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Handmark has added World Cup coverage to the Sports channel of its Pocket Express wireless news and information service. The mobile software developer says it appears in a special news subcategory within the channel and offers dozens of stories throughout the day.

The articles are continuously updated and posted as the Associated Press files them. Coverage includes game previews and recaps, breaking news and scoring updates on games in progress, injury reports, and more. Handmark expects to cover the world's largest sporting event through the championship game.

Sports, already one of the most popular free Pocket Express services, offers continuous coverage from now through the championship game. NHL and NBA finals are also covered in the AP Sports news channel and within detailed “weekly game” box scores for each sport, according to Handmark.

Handmark chief marketing officer Douglas Edwards said, “With up to the minute coverage 24 hours a day, anyone from casual observer to hardcore fan can get the latest World Cup updates wherever and whenever they choose."

The company updated Pocket Express, now on 3.0, to the most recent edition during CTIA Wireless 2006. It is compatible with Palm OS (Treo), Windows Mobile, and RIM BlackBerry platforms.

Pocket Express uses a channel metaphor, rather than a browser, to deliver Internet content to PDAs and smartphones. Handmark says Pocket Express is faster than mobile Web surfing by orders of magnitude and, with the 3rd edition, offers more than twice the number of services for the same $6.99 per month price as the previous edition.

Handmark demonstrated Pocket Express to PDAStreet using Motorola's Q , well before that smartphone's arrival.

Pocket Express works by basically downsizing the Web to make it more manageable or 'usable.' With it, information becomes more accessible to the consumer. In addition to the channels mentioned above, Pocket Express delivers stock info, movie times, maps and directions, and 411 directory search offerings.

Newer features include much-expanded sports, stocks, news and showbiz coverage, News of the Weird, Dear Abbey, Scott Burns financial advice, Last Word in Astrology, and the American Writer’s Thesaurus and New Oxford Dictionary.

With the new version of Pocket Express, users can select a SHARE option to send an SMS text message with a link to access a free trial to anyone they like. If the recipient decides to give Pocket Express a try, the sender is re-entered into the Porsche sweepstakes, which ends with the close of the year.