Handspring, Inc. announced that the Handspring Foundation, a fund established in March of this year to support organizations and programs dedicated to creating positive change in their communities, has awarded its first round of grants. The Handspring Foundation selected five nonprofit organizations to receive the grants, including: the Emergency Housing Consortium in San Jose, CA, Via Rehabilitation Services in Santa Clara, CA, Laura’s House in San Clemente, CA, the Dance Institute of Washington in Washington, D.C., and the Greater Muchinjike Orphan Home Trust in Zimbabwe. Additionally, the Handspring Foundation announced the launch of its Product Donation Program to provide nonprofit organizations with Handspring Visors and the Handspring Volunteerism Campaign.

DataViz, Inc. announced at TechX that printing solutions from IS/Complete and The InStep Group will support Documents To Go. This support enables users to print Word, Excel, and other files from their Palm OS device using their handheld or conventional desktop printers.

In its second round of grants from the Palm Education Pioneer program, Palm, Inc. announced it is awarding $2.3 million in Palm handheld units to elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities to enable innovative teaching and learning, and to gain insight into how handheld computers affect teaching and learning. This research will help determine best practices for integrating handhelds into curriculum and teacher training. Palm named the grant recipients on the opening day of the National Educational Computing Conference at McCormick Place.

Palm, Inc. announced that Sears stores are offering Palm handheld computers in retail outlets nationwide.

Palm, Inc. and Panasonic announced joint efforts to accelerate consumer and enterprise acceptance of the Secure Digital memory and Input/Output card standards. These efforts may include such things as joint advertising and promotion activities in the United States, portions of which will debut at TechX NY.

Palm, Inc.’s chief executive officer, Carl Yankowski, is delivering the opening keynote address this morning at TechX NY. Directly following the keynote, Yankowski will hold a media Q&A session to answer questions related to the keynote. In addition, approximately 20 third-party Palm Economy partners are launching products at the show. In the keynote, titled “Handheld Computing: Grass Roots to Corporate Standard,” Yankowski will discuss how handheld computers, along with mobile phones and notebooks, broke the chains that tethered workers to their desks. Once a grass-roots trend among the technical elite, handhelds have found a place among mobile professionals and enterprises–and are fast becoming a platform for managing the heart of business itself. Yankowski will provide a look at the technologies and innovations that are fueling this revolution, not just for the future, but also in the here and now.

Our editorial staff, en masse, will be on assignment at TECHXNY (the new name for PC Expo) for the next few days. Daily news coverage will resume on Friday. Stay tuned to our upcoming issues for full show reports.

ImagiWorks, Inc. unveiled ImagiProbe 2.0, a new version of its Palm OS-compatible sensor-based data acquisition system for science and math education. The ImagiProbe system enables users to attach sensors to Palm OS devices and collect, display, and analyze data in context.

Palm has announced a leading-edge, independent school outside of Winston-Salem, NC, has become the first K-12 school in the country to require the use of Palm handheld computers in its high school and to pilot their use among students as young as first grade.

According to Eric Peterson, assistant headmaster at the school, ninth through 12th grade students returning to school in late August will find something extra in their registration packets — a Palm IIIc handheld, a portable keyboard and a suite of software applications. The school is working with Palm and several third-party developers to select an appropriate set of software applications to be used by students and faculty across the curriculum. In addition to issuing Palm handhelds to the high school students, classroom sets of Palm handhelds will be used in science and math classes in both the middle and elementary grades. The school also plans to integrate handhelds into its brand new, multimillion dollar science, math and academic support centers.

Jen Edwards at Brighthand has a review of the Infraready IR Adapter from Bachmann Software, which allows you to use PrintBoy to beam files to any printer.