The Money Magazine Financial Assistant is now available from LandWare. It provides more than 45 worksheets to help calculate a loan payment, split a restaurant bill, or simply compare the prices of different sized packages. It has worksheets that cover loans, leasing and mortgages, currency conversion, investment evaluation, net worth, and much more. The Money Magazine Financial Assistant sells for $25.

Handspring has released a version of Palm Desktop 4.0 that will allow Macintosh users to HotSync with some of its models. It works with Mac OS X 10.1.2 or higher and Mac OS 9.x and supports all Visor handhelds and the Treo 300 communicator. Full Macintosh synchronization software for Treo 90, 180, 180g and 270 products will be available later this fall. The download is free. -PR

The Treo 90 is now available for customers in the UK, where it sells for £250. Versions in other languages will be available later this year. -Henrik

Many users complain that wireless SD cards or Memory Sticks take up their handheld's sole expansion slot, leaving them with no way to store more files than their handheld's RAM can hold. A new application from Cutting Edge Software solves this problem.

Mobilefile allows Internet-connected handhelds to access files on a desktop PC. The handheld can be connected to the Internet through a modem or wireless network card. This includes smartphones and other wireless handhelds.

Cutting Edge Software has released Quickpoint, which allows users to take PowerPoint presentations created on their PC and view them on their handhelds. These can also be modified in a few ways. Notes can be edited and slides can be reordered. Changes made can be synchronized with the PowerPoint version on a desktop.

Quickpoint sells for $30, plus it has been added to Cutting Edge's office suite, Quickoffice Pro. This sells for $50. Current users of Quickoffice can upgrade for $20.

Palm's new dual brand architecture, which was introduced yesterday, divides the company's products into two sub-categories: Consumers and Professionals. The first get the Zire family, the second the Tungsten family. The Zire family is intended be easy to use, simple, fun, empowering, and intuitive.

On October 7, Palm will announce its first Zire sub-brand handheld, which doesn't have a model name of it's own yet. Palm Zire will have 2MB of RAM and use Palm OS 4.1. It won't have the Universal Connector nor a cradle, and it will only come with two hardware buttons instead of four, plus the Up/Down separated buttons.

Margi Systems has announced that it will be releasing a version of its Presenter-to-Go presentation tool that connects to Sony handhelds via the Memory Stick slot. It will allow presentations created in PowerPoint or any printable Windows application to be transferred to a handheld and displayed in color at 1024 by 768. It will be compatible with the full Clié line. It will be available in October for $200.

Palm Inc. has reported the results for its most recent financial quarter. It was not a very good quarter. It had revenues of $172.3 million, which is slightly below analyst's expectations. The company posted a pro forma net loss of $36.4 million, or 6 cents per share, which is a penny better than what analysts had predicted. The company also lost 6 cents per share the same quarter last year.

There were some bright spots in Palm's results. Gross margins for its handhelds are up to 31.4% vs. 27.1% the same quarter last year. It has reduced operating expenses and inventory. According to NPD, 59% of the handhelds sold in U.S. retail stores during the last week in August were made by Palm.

Palm Inc. announced today the creation of two distinct sub brands for its portfolio of handheld products -- the Tungsten and Zire families. No actual handhelds were announced, just two new lines of handhelds.

Tungsten will be the brand name for its high-end models aimed at mobile professionals and the enterprise work forces, while Zire will be its consumer brand.

One of the areas people are concerned about in the new Palm OS 5 is that all the current hacks will no longer work. For a while there was some confusion over whether OS 5 would supports any kind of hacks. Fortunately, this isn't the case.

Hacks are small applications that change the way the operating system works which, with the rewrite of the OS to move to ARM-based processors, will no longer function. However, these are too popular to be allowed to go away so PalmSource has created a new system-extension mechanism that can be used to create mini-apps that perform many of the same tasks as hacks and developers are working to come up with replacements.

Last week came word that SonyStyle Japan had begun listing the NR series as discontinued. Over the weekend, alert reader Kit Leung pointed out that the site has stopped listing these models altogether. It seems likely Sony will announce a replacement in the next few weeks. -Ed

Kyocera began showing off its 7135 this summer but hasn't announced a release date more detailed than "fall". This may be drawing close as the company has put this smartphone on its main home page and has a full description about it. -Jim

An anonymous source has given Geek.com an image of Palm Inc's upcoming high-end mode. The picture confirms that it is based on the Oslo prototype. This features a sliding bottom part which alternately covers and exposes the Graffiti area, allowing the handheld to be very small when closed or let user enter text when open.

The image also confirms that this model will be named the Tungsten T. All of Palm's high-end products will be part of the Tungsten line. Its new smartphone will be called the Tungsten W.