Blue Nomad is now offering a public beta test of a new wireless backup solution for the Treo 650 and 600. BackupBuddy.Net works in the background to backup your smartphone data to a server on the Internet.

Following a holiday quarter in which worldwide shipments of handheld devices topped two million units, the worldwide market for handheld devices began 2006 with its ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. According to IDC's Worldwide Handheld QView report, worldwide shipments of handheld devices totaled 1.5 million units, down 22.3% from the same quarter a year ago.

Telstra, Palm, and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced that BlackBerry Connect for the Palm Treo 650 smartphone on the Telstra Network will be available early next month in Australia.

mOcean is a new MP3 digital audio player for the Palm OS from MotionApps, and is optimized for the Treo 650, Palm TX and LifeDrive. It features a touch sensitive scrolling user interface and controls much like the popular Apple iPod. The program also does iTunes synchronization on Windows desktops.

mOcean can be controlled 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 has 22 preset equalizer settings and you can search for songs by typing in a few letters of the title. 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.

mOcean is available now with a free trial. It costs $19.95 USD to register.

Mario Kart on the Nintendo SNES was one of my favorite time wasters back in the early-mid 90s. Now a similarly themed title has made its way to the Palm platform courtesy of Viex Games & Xavier Martin. Read on for Kris' review of MicroQuad, one of the Palm OS's finest racing titles!

Orb Networks today announced their collaboration with Kinoma to bring Palm Treo 650 users and Palm OS 5 devices on any mobile network instant enjoyment everywhere of their all their home and Internet television, music, and videos.

The Palm Treo 650 smartphone is now available to businesses and consumers on the Vivo network in Brazil. The Treo 650 smartphone joins Vivo's portfolio for its Smart Mail corporate service, which allows real-time access to email, calendar, contacts and tasks.

UPDATE: (4-28) The Treo 700w updater is back online now.

The Treo 700w update that was released last week has been temporarily removed from the Palm.com support site.

According to a Palm Inc spokesperson, the update has been removed from the site, but this change does not impact users who have already completed installation of the 700w update.

The Stanford PalmPilot User Group meets at 7 pm on the first Tuesday of each month. The May second meeting will feature a demo and raffle of Stand Alone Software's Quickipedia, a Palm OS client for the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

Good Technology today announced the immediate availability of GoodLink v4.8. The newest version of the messaging software and service enables enterprises to deploy, centrally manage and secure growing smartphone deployments with greater flexibility and ease, unlocking the power of mobility for businesses worldwide.

Palm has made available today a comprehensive software update for the Windows Mobile powered Treo 700w smartphone on Verizon Wireless. The free update gives Palm Treo 700w users automatic push email functionality and improved exchange synchronization with outlook, calendar items, contacts and tasks from Exchange Server 2003 SP2.