Peanutpress.com has announced that it will e-mail news and columns each weekday from The Wall Street Journal to subscribers for $8.49 per month or $24.95 per quarter. Included in the service is monthly editorial content from Fast Company, a magazine about the new economy. If you sign up now you get the service free for two weeks.

Galen Design Worldwide is having a sale on their Color Translucent cases for Palm III series models. Mention Palm Infocenter and pick one up for 24.95 (reg $39.95). Interested parties should contact clearpalm@galenworldwide.com for order instructions. SPUG has reviews of the AxxPac and the Pal Pal Twistor. The PalmGuru has reviews of the GoStyle Wood case Overlays and the Palm Planning video. Finally, GadgetSquad is a new site that will carry reviews regarding PDAs, Home Theater and Hi-Fi Audio, Personal Music Devices, and Digital Photography. They also have a few intro to PDA articles.

Sandokan wrote in with his experiences with Palm's customer service. Don't let this happen to you...
Ever since I purchased my new Palm IIIc I have been happier than hell with it. What I am not happy about is the knowledge level of the Palm (technical) group.

In papers filed in support of the government's proposal to break up Microsoft, the Justice Department said Microsoft is using its monopoly power to hurt other makers of PDAs, specifically mentioning Palm Inc. The government said that on July 11, 1999, "Bill Gates wrote an e-mail directing that Microsoft redesign its software to harm competitors" who make PDAs.

"We were surprised to learn about that today," said Jim Adamson, director of media relations at Palm Inc. "We are looking into the matter and beyond that, because it's part of pending litigation, we can't really comment any further."

Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said the e-mail in question did not talk about "harming" Palm, but instead asked how Microsoft could make its handheld products better than its rival's.

Here's the scoop on the Beta wrap-up....

Dear OmniSky beta member,
As we count down to the commercial launch of the OmniSky service I want to fill you in on some of the exciting things that will be happening over the next several weeks, including a preview of our launch announcements and a sneak peak at the features of the new OmniSky service. I also want to address a couple of questions that have arisen about our upcoming OmniSky billing. The details follow, and will hopefully clarify this process. So read on to learn more. We're proud of what we've accomplished together, and can't wait for you to see the results!

NPD Intelect has released a study showing that Palm Inc. had an 87.3 percent share of the handheld market in February, in terms of dollars sold. Casio, HP, IBM, and Compaq accounted for only 10.6 percent of dollars sold. Palm's lead has grown substantially over the past year, moving from 65.3 percent in February of 1999. There can be little doubt that the sales of WinCE machines in February of this year were affected by the imminent release of PocketPC, as few were willing to buy a handheld they knew would soon be obsolete. Thanks to AllNetDevices for this story.

Despite Palm's upcoming move to the ARM processor, MacOS Rumors, which is generally as accurate as any rumors site can be, is reporting that little or none of the technology and code written for the Apple Newton will be used in Apple's upcoming PDA. The Newton ran on ARM processors but was discontinued several years ago. MacOS Rumors admits their information is limited but they expect the Apple PDA to use a combination of Mac OS X and the Palm OS. This should push back the release of this product as Mac OS X is still in development and there is significant work still to be done on the Palm OS before it can run on an ARM processor. MacOS Rumors is also reporting that the Apple PDA will sport voice control.

SNE has announced the release of ThumbDrive, a tiny Flash card that plugs into any USB port. ThumbDrive will be available in 16MB ($57), 32MB ($95), 64MB ($159), and 128MB ($310) versions, and will be available direct from SNE's Web site. SNE said it is preparing 256MB and 512MB ThumbDrives for release later this year, and a 1GB drive in 2001. SNE is promising drivers for the Palm OS later this year, though it isn't clear how this will work, as no Palm currently has a USB port. Is this a hint that future Palms will have a USB port?

UPDATE: More about the ThumbDrive can be found here: www.thumbdrive.com

Google Inc. today announced the beta availability of a new version of its search engine optimized for wireless phone and handheld computer users. This is the first search engine that brings the entire Web to mobile devices. With less than 1 percent of websites available in Wireless Markup Language (WML), Google offers mobile users the ability to view and browse traditional HTML websites. When a wireless user requests a traditional HTML page, Google translates the requested HTML document on the fly into WML. Palm users surfing with wired connections will find the search engine useful, too, because Google's pages have been optimized for a small screen.

Palm Inc. said it and several yet unnamed partners are preparing a $150 million venture fund that will provide seed-level funding for technology startups working on Palm-related products and technologies, especially in the network and wireless areas. "We want to take a proactive role in the development of our relationships with technology providers," said Palm CEO Carl Yankowski.

The Kodak PalmPix , a clip-on digital camera, is now available for $179. Kodak is apparently expecting demand to exceed supply because they are limiting one per customer. It is compatible with the Palm III, IIIc, IIIe, IIIx, IIIxe, and VII, IBM Workpad, and TRGpro. It is also compatible with Palm V and Vx models with an adapter.