Handspring, Inc. introduced Treo 270, a compact, full-color wireless communicator that integrates a mobile phone, wireless applications like email and Internet browsing, and a Palm OS organizer all in one. Treo 270 also has a built-in, backlit QWERTY keyboard and enhanced battery life. Treo 270 is available for $499 with GSM service activation or $699 without a service plan.

The Palm i705 wireless handheld from Palm, Inc. has been chosen by a technology solutions provider and consulting firm to arm its more than 100 field sales representatives with information that otherwise would be locked at their desktops. SARCOM Corp., a Columbus, Ohio-based solutions provider for Fortune 2000 companies, has equipped its sales representatives nationwide with Palm i705 handhelds to receive and respond to emails, and offer clients the most up-to-date information, such as purchase-order status, inventory and pricing. SARCOM sells technology products, including routers, printers and handhelds, and acts as a systems integrator for its customers.

NowSpeed released version 2.5 and announced 10,000 licensed users and 1,000 downloads of NowSpeed Mobile Office, which delivers enterprise-wide, secure access to Microsoft Exchange from voice, PDA, and mobile browsing and Web platforms. Release 2.5 will extend this capability to include notification alerts and extensibility to other enterprise applications. This will allow enterprises to leverage NowSpeed as a seamless remote and mobile gateway to other applications, enabling them to be more productive and responsive.

Technical Marketing Ltd announce PrimePoint, designed to allow Web style data to be downloaded directly to a Personal Digital Assistant. A “black box” device known as the BeamBox recognizes any PDA within its vicinity, establishes the type, and then transmits information in a format to suit the PDA’s operating system. Technical Marketing believe this development will open up a whole new range of marketing and advertising communications opportunities to target people on the move.

alerga announced the release of LyME 2.2, scientific software for Palm OS devices with a Matlab-compatible language (matrix, complex numbers, graphics, access to Palm OS databases, and serial port, etc.). Version 2.2 adds 25 functions for linear algebra, input/output (including GUI dialogs), support for multidimensional arrays, and more. Variable are now saved across launches.

Brochu Software has just released an upgrade to its TapPad Graffiti Enhancement product. TapPad consists of a clear overlay that attaches to your device’s Graffiti area and covers and protects the entire silkscreen area. The overlay includes shortcut buttons to enhance your writing, including a 10-key number keypad, one-tap clipboard operations including a system-wide popup multi-clipboard, easy capitalization functions, special character popups, and a text clippings popup where you can store popular phrases.

PDATopSoft.com has launched a new feature that allows you to select a device from a list and get all the software available.

Qvadis announced the public release of Lexica, the newest in its line of software applications for users of Palm OS handheld devices. Qvadis Lexica is a reference viewer and multilingual dictionary and translator, allowing fast search and translation of tens of thousands of keywords between English and French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, with other languages in preparation. The Lexica system consists of a free dictionary-style browser and a set of user-selectable language modules, containing the databases for one-way and two-way translation.

The Stanford PalmPilot User Group meets at 7 pm on the first Tuesday of each month; the next meeting will be on June 4th. The Guest of Honor will be Simon Mawby, Product Manager at Handspring, Inc. for the Treo 270 and the Treo GPRS Software Upgrade.

Palm announced an independent study of enterprise deployments of the two leading operating systems for handheld computers and smartphones–Palm OS and Pocket PC–conducted by The Gantry Group LLC of Concord, Mass., shows that the Palm OS platform delivers a 41 percent annual cost savings to enterprises when contrasted with the Pocket PC platform. The complete study is available on Palm’s Web site.