3Com has "announced Japanese language support for all products" based on their Palm Computing platforms and will ship the technology (including HotSync) to international OEM partners (IBM, Symbol Technologies, Franklin-Covey, and PageMart) in late Q1'99. The following companies are reportedly working on "Japanese-savvy" Palm OS solutions with 3Com: Oracle, Teamsoft/Nippon, Polaroid, Puma, TRG, Netscape, Remedy, Lotus, Landware, Aportis, Concept Kitchen, IOData, and Accton Technologies.

JAWS Technologies has released JAWS L5 Data Encryption for Palm III capable of supporting "4,096 bit encryption strength." The software is being posted to ZDNET and CNET for evaluation download during the first half of Feb99, and can be purchased via a "special promotion" for only US$1.00 via BUYDIRECT.COM.

Sybase is reporting that their "mobile database solution" called "Sybase SQL Anywhere Studio" (admin, modeling, query, analysis, and ODBC/JDBC drivers) will now support Linux for Intel x86. Sybase has already announced support for Windows 3.X/95/98/NT/CE, Novell NetWare, and UNIX (Sun Solaris, HP-UX, and IBM AIX). A version for Palm OS was also announced in the past, but information on this product has been scarce.

Qualcomm has introduced a new "four ounce" wireless Thin Phone (MSRP US$100) that comes with a built-in modem (single chip, 14.4 Kbps) and support for either "800MHz dual-mode (digital/analog) code division multiple access (CDMA) or 900MHz single-mode (digital) personal communications services (PCS)." The CDMA savvy phone is model #QCP-860, and the PCS savvy phone is model #QCP-1960. [SOURCE: Grant Buckler, Newsbytes, 25Jan99]

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)