Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio expect to offer a lower-priced package consisting of fewer channels after the companies combine, Sirius said on Wednesday.

The combined company will provide programming choices on a “more a la carte basis,” including tiers of service both higher and lower than the $12.95 per month each company currently charges.

Jason Langridge has posted a nice comparison document outlining the features of Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6. This is a great place to start to learn about the differences between the current mobile version of the Windows OS and its next incarnation.

By means of “white” and “black” lists, PhoneGate for Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs will accept incoming calls, verify the number and, if necessary, automatically reject the call, so that the caller hears the busy tone.

About 75% of Microsoft employees have a Windows Mobile device. How do they deploy, manage, and use Windows Mobile inside Microsoft? On April 26th at 11:00 AM Pacific time, Justin Emch and John Albertson will be hosting a Webcast on this topic exactly.

The ExtraLabs Software company, a developer of software for creating RSS feeds, announced the new release of the Image Assistant graphic editor that has some new features improving the usability of the product.

Image Assistant is a multifunctional and yet easy-to-use program for batch image processing. The main advantages of the product include the intuitive interface allowing you to resize images and automatically rename image files, generate HTML preview pages and also apply all kinds of text and graphic “watermarks” and filters to images.

Palm Inc. could be sold for at least $20 per share this week and at least four bidders are interested, including private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, according to unnamed sources cited by technology news Web site Unstrung.com.

Texas Pacific declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Palm was not immediately available.

Sources have previously told Reuters that Palm hired Morgan Stanley to pursue a buyer.

Other bidders may include Nokia or Motorola, the site said. It also said there was speculation that private equity firm Silver Lake was interested in the company.

The site said that Morgan Stanley wants to wrap a deal by March 22.

Archos has unveiled the new 704 WiFi media player. The 704 offers complete video, music and photo playback, and full Internet access for surfing the Web and sending email.

The player comes with a 7-inch touch-screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 802.11g wireless networking, and a 80GB hard drive. Battery life is approximately 25 hours for music playback and 5 hours for video playback and Internet browsing. The 704-WiFi is available immediately with a suggested retail price of US $549.99.

Pocket Tunes now supports Windows Media Player 11. Customers can manage the tracks on their Pocket Tunes device directly from within the Windows Media Player 11 application on their PC. It also provides the ability to transfer songs and playlists from a PC to your smartphone or handheld.

In addition, NormSoft is offering discounts on other software, and has released new skins.

The new MixPad application from miniMusic plays standard MIDI files on any Palm-powered handheld or phone and can remix the songs as they play. Songs can be played on most modern devices using miniMusic’s Krikit Audio Engine for rich polyphonic audio.

Some handhelds can be connected to external music hardware like synthesizers, samplers or tone modules and MixPad can control those. Handheld computers with dedicated sound cards are also supported, including models from Sony, Tapwave and Handspring. The mixing board inside the software can adjust the volume and panning of individual instruments while a song plays, or solo or mute tracks.

About 115,000 former Cingular Wireless customers in California will soon get refunds for cancellation fees they paid when terminating their service after they had trouble making and receiving calls.

The refunds are part of an $18.5 million settlement worked out between AT&T, which now owns Cingular, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The deal, which was announced Thursday, provides refunds to 115,000 customers who left Cingular between January 2000 and April 2002. The average refund check will be about $160 and covers fees that were charged for early cancellation of service, plus accrued interest.