Abstract (from IBM)Pippy is a port of (a subset of) Python to the PalmOS. With Pippy, Python programmers can create custom applications to run on Palm devices, as well as use Pippy as an interactive environment directly on the Palm. David evaluates the strengths and limitations of Pippy as a means of implementing Palm applications.
Let me introduce Pippy in the style of a good news/bad news joke. The good news about Pippy is that it allows a Python programmer to write and run programs right on the Palm. Moreover, with version 0.7, Pippy has gotten faster, more stable, and easier to use. The bad news is that, so far, Pippy is still fairly "bleeding edge" software, and a lot of the things programmers want in a development environment are planned for later versions, not available today. Still, Pippy gives you enough to play with now, and enables you to do some useful things without too much effort. 
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Secure Java MIDP Programming Using HTTPS with MIDPAbstract by Qusay H. Mahmoud
June 2002 Any information transmitted over wireless links is subject to interception. Some of that information could be sensitive, such as credit card numbers and other personal data. To make handheld wireless devices more useful in an enterprise setting and for m-commerce, applications must protect their users' information, using encryption, authentication, and secure communications protocols. E-commerce applications are already using successfully the secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), which is HTTP over the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol originally developed by Netscape. SSL works nicely for e-commerce applications, and it is a viable means of securing wireless transactions for end-to-end m-commerce applications. As a matter of fact, Java-enabled devices that support SSL are already available from NTT DoCoMo and Motorola. Sun has been working on a stripped-down version of SSL called "Kilobyte" SSL (kSSL), and has already delivered it as part of the MIDP 1.0.3 reference implementation and the J2ME Wireless Toolkit 1.0.3. This article first presents an overview of SSL and kSSL, then shows you how to: Open connections to https:// URLs
Configure Tomcat to be a secure server
Generate your own certificates and import them
Use the MEKeyTool delivered with the J2ME Wireless Toolkit to manage certificates.
Overview of SSL The SSL protocol allows clients (Web browsers, typically) and HTTP servers to communicate over a secure connection. It offers encryption, source authentication, and data integrity as means to protect information exchanged over insecure, public networks. Encryption protects data from unauthorized use by converting it to an apparently meaningless form before transmission. The data is encrypted by one side (the client or the server), transmitted, decrypted by the other side, then processed. Source authentication is a method of verifying the data sender's identity. The first time a browser or other client attempts to communicate with a Web server over a secure connection, the server presents the client with a set of credentials in the form of a certificate. Certificates are issued and validated by trusted authorities known as certification authorities (CAs). A certificate represents the public-key identity of a person. It is a signed document that says: I certify that the public key in this document belongs to the entity named in this document. Signed (certificate authority). Two of the most widely used CAs are VeriSign and Thawte. Data integrity refers to means of ensuring that data has not been modified in transit. Among the features of SSL that have made it the de facto standard vehicle for secure e-commerce transactions is its support for negotiable encryption and authentication algorithms. The designers of SSL realized that not all parties will use the same client software and consequently not all clients will include any particular encryption algorithm. The same is true for servers. The client and server at the two ends of a connection negotiate the encryption and decryption algorithms (cipher suites) during their initial handshake. It may turn out that they do not have sufficient algorithms in common, in which case the connection attempt will fail. An extended version of SSL has been adopted as an Internet standard under the name Transport Layer Security (TLS). While SSL allows both the client and the server to authenticate each other, typically only the server is authenticated in the SSL layer. Clients are customarily authenticated in the application layer, through the use of passwords sent over an SSL-protected channel. This pattern is common in banking, stock trading, and other secure Web applications. Full Article
MIDP for Palm OS is a Java runtime environment for Palm OS handhelds. It lets Palm OS users run the same Java technology-based applications ("Java applications") that are available for other MIDP-compliant devices, such as mobile phones and pagers. Because it follows Palm OS user-interface conventions, MIDP for Palm OS creates a user experience that minimizes training requirements. MIDP for Palm OS is compliant with the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.0 specification and the Mobile Information Device (MIDP) 1.0 specification, which have been standardized through the Java Community Process. This means that MIDP for Palm OS provides standard APIs for developing Java applications for Palm OS handhelds.
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Mobile & PDA 
