PalmSource's David Nagel told Reuters that it will release a version of the Palm OS for the Chinese market, considered by many to be the most important growth market in the World over the next several years. The Chinese version of the Palm OS will be out within a year. -PR

The Pretec CompactTRIO Adapter is a Type II CompactFlash card that allows HandEra owners to use Memory Stick, SD, and MMC memory cards. It sells for $50. -Ed

Former PIC News Editor Ed Hardy takes a look at the competition between the Palm OS and the Pocket PC OS. Though long only a niche player in the handheld market, recently the Pocket PC started to make some gains. With the release of Palm OS 5, the competitive landscape has shifted back in the Palm OS's favor. The change to faster processor and the addition of new capabilities means that the Palm OS is in no danger of losing its lead in the handheld market.

After many months of development, the final version of Palm OS 5 has been sent by PalmSource to the licensees. Now that the operating system is complete, it is up to the licensees to develop and release handhelds to run it. Of course, these are already close to being ready, based on early versions of OS 5 but there is no way at this point to accurately predict when the first of these will be available. Steve Sakoman, the CTO of PalmSource, would only say that he had seen the time between an operating system going Golden Master and a handheld release be as short as a month and a half.

Someone who says he is the biggest Handera dealer in Germany has posted pictures and some details of what he says is a prototype color handheld from HandEra in PDABuzz's forums. According to him, the device runs Palm OS 4.1, has 16 MB of RAM, and 4 MB of ROM. It uses the Palm III connector which HandEra has modified to run at USB speeds. It uses an internal li-ion battery.

TealPoint Software has released TealDoc 5.00, the latest version of its document reader. The new version adds TealDoc Maker, a Windows converter program that creates Palm-readable documents from text files, HTML files, clipboard text, and even previously-created Palm-format documents. Other additions include antialiased fonts, document notes, and bookmark support for documents on external storage cards. It is available now for $17.

According to an anonymous source, Sony is going to announce a U.S. version of the T650C on June 25. It probably isn't a coincidence that this is the first day of TECHXNY/PC EXPO, a very large tradeshow. If Sony follows its regular pattern, the new model will be announced but not available until a few weeks later.

Last year, the T600C was introduced in Japan at 40,000 Yen, the same price the T650C is coming out at. This might be an indication that the U.S. version of the T650C will be introduced at the same price the T615C was: $400.

Kinoma Player is a new hi-res digital media player for Palm handhelds. It supports playback of video, animation, and still images along with digital audio. Movies can be stored in RAM, as well as on external memory cards. It can also play content encoded in the gMovie format. Kinoma Player is free while Kinoma Producer, which is needed to encode content into the proper digital format, is $30.

Kenny West, CEO of PalmGear, has sent an email to all the developers who list applications on his company's site, informing them of a new payment policy. For months, PalmGear has been behind in payments to its partners, the people and companies for whom PalmGear acts as an online reseller. Starting this month, the company will first pay its partners what it owes for applications sold in the current month. Any money left over will go toward past due balances.

TapPad 2.02 includes a Virtual Graffiti skin for the Sony NR series. It also has a MiddleCaps Hack-like function. TapPad adds a number keypad, clipboard, editing buttons and more to almost any Palm OS handheld. -PR

Handheld Media Group is broadening its quarterly Buyer’s Guide to include all things handheld; from Palm Powered and Pocket PC PDAs to MP3 players to digital cameras. The Guide includes head-to-head reviews designed to let readers know which products rank best in a specific category. The next issue will hit newsstands June 15. -PR

Palm Inc. has released DualDate, which allows two different calendars to be displayed simultaneously. The primary calendar works like Date Book, the built-in app most users are familiar with. The second calendar can be beamed from another handheld running DualDate. It can only be displayed, not edited, and alarms from the second calendar aren't transferred. DualDate is freeware and is available now.

Palm Inc. is now offering a free Palm m105 with the purchase of an m500. The m500 must be purchased between today and July 8.

Palm said last week that demand for its handhelds this spring has been weaker than expected. Sales and rebates like this one are classic methods for spurring sales, especially now when many Father's Day and graduation gifts are being bought.