Puma Technology has announced a new license with Research In Motion (RIM) for Puma Technology's Intellisync software platform. The technology will be used to link RIM's new two-way "Inter@ctive Pager" with PC based personal information manager (PIM) applications. Other companies who have also recently announced similar agreements with Puma Technology include Oracle, Qualcomm, SalesLogix, and Time/Systems.

Brooks Talley examines "Wireless networking solution: Bay gives users local mobility" on page 40C of InfoWorld published on 14Sep98. A PC Card with support for Windows 95/98/NT costs under US$600 each, and the base access point (BayStack 660) costs under US$1800. The complete solution gets an overall "good" review, but notes that the system does takes "some time to configure correctly." For more information check out www.baynetworks.com.

International Data Corporation (IDC)--an information industry market research and consulting firm--has announced plans for a new service that is going to monitor "Japan Smart Handheld Devices."

BSquare is now shipping new software for HPC Windows CE devices: "faxing (bFAX Pro 4.0), printing (bPRINT 2.0), expense tracking (bTRACK 2.0), electronic text publishing (bREADY 2.0 Publisher), and reading capabilities (bREADY Viewer)." Palm-size Windows CE devices can also get "faxing (bFAX Express 3.0), printing (bPRINT 2.0), newsgroup reading (bMOBILE News 3.0), electronic text publishing (bREADY 2.0 Publisher), and reading capabilities (bREADY Viewer)." 30-Day demos of all the above applications have been posted to BSquare's WWW site.

Jim Kerstetter and Scott Berinato examine "Smart Cards Get Hand: Technology, poised for growth, fills enterprise security needs" on page six of the PC Week published on 21Sep98. The article notes current and future solutions from IBM, HP, Compaq, Gemplus, Information Resource Engineering, Microsoft, and Sun.

SkyTel is now offering its two-way paging customers a new clip-on device from JP Systems called "BeamLink" that wirelessly connects via IrDA to a 3Com PalmPilot device to enable SkyTel customers to send/receive mobile email using a PalmPilot.

Orang-Otang Computers has released a new "wearable PDA case" they call "the Banana Peel" (list for under US$50) that was designed for 3Com PalmPilot and Philips Nino form factor devices.

Reuters is reporting that Intel CEO Craig Barret has announced that Intel is "not siding with either Symbian or Windows CE in the coming battle for dominance in palmtop operating systems."

Oracle is now shipping Oracle Lite--"the industry's first mobile database for PDAs and handheld PCs to enter volume shipment"--with support for Windows CE enabled devices.

Andreas Briell has announced the release of EBB-Mobile Data Systems' new VoiceNotes 1.1 demo for Newton devices. The demo package is a full-featured version of VoiceNotes 1.1 but it only saves five recordings at a maximum length of one minute per recording.

Avi Drissman has announced an important bug fix upgrade to his very popular "Avi's Backdrop v1.21" for Newton devices. This upgrade is recommended for all current users.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)