SBC Communications is reportedly testing within the United States a new email only device called "eMessage." The device will retail for under US$180, and has a 10-by-7-inch form factor. The monthly Internet service fee for email access from SBC will be under US$10 a month. The equipment maker is more than likely CIDCO which has had their own "MailStation" product out since early July 1999. [SOURCE: Reuters]

IBM has announced that they are releasing their embedded database for Palm OS and Windows CE called "DB2 Everywhere" (50-KB) for free. The "free" label is also be extended to IBM's Mobile Connect synchronization software that supports DB2 Everywhere. [SOURCE: Information Week]

Stan Miastkowski at PC World is reporting that Electrofuel's PowerPad 160 battery (US$449, 2.2 pounds) ran an IBM ThinkPad 560 (233-MHz Pentium MMX) for 15 hours in recent PC World Lab tests.

Stormgate Communications has announced the release of Blue Moon for Palm OS (US$10) that enables "professionals and general users to track tasks and/or events that reoccur, or should occur at regular and irregular intervals."

SanDisk Corporation has announced that they will be supplying Ricoh with CompactFlash (CF) digital film cards for the new Ricoh RDC-100 megapixel digital camera. The RDC-100 will be shipping in Japan very soon, and should be shipping worldwide by late 1999.

Softwarebuero Mueller is pleased to announce the release of Card Eject 1.1.1 for Newton OS (freeware) that "prepares a storage card for removing" and should "eliminated the Newton OS re-insert card warning message."

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