With riteMail electronic ink email, you can create your own cards with a desktop computer mouse or PDA stylus and email them straight to Dad. They’ve drawn several templates that make it easy for adults and kids alike. For example, they can color a new tie, speckle a recently caught fish, add hamburgers, and hotdogs to a BBQ feast, or personalize any of the drawings with their favorite colors, fun doodles, and handwritten Happy Father’s Day message.

Palm, Inc. announced a strategic, two-year alliance with McKesson Corporation, a provider of supply, information, and care management solutions to the healthcare industry. The agreement combines the strength of these two leaders to provide healthcare organizations and professionals with mobile and wireless access to the critical clinical information they need to make the best possible patient-care decisions.

Rococo Software will give-away a Bluetooth-enabled Palm handheld to the winner of Rococo’s trivia game challenge at this year’s Bluetooth Congress. Conference attendees are invited to try their hand at Rococo’s Bluetooth trivia game at booth #334. The trivia game is part of Rococo’s demonstration of its development tools, Impronto Simulator, and Impronto Developer Kit at Congress. In addition to the game, Rococo will show a Palm OS-based instant messenger application that sends and receives real-time messages on a Palm handheld over a Bluetooth connection.

As enterprises equip more employees with PDAs, they must understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) for these devices. Gartner, Inc. analysts said the TCO for a PDA per user can approach $3,000 a year. TCO for a wireless device will mostly add additional hardware, software, and service costs on a per-user basis compared to mobile (but not wireless-enabled) devices. Additional software and service costs can vary, but average about $50 per month per user. Gartner found PDA TCO approaching $3,000 per user per year. Adding a wireless modem with a TCO of $1,392 will bring the cost to $4,392, comprised mostly of hardware, support, and additional service fees.

CNET News.com has an article on Palm’s announcement of the shipment of Palm OS 5 to its developers. According to the article, the new operating system is designed to pave the way for hardware makers to create Palm OS handhelds using more powerful processors based on chip designs from England’s ARM. The OS also adds improved security, sound, and networking features.

SplashData, Inc. announced a significant upgrade to SplashShopper, its shopping list manager for Palm OS handhelds and desktop computers. SplashShopper 2.1 now includes support for multiple stores, beaming, sharing customized lists, converting HandyShopper files, and more. The new version is available for a limited time for half-price, $9.95, when purchased online from SplashData.

PalmSource, Inc. has licensed components of the Palm OS platform to MediaQ, Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer, to further support the development of Palm OS products with advanced graphics and multimedia capabilities. MediaQ has joined the expanded Palm OS Ready Program, which is targeted at providing Palm OS licensees with silicon solutions ready to run Palm OS. The program fosters innovation and reduces time-to-market for Palm OS products, which account for 87.2 percent of the U.S. retail market, according to NPDTechworld research.

PalmSource, Inc. has begun shipping the final version of Palm OS 5 to licensees and developers. The release of Palm OS 5 is designed to enable developers and licensees to accelerate the introduction of innovative mobile products while maintaining compatibility with today’s Palm OS based software and Palm Powered hardware. Palm OS 5 will bring the flexibility, innovation, and ease of use of Palm OS to a new generation of mobile devices through powerful ARM-compliant processors. Licensees can now choose from a full range of processors, starting with the ARM 7 CPU and scaling to the highest-performance ARM chips from Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments, effectively broadening the market. In addition, the operating system will deliver an enhanced user interface that enables increased personalization, security, multimedia, and wireless networking, as well as compatibility with existing Palm OS software programs. Palm OS 5 offers licensees and developers greater market opportunities, enabling them to create new classes of devices and software.

Rococo Software will unveil its Bluetooth developer kit at a press conference at Bluetooth Congress in Amsterdam on Wednesday, June 12 at 3:30 pm. Impronto Developer Kit is a standards-based Java tool designed to make building Bluetooth applications easy by hiding complex Bluetooth protocols behind standard Java APIs (JSR-82). Impronto Developer Kit is designed to cut application development time, reduce the Bluetooth learning curve, run applications on Bluetooth devices that support Java, implement standard Java APIs for Bluetooth Wireless Technology (JSR-82), and works in J2ME and J2SE.

CNET News.com reports Palm plans to announce today that it has shipped Palm OS 5 to its developers. According to the article, “The new operating system is designed to pave the way for hardware makers to create Palm OS handhelds using more powerful processors based around chip designs from England’s ARM. The OS also adds improved security, sound, and networking features.”