Foundation Systems has announced WriteHere 2.5 -- "a suite of applications for Mac OS, Windows, Palm OS, and Newton OS computers that brings handwriting recognition (HWR) from the handheld world to the desktop." With WriteHere, you can use your Palm organizer or Newton MessagePad as a HWR engine for your desktop or notebook computer. A demo of the product has been posted to the above URL.

SmartICE is a new wireless handheld credit card payment and order entry terminal that is ideal "for bringing the payment system directly to the consumer." The SmartICE device is being offered by Hypercom Corporation. [SOURCE: Business Wire, Associated Press]

Ultrasoft Money Pocket Edition is a "finance" program for Palm OS devices that syncs directly to Microsoft Money 99 for Windows.

Ultrexx Corporation has announced a "core inference engine technology" based on Java that has a small enough software code base to be hosted on memory restrictive "smart phones" and other "intelligent" communication devices. The first targeted devices will reportedly be mobile devices created by Intermec.

Peanutpress.com has released a new updated Palm OS savvy Peanut Reader (free), and has a host of top selling, contemporary fiction, & non-fiction book offerings.

Softwarebuero Mueller has announced the release of the SBM Utilities v1.5 for Newton (US$39) with new "Soup sort order capabilities." SBM Utilities consists of several modules for manipulating data stored in Soups, and Newton OS features/capabilities.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com) eFax: 978-246-3067