The Hewlett-Packard Garage, a 12-foot by 8-foot shed at 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, Calif., now stands beside such hallowed sites as the Alamo, Carnegie Hall and the White House.

The National Park Service on May 17 declared the site where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began their partnership in 1938 a National Historic Landmark, among those sites and some 2,400 others considered historically significant by the agency.

The garage, which first appeared in Palo Alto city records in 1924, housed the Hewlett and Packard workshop as the former Stanford University classmates tooled around with a used Sears Craftsman drill press to create an audio oscillator in 1938. They formalized their partnership as Hewlett-Packard the following year and moved on to larger quarters in 1940, but 367 Addison is regularly considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

You may have noticed the news has not been as regular over the last week as it normally is. We’re having some trouble with the news rendering engine, but investigations and repairs are under way. Be assured, we are doing all we can to ensure the timely delivery of our industry news.–Ed

Dell is being accused of making false promises to customers to drive sales, according to a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The court filing accuses Dell and Dell Financial Services of 10 counts of fraud, false advertising and deceptive business practices, including offering misleading financing, and failing to honor rebates and warranties.

The state of New York is asking for an injunction of Dell’s allegedly bad business practices and an order that the world’s second-largest PC maker pay an unspecified amount of damages to customers found to be affected, in addition to a $500 civil penalty payable to the state of New York for each violation.

PhatWare Corporation has announced the beta availability of PhatNotes 5.0, the next generation of the company’s award-winning notes organizer software for Microsoft Windows based desktop computers, Smartphones and Pocket PCs. PhatNotes 5.0 Beta 1 is available immediately to consumers for Beta testing, and PhatWare welcomes user participation and feedback.

PhatNotes is one of the most popular Pocket PC and Smartphone note-taking applications on the market. PhatNotes allows users to create notes and organize them by type, subject, creation, and modification date. The software provides powerful text search with regular expression support, document security and email capabilities.

Palm and Digitel announced the availability of the Treo 680 smartphone in Venezuela.

The Treo 680 GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone, running on the Palm OS, boasts Palm’s hallmark ease of use. It’s packed with features beyond its excellent phone capability, such as email, Web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar, contacts, touch screen and more.

ThinPrint, a member of the BlackBerry ISV Alliance program, has launched Content Beamer 3.5, allowing users to remotely access business files and network systems from a BlackBerry smartphone and therefore increase productivity for mobile professionals. Content Beamer 3.5 for BlackBerry now allows users to access documents remotely from a document management system such as Microsoft Sharepoint. Content Beamer acts like a remote control, allowing mobile users to display, fax, edit and print documents stored on their business network from a BlackBerry smartphone.

With a similar sexy design as the Pearl, yet with a full QWERTY keyboard, the new BlackBerry 8800 (Gamma Ray) is certainly worthy of protection with Proporta’s Advanced Screen Protector and Alu-Leather Case.

Palm and CTI Movil announced the availability of the Treo 680 smartphone in Uruguay.

The Treo 680 GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone, running on the Palm OS, boasts Palm’s hallmark ease of use. It’s packed with features beyond its excellent phone capability, such as email, Web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar, contacts, touch screen and more.

The Belkin Network USB Hub works with your existing wireless router to give you wireless access to printers, media readers, and external hard drives.

The Hub simulates a direct USB connection that makes your computer think that the devices on the network are directly attached to the computer. Special caching techniques allow for support of high-speed USB devices and isochronous transfers at full speed. The software also allows you to easily transfer control of USB devices on the Hub between computers.

Discount retail giant Wal-Mart Stores announced that it will add a special section that sells Skype products, including handsets, Webcams, headsets and other equipment, in more than 1,800 of its stores.

Companies such as Motorola, Plantronics, Logitech International, Royal Philips Electronics and others manufacture this equipment, which is already sold through consumer electronics outlets like Best Buy. But Wal-Mart is the first major retailer to dedicate a section to Skype equipment.