Motorola has announced that they have licensed Palm OS from 3Com, and that Motorola will take an equity stake in 3Com's Palm Computing division as the organization prepares for their near-term initial public offering (IPO).

Riverbed Technologies has announced their membership in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum. In related news, Nettech has announced plans to support WAP in their next-generation mobile middleware software solutions.

Communication Intelligence Corporation has released a new version of their e-signature solution called "Sign-it 2.0" with support for Palm OS handheld devices.

BUSINESS NEWS--#1.) Data Critical Corporation has announced plans to acquire Physix; #2.) Dream House Software and Silicon Mills have reportedly completed their merger; #3.) Franklin Electronic Publishers has announced plans to develop and market specific content for use in Handspring's Visor devices; and #4.) Kingston has announced a new 512-MB ATA Flash PC Card.

Cutting Edge Software has announced that registered users of Quicksheet 3.0 through 4.0 (spreadsheet application for Palm OS) can upgrade to QuickSheet 4.1 with QuickChart v1.0 for free.

PMN News Service has published several interesting articles--#1.) GO32.com and Netmaster Communications team up for Web offerings to EPOC users; #2.) Microsoft & Ericsson joint venture news coverage; #3.) Eba's "real-time" sales force automation system for handhelds (Palm OS/Windows CE); and #4.) @mobile's new "network status technology" for their wireless application services.

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