Palm developer Robert Jen announced that all proceeds from his shareware products would be donated to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund through the end of the year. This includes Triv, a Palm OS trivia game with five game variations and over 17,000 questions, and the newly released BabyMelodyPilot, an entertainment application for babies, kids, and adults of all ages, combining animated graphics with karaoke-style lyrics and almost 700 melodies.

MobileSoft announced its latest product offering for media and publishing companies called MobileMedia. MobileMedia content management software is designed to allow media companies to extend their reach to cars, PDAs, handsets, and mobile devices.

Aportis Technologies Corp. announced the release of AportisDoc Converter for Windows has been released. AportisDoc Converter allows text to be extracted from various types of documents so they can be read on any handheld device that has an AportisDoc viewer installed. Files that can be converted include Word 97 and Word 2000 (.doc), Adobe PDF (.pdf), Rich Text (.rtf), HTML (.htm or .html), Plain Text (.txt), and WordPerfect 6x – 9x (.wpd).

PDA Offers is being launched to bring together vendors of PDA software and accessories and offer exclusive special discounts to consumers. PDA Offers is partnering with the handheld computing vendor community to provide a wide range of temporary and permanently discounted products through its Web site, PDAOffers.com. Consumers can register at the site to receive regular email updates on the latest special offers.

Palm, Inc. announced it is kicking off the holiday season with product demonstrations and a promotional offer that showcase Palm’s dual-expansion architecture. With the purchase of a Palm m125, m500, or m505 handheld, shoppers can mail in for a free 16MB Panasonic Secure Digital (SD) expansion card and $250 worth of coupons for additional expansion products. The promotion runs through January 7, 2002. In addition, Palm has lowered the price on its Palm m505 color handheld, resulting in an estimated street price of $399 (previously $449).

Palm has issued a press release stating every day, retail stores face the tremendous challenge of efficiently tracking huge volumes of merchandise. Large stores are increasingly turning to Palm OS handheld computers to simplify and expedite sales and operations processes. Many stores can attribute success to their ability to efficiently and cost-effectively move goods along the supply pipeline. With handhelds based on the Palm OS platform, store employees can communicate more efficiently regardless of location, truck drivers can gather and disseminate delivery information electronically, and inventory workers can solve stockroom issues with less time and hassle.

Ectaco, Inc. announced its participation in COMDEX Fall 2001 in Las Vegas, from November 12 through November 16. Ectaco, Inc. will hold a press conference to represent the world’s first Pocket Voice Translator UT-103, which is also the first model in the company’s new product line.

Palm, Inc. announced the first ebook versions of CliffsNotes, published by Hungry Minds, Inc, a John Wiley & Sons, Inc. company. An additional 70 CliffsNotes ebooks are scheduled for release in November. CliffsNotes cover a wide spectrum of books from English literature to test preparation and Advanced Placement reviews.

Palm, Inc. released its list of October’s top 10 best-selling ebooks from Palm Digital Media. Palm Digital Media offers more than 3,000 titles from most major U.S. publishing houses. The ebooks are available for reading with Palm Reader. Palm Reader runs on Palm OS handhelds using Palm OS 3.0 and higher.

Palm, Inc. and Siebel Systems, Inc. announced they have strengthened their existing alliance to jointly market, sell, and ensure smooth implementation of Siebel Systems’ mobile eBusiness solutions on Palm branded handheld computers. This alliance will focus on helping enterprise customers achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction, maximize revenues, and receive a strong return on investment. Underscoring their confidence in the strength and effectiveness of the joint mobile sales solution, each company will internally deploy Siebel Sales on Palm handhelds to increase productivity and revenues generated by their own mobile sales professionals worldwide.