According to a report from NPD Intelect, the number of software titles sold in retail last year was four times what it was the previous year. Over 900 thousand handheld applications were sold in U.S., while only about 225 thousand were sold in 2000. A startling 97% of the software was for the Palm platform. The best selling category was games, accounting for about 350 thousand software sales, about a third of the total.

iambic has released Action Names School Edition 1.0, a specialized version of ActionNames 5.x. To make it more appealing to students there are new icons, new default To-Do categories (now called "homework"), and new names for a few other functions (the Contact List is now a "friend list", etc.). -Jan Lund Thomsen

STNE Corporation is now offering to upgrade the i705 to 16 MB of RAM for $115. STNE does memory upgrades on most Palm OS handhelds. -Will

Electric Pocket has released Mailer, a POP3 email application. Mailer offers a multi-account email engine that gives users control over which email messages are received and how much of each message. It also provides an option to reply to an email with a phone call. It's available now for $30.

It's difficult to judge the success of new handhelds, especially as companies generally don't announce sales for individual models. However, there are some clues that models recently announced by Palm Inc. are selling well. On the list of Buy.com's Top 25 Best Selling Products, the i705 is first and the m515 is second. The m130 is a still respectable ninth, considering its competing against everything else the webstore sells. -mashby

Novell's new version of iFolder allows users to backup their Palm handheld onto a network drive. -Ed

Since Sony announced the PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V in Japan earlier this week, they have garnered unprecedented attention. While as much information was released as possible immediately after the announcement, the original report was a bit sketchy in some areas, mostly due to the English/Japanese language barrier but in some cases because the information simply wasn't available yet. Some additional details on these new handhelds is now available.

At CeBit, Palm Inc. has announced that it will soon be releasing the Palm Web Browser. This is a full Web browser which allows to user to access any URL on the Internet, bookmark and categorize favorite sites, save information for offline viewing, and cache a history of visited sites. Pages are reformatted to make them look better on a handheld's small screen. It will be available in the U.S. on April 8 for $20.

Many people are nervous about carrying around an expensive handheld without some kind of case to protect it. With Sony's T615C so new, the selection of cases has been weak. However, in the near future that problem may be solved. Both Vaja Cases and InnoPocket are now taking preorders for T615C cases that will be available within a month.

Eugene, a frequent PIC reader who lives in Japan, went down to Sony's home offices and was able to handle the just-announced NR70 and NR70V and was kind enough to write up a report on them. -Ed

John Bartley, who runs the I300 Yahoo Group, was told by a source at Samsung that its SPH-M330 has been delayed until "late third quarter". When it was announced recently, the company said it would be out next month.

Matsushita Electrics has just announced that it plans to release a GPS module that uses the SD format this fall, according to ZDnet Japan. Few details were released except that it will use chips from the U.S. company SiRF Technology. Matsushita did show of a picture of a prototype.

Logitech has just announced a wraparound fabric keyboard. The Logitech KeyCase uses ElekTex, a sturdy electronic fabric. When not in use, the keyboard wraps around the handheld, offering it some protection. The KeyCase works with Palm's Universal Connector and it will be available in the U.S. and Europe in early April for $100.

The company has also introduced a folding aluminium keyboard.

The Palm Bluetooth SD Card is now listed on the PalmStore. This card has been available in Europe since last month but has only been available in the U.S. from a few stores and not from Palm itself. The card sells for $130 and it's available now. It will work with all Palm-branded handhelds that have an SD slot.