When Apple announced iSync in July, it said it would be available in September. Earlier this week, the company's CEO said only a beta would be released later this month. This app will allow Macs to synchronize address book and calendar info with Palm handhelds, cell phones, and Apple's own iPod. -Ed

AvantGo has announced that Richard Owen will resign his position as CEO effective September 30. The company's CFO will take over the position. On that same date, AvantGo will move from Nasdaq's National Market to the exchange's SmallCap market, under its current ticker symbol, "AVGO." -PR

Several companies are offering 256MB SD cards and some readers have asked for confirmation that they will work with their Palm OS handhelds before they bought them. A spokesperson for PalmSource said its licensees have run tests with these and found no problems. -Ed

The T615C is now on Sony's official list of discontinued handhelds. Circuit City appears to have sold out and is no longer offering them at $250. -Terry Salmi

Sony is putting on in Tokyo this week a show called Dream World, designed to show off its latest technology. Included in this is a demonstration of a handheld running Palm OS 5. PC Watch, a Japanese website, has a picture. Unfortunately, no other details are available.

Update: A Sony spokesperson emphasizes that this is more of a demonstration of the capabilities of Palm OS 5 on an ARM-based processor than a sneak peak of a future hardware release. According to him, it is premature to draw any conclusions about the hardware features of future handhelds based on this.

Shipments of all types of handhelds dropped over the past year. According to figures from IDC, the number of handhelds shipped worldwide during the second quarter of 2002 is 9.3% below the number shipped during the same quarter last year. All of the top handheld vendors have seen their shipments decline except for Sony.

Clearly, the slow world economy is the main cause for this decrease. Individuals and companies are reducing their spending on computers and other kinds of technology. The sharp drop in Hewlett-Packard's sales could indicate that corporations, the major purchasers of the company's Pocket PC models, might be cutting back more than individuals, Palm's and Sony's major customers.

Handspring has released its GPRS upgrade for Rogers AT&T Wireless Treo 180 customers in Canada. This will allow this smartphone, which now uses GSM networks, to also use faster GPRS networks.

Handspring is rolling out this upgrade on a country-by-country basis. Earlier this month a version was released in Singapore and New Zealand. The company strongly recommends that Treo users not install this upgrade if they aren't in the country it was designed for. Handspring will give no support to people who have problems with this upgrade who aren't in the country it was intended for.

Sony began offering a new mid-range model, the SJ30, last week. It has a 320 by 320, TFT, color screen and all the features typically found on Sony models, including a Memory Stick slot and a Jog Dial with a Back button. It runs Palm OS 4.1 on a 33 MHz Dragonball processor and has 16 MB of RAM.

News Editor Ed Hardy now brings us the second part of his review of this model.

Symbol Technologies has announced that it is working on a Laser Projection Display (LPD). As its name suggests, a laser beam is used to create a high quality image on any flat surface, at any distance, without refocusing.  The screen's resolution can be as large as VGA (640 x 480 pixels) and the actual image size is determined by how far from the LPD projector the wall it. At this point, the major limitation of the Symbol's LPD is it uses a single laser; therefore all images will be monochrome. However, Symbol says it can reproduce 16 levels of gray.

Sony has officially announced that the MSB1 Memory Stick Bluetooth Card will be available soon in Europe. The GC10 Game Controller and KB20 Mini Keyboard will also be available there soon. -Dan

Brighthand's Editor-in-Chief Steve Bush has announced he will change hats to become the site's publisher on October 1. Bush says he is bringing in "someone who's recognized in the handheld community" to take over producing daily news, though he declined to say who the new person would be. -Ed

Cascata Games is working on a first-person shooter called Master Thief based on the Deity 3D engine, which the company is licensing from MobileWizardry. Players of Master Thief will need to not just be quick with the trigger finger, but also use code-breaking skills, special weapons, and a lock pick to be successful. Additional level packs for the game will also be available. So far, Cascata has only said the game will be available this Fall, and hasn't yet released a price.

Rumor: Someone who works for a national retailer says that one of his company's product placement reports shows there will be a replacement for the Palm m105 that will be called the Palm Zire. The model number will be P80707US. Rumors about the Zire have been circulating for weeks. -Ed

Circuit City is selling its remaining stock of Sony T615Cs for $250 while supplies last. -UZI4U182

Many people are asking for handhelds with built-in 802.11 wireless networking. However, the handhelds already available with this tend to be large and experience a short battery life. Texas Instruments has a solution for both these problems. It has announced a new Wi-Fi processor that uses significantly less power than its competitors. It does this by reducing by 90% the amount of power consumed in standby mode. This means a significant overall power savings because most 802.11b devices spend nearly 95% of their time in non-operational sleep or standby modes. TI estimates this improvement will reduce overall power consumption by up to 25%.