ACCESS has announced it has entered into a non-exclusive agreement with Palm, Inc., that gives Palm a perpetual license for the Palm OS Garnet source code. ACCESS and Palm have also agreed to an expansion of the two companies’ existing patent license. Palm will pay ACCESS a total of $44 million (USD).

Under terms of the agreement, ACCESS has granted Palm specific rights to modify the code base of Palm OS Garnet for use in its devices such as the Palm Treo smartphone family and the company’s other handheld computers. The agreement also grants Palm the right to use Palm OS Garnet in whole, or in part, in any product from Palm and together with any other system technologies.

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The latest addition to Seidio's excellent line of extended Treo batteries is now listed for sale on their website. A huge (in both capacity and physical size) 3200mAh battery is now available for $54.95. This new battery is the highest capacity Treo battery, surpassing the previous 2400mAh version by 33.3% and offering 77% more capacity than a stock 1800mAh Treo battery. It even comes with its own extended battery door. Seidio claims 10.7 hours in talk-time and 533 hours in standby-time with this new battery but does not break down talk and standby times by specific model.

Palm Canada today announced the availability of the Palm Treo 680 smartphone, on Rogers Wireless, Canada's largest and clearest integrated wireless voice and data network. The 680 is available for $299.99 CAD when purchased with a three-year voice and data service agreement.

The Treo 680 is the fourth and final new Treo promised by Palm prior to the start of 2006. When it was announced it was billed by Palm as a lower cost, more affordable Treo. Palm has hopes that more customers migrate from the realms of feature phones and choose a Treo. To date price, complexity and the larger form factor of smartphones have held back most average users from choosing a smartphone. The Treo 680 addresses these points and debuts with the lowest introductory price of any new Treo smartphone.

Read on for the full review...

mOcean, the iPod emulating mp3 digital audio player for the Palm OS, has just been given a major update. v3.0 has a number of new features including Internet Radio streaming, Live Podcast support, audiobooks, video and photo functionality, visualizers and new skin support.

mOcean features a touch sensitive scrolling user interface and controls much like the popular Apple iPod.The program lets you browse and control music playback with a on-screen mini scroll wheel as well as the 5-way navigator. You can create, save and load playlists from your personal music collection stored on an SD memory card. It also has background music support and headphone integration that will pause the music when the stereo headphones are disconnected or when the phone rings.

The Treo 650 is no longer offered for sale on Palm's website. The 650's product information page is still posted but states "This device is no longer available" and recommends Palm's current Treo 680 and 700 series.

The Treo 650 was announced by Palm in October 2004.

Rumor: A official-looking release roadmap screenshot has been posted by jeffro21 on the Howard Chui forums. This screenshot was likely taken by someone with inside Verizon employee information access.

The screen depicts an internal Verizon information screen showing upcoming handset launches. It clearly indicates the Palm Treo 700wx as arriving on January 29th 2007. This would be almost a year to the day since the launch of the Treo 700w, Palm's first Windows-powered device, on Verizon's network.

Star Command is a Palm OS re-creation of the old Star Fleet game of the early 80s, which was (of course) a Star Trek simulation. In the game you control a starship and travel the galaxy fighting enemies in order to stay alive and rise in rank. Names have been slightly changed for trademark purposes, so now you fight Krutons (instead of Klingons) and Zingers (instead of Romulans).

Read on for the review...

The Stanford PalmPilot User Group meets at 7 pm on the first Tuesday of each month. The December 5th meeting will feature a competitive demo of The Leonard Maltin Movie Guide, demo?d by Michael Rothstein of LandWare, versus PocketSensei?s VideoHound movie guide.

Marvell has formally announced the new PXA3xx (Monahans) Family of Application Processors. Back in June, Marvell acquired Intel's application processor business, which includes the XScale technology. The Marvell PXA3xx family of application processors are based on third generation Intel XScale technology. The new chips feature improved performance with intelligent power management features.