Sprint is offering a trade-up program on the new Handspring Treo 300 smartphone. This allows people to get a Treo 300 and then send Handspring an older handheld and get a $100 rebate. The smartphone must be purchased from Handspring at the full $500 price and it must be activated with Sprint. This program lasts until October 11.

The Sony SL10, SJ20 and SJ30 are now available in Canada at SonyStyle.ca. They are retailing for $230 CDN, $300 CDN, and $500 CDN respectively. -Anon

The NR70V is now listed privately in the Best Buy database as being on clearance. This is just one of several indications lately that this product is close to being discontinued. Update: This report is incorrect; it is actually the NR70 that is listed as being on clearance, not the version with the built-in camera. -Anon

Pico Communications is going to install PicoBlue Internet Access Points in both the Palm Solutions Group's new offices in Milpitas and in PalmSource's new offices in Sunnyvale, both in California. This is expected to be the largest Bluetooth wireless network in the U.S. and the largest enterprise Bluetooth network in the world. It will be operational later this month.

Several weeks ago, it was acknowledged by Palm Inc. that the m130's screen could not display the number of colors the company had previously advertised. At that time, Palm said it was working on ways to compensate m130 owners for this mistake.

The company has begun sending registered Palm m130 customers an email that gives them two options. The first is a refund for the purchase price and tax of their m130 handheld. The second is a free copy of SimCity, a $30 value.

Cutting Edge Software is the developer of the Quickoffice suite of office applications. In this interview, Michael Compeau, the company's Vice President of Business Development and Planning, talks about how Palm OS 5 will affect Quickoffice, whether a PowerPoint-compatible app will be added to the suite, the possibilities of a Pocket PC version, and much more.

Astraware has released four new games and updated many of their current ones.

Rook's Revenge is a real-time chess game that is more about being a fast thinker and mover than a grand master. While the game features a standard checkered board and chess pieces - all moving according to traditional rules - and the objective is to capture the opponent's king, this is where the similarities end. Instead of taking turns at moving their pieces, player can move them as soon and as often as they like.

The price of the NR70V at SonyStyle has dropped from $600 to $550, while the NR70's price remains the same. The price of the NR70V on SonyStyle.ca has dropped from $1000 CAD to $800 CAD. -Maxime

Amazon has the Stowaway folding keyboard for the Handspring Visor for $10 after a $30 rebate. - Larry

Today is Labor Day, a national holiday in the U.S, and the PIC staff is taking a well-earned vacation. -Ed

Sony's Bluetooth Memory Stick PEGA-MSB1 will be available in Europe in mid-September for about 200 Euros ($200 US), according to the German newsite heise online. -Ralph

Sony has released a software update for the Memory Stick slots on some of its models. There are versions for the NR series and the T665C. According to Sony, "This update program resolves the issue where errors occur when accessing the Memory Stick media." -Andy Cheng

Last week, Intel demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference in London its toolkit to help developers to write 3D games on devices using XScale processors. The Intel Graphics Performance Primitives (Intel GPP) for the PXA250 provides developers with a broad range of 3D graphics functions including data-type conversion, arithmetic, trigonometric, vector, matrix, and raster primitives. This toolkit is designed to overcome limitations in the XScale chip when it comes to 3D modeling. The Intel GPP is free.

RV Tec has begun offering the Guyver, a clip-on sled that allows a handheld to use wired and wireless PC Cards. There are versions for Palm's m500 series and Sony Clié models. The Guyver is a metal sled that has a single a Type II PC Card slot.

The company gives a long list of PC Card modems that are compatible with the Guyver. This includes ones that use GSM, GPRS, and CDMA wireless networks plus others. It also supports several 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless networking cards.

One of Handspring's international sites has posted the GPRS upgrade for the Treo 180 and 270 models. This will allow these models, which now use GSM networks, to also use faster GPRS networks.

GPRS is the next generation of GSM, offering 144 Kbps connections. One user of this update confirmed that GPRS connections stay active even when the device is turned off. In addition, the network connection stays active when the device ID off. This allows users to intermittently use their Treo without having to frequently go through the slow process of reconnecting to the network.

Update: In an official statement, Handspring says that this upgrade has been released only for Singapore and New Zealand and urges users in other countries to wait to upgrade their Treos until a version is released for their home country.