Big Box of Blox from Astraware might be worth checking out; it is free for the month of July. Astraware has churned out pretty good games for as long as I can remember. That’s pretty long considering the first Bejewelled I played were in monochrome (that’s black and white by the way, well technically they’re just black pixels on a greenish LCD). There’s also a fireworks program that… ehm, displays fireworks. Really, it does nothing else; aka eye-candy. If that’s your thing, get it here.

Hot on the heals of free software for the Palm Centro and Treo platforms (who says Palm is dead?), here’s another one - Gizmo 5 is a long time player of VoIP and IM for mobile devices and they just released a native Palm client (yes, native PRCs, not midlets/MIDP) that, among other things, allows interoperable IM between the major IM networks - Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Jabber). It does VoIP through SIP as well so if that’s your thing, it’s a damn good reason to get this installed. Since this thing hooks to Jabber, you get all the IM networks Jabber supports. Until Skype (if ever) comes out with a client for Palm OS, this is a viable alternative to VoIP-enable your Palm device. And just in case you’re wondering, yes, this thing does run in the background (this also means you should remember to disconnect it manually to avoid running up a small fortune on your data bill). Get Gizmo5 - here.

Gizmo5 isn’t the only player in the IM space. Long time software developer Geodisic (formerly Causserie IIANM) also has a client available called MunduIM. It supports MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber and AIM (among others). MunduIM is shareware though but it is cheap at $11 for lifetime use (but only throughout the same version). Geodisic has been known to release major version updates which requires a new license with no upgrade options. I understand that development costs has to be recouped in a way and being so cheap, I guess it’s unavoidable. But I thought any potential customer should know about this before hand. With free software coming out all the time, MunduIM has to add more value or risk being rendered irrelevant by the competition (much like the subcription-based Verichat and expensive IM+).

Now if you still want choices (that’s the good thing about using a Palm, you’re never short of them), there’s yet another IM client to choose from. And this one is free too. Webmessenger Mobile for Palm is relatively new as I’ve only heard a Palm OS client recently. Other than being slightly sluggish, it’s pretty solid and stable in my limited testing. Again, major networks such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk is supported, but this one has a extra network support - Skype! So if you’ve got a host of Skype contacts, this is the one to get.

So with 3 choices of great IM software, Palm OS users need not fret about being left of in the cold in the IM-space. The way I look at it, why let the excellent Treo/Centro keyboards go to waste ? Now if only I have an unlimited data plan…

Here’s an interesting software for the Palm Centro and Treo devices - a mobile blogging application that allows posting of pictures, text and - get this - video. Supported sites include popular social sites such as Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, twitter and myspace.com (for a more complete list, see here). Palm OS along with other popular smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Symbian are also supported. Hint to cellspin - please allow downloading of the program to a PC instead of forcing subscribers to download from a link from a cellphone. Not everyone has an unlimited data plan.

Here’s what’s not so hot (yes, I’m nitpicking) - you gotta sign up for yet another service. Instead of just working transparently, there’s yet another portal to check and all your content actually goes to cellspin’s own portal. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty happy with Wordpress as my core blog, flickr as my photo site and Facebook as my social site. It’s cool if I just get mobile clients to post directly to these sites. Not too hot that I have to sign-up for another one, just to track these three. But hey, that’s just me.

Check out the free CellSpin beta. As an alternative, Palm has a Facebook client as well.

Along with the announcement that there is now a GSM unlocked model of the popular Palm Centro in the US, Google is debuting a new Google Maps version that uses GSM towers triangulation or GPS hardware to determine the phone’s location called MyLocation. I’ve seen this in action when I was using my iPAQ 6965 (GPS) and also on the iPhone (via a 3rd party software that piggy backs on Google Maps). I certainly didn’t know that it wasn’t available on Palm OS devices. I’m without an unlimited data plan so I’ve not been playing with Google Maps much.

With Palm Centros selling in the millions and software freebies like this and the earier Facebook application, Palm OS is still going strong. Malaysian users interested in getting their feet wet in an extremely powerful and mature smartphone should take a look at the RM1299 (RRP) priced Palm Centro. Street price is going for less than that or with freebies.

Thanks to palmdoc for spreading the word that there is a Facebook® for Palm native application now available. I bet this will rack up the your data usage so only those with unlimited data plans need apply. Still this is pretty cool stuff for Facebook addicts.

Live updates: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/steve-jobs-keynote-live-from-wwdc-2008/

OMG. Pretty crazy stuff being demoed.

SDK & iPhone 2.0 firmware related: 3D accelerated games, medical applications, Chinese & Japanese language support, push notifications for background-like alerts (looks like no true multitasking for iPhone), an Exchange-like service and a suite of new Web 2.0 apps. There’s also a lot of bashing of Windows Mobile (specifically its multitasking and Activesync ).

And finally, the 3G iPhone was announced. $199 for the 8GB, $299 for the 16GB model. Starts selling July 11th.