Group Sense Ltd. and PalmSource, today welcomed the first Palm Powered smartphone from GSL, the Xplore G18. The Xplore G18 runs Palm OS 4.1.2 and will be targeted at the Asian and European markets.

UPDATED Handspring has made a number of announcements regarding the wireless messaging system for the Treo 600. Good Technology is working to deliver their GoodLink 2.0 wireless corporate messaging system to the Treo 600. Handspring has also announced SEVEN will provide the default mobile email software on all Treo 600 devices sold by Sprint PCS and Visto will also make their Visto Mobile Access Solution available for the Treo 600. Handspring has also selected the Airprime EM3420 CDMA module for the new device.

Motorola, IBM and other companies have been working on developing the next generation of memory technology called magnetoresistive, or MRAM. MRAM promised much faster speeds and drastically lower power requirement and could be used in PDA by this time next year.

MobileWizardry had announced SHARK, a new development kit primarily focused on building applications for handheld computing. It allows any programmer to build and target a number of handheld devices and platforms with a single code base.

Scanning Devices has released a new Magnetic Stripe Reader for Palm Handhelds with the universal connector. The new 2500 Series Magnetic Stripe Reader clips easily to Palm Handhelds, including the Tungsten line, for reading and processing magnetic encoded cards.

Sony has posted several new software updates for their Palm OS 5 models. A new build of NetFront is now available as well as the latest version of the Macromedia Flash Player. Sony has also released a update for the integrated camera software for the NZ90 handheld.

Amazon.com has lowered the price of the Tungsten C to $429. The Tungsten C can also be found for under $430 from several online stores via our price comparison search.

Reuters has released a report that says Palm has begun manufacturing handhelds in Brazil. The plant will make Zire and Tungsten handhelds for South America.

The shipping dates for two of this summers most anticipated Palm Powered models have slipped behind. Both the GPS enabled Garmin iQue 3600 and the Fossil Palm OS wristwatch will ship a few weeks later than previously expected.

Palm has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the PalmSource spinoff and the acquisition of Handspring. The document outlines the process and details about the PalmSource spinoff and the Handspring merger.

After a year of development a open source Apple IIe emulator has been released for the Palm OS. The emulator is still ealy in development but can run almost any Apple][ disk.