The dog days of summer are here, a slow season for new PDAs but a good time to share some news and catch up with reader e-mail on topics ranging from Wi-Fi for Treo smart phones and annotating GPS data to the history of Palm Computing.

First, the news. Not to sound overly defensive, but this particular pundit just doesn't have the time or energy to check out all the wonderful software available for handhelds. However, the folks at Handango, the online emporium, see a lot of commercial programs for all manner of handhelds, so I pay attention to their annual Champion awards.

Presented several weeks ago at Handango's yearly partner summit in Miami, these awards honor software for several major handheld platforms in categories such as best applications for work, play, and life. I was pleased to see some of my personal favorites, including PDAapps' VeriChat for Palms and MobiMate's WorldMate for BlackBerries, in the mix. Here's a list of winners for the major PDA platforms; you can check out the complete list, including the winners in Windows Mobile SmartPhone and Symbian categories, at Handango's Web site. Regular readers of this column will see some familiar names.

Blackberry:
Best Application for Work: Mail2Fax (Software-for-Blackberry.com)
Best Application for Play: Ring Tone Megaplex (Terratial Technologies)
Best Application for Life: WorldMate (MobiMate)
Best New Application: ESpell (DynoPlex)

Palm OS:
Best Application for Work: SnapperMail Premier Bundle (Snapperfish)
Best Application for Play: Pocket Tunes Deluxe (NormSoft)
Best Application for Life: VeriChat (PDAapps)
Best New Application: SplashBlog (SplashData) Best Industry Application: Davis's Drug Guide (Unbound Medicine)

Windows Mobile:
Best Application for Work: Pocket Informant 2005 (WebIS)
Best Application for Play: Fish Tycoon (LDW Software)
Best Application for Life: SPB Pocket Plus (SPB Software House)
Best New Application: CodeWallet Pro 2005 (Developer One)
Best Industry Application: MobiLearn Talking Phrasebook (MobiLearn)

If you use Intellisync Handheld Edition to synchronize your Palm contacts and datebook with a desktop application, and you've been having trouble with either a Treo 650 or a LifeDrive, you're not alone. A glitch in the most recent version of Intellisync recently began causing the HotSync process to hang when it tried to sync the addresses in my Lotus Notes desktop software with those in my Treo 650.

Intellisync says it is aware of the problem and will be fixing it in a new release, due shortly. In the meantime, an Intellisync engineer sent me a workaround, which involved shutting down HotSync and then deleting a bunch of old log files from the Intellisync program directory (search for and delete all files with the extensions .log, .ish, .bk0 (that's a zero, not the letter O), .ini, and .old. After that I had to restart and reconfigure Intellisync, but the synchronization process then worked.