Not only will Palm be offering Treo 750 users a chance to upgrade their phones from Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Mobil 6, but the company won't charge for it.

That means support for HTML-formatted email, Office 2007 file formats, and HSDPA support. There's slightly less memory available on a Treo 750 running Windows Mobile 6, but the folks over at Mobility Site got a chance to play with one at CTIA, and they say it seems just as responsive as a Treo with Windows Mobile 5.0

There's no word on when the update will be available or how current Treo users will be able to sign up for it.

Today Jajah announced JAJAH Mobile Web, a service made especially for smartphones like the Blackberry, Treo, and Windows Mobile devices. Like Jajah's service that allows for the ability to make free local and international calls with a regular phone, Jajah's mobile service aims to do the same for mobile users. Any device that has internet access with a browser can make free or low-cost calls with a click. As long as you are a Jajah user, you can call other members for no cost, or call for a small fee to non-members. Web consumers can access the service directly from their browsers by visiting mobile.jajah.com. The Mobile Web service then ties into user's address books where calls can be placed. Simply enter the phone number of the individual or scroll down on your address book, and Jajah will make the call. Jajah has a Flickr photo tour so you can better understand the process involved. You can also check out the JAJAH Mobile Web video tour after the jump. Mobile providers watch out!

There's been a ton of news out of Sling Media during the first few days of CES. This morning, the company officially unveiled SlingPlayer Mobile for PalmOS.

A public beta of the Palm client is due out by the end of January, with an official launch date scheduled for the first quarter of 2007. There's no word yet on pricing, but seeing as SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile has been available for a while with a price of $30, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the Palm version will be comparably priced.

Sling also announced today that they'll be bundling some of their software with new HP notebooks, and they're demonstrating that SlingPlayer works with Vista, although I think the big surprise would have been if their software didn't run on Vista.

Sure, you could drop a couple hundred bucks on an iPod or a Zune, but who wants to carry around a portable media player and cell phone, and a PDA. there are a number of programs out there to do for your PDA what Winamp did for the PC.

If you've got a Treo or other PalmOS device, Pocket Tunes is one of the most full-featured music players around, and version 4.0 adds a bunch of new features:

• AAC and aacPlus support
• Internet radio manager
• New interface
• Album art
• Enhanced volume boost feature

Pocket tunes Deluxe 4.0 will set you back $38, but if you can live without internet radio and support for DRM protected AAC and WMA files, there's a $20 basic version. You can also download a free trial.

[Via Palm InfoCenter]

Despite ads floating around inviting shoppers to the url, www.ontreo.com--Palm's site for the new Treo 680 released last week--had remained dormant until today. And it probably should have stayed that way. Engadget says the phone itself has a "whiff of 2004" about it, and that goes triple for the obnoxious flash-based bit of yesteryear that Palm has whipped up to support the phone. Aside from being blinding and difficult to navigate, it's one of those "hey, look at our cool site!" sites that tells you absolutely nothing about the product. Assuming you can find the information links (I'm not telling; you'll have to figure it out for yourselves), each of the phone's features is given exactly one paragraph of description before the detail links whisk you off, without so much as a how-do-you-do, to Palm's main site. Actually I'm okay with that. It's where they should have sent everyone in the first place.

There is one interesting tidbit buried in the site, though: apparently the the 680, like it's big brother the 700, will support TiVoToGo. That makes it almost worth the $199 pricetag right there.

You can read a paragraph about that, too, if you make it through the blinding orange and emoticon-headed masses with eyesight and sanity intact.

Opera software released a new version of its mobile browser, Opera Mini, on Tuesday for use on Palm and RIM handhelds. This new version has "the Google" search engine as default. Since launching earlier this year, Opera Mini has received much fanfare and thanks from mobile users for bringing a fast and much better mobile browser to the marketplace. This new version enhances on image rendering and speed performance by condensing web pages, and decreasing the data size that is transferred. Not only is Opera free to download and use, but they have a contest running right now where Operaheads can win a free Palm Treo or Blackberry for coming up with a sales pitch to explain why Opera Mini would improve your on-the-go lifestyle. The deadline for the contest is November 30th.

Say what you will about Dave Winer, he's hard to ignore in the blogosphere. Recently Dave released YoMoBlog, a web-based blogging client for mobile devices like Blackberries, Treos and Pocket PCs. All you do is fill out a few fields on the start page (which we've linked to above), which include blog url, email address, username , and password, and if all goes well you should be able to post directly to your blog.

In my tests I found YoMoBlog to be extremely slow, but I'm sure that can be chalked up to weird internet inconsistencies. Otherwise it seemed to work fine. Note that your blog engine must support the Metaweblog API for this site to work.

Personally I'm not big on entering text into a mobile device, but this service could be a godsend in the event you're in a situation where blogging in a timely fashion is critical. Of course, the fine print says, "This is experimental software. Please back up your data. We are not responsible for any loss in service or loss of data entered into the system. Will not use your personal information for any purpose other than to allow you to create and edit posts on your weblog. The security of the system is very simple, don't trust it for sensitive information. We make no guarantees about performance, uptime, and we may cancel the service at any time, for any reason, at our discretion.", so you certainly wouldn't want to build a business around this service, or rely on it as your only mobile blogging solution.

Digg has launched Digg River, a service intended for mobile users. The page and site are much more simplified, only providing the top level feeds. The categories are currently only available through the about page, and there is no "digging" available for the stories. It's a nice clean, simple and effective way for Digg feeds to be accessed with a mobile device like a Treo, Blackberry or cell phone. Diggriver allows for book marking by categories in case you choose to only watch a certain area. It's a great way to check out the latest news while in boring situations.

[Via Wave Broadcast]

Notice how we don't talk much about Palm apps around here? I used to be the biggest Palm fan out there. That was before the dark days of lousy hardware, bloated OS updates, and bugs from here to the 10th planet. Riddle me how Sony was able to get Flash on their PalmOS devices years ago, but Palm's own still don't have it? Explain why the OS has to be stuck at 5.x.x.x.x ad infinitum? Oh well, they lost me about a year ago (that LifeDrive is too little, too late, and it doesn't even work properly), but I still am intrigued by this latest development... PalmSource and Access are teaming up to create a Mobile Linux Ecosystem. Actually it's called the Access Linux Platform. Essentially it's the move to Linux PalmSource has been talking about for a while, only now we're beginning to see what shape it will take. Cutting through the marketing jabber, I see several open source items are making it into this new platform, including GTK and GStreamer. It also appears the existing PalmSource PIM apps will make the cross over. SQLite will get into the mix, but Palm's browser may take a back seat to the ACCESS NetFront browser. I'm a little worried about that one, since Palm's browser worked pretty well. Interesting times, but we shall see if this is the herald of a new age in Palm's OS, or the last nail in the coffin.

[Via MyTreo]