep track of a user’s listening habits. The updated software includes a feature that recommends tracks similar to the music being played via iTunes. Users said Apple had to be more open about data being collected because the recommendations use unique identifiers for a computer and iTunes account.